What rubbish CJ. I can't remember in which of the countries from which our immigrants & illegals are now flooding, we had our colonies. Perhaps you could remind me.

The destinations of these people are those which have the higest welfare payments. Welfare is the draw, & the desirability of the destination is pro rata to it's level of welfare.

I would like to know how it is, that many of them, after gaining Oz citizenship, can return to their country of origan, & live very comfortably on our welfare. Welfare that should have stopped, 6 months after they left the country.

Blairbar

'There is no white race, black race, brown race, yellow race or green race.'

Exactly. The concept of race is made incoherent by reality.

You're right Ozbib, but the concept is made 'real' by a host of social factors, power inequalities, the degree of inclusion or exclusion from mainstream society, and thus either participation in or marginalisation from society, from daily economic life, from interaction with people outside one's network.

Phony as it is, the notion of race is maintained by markers such as skin colour, which are exploited to maintain those power imbalances. In the case of Indigenous people in rural and remote areas, those markers are used as excuses to marginalise and segregate - blatantly, on the part of the Right, subtly on the part of the Left.

And many Indigenous academics and bureaucrats are guilty also of re-instituting and perpetuating the re-colonisation of their own people, of de-skilling and disempowering their own relations, all for their grubby careers.

We have to ask: who benefits from Apartheid and the contemporary forms of neo-colonialism, which exploit white racism as reason to divide Black from white ? Who champions the cause of separatism for a powerless, unskilled and marginalised population ? Separatism under whose control ?

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Hasbeen: << I can't remember in which of the countries from which our immigrants & illegals are now flooding, we had our colonies. Perhaps you could remind me. >>

History's not your forte, is it Hasbeen? I was referring to Belgium and the Netherlands, in response to Rutherford's clearly racist drivel. Australia, being a former colony itself, was created by expropriating its territory from its Indigenous owners and overpopulating it with immigrants - who mainly came from Europe until the 'White Australia' Policy was abandoned.

As far as I understand, the "illegals" are predominantly tourists of European descent who overstay their visas, as opposed to asylum seekers and refugees who are entitled to be here.

Well said, blairbar and Loudmouth.

The racism against Aboriginals continues but it must cease.
http://makingmulticulturalaustralia.blogspot.com/2010/02/sexual-assault-by-aboriginal.html