Reflective Essay On Australian Identity

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I’d like to pose to you an interesting combo - call it a tad chaotic, if I might say Maccas soft serve and fries It just doesn’t work, some may argue. There is too much rashness and creaminess and salt and sugar into one - and it just doesn’t work. And some say, without even having a try there is too much in apparent contradiction to ever taste of something good - or even acceptable, tolerable. Likewise, I felt and I’m sure over 6 million Muslims did with the “apparent” contradictory identities of both Muslim, and Australian. Only accentuated by media narratives, with the paradigm shift of 9/11, and more recently, the Cronulla Riots. Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to explore with you today the experiences of religion and specifically Christianity …show more content…

When I spoke to relatives from overseas, I was the “Australian” but when it came to life in Australia, very little of me did I see in the media, the government and on TV. Constantly bombarded with the phrase “go back to where you come from”, my sense of citizenship was often compromised. And I never had one of those name tag key rings. Ever. With this lack of representation, there came a lack of positive role models, further contributing to this sheltered and hindered sense of identity and citizenship. Contrarily from distributed surveys, I found that my Christian counterparts did not feel villianised within the media, government or TV, however, too identified a lack of Christian representation, particularly on TV. Despite this lack of representation - 80% of Christians surveyed responded that they belonged to the Australian identity. Alongside identity, Islam was further presented in national and international media in a significant time of conflict within Australia’s history; The Cronulla riots. My content analysis of a transcript of Alan Jones’s commentary on the riots identified that nearly every single statement made was on the negative regarding Islam, and over 5% of the words themselves were profanity or derogatory contrary to the ACMA radio regulation of no curse words or profanity. In correlation to the release of Sydney’s top radio charts, 2GB took the lead in 2005 - the year of the

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