Having a sense of being different makes it difficult to belong.

Imagine you are at Flinders Street Station, you are making your way to platform twelve to meet your departing train to Melbourne Central, it is September 11th 2011. As you begin to make your way through the main terminal and through the vast array of groups and individuals huddled around the screens to have an insight as to when their train is departing. A strong scent fills the surroundings, the smell of different cuisines from various cultures and the smell of diverse ingredients travelling in from the nearby market. As you make your trek through the crowd of people, you notice the true diversity of cultures surrounding you, people belonging from many different groups of society, whether it is due to race, religion, socioeconomic standing, or ethnicity. As this thought is occurring a sound of hatred and despair fills the air. You being curious, make your way over to where the sounds are coming from, and as you approach, your heart drops. The sounds of hatred and despair are in the form of anger and abuse coming form the mouths of a flock of young adolescents, and being directed at an old Islamic couple. This group of minors isnt holding back as they hurl abuse at this poor couple, which are on their hands and knees performing their afternoon pray ritual, the Salat al-Zuhr, with the Quran in front of them. You begin to make your way closer to the chaos, as you hear that the boys are racially abusing this old couple, with such comments like; Go back to your own country, you bloody terrorist, and Go fly into another building, you murderer. Your body goes into shock, as you are unable to move, as you stand there in disbelief to what you just witnessed. How could so much hate be pinpointed at one individual? What did they do to deserve this?

All individuals living on earth want to belong. Each and every one of us feels safer, sheltered and at ease if we believe we belong somewhere or to someone. In a world where there are over 7 billion people and every single one of them is different there is no one group to which we can all belong to. There are various factors that prevent this, including religion, race, social standing and ethnicity. Through these factors it makes it very difficult for one to belong to a group at all. As society has a perception and stereotype of what group we have to belong to in order to truly belong. Therefore when an individual is different to the social stereotype they find it challenging to integrate with society.

In the memoir The Mind of a Thief written by Patti Miller, the concept of being different is widely discussed with a major concern on the Indigenous Australians finding their place in society and fighting for their rights. However the only reason that Indigenous Australians were finding it hard to be a part of society were due to the fact that society had a perception that they were all thieves and worthless. This sense of making it difficult for a group or individual to belong was not only in regards to society as a whole, controversy this perception of someone being different make it difficult for members of the Indigenous community to belong as well. A prime example of this is Rose Chown who was originally apart of the Wiradjuri people, but left for twenty years to pursue the rights that she believed her people deserved, she left to become a spokesperson for the indigenous people and It was Rose the media wrote lyrically about. Another individual who found it very difficult to live and belong in society is Miller. When she found out she had indigenous heritage in her blood, she had to develop a new identity which in turn would change the perception of society and the Indigenous Australians so that she could find her place and not belong to a stolen country. This was difficult at times as she was unable to see her own identity, which in the eyes of Joyce Williams was my cousin Patti.

The groups that individuals in the community belong to are a major factor on whether they truly belong to the community and society. One group that is considered to have a larger influence on belonging than others is religious groups; more pinpointed is the Muslim religious group. Since the horrific day of the 11th of September 2001 the entire Muslim community were blamed for the terror attacks that occurred on two of the United States monuments; the world trade centre and the pentagon. The various hate crimes that were racially motivated after the horrific attack increased enormously. This meant that all of the Muslim society were considered to be terrorists by the uneducated of society, which in turn made them different and they found it very difficult to belong. One attack that stood out form the rest was one performed by a so called US patriot who blamed all Muslims for the terrorist attack, after he heard of the attack; Mark Stroman drove to his local petrol station in Texas and shot the Muslim cashier, Rais Bhuiyan in the face. This is further evidence to prove that Muslims have been attacked in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks due to their religion. Another poll also showed that after the 9/11 occurrence over 75% of the Muslim individuals find it more difficult to belong in society after the events of 9/11.

After dumbfoundedly looking at the immature adolescents abusing the old Muslim couple, you decided to say something. You approach the group of boys and ask them a question; How are these two individuals different from your grandparents? They will think for a while but will be unable to answer. You then explain that we are all the same, we are all human and we all deserve the right to belong.

Written By Kurt Chamberlain- Essay Competition -- Topic-Individuals are all different which make it difficult to belong -