When my seven-year-old sister dressed up for her school Harmony Day parade this year, my dad sent a long message to the family group chat responding to a photo of her in a tiny Egyptian abaya. He recounted the history of the day, which he said was introduced by the Howard government in 1999 to “hide the longstanding systemic racial discrimination many people have faced in Australia”.
The day coincides with the United Nations’ International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which was originally meant to commemorate the shooting of anti-apartheid protesters in South Africa in the 1960s.
Having a day to celebrate supposed “harmony” diminishes the ongoing truth of racism in this country, and instead reinforces a comfortable and easy myth: that Australia is a global example of a tolerant and accepting multicultural society.
It may be useful to think of the rise of racism in Australia not as a departure from but an extension of such messaging. There is a risk that simply paying lip service to multiculturalism does more harm than good when it comes to fighting racial injustice.