ABSTRACT
Policy change is seen implicitly as a way of constructing a new identity and future for Australia, and for those Australians who had previously found themselves on the margin. Despite the abundance of evidence pointing to a racism which reduced the Chinese in Australia to second- or even third-class citizens during the first half of the twentieth century, racism is not a topic which readily surfaces in oral-history interviews with Chinese-Australians. The memories provide evidence that, despite the success of policies of racism and assimilation in directing attention to issues of class and social mobility and away from ethnicity in defining the place of long-setded Chinese-Australians, ethnicity and cultural heritage have remained at the core of concerns about identity. The change in official stance in Australia from racism through assimilation to multiculturalism has had an impact on the identity and self-definition of ethnic minorities.
