Individual,

It's not really a pissing contest, you know :) But you have a point.

On the one hand, we have to face the realities of Australia, that the majority population, 97 % or so, are not Indigenous, especially those with power and authority, so racist comments from somebody who is perceived as part of that majority (or a majority of the majority) are going to be felt more deeply than the jibes of a self-perceived maligned minority.

But on the other hand (what am I, an economist?!) over the past forty years, the people who I have heard use words like 'wog' and the many derogatory terms which different groups of Aboriginal people might use for other groups/'tribes'/clans, have tended to be Aboriginal. Of course, i have led a fairly sheltered life, so what would I know ?

I do recall back in the eighties, when an Aboriginal kindergarten here in Adelaide was approached to admit a Vietnamese child, the Aboriginal parents were furious- no 'goonties', they demanded. And so it was.

As far as I could tell, the response by Aboriginal people of my acquaintance to the anti-democratic coup in Fiji in 1987 was universally to support the Fijians against the Indian tenant farmers who had voted in a mixed government. And no, Indians weren't the majority population at the time and have since diminished to about a third of the population.

And ask an Aboriginal academic about coming 'out of Africa' and be unpleasantly surprised by the response.

So perhaps when people have power, no matter who they may be, they just possibly may tend to misuse it. Nobody has any monopoly on ignorance.

Best wishes,

Joe

Individual, perhaps you just choose to pay attention to racism coming from black people and ignore the toxic racism from whites?
For me Racism = prejudice + power.
I may have on occasion had a prejudice, but no the power.
If you think racism is only about name calling, you know nothing about racism at all.

When white people complain about reverse racism, they are not complaining about losing their RIGHTS. What they are complaining about is losing their PRIVILEGE.

Individual>> Rainier,
We obviously have vastly different experiences because I have met a lot more black racists than white ones<<

Indi, I grew up with aboriginal families, back then our shared poverty bound us socially.
There was always an undercurrent of “white dogs” in their sentiments, brought about by “colonial genocide” and TOTAL disenfranchisement from the new Anglo Australia.

But that was fifty years ago, the parents of my mates at the time had grandfathers killed by the colonists, they were bottom of the social bird cage and they didn’t even have the right to vote. No voice in my father’s place is how one dad put it all through my formative years.

I heard the political grievances of the first Australians at their kitchen tables. These people have at the heart of their genes an honest and open disposition, a gentleness that Caucasian societies lost long ago; I still see it in the kids. Yet their societies were brutalized. Did that give them the moral right to harbour absolute resentment….it absolutely did.

Shoot forward fifty years. Last year I was driving to Sydney from Brizzy. I stopped at a small town takeaway to have lunch, sitting at a table I watched three separate groups of first Aussie descendants come in, order, wait, pay and leave. They all had attitudes that ranged from surly to downright contemptuous towards the staff and other patrons.

When I took the plate back, I asked “what’s their problem.” All three ladies behind the counter said “they hate us”.
It seems that the local land council was quite influential in the area and the local descendants treated all whites like contemptible squatters. As I drove back to Sydney I thought of the families I grew up with, I had never witnessed that degree of open hostility and contempt for whites from them.

Yet these last two generations of descendants have had positive discrimination and an opportunity to move forward…but they didn’t. They have decided to live off the spilt blood of their ancestors.

I exempt all outback communities from this observation.

Joe>> As far as I could tell, the response by Aboriginal people of my acquaintance to the anti-democratic coup in Fiji in 1987 was universally to support the Fijians against the Indian tenant farmers who had voted in a mixed government. And no, Indians weren't the majority population at the time and have since diminished to about a third of the population.<<

Well thank Rabuka for that.
If I can draw a comparison.

In Australia we have an invasion of Indian Minor birds. They are more opportunistic than the local birds, smarter than the local birds; they took over the most lucrative feeding ranges, took the prime nesting sites and bred like Minor birds.

Joe that is what was happening to Fiji buddy, no wonder the first Aussies supported them.

Hi SoG,

Well, no actually. Indian sugar workers in Fiji have never owned the land, only leased it from Fijians. They were a bare majority of the population in 1970 or so, at Independence, but their proportion was slowly declining even then, and especially after the racist coup of 1987 - now they make up less than 40 % of Fiji's population. They don't own land, on the whole. Fijians are akin to their feudal masters. I long for the day when Fiji can become a democracy.

My point was simply that nobody is somehow angelic, above other human beings, nobody, but that everybody is capable of idiotic viewpoints, cruel and racist jibes and gutless attacks on people who they think are less powerful than they are. And it's all wrong.

And I'm a little uneasy - forgive me - with comparing human beings to birds, but if it floats your boat ....

Joe