Five years ago, a first-generation Australian-Lebanese girl introduced her conservative Lebanese parents to her first serious (Anglo-Saxon) boyfriend.
It didn't go down well, and a few days afterward, the girl received numerous phone calls from concerned friends about the likelihood of her relationship sustaining societal expectations and criticism. An Aussie bloke and a Lebanese girl could never work out, they'd told her, and the evidence was there before them: race riots against Lebanese by the Aussies down in Cronulla.
In the five years since, many are still unsure as to how the riots occurred, and what their perpetrators had wanted. No more Lebs in Australia, no more Lebs at the beach, or 'no Allah in Cronulla'? Whatever the motive, it seemed that in a world where appearances are everything, anything 'of Middle-Eastern appearance' was something to be feared, and needed to be stopped.
The riots themselves may have subsided, but their roots are still around us. For all our sayings about judging books by their covers and looks being deceiving, our biggest problem is our innate susceptibility to stereotype. Representation, or misrepresentation, in media, pop culture, social/political policies or even everyday conversation, has the power to shape our perception and attitudes towards the other.
And it is this 'us and them' grasp of otherness that still prevents us from moving forward after witnessing our young men fight, protest and retaliate over difference or, rather, their warped, alcohol or frustration-fuelled misconception of it.
And misconception is where our problem lies. A few weeks ago, I led a scripture class at a high school in Cronulla. Afterwards, I joined a few of the regular teachers for breakfast, and was told plenty of people in the shire still don't take kindly to 'Lebs'. The students couldn't fathom that I, their teacher, was a 'Leb'.
So what was a 'Leb' exactly?
At the time of the riots, to Labor's Federal Member for Bankstown Jason Clare, 'Leb' was the six Lebanese Muslim boys he took to Kokoda to bond with six Aussie boys from the shire. Not a mixture of mixed-faith Lebanese boys, which meant that all the Lebanese Christian boys who were socially rejected and attacked in the media had to stay at home, forgotten about where