Lines in the Sand

On the infamous afternoon of Sunday 11 December 2005, a crowd ofabout 5000, mostly white, English-speaking background young men, wenton a rampage at Sydney's Cronulla beach attacking anyone of MiddleEastern appearance. The day had begun as a protest against what manysaw as the unacceptable behaviour of some young men following a scufflebetween off-duty lifesavers and a group of Lebanese men. Such incidentsare not uncommon, yet rarely do they lead to large-scale, ethnicallymotivated violence in which people wrap themselves in the Australianflag. Many Australians, used to seeing racial violence in otherparts of the world, were shell-shocked. Yet the causes and consequencesof the riots and the revenge attacks that ensued are still beingdebated. Did the riots reveal the racist underbelly of Australiansociety? Did they demonstrate the failure of the multiculturalexperiment of the last 30 years? Were they yet another example of thecontemporary problems of youthful masculinities? Were we seeing theresurgence of an ugly nationalism, spread by populist media? In this provocative and insightful collection of essays, theauthors examine these and other issues in the first major criticalassessment of this significant moment in Australian history.