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Ben lawson’s bushfire poem

• Topic – Ben Lawsons poem is about the Australian fires and how he is both sad to see that the problem ever managed to get this far, he is also proud of how hard Australian citizens worked to help raise funds and similar work for preventing further spread of the fires.
• Background – The background that Ben Lawson expects you to know before reading/listening to this poem is about the Australian fires.
• Why is this a poem? – This is a poem since Ben Lawson payed attention to the diction of his writing so that he could further express his emotions and thoughts through his words.
• Stereotypes – The poem talks a bit about how Aussies speak strangely. It also mentions how even though he’s far from home, he still tunes in to watch The hottest of the hundred, and listen top Paul Kelly.
• Why was this poem so effective? – I think the biggest reason this poem is so effective is because you can hear how serious Ben Lawson is about this. Not only in the way he delivers the poem to the audience, but in the poem itself as well. He uses words like “I know I’ve never been so proud. To call myself Australian”. Showing that these are his real thoughts and emotions.

How does prejudice emerge?
Prejudice is defined as a “preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. In other words prejudice is already having several opinions and misconceptions about someone or something, before you run into said thing. These opinions and misconceptions are often negative, and can lead to flat out racism and other types of unwarranted hate. But how does prejudice even emerge in the first place?

There are many different factors that can lead to prejudice, but I think the biggest one of all is the existence of a “single story”. I think Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie put it very well in her TED talk “the danger of a single story”. Here she talks about how if all you know about a specific group of people is one story, you end up completely misunderstanding their entire culture and way of life. For example, in America, a lot of people have a single story about mexicans. They hear from people like for example the president that mexicans are just lousy, lazy and poor people who get into America illegally and steal Americans jobs. This is quite simply not true, and not at all how they are or act, however since so many people only hear this story, they have this picture in their heads of the job stealing mexicans.

You can also see parts of this in the TED talk “what is it like to be an aboriginal” as well. Here, Tui Raven comes with several examples of things people ask her that clearly show that they have only heard one story, and are basing their views on aboriginals from said story. The question “can you pull a snake out of a hole” is an especially good example of this because of how completely ridiculous it is. Aboriginal people are people just like us, and most live their life in big cities with “normal” jobs. Yet despite this, the only thing this person knew about aboriginals are that many of them can “pull snakes out of holes”, not even correct. This person didn’t have any specifically negative emotions about aboriginals, but because he had only heard the one single story, he still completely misunderstood aboriginal people, and just saw Tui Raven as sort of a noble savage

All in all, doing what you can to learn anout different cultures and people, making sure to read more than just the single story that everyone has hear, is extremely relevant for making sure that you can stay away from building up any prejudice towards a specific way of life or group of people. Not doing this, and instead just feeling happy with yourself after learning only the smallest amount of facts is the big thing that leads to prejudice and misunderstandings.