Chapter 8 – Ghetto Find your Tribe
So after the last couple of chapters which, I will admit,
were a little ‘woe is me’ I am returning to the original motivation behind this
blog. My life experiences and the places, people and discoveries that have made
me, me. I will say that the disclosure that I have made over the last few posts
were definitely important to me, I don’t want to trivialize the situation I am
in, my life has and is going through a radical change due to a small strand of
retrovirus. It has made a radical shift to the way I view myself, my
perspective on life and altered my world view…..somewhat. But that’s not my
topic today, I want to talk about the concept of the Ghetto.
The term ghetto always conjured, for me, an image of The
Bronx or Harlem. The representation of a black American subculture isolated
within a boundary where outsiders feared to tread. The images were always full
of unemployed gangs, drug dealer, prostitution, crime and fear. This is all
true of course, if a group of people feel threatened by the majority of a
society they will tend to cluster together, if only for mutual protection. The
trouble with a situation like this, where a group of oppressed people come
together is of course that it provides a target for further suppression.
Corralled into this ghetto model like a concentration camp, closed in on all
sides, contained. In this situation the majority, white American society was
comfortable leaving the black community to fall deeper and deeper into poverty,
encouraging higher and higher crime rates, murder rates, drug use and any
number of vices.
Of course history shows that this ghetto situation gave
birth to a revolution. Black Power, the strength in numbers, not always a
single voice but a chorus of voices calling out for justice, equality and the
right to be included within the wider community of Americans. It is still not
possible to say that the racism that underlay the attitude of Americans towards
the black community is fully erased from current dialogue but it is now
recognized for the bigotry that it is. The ghetto still exists of course, the
fight was never an attempt to be totally absorb into the wider world outside of
this enclave, but it did allow a greater avenue for cross cultural exchange. An
exchange which has since influenced not just American but world culture. It
wasn’t an easy struggle, lives were lost, lives were ruined, many suffered on
the road towards equality but the victory was won through perseverance,
determination and the knowledge of what was right.
The black ghettos of America and the struggles that came out
of them are more important to the history of the world than is often understood
by people who have never had to fight for the right to be. The battles fought
during this period has influenced many other minorities when their time to
fight arrived, but more on that later.
Of course there is another type of ghetto, one more familiar
to Australia. More prominent in the larger cities like Sydney rather than small
cities like Brisbane. With a multi-cultural society like Australia with
immigrants coming from all over the world by choice or through a need to escape
atrocities in their homeland there is a need for people to hold onto their
cultural roots while adapting to the new society around them. In Brisbane there
are only 2 such ghettos that come to mind, the Greek population of West End and
the Chinese dominated culture of Sunnybank. West End is no longer as strong a
Greek ghetto as it once was but this is also the case in Sydney. I think that
the Greek ghettos in Australia served their purpose many years ago, with the major
influx of Greek immigrants after the World War subsequent generations have
already amalgamated with the wider Australian society and Australian
culture. The Chinese have always created
an area in the city where Chinese culture thrives, most western cities will
have a ‘Chinatown’ located somewhere in the heart town. Sunnybank is more of a
ghetto style community though, where large numbers of a particular culture
choose to live in close proximity to each other. The same can be said of the
Lebanese in Bankstown, Sydney or the Vietnamese in Cabramatta. These ghettos
are important to the people who live there because they know that those around
them will understand their cultural needs and provide the continuation of those
cultural values as they come to terms with the Australian way of live.
These types of ghettos do serve their purpose and over time
as each generation becomes more Australian, as the Greeks did before them these
communities will disperse and become simply part of the general population.
Until then there can be issues with this situation, gangs develop to wage war
on other communities. Sydney saw a lot of this during the 90’s where rival
cultures would battle on the streets. So are ghettos a good thing? Do they
contribute to the wellbeing of those who choose to reside in one?
Well, that’s what I am thinking about today. From the moment
I left school and blossomed as a poof, while trying to live under the
oppression of a homophobic government in Queensland all I could think about was
getting to Sydney. The thought of being somewhere that would accept me for what
I was and allow me to discover all my potential openly and freely was like an
impossible dream. When I finally made it to Sydney in the early 90’s, straight
into the heart of Darlinghurst I was home. Never had I felt so safe, secure and
welcomed as I walked Oxford Street for the first time. I is impossible to
express the joy, the relief, and the excitement in discovering that I had
stepped into the Emerald City, a place where no one judged you for being gay,
where you could leave your ruby slippers behind because you would have no need
to click your heels three times to get home, because you were home.
Is Darlinghurst a ghetto? Damn right it is and thank god for
it too. The gay community has developed a ghetto like no other. We don’t fight
(apart from for our rights), we welcome outsiders and show them that it’s okay
to be different. We created a place where a young man could feel safe to say “I’m
gay” without the risk of rejection. And everyone looks fabulous!!
The gay ghetto for me is a place where our history is
stored, shared and created. We, as a community were able to take the lessons gleamed
from other oppressed groups, like black Americans and learn from their
struggle. It is only through a close community like that created through a
ghetto that change can occur. Together as one voice and in numbers we could
march on parliament and force ourselves to be heard and seen. I remember one
such march where we gathered in our hundreds on Macquarie Street outside parliament
fighting for the anti-vilification laws to be passed to protect us from brutal
and often fatal attacks from homophobic gangs as well as bosses and private organizations.
We blew whistles outside which could be heard in the chamber during the debate
to announce our presence. To make the politicians inside realise that we were
here, we were queer, and we were voters. What I most remember about that night
was standing beside Marcia Hines as she joined our call and blew her whistle alongside
us in support, she is a DIVA of the highest order and will always be in my
heart after that night. I did see her often after that night but not on a
political front, she is one of the nicest people you are ever likely to meet. Needless
to say we won that battle and the law was passed, but it was one of many that
needed to be fought for to get us where we are today. It was only through the
construction of a ghetto situation that we were ever able to be recognized as
human beings with the right to live freely and with respect. Then of course the
full impact of AIDS came alone which to date has killed 35 million people over
the last 3 decades.
Darlinghurst became a placed labelled with disease, our
opponents took full advantage of our plight to attack when we were at our most
vulnerable. Our leaders were dying, our governments were closing all the doors
in our faces and the community was crumbling. If it hadn’t been for the strength
of the community that had been created by, for and cherished by the people who
lived in the Darlinghurst area many, many more would have been lost. We all
changed from that moment. For me caring for a couple who both were positive,
holding Roy’s hand while he lay on his bed as he passed away while his partner Stewart called the
undertaker was enough to make my blood boil. This was a time when new drugs
were just coming out which could help to control the virus, but they were
expensive and the Australian Government was slow to approve them and selective
in who they would give access to them. So while Stewart fitted the Governments
criteria for help he had to watch his partner die. I changed then, I realised
that everything that we had been fighting for was so trivial compared to what
was decimating our community. Our fight was no longer to be seen as equals
under the law we actually had to fight to stay alive. Once again the ghetto was
the greatest source of strength for this battle, I was not alone in my anger.
We marched on parliament, not with whistles but with raised fists, we refused
to be forced to die. What a lot of people didn’t realise is that the Jews were
filed into gas chambers by the Nazis but our governments simply had to do
nothing to remove a noisy and despised group from the wider community. By
refusing to release medications which could have saved countless lives through
the creation of red tape to delay every step they hoped that our numbers would simply
diminish but unlike the Germans they couldn’t be blamed. I remember coming to
Brisbane as part of a group of protestors to cause as much havoc as possible in
Brisbane streets to try and make our plight be heard. We marched into the
middle of Victoria bridge and lay down, a ‘Death in’ we had to radicalize because
the media was following the Government line and not discussing what was
happening. We lay down in the middle of the bridge and refused to move because no
one was listening and no one was helping. But this all stemmed from the fact
that the ghetto provided a secure environment where we could build numbers and
create plans that would allow a minority group to be heard.
I have a lot to be thankful for from my time in the Gay ghetto
of Sydney. It helped me to develop into who I am today, it gave me the space
where I could discover my history as a gay man and to help create the history
that the gay youth today can learn about. It helped set my values, it provided
a cultural education and believe me when I say that my gay cultural history is
far more important to me that my Scottish heritage or Australian citizenship.
Being gay is so much more than who I sleep with it influences every aspect of
my life like nothing else could ever do and it was living in a gay ghetto that
allowed that to flourish. Personally I think it should be compulsory for every
gay boy to be sent to the gay ghetto so that he can spend some time with his
own people and learn who he is and what he is capable of without the influence
of a wider society that doesn’t understand the true nature of the queer.
Am I sounding a little angry, it feels like I am when I read
back over the last paragraphs? There were certainly periods where anger was a
necessary tool to try to achieve a positive result but like anything done by a
group of queens it was always done with style, flare and with a sense of drama.
And what has drawn me to talk about ghettos anyway.
Well as many of you may be aware I have only this week moved
home. This was done for a number of reasons but primarily because I need to
establish myself in an area where I can once again feel at least somewhat as
comfortable as I did living in the gay enclave of Darlinghurst. I was living in
Woodridge which is bleak, dark and miserable, it is a lifeless suburb which
thrives on hate and anger. I was only able to tolerate this by ignoring the
worst components and distancing myself from trouble whenever possible. But my
life has changed as you are aware and I realise that I need to make the most
from any time that I have left on this planet. Brisbane doesn’t have a ghetto
in the same way that Sydney does, although New Farm or Gay Farm comes close but
I decided to move to West End. It is an area that reminds me a lot of the youth
culture of Sydney’s Newtown where I lived for a few years. A nice mix of people
who are doing their own thing without judging those around them. I can once
again wear clothing that has a bit of flare without fear of attack or abuse. I don’t
have to worry about the gangs in my neighborhood who have been told by someone
that I have AIDS so think its ok to threaten me on the street. So I feel a
little like I have moved back into a ghetto, a happy, creative and inclusive
ghetto that hopefully will allow me to once again bloom like the fairy that I
am and enjoy the life that I have. I hope that doesn’t sound too morbid, this
is a very positive step for me, taking back control of my life after what has
been an awful few months. I can already feel the stress lifting even though I
have so much work to do in setting up my new unit, but sitting on my front
steps and watching the people go by already feels like home.
