Comment on Why Keating’s greatest speeches still matter after the Voice failed
HalfEarthMedic@slrpnk.net 1 day agoI think there’s a subtlety to this argument that you’re missing.
The prosperity of all non-indigenous Australians is built on what was taken from the indigenous population with brutal force.
The single most important reason that there is such a large gap in quality of life between the indigenous and non-indigenous population is that for more than a century it was government policy to repress and deny opportunity to the indigenous population.
It is not unreasonable to think that we, as a population that has built a prosperous society on the ruins of theirs, that we could give them a hand to regain some benefit of our prosperity.
We hear a lot from conservative cranks that indigenous individuals should take responsibility for their actions, most progressives actually agree on that. I would argue that as a settler society we should take responsibility for our collective past actions.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 23 hours ago
hard work, good culture, stable government, stable modern society, low corruption, democracy, luck with international markets needing our commodities, speaking English, alignment of values with other western nations
It’s been 50 years since the end of the stolen generation, it’s been 3 decades since that Keating speech of giving them a hand
aph.gov.au/…/AustralianGovernmentIndigenous-speci…
A lot of people think we’ve done more than enough to help them and quite frankly it’s starting to look like dependence
HalfEarthMedic@slrpnk.net 12 hours ago
Thanks for the response.
I have to assume that you’re quite young since you seem to think that 30 or 50 years is enough time to erase the kind of trauma anglo-Australians put indigenous Australians through, this is living memory for many of us.
There really is no denying that coming from parents who have suffered trauma and economic disadvantage leaves the children at severe disadvantage themselves, ie the sins perpetrated on the grandparents of today’s young adults are a key reason for their disadvantage.
This kind of reasoning is often taken as ‘excusing’ bad behaviour, it shouldn’t be but it is explanation and we do bear some responsibility to alleviate that disadvantage while still holding people responsible for individual actions.
The final key point is that systemic racism remains rife. You would have to be willfully blind to not see that indigenous people are treated differently at the Centrelink office, the emergency department triage desk, at a job interview.
You correctly point out some big numbers involved in current support for indigenous focussed programmes, I suspect that much of this is providing services that they find difficult to access through the mainstream due to systemic racism which is kind of a bare minimum, regardless we have a long way to go.
The past isn’t gone, it isn’t even past. I hope you can appreciate that there is a but more subtlety to this issue than you seem to give it credit for.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 4 hours ago
The reason I (and most people who aren’t green haired devils in melbourne) don’t give it much credence is because any subtle effect of being Indigenous is overruled by other brown/black/asian people who are also impacted by the same issues and often coming from worse situations improving their lives drastically simply by working hard, studying hard, and doing their best to integrate.
You live in Australia, not Africa, playing the victim card only works for so long, people get tired of hearing about it.
Hence the no vote:
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You can’t blame whitey when literally every demographic is represented in that 60% no vote and there wasn’t even a no campaign, all the pink haired melbourne devils like /u/Taleya’s running around screaming if you don’t vote yes you’re racist!!! somehow didn’t seem to impact the majority of the electorate that again, includes whites, blacks, browns, asians, and everything in between.
HalfEarthMedic@slrpnk.net 2 hours ago
I can’t help but feel you haven’t read the article posted or my comments. You’re not addressing any of the points raised and instead just seem to have a bee in bonnet about the referendum which is at best tangentially related.
I do understand the fatigue of this being an ongoing issue but that doesn’t really change the situation.
Taleya@aussie.zone 22 hours ago
When comments like yours think they have validity, then it shows we still have a long way to go. You and fucking Danby.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 21 hours ago
next time you have a thought like this that adds zero to the conversation maybe keep it in your head?
Taleya@aussie.zone 20 hours ago
No. Stop curating your ignorance.