Our tolerance is So clear - Andrew Bolt

Herald Sun ^ | 1st December 2004 | Andrew Bolt

[naturalman1975]

WE are so often told we're racist, that I hope you won't mind again hearing the latest proof that we're not.

This week's evidence is John So's runaway win in the popular vote for the lord mayor of Melbourne.

Here's a Chinese man, whose English has been chopped up for soup, winning more votes than the Anglo also-rans combined.

Strange, the harder So tries to speak clear English -- and fails -- the more voters love him.

Or not strange. So's struggles show him clearly doing all most Australians have wanted from migrants -- trying to fit in, no matter how silly he may look. Think of They're a Weird Mob, the 1957 bestseller that described the farcical battle of Italian Nino Culotta to become a "real" Australian.

What's more, So's election comes just a couple of weeks after Casey Donovan, who has Aboriginal heritage, was voted the winner of Australian Idol, and in the same year a man from a Fijian family was voted winner of Big Brother.

So where is the proof of our famous racism?

It would be wrong to say we've only recently mellowed. I remember as a boy in Darwin hearing my father speak with respect of our ethnic Chinese mayor, Harry Chan, who was elected in 1966 and had a street named after him on which stand the Darwin City Council offices today.

In a Bendigo museum is an even older tribute to our openness -- the Chinese dragon that first danced in the city's Easter fair in 1892. Naturally, there are racists here, as there are everywhere, but those who claim racism is in the soul of this country tell a smug lie.