The tree is called Gympie gympie in Australia. As an immigrant in Australia, my white housemates educated me diligently about the dangers of hiking in the Aussie bush. Except for drop bears every bit of education I got is true! :D
In a large business building in New York City whenever I’d go down to the mail room there would be couriers and maintainence men hanging around. Each a different ethnicity and shade of color.
Most of the conversations I heard there were from them trading insults in friendly fashion. Most of the jokes were ethnic stereotypes.
It offered them a chance to connect with each other. Out of this play, tolerance is made over time.
You’ve now finally offered some clarification, although honestly I still don’t really have any idea what you meant. But your initial response was to act as if the very act of asking the question somehow victimized you. Your original post lamented “PC culture” but no one actually criticized your post and you didn’t provide the asked for clarification.
Sorry if I'm off-base… just my guess that this is a miscommunication stemming from the US-centricity of these forums. It's natural after all for a reader to put themself in the shoes of the writer (as did I on first reading of your comment), which can occasionally lead to misunderstandings when race, gender, etc. do not match.
To people raised under that philosophy, it can be disconcerting to realize that now it has become proper to judge everything only after first assessing the skin color of who said it. This isnt as shocking when someone makes a statement related to race, but the point is really driven home when the issue at hand is a tree.
So maybe the word is relevant. It’s not obvious to me what the relevance is, so asking seems pretty logical. Otherwise a reader is forced to conclude that it somehow has to do with white, presumably Australian stereotypes.
Likewise, if Perth is included it clues the reader into a more specific area which might tell us something or not, depending on our pre-existing knowledge of Perth. No reader is going to conclude that the detail Perth was added merely for “flavor” and has no other significance. They might not have asked even if ignorant, because they might’ve made their own assumptions (e.g. this is an area where the trees can be found), but they wouldn’t assume it was a meaningless detail.
And yes, I think I might have asked about relevance if the poster had said, “My roommates, while wearing purple t-shirts, told me...”
When you add in the baggage that comes with race and racial stereotypes are you really surprised anyone asked? You don’t even have to be offended to not understand why race was included.