A former soldier, many of my comrades were black, and so also was my best friend.
No soldier that I know is racist!
We were simply blokes who knew they could count on the other, when the S hit the F.
I remember a story about Gallipoli, that goes, a new chum, recently arrived at the trenches, saw men covered in their own and other's feces; and was subjected to an antipersonnel bombardment, and unending machine gun fire, remarked, this is what hell must be like?
To which another old chum remarked, yes, but at least there's no flamin flies!
Unfortunately, the civilian world is chock full of racism, none more visible than Mundine remarking that his Tasmanian opponent was too white.
I prefer the trenches and soldiers, who were genuinely color blind, rather than seeing color as somehow demeaning, or just not the right shade.
There's no white way, or black way, just a right way! A way that saw soldiers accept the other for the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin.
If there are too many deaths in custody, it is because there are too many in custody.
If we treated addiction as a health issue; ditto mental health; most of the prisons could be emptied out.
Moreover, if we could simply send young offenders to some sort of boot camp or diversion process, that simply took them away from their usual drug dealers and the grog and what have you? And re-instilled some earned self esteem, we might be able to keep aboriginal people and others out of prison in the first place!?
I can't think of or imagine anything worse than to be forcefully removed from your homeland, then be transported halfway around the world, and then have to wear the entirely unearned burden and or the name, invader!
That said, it's time to move own and start owning your own behavior and their inevitable outcomes!
It's not my arm that lifts the glass, nor is it mine that jabs a needle full of sh-t into another's arm!
Rhrosty.

Good post, when/where I was a serving no one cared about skin colour, race (?) or religion; the bloke who might be giving you covering fire sometime was a mate, a comrade and a soldier.

I did 40 years in uniform and never encountered the racism spoken of in this article. As others have commented above, if someone was black or any other colour or culture, they were still just the same as every one other sailor, soldier or airman. They didn't ask to be separately acknowledged. It would be inconceivable for the CO to address the troops and say well done lads and well done separately to the Aborigines. It just didn't happen and it didm't need to happen. They were all just good blokes.

Ray Jackson just seems to want to make himself a victim. He wants extra sympathy. He wants something for the injustices he thinks were done to his forebears. Ultimately he wants a separate nation.

He can't have it. The nation belongs to all of us. Join in Ray and stop standing apart hurling insults at the rest of us. And my great grandmother was a full-blood black islander so don't try and say I'm one of "them" you're insulting.

When the racists stop bleating racism things may improve.

What a breath of fresh air, to see a writer raising a voice against the relentless barrage aimed at haranguing the population - especially the children – into a militarised mindset in which war is the default social condition and the event that is supposed to shape our nation is one in which blind obedience is revered as something noble, more important even than the lives of its victims. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.

In 1914, Germany and Austria and hangers-on like Turkey committed the unspeakable crime of military aggression, hence Gallipoli. Some are whining to this day about the aggressors being made to pay reparations for it. Military aggression is not noble – it’s criminal and always has been even though its criminality wasn’t formally recognised and codified until the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and the recognition has been resisted and whittled away at the edges by and on behalf of brasshats ever since. The Anzac Day ballyhoo focusing on how the Allied soldiers served, not why, is part of the whittling away. Ray Jackson has done us all a great favour by reminding us how and why the sacrifices the Allied soldiers made in 1939-45 were so uniquely honourable and earned the undying gratitude of all human beings.

War service under the Australian flag by Aborigines merits special honour and gratitude. Land stolen, treated like dogs, yet they not only agree to be included as part of the nation growing out of the invasion but persistently demand to be despite so many insulting brushoffs.

Mr Jackson’s article is full of wisdom and so is Rhrosty’s response