Not good enough rainier, you lied, then say you retract after being caught out in a disgusting lie! Not good enough mate. You are an absolute disgrace! YOU LIED! try and be a man and just wander away from all this, everything you now say should be just ignored.
Do not retract, apologise you craven coward! Disgusting behaviour!

I've considered doing a thorough textual analysis of the techniques Dillon uses in this piece of 'opinion' but its Friday night and I've got a movie lined up to watch. I will however offer the following observation on one of the most revealing paragraphs from this clever polemic.

After some lame rebuttals of racism being a sociological factor in Australia's race relations Dillon qualifies his moral credentials by declaring:

"In a country the size of Australia, there will always be pockets of people who are racist, as racism is an expression of the racist's deep-seated insecurity, and, there are always insecure individuals. I am sickened when I hear of accounts where an Aboriginal person is refused service or asked to sit somewhere not of their choice, simply because they are Aboriginal."

Here Dillon reduces racism's effects (and acts) as being acts of deliberate deprivation and thus coming from deep seated insecurity of 'individuals'. The left over effects of past government policies and laws of segregation and assimilation are bypassed completely in this re-ordering of how racism impacts on the lives of Aboriginal people. Dillon's call for Aboriginal to adopt a "rugged invidualism” allows him to deploy and refute simultaneously, any suggestion that racism is a mitigating factor. Washed clean of any impurities, any reference to the historical effects of racism on the lives of Aboriginal people is denied any agency or purpose. This egalitarian approach to neutering racism is not new, it’s a well known approach used by black Afro American Conservatives who victim blame and argue that from a position that "dovetails quite nicely with the longstanding white supremacist notion that the unequal position of Aboriginal people is due neither to racism nor to systemic
economic conditions but to the inappropriate behaviour of Aboriginal themselves. This is not only lazy scholarship, quite simply, it’s just plain embarrassing.

JBowyer, give over, Rainier made a mistake and apologised. End of story. I also checked as I had not been aware that Anthony was doing his PhD as he has never mentioned being a PhD candidate in all his writing. Congratulations Anthony.

I agree withe Rainier though that having completed his doctorate Anthony should know that the his assertions are not supported by the literature. Indigenous Australians generally do have a different worldview from mainstream Australians. Our spirituality is a significant aspect of this worldview and if Anthony is not very conscious of this he has a problem - disconnect from the spirituality can lead to the problems Rainier mentions. I did my PhD on this topic and it is very clear. (Graham Y can verify my Dr status).

Racism is very real and it permeates the halls of our universities as the NTEU showed. Employment can often depend on assimilation and acceptance of Western mainstream values and culture and the suppression and or denigration of Indigenous culture.

To suggest that racism is just a hollow catch-cry shows Anthony's ignorance or assimilation.

Rainier,
Good point, I only know one Aboriginal person and she's never mentioned racism in the five or so years I've known her, like most people it's not something that is high in the queue of topical conversation. She talks about how busy she is, her kids, her artwork, her involvement in Koori Art projects and other community groups.
I know one other person "of colour" and being South African he does talk about race a lot but he's dismissive of "Racists" as simply ignorant and will always point out that his success in life is because of his own single mindedness and will to succeed (he talks about that a lot, to the point of being annoying).

A lot of people are pretty good at making excuses for the failure of "Minorities" to thrive, the vast majority of poor, homeless and disadvantaged people in this country are White, the so called "White Abos", what excuses do they make for them?
Are there any racial or culturally specific problems relating to the White underclass? There must be, low status Whites are the most visible and publicly vilified group in society, the "Bogan" is a veritable folk demon, you only need to look ant the vicious way in which the Corby family has been treated in the media, websites like The Anti Bogan. or filth like the SBS program "Housos".
Nobody in the media dares portray Aboriginals that way, look at the coverage of Liam Jurrah, he's accused of an extremely serious crime, far more serious than anything a White footballer has done in recent times, but in contrast to the coverage of say Wayne Carey or Ben Cousins who were pilloried, slandered and vilifed the excuses for Jurrah's behaviour come thick and fast.

The questions raised by this article stir up reactions, because the Aboriginal question is so frustrating.

No matter what is done, both sides remain unsatisfied, at best, and quite often, angry, which simply exacerbates the situation.

The article is quite reasonable in its terms, and appears to be seeking solutions. It is a shame for it to be taken the wrong way.

Obviously, the activists, in this sorry mess, have done more harm than good, but the author does not seem to me to be an activist, and is inviting reasoned discussion.

What is the “cultural gap”, that seems basic to this impasse?

A Stone Age people were suddenly confronted with people from the Age of Science.

They are the same species, but there is a huge gap in their respective development.

This is an opportunity for the Aborigines to come from the marginal existence of hunter gatherers using stone and wooden implements to a civilization based on cropping and herding, harnessing of energy, conservation of resources and access to stored knowledge; all completely foreign to the natives.

Initially, attempts were made to effect assimilation, with much success, for those lucky enough to be part of it, but with the difficulties and failures which always accompany such efforts.

Then came the activists, who did the Aborigines the disfavour of concentrating on the failures, and magnifying them to develop a victim mentality in the Aborigines instead of a pride in the assimilation of the modern world which so many of them achieved. The abhorrent nonsense of invention and constant use of the anti-white pejorative of "racist", has played a great part in ensuring that no progress was made.

How do we rid the Aboriginal movement of the activist element which has so degraded it, and get back to a sensible assimilation movement which previously did so much good?

The Aboriginal culture is not amenable to the world in which we now live, and an appropriate way has to be found to let it go. The separation of people by race has to cease. We have to be one community.

I have formed my own definition of racism & those whom I explain it to agree.
Racists are people who very quickly condemn wrongdoing by someone other than their own.
When the wrong doer is one of their own then & someone not of theirs points the finger than the person pointing the finger is the racist. Or so they try and twist it.
Presently there's huge resentment at a video about the method of killing turtles & dugong in Nth Qld. Now the wrong doer is the white bloke who filmed it not the black blokes who did the killing. They now accuse the bloke with the camera of being racist.