They're still going on about the riots at Cronulla, a couple of days ago, and opinion is divided on the cause.
The left has quite happily settled into beating up a few usual suspects: Howard, racist Anglos and...somewhat bizarrely...individualism.
Elsewhere, there's a good article by Michael Duffy on the moral preening of some over this issue.
Most interesting for me, is some stats, buried in this opinion piece:
Studies by Monash University's Bob Birrell of the most revealing test of immigrant integration, the marriage rate, showed that by the end of the '90s less than 10 per cent of second-generation marriages of people of European descent were to someone from their parents' country.
Much the same was true of immigrants from south and east Asia.
Only 6 per cent of Indians married within their ethnic group, as did only 18 per cent of Chinese.
In short, most immigrants, whatever their race, married Australians of other nationalities.
However, for the Lebanese, of whom most of marriageable age were Muslims, these figures were reversed.
No less than 74 per cent of Lebanese brides and 61 per cent of Lebanese grooms married within their own ethnic group.
Moreover, these figures had increased since the early '90s, when they were about six percentage points lower.
Similar point is made by this article.
In essence, this is a dangerous trend, mostly for the Lebanese community itself.
In the first half of the 1950s, Catholic Australians rarely intermarried with protestant Australians, and this certainly contributed to the "apartness" that a lot of Irish Catholic descended Australians felt.
Nowdays the Catholic/Protestant divide is not an issue at all.
Food for thought, certainly.
(More on Cronulla-related items from Tim Blair)
Posted by Quentin George at December 17, 2005 12:12 PMAh, the old Catholic/protestant divide.
In Ireland, an Irish work-mate said, "Since you're Australian, you're probably an atheist, right?" I confirmed his suspicion.
He then asked my father's religion. I told him he too was a (weak) atheist. He then asked my grand-parents religion and I said I believe they were German Lutherans.
"Ah, protestant bastard!" he exclaimed as they all exploded in laughter.
Point of the story: I hate the Irish.
Posted by: Engels at December 17, 2005 08:05 PMAs someone who's around 50% Irish background, lemme just say:
You're probably correct.
Posted by: Aidan at December 17, 2005 10:25 PMI've heard, from a Free Mason, that the two main department stores in Sydney (Grace brothers and ...) would only hire catholics and Free Masons respectively back in the day.
I think back then Free Masons were predominantly Protestant.
Posted by: Engels at December 18, 2005 11:05 AMThat's because the Catholic Church threatened to excommunicate any of their members who joined the Freemasons.
Posted by: Aidan at December 19, 2005 10:19 AMI'm married to an Indian West Indian (get your head around that) who migrated here in 1981. My brother married an Italian. We are 6th generation Scots-Irish and grew up in Sydney's inner west. Most of my Italian school friends married 'Skips'.
Travelling in India I met many Christians in the South West. One asked me, 'So Australia is a Christian country?' 'No', I said, 'We worship the sun'. Cruel!
Posted by: Bruce at December 22, 2005 09:06 PM