Schmalz is a Yiddish word. The literal meaning is "fat." Metaphorically it is untranslatable. The closest I can come is "Icky sentimentality."

Sorry day sets the benchmark for schmalz. It is also shrewd political theatre. For the most part Rudd cannot give the latte left what it wants. So he makes a great fanfare of giving them what he can while conducting a conservative economic policy and a foreign policy that is largely indistinguishable from Howard's.

The Romans governed through "bread and circuses" and sorry day is the circus part of the equation.

Maybe this outpouring of schmalz was necessary.

BUT, will the Rudd initiative improve the welfare of Aborigines?

Colour me sceptical. My guess is that a decade hence we shall still be discussing the dreadful state of Aboriginal society.

Here's why.

I doubt the viability of remote Aboriginal communities. It may be that salvation for many, not all, Aborigines lies in moving to cities as have many Australians. The jobs, the opportunities, are mainly in the cities.

Who is going to tell Aborigines that?

If the remote communities are to become viable the locals are going to have to display considerably more entrepreneurship than they have shown hitherto. They are also going to have to go out and sell their communities to business as investment destinations.

Can anyone visualise this happening anytime soon?

I have no magic bullets. But here are some guidelines that may help.

--Whites need to toss their guilt on the trash heap. Feeling guilty never helped anyone.

--Whites also need to view Aborigines as human beings, not as a way for liberal whites to feel good and self-righteous.

--Everybody needs to recognise that ultimately Aborigines need to help themselves. The most Whites can do is act as facilitators.

DISCLAIMER

The views I express are mine and mine alone. Despite having used a Yiddish word I do not speak for the Jewish community. Most of my fellow Jews are taken in by the schmalz.

"I have no magic bullets. But here are some guidelines that may help.

--Whites need to toss their guilt on the trash heap. Feeling guilty never helped anyone.

--Whites also need to view Aborigines as human beings, not as a way for liberal whites to feel good and self-righteous.

--Everybody needs to recognize that ultimately Aborigines need to help themselves. The most Whites can do is act as facilitators." (Quote:stevenlmeyer)

Thank-you for your guidelines. I only have one:

'Whites'/'Aborigines'= Australians.

WE are all Australians. Think divisively; and you will maintain division.

As you say: no magic bullets/no magic results. The us/them attitude if nothing else will take eons to dispel if ever..?

Sadly there are still many in Australia who will be happy to see nothing change; if only to prove their point. Very sad.

"--Whites also need to view Aborigines as human beings, not as a way for liberal whites to feel good and self-righteous."

...........is it so impossible for you to accept that it IS possible to see 'Aborigines as human beings'?? To NOT view them as just a way to 'feel good and self-righteous'??

Even sadder SM; that you have such a low opinion of indigenous Australians that you cannot embrace the view that people do indeed view them as...'human beings'. Such a telling comment, and from a Jew, I think a bloody tragedy.

Ginx wrote,

"Even sadder SM; that you have such a low opinion of indigenous Australians that you cannot embrace the view that people do indeed view them as...'human beings'. Such a telling comment, and from a Jew, I think a bloody tragedy."

I think you are misreading what I wrote.

I have no difficulty viewing a human being as a human being.

BUT

I do think many White Australians have difficulty viewing Aborigines as human beings.

That is a comment about White Australia, NOT about Aborigines.

I think that, in the consciousness of many White Australians, Aborigines have become ideological footballs rather than actual people.

You wrote:

'Whites'/'Aborigines'= Australians.

I actually AGREE with that sentiment. It's not me, but "liberal" Whites you need to convince.

Yes, I did notice your reference to the 'latte Left'.

I suppose if you feel the need to categories in this manner, I must confess my 'sins'. I like my latte..with full cream milk thanks; proper latte. And I am most certainly on the so-called Left (do Conservatives get stoned if they are caught drinking latté?).

Is it so incomprehensible to you that I AND so many others, do not see Aborigines as a cause rather than a life form? Is it so incomprehensible to you that there are some Conservatives who feel the same way?

Are you so hell bent on projecting those on the so-called Right of politics as having the kind of views you espouse?

_____________________________

Aborigines WERE treated shockingly.
Their children WERE stolen from them in MOST cases.(Whether the intention were good or not).
They WERE shackled; NOT like animals.
They WERE studied as specimens NOT human beings.
Bones WERE stolen, and in MANY cases, have not been returned.
They WERE murdered en mass. GENOCIDE.

You know, I'll be a pragmatist here; given all that, I don't give a t'penny h'penny damn whether they are looked on as a cause or not.

If Aborigines have learned to screw the 'white man' it is because the white man screwed them.

I remain absolutely disgusted at the petty-minded point scoring on this forum regarding the apology.

Shalom Steven,

I thought you'd made a typo when I first saw "schmalz." He's left out the "t," I thought. But then I remembered there are two spellings of the word. I'm used to "smaltz," - meaning exaggerated sentimentalism, as in music or soap operas. Or fat or grease, esp. of a chicken. It comes from Yiddish - 'smelt,' orig. meaning was grease, butter.

What can the Government do - now that 'sorry' is out of the way for
Australia's indigenous people?

I'm sure the PM has an agenda. But I would ask him to invest in the
children...

One of my suggestions to the PM - would be -to provide access to the same sporting facilities and opportunities in the outback areas that are available to whites.

Professor Colin Tatz, (formerly Professor of politics at Sydney's Macquarie University, where he established one of only three academic
centres in the world devoted to genocide studies) told us in , "Obstacle Race," of the 1,200 black sportsmen and women he studied, only six had access to the same facilities and opportunities as whites.

His book is a moving testament to the endeavours of the first Australians to live up to the sports-obsessed culture of the majority.

He describes the dustbowls, the fields of mud and salt and strewn rock where black Australian athletes have trained and played, and won through, often against all odds of their fragile health.

On the salt pan at Lombadina, Aborigines play with two saplings stuck in the ground. If you inspected their conditions, you would be looking at third - and fourth world sporting facilites. You would see Aborigines kicking a piece of leather stuffed with paper because they don't possess a single football or have access to the kind of sports facilities that every white Australian takes for granted, even in poor working-class suburbs there is a municipal pool, a municipal ground, a cricket pitch or a tennis court or a park of some sort - these things are totally absent in 95% of Aboriginal communities.

Steve,
I think that in the longer term education of the kids is the key. By some means or another the parents have to see the kids get to school each and every day. How can uneducated people cope in a modern world?

But at the same time we cannot sit back and let the neglect and abuse of kids go on. Our Governments must insist on proper care and safety for the kids. How this can be acheived I am not sure. Maybe by NT type intervention, but this seemed to split the aboriginal communities down the middle. No one has come up with an alternative scheme thus far.

Am anxious to see the results from the NT thus far. If it doesn't work we had better think up something else.