CM, possibly o sung wu is referring to Eveleigh St and the 'The Block' in Redfern back in the 70's. I recall a visit to the infamous 'Empress Hotel' on Regent St, one of only a couple of "black pubs" in Sydney in those days, located near the train station and Eveleigh St. When it got going The Empress was a sickening sight of depravity to behold. One Saturday arvo back in the day, a mate wanted to show me the "sights". And what a sight it was, what an eye opener. Take a crowd of dysfunctional people, ply them with cheap grog until half of them can't stand up, and let em' rip. On cue the coppers were around with their paddy wagons, ready for heavy handed policing, bar fights and street brawls were common, a string of arrests ensued. The result was old Redfern Court house was very busy on a Monday morning. A cycle repeated weekly.

What happened, police and the local community leadership got together to turn things around, through cooperation. The Empress Hotel was no more, things worked so well that I recall black Redfern had a lower crime rate on a Friday and Saturday night than some white locations such as the northern beaches. People started to feel safe in the area, to a point where some very nice local eateries opened up, the pubs went up market, and people could spend a pleasant evening socialising.

Before leaving Sydney The Cauliflower Pub, one of the oldest hotels in Sydney, a stones throw, and a world away, down Botany Rd from the above, with it bistro dining, retro bands on a Saturday night, was a great place for us to meet up with friends and enjoy a good night out, that's how things should be for all. Given a chance communities can do it.

Hey Canem Malum,

"Maybe you want to make white people feel guilty for their ancestors and for themselves. I'll leave it to others to decide if they or their ancestors are evil for any acts. I feel confident that my ancestors are not complicit in significant acts of harm to other peoples that warrants my slavery or disenfranchisement in modern times."

It doesn't matter if your ancestors were complicit in acts of harm towards others.

You are not responsible for anything that happened before you were born.

Maybe if your ancestors got rich off others expense before you were born, and as a result you benefited from this, then maybe the matter of your wealth and how you came into it might be a topic of discussion, but it still would not make you responsible for anything that happened.

If you were born into and inherited wealth from your ancestors mistreatment of others, and others made a case that you were liable for redress because of what your family had done before you were born, I'd probably argue in favour of what was 'considered lawful at that time'

If you got rich off slaves, but it was legal to have slaves then you didn't essentially commit any crime.

Just because something is inherently wrong with the idea of 'owning other people like assets' one should also accept the fact that it most certainly wasn't considered illegal.

Who is responsible for past misdeeds, when everyone's long since passed?

Is there no moral obligation, only a legal one? Then those charged with crimes against humanity, could argue "I was acting within the law as it existed at the time", but that begs the question; How did that law come about? The answer is the elite of which I was a part, made laws that accommodated what we wanted at the time.

We in Australia, benefit today from the past exploration by our European ancestors. There is a connection between the past deeds and our modern society. I'm not advocating that we should try and wind back the clock, that would be ridiculous. At the very least if the present inadequate conditions for some are the result of the past actions of others, then regardless of that, we do have a moral obligation to try and redress, as best we can.

Where all societies fail so miserably is when they reach a high standard of progress they switch into moral regress.
The more money they get paid the less work they perform. The more power they attain the more corrupt the become. Not only Whites, they're simply the one who admit their wrongs & some make efforts to remedy the wrongs. Which non-white society do we see doing that ?
In my book, the worst trait of Whites is the stupidity that invariably follows success !

Oh god I get sick of this lefty bleeding heart garbage. The world is a much better place today because of European colonialism.

Take India. Yes the poms extracted a huge amount of wealth from India, but they built the infrastructure to allow them to do it. The transport system that allowed India to prosper, road rail & ports were all built by the poms. Every single Indian today is still better off thanks to the nation building done by those poms.

We can't judge the past by the overblown standards of today, or one culture by the standards of another. There was huge complaint of the shipping conditions our POWs were subjected to by the Japs. It is only when you realise they were shipped to Japan in the same ships, loaded to the same level as those same ships had transported Jap troops to the islands.

If we were to ship livestock in the same conditions as steerage passengers were shipped pre WW11, there would be a new outcry. Things & cultures change, & should be left in their own time.

yeah Hasbeen it was a lovely place for young girls before colonisation. Certainly was lovely for the uncles. We could put up a few statues in remembrance. The woke crowd are sick puppies.