Culture is often just noise and or, brainwashed from birth (flat earther) belief.
Alan B,
In the past 50 years 'Culture' has been an excuse to divert from many wrongs !

SAINTS & Others.
If my memory serves me correctly, that is what "The Intervention" was designed to do, but all the cultural dogooders had it stopped before it could have any practical effect. Meanwhile the kids keep getting raped and the women bashed and killed and the culprits virtually escape unpunished because the magistrates are taken in by all the cultural BS.

David

Darrell Patrick Arnold
January 15, 2021 at 7:16 am

I enjoyed the piece, Andris! One of the remarkable things about Ossoff’s and Warnock’s characterization of themselves as “black and white brothers” is that it comes in a period of increased racial animus in the US. Trump came into the White House stoking racist fears with the birtherism lie. Not only were tens of millions receptive to the birtherist lie, they were also receptive to talk of Mexicans as “murderers and rapists” and talk of very different kinds of Muslim and Chinese threats. Precisely this worked with many of the white Americans who are living in the most precarious situations in the country. Of the ten poorest states in the US even in 2020 Trump won all but New Mexico.

Your story relates how those down and out whites in Australia were able to find some common sensibilities with the Aborigines, no matter how sad or broken the context. That sometimes can happen spontaneously. But that is also something that can be politically forged or politically broken. Trump never ceased to invoke divisive rhetoric. But he did so while acknowledging the pain, frustration and insecurity of white America. His appeal was and is populist. Of the Democrats, only Sanders has had a similar populist appeal. I hope our junior senators, Warnock and Ossoff, are able to affect a sensibility of unity that speaks to widespread concerns of African Americans, whites, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans. I hope Biden is able to make some populist appeal by speaking to the needs of all these groups.

The US needs unity — just not the unity that the Republicans are calling for, not the unity that amounts to a call for clemency. It needs the unity of political purpose that acknowledges the common struggles of the many diverse races in this country, now affected by covid deaths, economic worries and heightened concerns not just of violence, but of politically motivated and racist violence. Here’s to our opportunity to meet those challenges! Here’s to the opportunity for acknowledging our brother- and sisterhood!

Perry Kinkaide
January 16, 2021 at 5:45 am

Please please advise Biden NOT to throw cash at the problems of “social and economic” inequities. If we have learned anything over the last century, is that laws and cash, wars and riots, are only cosmetic. To achieve social justice we need less authoritarianism and more embracing of the issue at birth, in family, at community. We need to personalize not nationalize the issues.
Al Brooks
January 18, 2021 at 1:44 pm

The administration to be sworn in, only two days from now, can only do better, in the matter of race relations.

Plus, the new administration could set an example for the nations Down Under, and elsewhere. A small improvement could be made during the next few years.

I shall respond to most comments to my article BLACK AND WHITE BROTHERS above soon. Thank you for your comments; keep them coming. Thanking you, Andris Heks