In the topsy-turvy language of race forced on anyone trying to make sense of Australia’s riots this week, however, the brown woman is white and the pale woman is not.
But beyond their skin colours, and their religion or lack of it, a clash of lifestyles played a large part in Australia’s worst racial violence in living memory this week, commentators say.
Cronulla beach, where race riots first erupted on Sunday, and the streets of the mainly Muslim suburb of Lakemba, are a short drive apart in Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, but they could be different worlds.
To the government they reflect multicultural proof that the country has moved on from its despised “White Australia’ policy and is worthy of acceptance by its Asian neighbours at forums such as this week’s East Asia summit.
To the white supremacists and neo-Nazis spotted by police at this week’s riots at Cronulla beach, in which ethnic Lebanese from suburbs such as Lakemba were attacked by white mobs, the differences are intolerable.
But somewhere between the flat denial of racism by Prime Minister John Howard, and the hatred on the faces of the drunken white youths attacking fellow Australians while draped in the national flag, lies the truth, analysts say.
Shocking racial violence
In an editorial comment headlined “What will the neighbours think?”, the Sydney Morning Herald said the racial violence could not have come at a worse time for Howard, who took his seat at the East Asia summit in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.
The paper pointed out “sporadic reminders of the spirit of the white Australia policy (which officially ended in 1973) have long irritated regional ties despite decades of multiculturalism”.
But it added: “There is little point in engaging with Asia on racism: all societies have racist elements and Australia’s soul searching should be directed from within, not motivated by disapproval from without.”
The fact that many other countries, most recently France, experience racial unrest has been a constant point of reference in remarks by politicians here and in media coverage of the riots.
And few would quibble with the government’s claim that Australia has moved far beyond the days when this former British colony was viewed as home to “Asia’s white tribe”.
Sydney is a cosmopolitan city where the racial violence has come as a shock simply because it is unprecedented.
“We bring people to Australia from all over the world. They work into the Australian community, relative to other parts of the world, very successfully,” Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told AFP in an interview three months before the riots.
John Saleh, a 23-year-old Palestinian-born store manager chatting to friends on a Lakemba street, agreed, saying he had not experienced racism in his adopted country.
“It’s beautiful, friendly, I get along with everybody,” he said. ”Those who made the problems should be arrested.”
At Cronulla beach, a curving stretch of pale sand and blue surf edged by outdoor cafes -- like dozens of others in Sydney -- the question of who “made the problems” usually elicits the answer: ”Lebanese gangs.”
Some politicians have suggested that the violence was partly fuelled by anger over Islamic militants, but young “white” workers at the Alley Break beachfront cafe don’t mention religion in their assessment of the violence.
Boorish behaviour
Scott Veltmeijer, an ethnic-Dutchman born in Australia, and Melanie Campbell, 21, say large gangs of ethnic-Lebanese men descend on the beach at the weekends and spoil it for others through boorish behaviour.
“They play soccer and kick sand all over people, they make rude remarks to women, they intimidate everybody” said Campbell.
Girls in bikinis are called sluts and whores, the gangs play loud music and leave rubbish on the beach, local residents say.
Both cafe workers condemned Sunday’s violence, but supported the idea that local residents had a right to “reclaim the beach”.
“It’s not that they shouldn’t come here,” said Veltmeijer. “It’s everybody’s beach, but they mustn’t come and cause trouble.”
While the clashes have been described as being between whites and people of “Middle Eastern appearance”, it is the Lebanese community that is singled out for criticism.
“The Lebanese have been left behind compared with other groups such as the Chinese, Vietnamese, Greeks and Jews,” said James Jupp, director of the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies at the Australian National University.
“Their level of education and therefore their level of employment and employability are lower than average -- they are still in the classical ghetto situation.
“So there is a lot of resentment there: they haven’t done terribly well and they feel that they are not being treated like Australians and that they are being picked on.”
The macho culture of the Lebanese community is also blamed for fuelling the problem.
“There’s no doubt some of these young Lebanese guys have an aggressive attitude towards women,” said Jupp. “When they see girls on the beach walking around virtually naked, they get very excited about it.”
And there is an irony to the race riots that hasn’t been missed by the original inhabitants of this sun-drenched country, the Aborigines.
Photographs of a young blonde beachgoer were widely published after the Sunday riots, his chest bearing the slogan: “We grew here, you flew here” -- a reference to the belief by some Anglo-Australians that they are the true “Aussies” and other ethnic groups are mere interlopers.
It did not take long for graffiti to spring up in Aboriginal areas reading: “We growed here, you rowed here.”