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The Forum > Article Comments > White is just a paler shade of black > Comments

White is just a paler shade of black : Comments

By Don Allan, published 19/1/2010

There are only a few groups of Aboriginals left in the world, Australia should be proud of those who live here.

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"If something isn’t done soon (although already too late for some) the remainder also will lose their uniqueness and culture." perhaps a zoo would suit you? /sarc.

How do we help people as they demand and as we want, by keeping them in some kind of stasis? if you really want stasis, then we surely cannot have them watching TV, drinking alcohol or eating modern food - or do you want a bit of this culture, a bit of that food suppy and some medical technology on the side?

The "culture" is all but dead, and a good thing too, a lot of it was about how to survive in a harsh country that had little opportunity for farming until foreign foods were introduced.

It was not a fun way to live and I fully understand anyone wanting to abandon it at the first opportunity to modernise and grow.

Let's remember and document the "good bits" of their culture, sure, but to demand someone live that way, no thanks.

"Australia should be proud of those who live here" what? So we should have a special pride in a certain racial group? So do you suggest a hierarchy? Now that's racist.

We're happy for all Australians to live and prosper here equally, without resorting to condescending claptrap and paternal attitudes like this.
Posted by odo, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 8:48:02 AM
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Funny thing about equal rights, you're freer to make choices and do what you damn-well like, and one thing Aboriginal people are not doing any more than anyone else is hunting and gathering. Most of them are getting on with business, they don't want to live in cultural zoos, or re-enactment villages.

Three-quarters of the Aboriginal population now live in metropolitan and urban areas, and what they call inner and outer regional areas, with only a quarter living in remote (Mt Isa, Alice Springs) and very remote areas. About 2 % live part-time in very remote out-stations.

25,000 Aboriginal people have graduated from universities, 99 % in the last thirty years. Fifty thousand by 2020. One hundred thousand, one in every five adults, by 2034.

In the cities, 90 % of working Aboriginal people inter-marry and 90 % or more of those families raise their children as Aboriginal.

Only a completely callous person would consider that, out in the most remote areas, the violence and abuse and squalor and waste were somehow part of a 'traditional life'. Or somebody from the pseudo-Left.

Sorry, Don, but Aboriginal people/Indigenous people/Nungas/Nyoongars or Koories will call themselves whatever they like, and not get all that hot and bothered about what somebody else calls them, unless it's obviously insulting. It's their call. Funny thing about equal rights.

Joe Lane
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 11:04:53 AM
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"Australia should be proud of those who live here".
I think most level headed Australians "are" proud of "all" those who live, work and call OZ home.
Posted by Simpson, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 11:09:04 AM
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The sooner people get over this ‘race’ nonsense, the better off we’ll all be.

Don Allan couldn’t resist referring to people – whose “arrows” are meant to hit – as “racists”. It is one of life’s great mysteries as to why people who fall foul of people like Mr. Allan (simply because they don’t agree with him/them) are dubbed as racists. The word has been used, abused and misused for so long now, that it has no effect on any of its targets. Those who are genuine racists don’t care, and those who are not racists, but who are still called racists, no longer feel obliged to defend themselves from bigots, and no longer care either.

Yet Mr. Allan is determined that he will bring all those ‘nasty’ people to heel: “…I hope that when I release my arrows my aim is good and that they find their mark among racists because every arrow has a message that none of them will like.”

Mr. Allan, who claims no qualifications that would do the trick, is out to change the world.

Well, Mr. Allan, I am not proud of our aboriginals. I am a third generation white Australian of Scot, English and German descent who couldn’t care less about his ancestry; I live in the here and now. So, please do not expect me to be proud of anyone else’s background. I couldn’t care less if a Stone Age (unpractised by few, if any, indigenous people) dies out like all other backward or corrupt groups in the past - including white ones – that failed to make the transition to modernity throughout the ages.

And, if, under my lily-white skin there is a touch of black, I don’t care about that either. The world and its people have enough troubles they cannot solve now without concerning themselves with thousands or millions of years ago. It just does not matter, and it certainly will not make any difference to what people think about other people not like them.

..........
Posted by Leigh, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 12:21:35 PM
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..........

As for aborigine with a capital ‘A’, that is just a quirk of Australian dictionary writers. All indigenous people of any country are aboriginal with a small ‘a’.

If you want to show respect, show a little to the descendants of the original people who are out in the general community living and working like other Australians; not those who live where education and jobs are not available, but ‘sit-down’ money is. Respect Noel Pearson and what he is trying to do for the descendants of Australian aborigines.

Your “arrows”, Mr. Allan, are handicapping young Australians who have as much right to a decent life as anyone else, while still keeping in mind their heritage if they wish to
Posted by Leigh, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 12:22:58 PM
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Shooting these particular arrows might impress people who share Mr Allan's politics, but they won't create any more converts. In fact, baiting these elements of society will only harden their views.
Posted by benk, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 3:40:59 PM
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The only thing that will soften peoples attitude towards many aboriginals is when they stop being racist, start working and stop the hand out mentality. Then they will earn respect like many other aboriginal people who have come here from afar for a better life have done. I have spoken to Islanders, Asians, South Americans, coloured (white and black) South Africans and most of them can't believe what they see especially after reading the propaganda before they get here.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 3:50:21 PM
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odo odo odo, there is only one word for what you said but I cannot use it so I will say this instead.
Male Bovine Excrement.
loudmouth: Here here, and there is an increase in the numbers of them interested in reinheriting there culture.
Simpson: I agree, but the others have big mouths unfortunately.
Leigh, runner, : Not worthy of a comment, oops I just made one.

wybong: Oh that's me, here is my view.
Firstly, he should have put a full stop after the third word. Then if paragraph 1 and 2 are his opinion then I am confused.
If paragraph 2 is correct then they are aboriginal. Actualy, the words both really mean the same thing, although indigenous can have a wider target. Two examples would be.

feelings indigenous to human beings.
the indigenous people of Tahiti (Just to show this is not unique to Australia)

The indigenous culture of Australia is that of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

So go ahead, call yourself an Aboriginal of Scotland. Call yourself an alien if you like, because if your an Aboriginal of Scotland, then you have to be an alien here.

The second paragraph is mostly garbage, I think it needs rethinking because in my opinion the author has made some really racist statements.

This though pales in significance to the assumptions that are made.

As others have said, I believe that Australian Indiginal Cultures are generaly held in high respect, and I know that there is a high level of "shadow" predudice against the people.

I believe that a whole lot of attitudes are going to have to before we can even contemplate any changes.

Let me say just this.

It up to us to make the first move in re-conciliation, when we arrived, one of the most successful cultures was in place, what happened from then on, was by our (whites) hands.

Before when I said we need to re-think attitudes, maybe it should apply to the way we look at things too, like my use of the word successful.
Posted by Wybong, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 5:32:13 PM
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...
Says runner, the parody christian, who openly criticises aboriginals for not joining his precious little church. Jews don't join it for the same reason. They have a religious tradition inseparable from their culture, so they say, which is much older than his. Runner changed denominations years ago, and thinks others regard their religion just as cheaply.

Who's racist, Runner?

Bronx cheer.
Posted by Rusty Catheter, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 9:59:48 PM
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Aboriginal, Aborigine, Indigenous, Murri, Koori, Palawa, Wiradjuri, Pitjantjatjara, Kamilaroi, Gurnai, Aranda. Yolgu all have a specific history and attachment to land and sea and people and languages/ dialects.

But the poltical history of Aboriginal & Aboriginal is much more facinating than many realise because it was a history of denial and thus legal and social obscurification.

See Gardiner Garden's excellent article http://www.aph.gov.au/library/Pubs/CIB/2002-03/03cib10.pdf which explains some the legal and social complexities that have arisen because there was never any real resolution / agreement / treaty between the Crown and the people whose land the Crown stole.

Had a treaty been struck, I'm sure we would have declared that we should be called first nation peoples or something similar...from then which acknowledgement would also flow of the hundreds of individual 'Aboriginal' estates/ clans / langauge groups / conglomerations of "Aboriginality".

You may also be interested to know that we have names for non-Aboriginal people as well...most of them respectful :)

Cheers
Posted by Rainier, Tuesday, 19 January 2010 10:50:25 PM
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