Analysis Of White Australia Policy By Iyen Loewald

Uyen Loewald’s poem deals with the issue of immigrants feeling less-than the majority and the image of the ‘model minority’; migrants who are obedient to the ideals and expectations of the dominant culture.

Uyen Loewald was born in Vietnam during the 1940’s. She married an American diplomat, Klaus Loewald and moved to the U.S. She then migrated to Australia in 1970. This was not the best time to be an immigrant of a non-Caucasian background. This is because during this time the White Australia Policy which intentionally favoured immigrants from certain European countries-mostly form Britiain- was still being progressively demolished. This means that the racial tension between Australians and other minority groups would be extremely tense.

This means as Loewald was a woman of an Asian background being in Austrlia at that time would be very difficult; in the poem ‘Be good,little migrants’ the reader how can see how much this experience influenced her in her writing.
Loewald’s poem ‘Be good, little migrants’ deals with themes of migration, acceptance, multi-culturalism and stereotypes/generalisations. This poem can also be seen as a call to action poem. It is pointing out the flaws that are present in society in terms of immigration in a heavily sarcastic manner. It is showing that society thinks that immigrants should assimilate to their culture but also know their place; doing menial jobs that are not fit for ‘regular society’ to do.
Give us your faithful service
sweep factories, clean mansions
prepare cheap exotic food
Repetition plays a major part in this poem as it adds to the patronising tone.

Spoken from the patronising viewpoint of assumed Australian superiority The speaker describes the migrants as ‘little’ and repeats the instruction to ‘be good’. The repetition of ‘be good’ enforces the idea that immigrants are seen as unimportant and should be quietly useful and obedient in their new country. The use of ‘Little’ migrants infantilizes them making them appear as children with the speaker being an adult. This goes hand in hand with the idea of white superiority and the belief that whites are more superior- hence the term “little migrants”- to people of other racial backgrounds. In this poem the speaker sees migrants’ culture as ‘low arts’ and the expectation that migrants must be grateful and conform to the dominant culture is mocked by the poem’s extremely sarcastic tone. Loewald lets us see what stereotyping places on people and the struggle that migrants endure to gain respect and treated as an equal in Australian society. The line ‘you’ll reach excellence; just waste a few generations’, can allude to the Stolen Generation. This line can also be interpreted as the frustration and despair felt by migrants who know that their full potential cannot be realised until their descendants since they would be ‘properly assimilated’ to the culture and can be seen as more ’true

blue’.