You aren’t wrong, but they didn’t think like that at the time. The racism was off the charts by today’s standards. It’s ghastly to look back on and the psychological damage this policy did is immeasurable and ongoing. But beyond all that, they truly were attempting to improve the lives of “the savages” as they saw it.
“The Board may assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine, if after due inquiry it is satisfied that such a course is in the interest of the moral and physical welfare of such child. The Board may thereupon remove such child to such control and care as it thinks best.”
Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
Oh yeah I get it. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with what they did at the time. I was merely addressing one part of your own comment:
There’s no such thing as “an attempt at…genocide”. If the act was carried out with the intent to eradicate (even if, as was the case in Australia, they believed the eradication was in the best interests of the individuals), then the action is genocide, whether or not the targeted group actually ceases to exist.
If you think about it, that has to be the case. Otherwise we would say there has never been a genocide in history. The Nazis only attempted genocide against the Jews, Roma, gays, etc. But we don’t say that, we say what the Nazis did was genocide, even though Jews, Romani, and gay people still exist today. (And likewise, the genocide Israel is currently perpetuating against Palestinians is a genocide, not an “attempted” one, which is why the common genocide denialist’s attempt to point to numbers killed as a sign that it’s not genocide is irrelevant.)