18 min read
This article is more than 1 year old
You'll never guess where Louisa is really from — and she's not alone
Family histories and cultures are becoming more complicated in Australia and there are calls to improve how we properly capture people's identities.
Published 21 January 2023 9:00am
Updated 21 January 2023 9:16am
By Charis Chang
Source: SBS News
Image: Louisa is often asked by strangers what her heritage is. (SBS News)
When Louisa was a young bartender it sometimes felt like a fun game for customers to try to guess her heritage.
"I have gotten totally different ones; people ask if I'm like French or Spanish," she says.
The 32-year-old, who lives in Melbourne, says she still gets questioned about her background regularly.
"Nearly everybody I meet will at some point ask me about my heritage."
"I find it really strange that people even ask me because, to me, white Australians, non-Indigenous Australians, are generally quite multicultural, so it's bizarre to me."
Louisa is often asked by strangers what her heritage is. Source: SBS News
Only a question asking about her ancestry may have hinted at her cultural identity, which suggests respondents use their parents and grandparents as a guide. But Louisa's parents were also born in Australia.
Louisa isn't French or Spanish like her former customers thought — she's actually sixth-generation Chinese.
Her surname is Wang and every year since she can remember she has attended Melbourne's Chinese New Year parade, participating in it as a lion dancer when she was younger.
Lunar New Year celebrations in Melbourne. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
And when Louisa's family gathers for Lunar New Year dinner, the ancestry each of them brings with them to the table extends well beyond Chinese; her mother is of English, Jewish and Polish background and her partner is Italian.
Louisa's Chinese heritage stems from her father, who is ethnically Chinese but was born in Australia and does not speak Chinese. Older generations of his family married partners born in China, helping them to maintain a cultural and ethnic link.
Louisa Wang with her partner Luca and son Ennio. Source: Supplied
"Mum said she used to take me to the Chinese New Year parades when I was a baby ... It's so exciting for me, I love it, I think the lion dances are amazing, they are so inspiring."
Louisa also embraces Chinese superstitions around good luck symbols, is proud that she can make dumplings from scratch, and craves rice porridge when she's sick. Her culture is something she also hopes to pass on to her son Ennio, who inherited her surname as his middle name,.
"Hopefully Ennio will be the dragon [in the parade] eventually," she says.
Another reason Louisa feels connected to her Chinese heritage is through the work of her father Mark Wang, the chief executive officer of the Museum of Chinese Australian History in Melbourne. In Mark's case, he learned a lot about Chinese 'thinking' from his Shanghai-born father before he died.
Mark Wang is chief executive officer of the Chinese Museum in Melbourne, Victoria. Source: Supplied
"We would see Western people go into a place and try to bargain, and the Chinese weren't interested because they didn't treat Chinese people properly."
"My father ... would make friends with them and then he could have whatever he wanted."
Both Mark and Louisa say they identify predominantly as Australian but Mark is unsure whether his appearance - he looks more ethnically Chinese - contributed to his connection with the culture.
"I don't know whether I am Chinese from the inside, or whether people have made me Chinese," he says.
I don't know whether I am Chinese from the inside, or whether people have made me Chinese.- Mark Wang
Mark thinks he has become more Chinese as he has gotten older and believes heritage is what matters most when it comes to cultural identification.
"I might have Latvian ancestry but if I don't even think about it, and it doesn't perpetuate in me, it's not part of my heritage," he says.
"Your heritage gets passed down and you are what is passed down to you."
Louisa's grandmother and Mark's mother Mabel (standing, left) with her parents and siblings. Source: Supplied
The 35-year-old also comes from the same line of Australian-born relatives but looks Chinese. His father was born in China but the two hardly knew each other. Despite his mother not speaking Chinese when he was younger, they maintained some traditions.
"Growing up we definitely felt Chinese and we felt like we held on to some traditions ... but now that I'm older I experience it in a different way, I'm definitely more aware it was a kind of watered-down version," he says.
Wei has rediscovered some of his culture through his wife Rachel, who was born in Australia to Taiwanese-born parents. It's also something that he hopes to eventually pass on to any future children who will look Asian but will have Australian-born parents.
"In some ways I kind of feel like I'm more Asian than [my mum] sometimes because I've learned about Asian culture, whether it's in high school or after school and now [through] my wife," he says.
"It's weird because I guess cultural identity doesn't necessarily just come from origin, it can still be learned."
Wei Wang and his wife Rachel. Source: Supplied
"I've definitely experienced prejudice ... just the feeling of being put in a box or thought of a certain way," he says.
In one incident, Wei says he was speaking in English to a stranger through a screen door at his home, but when he opened the door, the stranger saw his appearance and immediately said "ni hao", which means hello in Mandarin.
"I just thought, that was a really strange thing to say. It wasn't rude or it wasn't, like, racist, it was just really unusual ... I was annoyed, I won't say I was offended but ... that kind of bothered me."
'Whitewashed' out of statistics
It's now much more common for families in Australia to have diverse backgrounds and capturing the complexity of this ethnic diversity is not always straightforward.
Australian National University demographer Dr Liz Allen believes the national Census of Population and Housing, a mandatory survey completed every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), needs to review how it looks at this area.
She is now working with Jieh-Yung Lo of the ANU Centre for Asian-Australian Leadership on a project called Counting for Change to better understand ethnicity in Australia and look at ways that data can better reflect the country's multicultural population. This could include whether people should be able to self-identify their ethnic or cultural identity as part of a new Census question.
Currently, the ancestry question on the Census only allows for two answers, which is becoming less useful as marriages between people of different cultures become more common. Some experts also believe people are interpreting the question in different ways so the results can be unclear.
READ MORE
How multicultural is your suburb?
Dr Allen believes the way data is collected in the Census reflects an outdated notion of identity and race that fails to adequately account for increasingly mixed parenting and shifting ethnic identity. She says collecting information about someone's country of birth, language spoken at home, religion and even ancestry may also not adequately capture identity. This could include Australians who look Asian but who only speak English, do not practice a religion, and whose parents were born in Australia.
"We kind of whitewash that Asian Australian and they disappear from our statistics," she says. "The trouble with that, is we deny their needs from a service provision position, and we deny their identity.
"At the same time, this Asian Australia is prone to and vulnerable to discrimination, and that's what we saw during COVID ... so much discrimination heaped upon Asian Australians who are kind of hidden or not present in the data."
A Diversity Council Australia report released last year found 43 per cent of non-white non-Christian Australians from non-English speaking backgrounds reported racism in their workplace as being common or very common.
We kind of whitewash that Asian Australian and they disappear from our statistics- Dr Liz Allen
Dr Allen says other groups that have a long settlement pattern in Australia, such as Greeks and Italians, could also be hidden in the statistics.
"Our ancestry and our history exceed these notions of where we were born, where our parents were born, the religion we practice and the language we speak," she says. "We're now seeing generations after generations sharing very intricate and diverse stories of ethnicity and transference of culture. We don't capture that at all."
Other identity groups are also fighting for better recognition, including a same-sex couple who . In September, the ABS and it will look at potential changes for the 2026 Census.
'We should ask about race'
Diversity Council Australia critical race expert Dr Virginia Mapedzahama says the experiences of Louisa, Mark and Wei show the tension between how people self-identify and how they are identified by others.
She says when people were trying to guess Louisa's "heritage" they were really trying to guess her race.
"When she's walking down the street, when she's looking for a job, when she's talking to people ... everybody asks her where she's from ... Those things happen not because she's culturally different, they happen because she's racially different."
Wei was born in Australia and speaks English but believes people treat him differently based on his Asian appearance. Source: SBS News
"If we want to know about the racial make-up of Australian society, we have no choice but to ask questions directly about people's racial identities.
"Louisa, who looks less Asian than Wei, may not even identify racially with Asian as a race," Dr Mapedzahama says.
Other countries including the United States already ask people about race as part of census surveys and Dr Mapedzahama says this could help reveal the impact of people's racial appearance and whether people were being discriminated against.
This could include the relationship between people's race and their wages, mental health or well-being at work, she says.
"What that sort of data allows them to do is easily say, 'when it comes to pay inequities, how are black women getting paid?' We can't do those same discussions in Australia because we're not actually collecting that data."
Mark's family has been in Australia for generations Source: SBS News
"[Race] does not capture the in-between and complexity of our lives," she says. "Just because you look different doesn't mean you feel different."
She says someone who also appeared to belong to a majority could feel different based on other measures, and this could impact their health and other outcomes as much as someone who also looked 'different'.
"For example, if you have someone of Fijian origin who has children with someone of English origin, what does that mean for their children?
"Their articulation or notion of identity transcends this notion of race. Culture, religion and language also plays into this."
Dr Allen says different data could be used for different purposes, and while data about race could be used to understand discrimination, data on how people self-identify could provide a picture of who Australia is as a nation.
Melbourne's cafe culture developed partly due to its large Italian population. Source: AAP / Erik Anderson
The census ancestry question also already allows people to self-identify what race or ethnicity they believe they are, she says.
Census general manager Duncan Young defended the usefulness of the current ancestry question in the Census during a cultural diversity data seminar in September, pointing out it had recorded the Italian heritage of around 460,000 people with Australian-born parents who might not otherwise have been captured.
Mr Young said of the 1.1 million Australians who reported having Italian ancestry, nearly half said both their parents had been born in Australia, and only 14,500 spoke Italian in the home.
"There's 460,000 Australians — Australian born, Australian born parents — that have Italian ancestry but wouldn't be visible in any other way in the Census," he told the seminar jointly hosted by SBS and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The problem with not understanding identity
Dr Allen says the problem with not adequately understanding the country's diversity came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly when .
"There was quite an ignorance that was displayed then when it came to the types of meals that people would eat, the types of ingredients they would cook with, and so on," she says.
"That to me reflects something quite insidious within government ... within service provision ... that we don't truly understand the needs of Australians; not all Australians."
She also noted someone's country of birth may also not reflect the complexity of some cultures. In India for example, citizens can speak many different languages or follow different religions and cultural traditions.
"There's a diversity, even among population groups that might on the outside look very similar. We sometimes fail to appreciate that ... because we don't ever ask people who live in Australia how they identify when it comes to their ethnic and cultural identity."
Demographer Mark McCrindle says the Census only allowing people to nominate two ancestries is inadequate when it was possible there could be up to four ancestries within just two generations.
Like Dr Allen, he is open to reassessing how the ethnicity of Australians is captured, including the possibility of allowing people to self-identify, as he says there are problems with how people are interpreting the current ancestry question anyway with some going back more than two generations.
Mixed race couples are becoming more common.
"The ancestry question is interpreted as a sense of where originally were my forebears from," he says.
"It's more a sentiment question than a current cultural perception question."
He says it could be useful to give people the chance to nominate a dominant cultural identity, as well as being able to nominate more than two ethnicities, but notes asking people to nominate what ethnicity they identify as moves away from the factual style of questions in the Census such as birth, language and religion.
This 'identification' type of question is something Mr McCrindle says is emerging more.
Dr Allen says internationally, countries such as Canada and New Zealand do a better job of understanding intermarriage or mixed partnering of people from different countries of origin or ancestry, which has been on the rise since the 1970s.
People in Canada were asked in 2020 about their ancestors' ethnic or cultural origins. Source: Supplied / Understanding ethnicity in contemporary Australia using the census/Australian Population Studies
"Our data collection is largely limited to ancestry, language and place of birth," Mr Giles told the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (FECCA) conference last year.
"Places like New Zealand, Canada and the US all ask deeper questions about ethnicity or race in their respective censuses ... we need to do better".
The question in Australia's 2021 Census asking about ancestry. Source: Supplied / Australian Bureau of Statistics
These standards will form the basis for further data collection and analysis across government, such as the expansion of ethnicity data collection in the Census, and expanding call data collection on a wide range of health and welfare topics ranging from hospitals, mental health, ageing and disability.
'You can't just switch off your ethnic identity'
Dr Allen says when the Census questions were developed, authorities had made it clear they didn't want to discriminate against people of different races.
"It was best practice to avoid talking about ethnic and cultural difference and this certainly sits within the core tenant of assimilation practices that we saw after World War Two and during that post World War II immigration boom," she says.
"But in actual fact, our avoidance in collecting data, in talking about these matters means that we don't know much about ourselves, and that's a real shame."
Allowing people to 'self-identify' may provide a more accurate picture of Australia's diversity Source: AAP
"I think we finally got to the time now, where we appreciate we can no longer do that. People can't do that," she says. "Nor do we have that kind of typical white majority that perhaps we may have been able to delude ourselves into thinking we had."
Dr Allen says Australia is no longer the archetype of a predominately white, colonised nation but the country's diversity wasn't being properly reflected in the data.
"We've moved on past that. The problem is, we still discriminate towards people who are so-called 'other'. But that otherness doesn't exist anymore."
The top five ancestries in Australia. Source: SBS News / Source: Census 2021/ABS
"I think that's because, apart from First Nations, everyone in the country has come from some part or other of the world. We're a nation of migrants and people are wanting that recorded [and] are proud of that ancestry," he says.
"That's what it tells me; that migration, our cultural background, and diversity, culturally, is well regarded, even the extent to which people will find out their own ancestry and do the DNA testing to find out how culturally diverse they are ... it's almost a badge of honour."
Dr Allen says data is not just about information and seeing yourself reflected in data could grant humanity and empower people. She says the needs of children, no matter their country of birth, religion or cultural and ethnic identity, matters "because it matters to the very future of Australia".
"It's an absolute travesty that we don't have that information that elevates the needs of people and that tells that young kid, 'you're okay', and that 'you're an important part of Australia's future'.
"If we're not collecting information about who we are as Australians, then we actually don't have boards, businesses and high-level decision makers, policymakers and politicians that actually reflect Australia.
"That, for me, is probably the biggest danger that we face; a lack of appropriate representation, and that feeds into discrimination."
Lunar New Year will be celebrated on Sunday January 22.
Would you like to share your story with SBS News? Email
