"Assimilation", then and now

A review by Peter Coleman of "The Education of Dr Joe" By Joseph N. Santamaria that appeared in "The Australian" on 24 June, 2006

When I was a child in Melbourne in the 1930s, some kindly uncle gave me a store-bought uniform of either Emperor Haile Selassie or Mussolini, I forget which. It was the time of the Abyssinian war and the uniform in which I strutted around the house became the occasion of angry family rows. Some backed the emperor, others the Duce.

I remember the passions better than the arguments. But I do recall there was zero prejudice against Italians, even among those who opposed Mussolini. You met them in fruit shops or at the markets. If you were Catholic, you played with them at the parish school or worshipped with them at church. They were hardworking, decent citizens. Australians welcomed them to the football teams, tennis clubs, Saturday night dances, at work and in due course university. (Archbishop Daniel Mannix helped with scholarships.)

That was before assimilation became a dirty word: in those days it meant befriending immigrants. But about 30 years ago it was redefined to mean conformity, intolerance, even racism. Multiculturalism became the new slogan. Immigrants are no longer expected to become Australian but to smile with some derision at Australian history and the old quasi-totalitarian days of assimilation.

Joseph Santamaria's cheerful memoir, The Education of Dr Joe, shows the humbug at the heart of many multiculturalist dogmas. He was born in Melbourne more than 5O years ago, the son of Aeolian immigrants (and the brother of B.A. [Bob] Santamaria), and he grew up in Brunswick.

No hostility to Italians soured his childhood. There was no talk about multiculturalism or ethnic ghettos. (When one boy called him Darkie at school, a Protestant boy threatened the offender with that great Melbourne punishment, a blood nose. Young Joe played Australian football and cricket in the back yard. He caught a horsedrawn bus. The family boasted a chookhouse. During World War Il, his brother served in the army in New Guinea. As a medical student, Joe Santamaria helped produce penicillin at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories. (He later served in the surgical team in Vietnam.) He recalls without bitterness the wartime internment of Italians suspected of fascism.

At the same time, the Santamarias enjoyed a rich Italian or Aeolian life, from cards at the Cavour Club to feast days in Richmond and religious festivals in Sunbury, not to mention the joys of belting out the songs of Naples, eating provolone cheese or cooking chicken livers. Friends dropped into his father's shop and sat around for hours. Others made wine in the bath according to the ancient Aeolian recipe. He lived and prospered in two communities, mainstream Australia and the Aeolian diaspora. That was what assimilation meant.

There is an elegiac note in these memoirs. The old easygoing way of life is almost gone, as with the horse-drawn bus and the chookhouse. But Dr Joe has more stories to tell. He notes in passing his "Italian reawakening ... a kind of shift into reverse gear". That, he says, is a story for another day. The sooner, the better.

Note: "Aeolian" refers to the historic Aeolian islands, roughly equidistant between Italy and Sicily

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