David F,
It does matter that she was an activist who trained with the American Communist Party and a member of the NAACP because it sets Parks' actions in their proper context context, Rosa Parks' refusal to obey bus company rules was a calculated political act and the catalyst for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, classic propaganda by the deed.

You're behaving in exactly the way I described, with rhetoric,obfuscation, indignation and self righteousness and typical straw men and false contradictions like "Nazis" and "Civil rights".
Any discussion of the complicated web of inter-ethnic relations which has now arisen in this country has to be framed by the Anti Racist in strictly racial terms, which is exactly the way a White Nationalist sees the world.
There is no way to link "Racist" events in 21st century Australia with events in the 19th or 20th centuries in Alabama or Europe other than via a racial thesis, that is to say Anti Racists lay the blame at the feet of "The White Race".
The only connection between Rosa Parks and Jeremy Fernandez is the bus, Mrs Parks was not being abused or threatened that evening and Mr Fernandez was not subject to racially biased laws, there is no similarity whatsoever but it's no mystery as to why the connection is made in the minds of anti Racists.
It's obvious to all Australians that anti Racists are not capable of assisting in the management of a multiracial society because they have no practical means of implementing their belief system on the wider population.
Read the study cited in the article, anti Racists are condemned to the agonies of Sisyphus and the reasons why that is so are not difficult to understand.

Dear JOM,

If a law is unjust and the injustice is great a person of conscience is justified in disobeying the law. Disobedience to the law should not be done without good reason, but there was good reason to disobey the segregation rules in the South. They were a calculated political act to keep black people down and to avoid the intent of the constitutional amendments passed after the Civil War in the United States which had as their goal equality under the law for all US citizens regardless of race. It took a calculated political act to overturn unfair laws which were put in place by a calculated political act.

The system of segregation in the US South was ugly, and Rosa Parks is a heroine for her part in ending it. Rosa Parks’ act and the Montgomery Bus Boycott have made the US a better country. Those acts roused the conscience of most of the American people, and the result from that and other civil rights actions were to dismantle the apparatus of segregation. The United States has benefited as the talents of all its citizens can have fuller expression.

Civil Rights are not rhetoric. In the United States they are part of the effort to dismantle the racist heritage of human slavery. Civil disobedience is one way unjust laws get changed. Henry Thoreau, Martin Luther King jr. and Mahatma Gandhi have all practiced it. Thoreau’s “Essay on Civil Disobedience” inspired both Gandhi and King. Thoreau protested the Mexican War which he regarded as a war of aggression. Gandhi protested the British Salt Tax and the British occupation of his country. King protested racial segregation. The protests were all justified acts of civil disobedience.

http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html directs you to Thoreau’s essay.

We see things very differently and will probably continue to see things very differently.

David F,
Yeah we'll have to agree to disagree, I understand that but White Supremacy, "Racism" and Racialism are different things with different origins and varying effects:
http://politube.org/show/3732
What's more Australia is not a racial society, after much study of the subject the problem I now have is the Americanisation of any race debate, I have an intimate understanding of White Nationalism as well as Anti Racism and they both do exactly the same thing with race.
I don't know if it's academic laziness or a lack of any internal critique on both sides that is allowing this situation to continue, it's probably both since neither side will allow any public criticism from within the ranks.
White Nationalism and Anti Racism are both inadequate approaches, Australia has never been a "White" society, nor has it been a "Racist" society and the relationships between indigenous people, European and Non European settlers have their own particular character which should not be studied or presented to students through the lens of the American civil rights experience.

One final remark. During the Civil Rights movement J. Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI. He was very opposed to the movement and labeled many of the participants 'communists' to discredit them. Rosa Parks and others may or may not have actually been communists. I don't think we can be sure one way or the other. It was during the Cold War.

Thanks for referring me to the site about 'white people'.