Brian concludes

'It seems that the lifeline of every human on the planet can be traced back to the same woman. She is known as Mitochondrial Eve and she lived in Africa about 150,000 years ago.'

Pervert the truth a little and come up with very strange conclusions. Loathing Australia day is one of them.

With the exception of Runner, this is an encouragingly thoughtful thread. Maybe that's what Australia Day is all about, self-reflection.
Did anyone listen to Parkinson's address. According to him we could be great!

Oh no runner don't you believe in mitochondria? Damn our secular education!

Mitochondria

Don't feature in the Bible

So they don't exist

I wasn’t aiming to participate on this thread, till I saw Squeers comment: “this is an encouragingly thoughtful thread”

That cinched it, there had to be something drastically wrong---and I was right!

Mark Holden tells us that being of “Irish stock” he was aware of racism directed at his group and the racism that they directed at others. But the racism he exposes is all Anglo-Celtic in origin.
“my parents…were trapped in the same group-think as almost all Anglo-Celtics were at the time”

There are non-Anglo-Celtic players in his little tableau but they are only ever seen as victims.
“I can remember my mother’s reaction when she saw me sucking a penny: ‘Spit it out. A Chow may have handled it!’”

He seems blissfully unaware that such group think is common across all the tribes of humanity.
The Chows (he cites) as the victims were likely telling their kids “ don’t eat that fruit , the dirty qweilo may have handled it ” .

That Mark conceives racism as a peculiar Anglo-Celtic characteristic, perhaps, says more about Mark’s limited experience that anything else.

Mark also ridicules the “jingoism on Australia Day” and “its puerile flag-waving and anthem-singing “
One wonders whether Mark would have similar derision for waving the “Aboriginal flag” or talk of pride in Aboriginal culture , or Chinese performers waving age old cultural standards –some how, I rather doubt it.

Racism is one form of grouping think, but there are many others. You could belong to political grouping that thinks it’s more enlightened than those lesser groups who are governed by “primitive emotion “ and “jingoism”
Same game, different name.

Adjustment: Mark should read Brian (Holden).