Thanks Mollydukes,

I don't know about other cities but here in Adelaide, Aboriginal people are living all over the place. Maybe in the late sixties, they tended - like new immigrants always have to do - to seek out accommodation in low-rent suburbs, but like many later migrants, they dispersed across the city, pleasing themselves where they lived, as they became more financially secure.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised (I'll check out the 2011 Census details when they come out) if there are far more Aboriginal people in say, Penrith than in Redfern, more in Epping than in Chippendale.

And why do you assume that all that may people were raised in white homes ? Very few Aboriginal people - even those taken into care - were raised in white homes, for all the propaganda otherwise. The great majority of Aboriginal kids taken into care for six months, or a year, or longer, were raised in church institutions, 'homes' if you like but hardly 'white', reformatories, convalescent homes, etc. I'd put the proportion of Aboriginal people who I have known who have been taken into care at about 5 %, and of those who have been raised in white homes, somewhat less than 1 %. But maybe I mix with the best of the best :)

Thanks too, Mollydukes for your slagging of graduates. I'm keeping a sort of file on the rationales that people use, usually on the pseudo-Left, for not considering increasing graduate numbers as positive. So they're all coconuts ? Perhaps you could tell them that :)

If the Gap is ever to be Closed, then how ? Isn't tertiary success a sort of surrogate, at least, for positive developments ? Or should we face the awful truth, known only to the Left, that Closing the Gap somehow disrupts Aboriginal culture, and therefore should be opposed ?

Or is it that tens of thousands of graduates can't be controlled by people who know better, but who have their best interests at heart ?

[TBC]

[contd.]

I must thank you sincerely, Mollydukes, for putting your prejudices in writing, but .....

Your statement: "Self-determination is our word, I found very few, even the people doing degrees, who fully understood white people and what we want them to do."

- this is amazing: " ... what we want them to do." Really ? What they want to do is up to them, it's none of your business or mine.

Mind you, I suspect that 'self-determination' as we understood it back in the sixties and seventies (or thought we understood it) meant something very different to many Aboriginal people, now wallowing successfully in lifelong welfare: as a Marxist, I had assumed all along that SD had to have an economic component, that it had to relate to community economic activity. What a complete fool I was ! Not many had the slightest intention of building economic enterprises: what people meant by SD was maximun political autonomy combined with maximum financial dependence (and minimum economic activity). SD meant doing as little as possible for themselves, getting whites to do more and more for them. After all, SD was interpreted to mean Power, and the more Power one had, the less one had to do for oneself: Power meant the ability to tell others what to do for you.

Idiot me, I always assumed that SD meant doing more and more for one's community, for one's group, putting more and more effort in, dispensing with more and more of the services of whites. I won't make that mistake again.

Meanwhile, individuals in the cities are coming on to tertiary study in record numbers. As human beings, they have stood up, resisting the racist temptations to live lives of indolence. Tertiary study is hard work, it needs sacrifice. So who should we admire most, those who put the effort in, or the loafers ?

Joe Lane

Loudmouth

Teaching a pig to dance is hard, and it irritates the pig.

Don't be so irritated. A dancing pig would be truly a wonderful thing. Nearly as interesting as a coconut.

Thanks, Mollydukes, but you lost me there. Are you comparing me to a pig [fair enough], or to a dancing pig [not so comparable, they would do it better] or are you suggesting that Indigenous people graduating from university courses are like, or as unlikely as, pigs dancing ?

Are you also saying that any Indigenous university graduate is a coconut ? Are you from the Left, then ?

Are you working in the Solomons ? Is that why you find coconuts so interesting ? I worked once in the produce markets here in Adelaide and one of my jobs was to cull rotten coconuts from overseas shipments, so I've never found coconuts all that exciting.

Joe