Four Corners: Margaret Valadian interviewed in 1967

ROBERT MOORE

Margaret, I wonder if I could come back to you now and you ask you a fairly direct question. How do you find white men treat you as a woman? Do they ever show inclination to take you out? Or are you made aware that they don't want to? Or what?

MARGARET

Well, I have had only a few experiences with European men. And with one exception, these have been most unsatisfactory. So I would tend now to look for coloured men for companionship.

ROBERT MOORE

Why have the white men been unsatisfactory?

MARGARET

Well, I think there's still a hangover, this black velvet that was so much a part of our early history. This feeling that, you know, coloured women were there for the taking. And I think it still exists, to some extent, in European men's minds.

ROBERT MOORE

And you've been made aware of this, have you, in personal relationships?

MARGARET

Yes, with the few European men with whom I have associated. So my own feeling now is to leave them alone and not to worry. I find, you know, quite good companionship among coloured students at the university and I'm quite happy with this.

ROBERT MOORE

Coming to, in fact, your student life, do you feel that you faced any difficulties as a student that wouldn't have been faced by a comparable white student, if you follow what I mean, socially and economically?

MARGARET

Well, in my first year at university, I did feel very much ill at ease. But I'm not sure how much of this related purely and simply to the fact that I was coloured, or the fact that I came into university after having worked for some years, and consequently didn't have any other members of my own class at high school at university with me. Because I found at university that students tend to associate at university with students with whom they've done their secondary schooling — their fellow students. And you get a lot of cliques forming at university from this point of view. So I don't think I'd be fair to say that any difficulties I had were because I was coloured. Some of it may have been. I'm quite sure that there was some element in this, but I wouldn't say categorically again that this was simply because I was coloured.

ROBERT MOORE

Since you've graduated, have you found it hard to get a job?

MARGARET

Well… I was doing anthropology last year, because it wasn't available when I was doing my course. I haven't been working this year, but that's through medical reasons. I think I could find difficulty in wanting to do the sort of work in which I'm interested. I've studied at university for the express purpose of working with coloured people. I found when I first began to talk about this with one of the government departments that they wanted me to work in an office as an example to Europeans that coloured people could be educated. The idea of my going out onto settlements to work in the field was rejected. And I would think that this is… The term we might say we'd be 'insufficiently employed'. Even though we have professional qualifications, we would not be employed where we'd be most effective.

ROBERT MOORE

Could I ask you this — do you feel that in a way — and it's up to you to answer this — that you may be seeking to work among coloured people because you're a little bit worried about working in a white society? Or isn't this a factor?

MARGARET

No, I've had to do fieldwork placements in basically European settings. I've only met a few coloured people in my place work. My reason for working with the coloured community is because I feel this is where the need is. There are no social workers in Australia who are basically trained to work with coloured minorities. And if I'm a member of that minority, well, the obvious thing for me is to work with coloured people.