Nice Is For Idiots

So – there we were, AFTER a white Australian supremacist had gone to New Zealand and murdered 50 innocent Muslims at prayer, and it was time for New South Wales to have a state election.

The State Labor Leader, Michael Daley was caught on film making the following observation:



He reckoned his comment about “foreigners” wasn’t xenophobic.

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The Liberal National Party LNP has been guilty by miles of not only saying nothing about white supremacist hate, but using it to garner votes.

But boy, show me a politician who wouldn't sell their mother to a foreigner if there is a dollar to be made?
The LNP has sold Australia’s water and ecosystems repeatedly to foreign interests for the last 20 years.

 

 

Cubbie station diverts entire rivers, the Culgoa and Balonne, into its dams. This foreign owned firm has water storages 28 kilometres long capturing 460 billion litres of Murray-Darling headwaters. Meanwhile, farmers downriver can have a BBQ on the Darling.




The LNP has not yet decriminalised Abortion in NSW.

It was the LNP which last year passed a law making it legal to pass children directly from State Wardship up for adoption – enforcing the stolen generations all over again and speeding up the process to boot.

There are so many reasons – including the awful lack of leadership from our current un-elected PM, Scott Morrison – that Labor should have won the state election by default, but they lost badly.

I suspect Daley’s inexcusable comment about Asians with PhDs had a lot to do with it.

This country is fucked. I could say we get what we deserve, but those who are not settler stock do not deserve what we settlers have done to this country.

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This week I went to Wodonga with a friend who is thinking of moving up there. Personally I’m something of a hermit, because I am over being disappointed by people. I am especially over feeling complicit in all the shit that happens in this country. While friend dropped in on her friends and relos, I stayed behind in the accommodation, cos they all just give me the shits.
Later, we went to the stooper market.

Friend:
“Kev said the Medical Centre is behind the burger shop on the corner, but it’s full of foreigners.”
Me:
“How is that relevant?”
Friend:
“It’s not. It’s just what he said.”
Me:
“So why are you repeating it to me? I mean, I know that you know that there are anglo doctors who are total dicks, and anglo doctors who are good. And you know there are foreign doctors who are total dicks, and foreign doctors who are good. And you know how I feel so why are you repeating this shit to me?
I stay away from these good catholic friends of yours cos I know I’m not going to change them and in return I just want people to leave me the fuck alone, so why do I still have to hear this shit?”
Friend:
“It’s not xenophobic!”

How is not going to a local doctor just cos they are foreign not xenophobic?
In fact how is it not actually even STUPID?
How is it not nice to use words like "shit" or "fuck" but okay to be racist?
How is it okay to be politically incorrect, but not okay to call this shit out?
Why am I the one who is considered anti-social here?

Are these the fucking “nice” idiots voting for the idiots destroying this country?

And by the way, Labor is fucked.

I have some questions for you, Michael Daley.

WHAT fucking jobs? The unemployment in this country is structural and deliberate - there is 1 job for every 8 jobseekers. And it's not like jobs are homogenous or labour is interchangeable or even what economists would call responsive to Demand. It's not like a job seeker with an employed spouse, 3 kids and a mortgage can just piss off interstate to work 30 hours at a shit job that doesn't guarantee permanent employment. How was it okay for a Labor PM (Gillard) to bag people who "did not work hard"? (Let alone lock asylum seekers up offshore. What a punt!)

Do you even understand what is meant by the expression "casualisation of labour" or the term "precariat"?
Do you understand the increasing meaninglessness of "GDP= Gross National Income" when income is not distributed fairly, if at all? Not even distributed within, or even taxed within, Australia in many instances. Gee, thanks a lot, Labor.

What fucking jobs have been stolen that actually require a PhD, and if they have gone to someone with residence or a work visa, how is their race relevant????

What, did One Notion knock you back for membership?

Your Party, when in power, helped create this mess. When in opposition, your party at both state and federal levels continued to support this mess, but are so busy sucking up to voters you just keep pushing the right further and further to the right.

Fuck You Very Much, Labor.

What Reproductive Rights?

Our (current) PM, SCOMO, recently announced "We want to see women rise. But we don't want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse."

Only in Australia, one of the most undemocratic democracies on earth, would a "leader" feel the need to qualify a concept like "equality".

"Benevolent sexism"... positions men as protectors of women,

while keeping women in non-threatening roles where they need the protection of men.

SCOMO also let us down in the area of reproductive rights.

You can find this SBS article here:

This article mentioned SCOMO's disapproval of "abortion". His attitude is disappointing on many levels, not just because abortion has never been decriminalised in NSW.

(In NSW, the "Levine ruling" allows doctors to approve an abortion if a woman’s physical or mental health is in danger, and taking into account social, economic or other medical factors.
As The Guardian recently reminded us, unlawful abortion is still a criminal offence in the state, and is punishable by up to 10 years jail under the state’s Crimes Act. Unlawfully supplying a drug or instrument for an abortion is also punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.)

The following comment popped up in my social media feed:

“Abortion is killing an unborn child that does not get any choice if they live or not. So how is abortion good?”

This is my response:

The full expression used in the UN motion, is “safe abortion and reproductive rights”. To immediately rule out "reproductive rights" and focus on abortion when you believe abortion is wrong assumes women are only interested in abortions, and this is counterproductive. If you would prefer women have access to contraception, then please make your support of this public.

Like many important issues that often divide communities, the issue of abortion cannot be reduced at a community level to a SIMPLE choice of “good or bad” because the very word “abortion” is associated with different assumptions in different people’s minds.

For example, you say “Abortion is killing an unborn child”. That implies a moral obligation for us all to observe some kind of reverence for all foetuses. At what age does a foetus become “a child” worthy of reverence? Is it from the moment of conception? Fertilised ova are spontaneously aborted by female bodies the world over weeks or months after “the act” but the spotting /waste that results from this is not treated with reverence – rather it is seen as part of the life cycle by many.

Would you allow for safe abortion if a foetus was not yet viable? Is the morning after pill (effectively a termination) okay?

Now let us turn to the request that abortions be “safe”: Hopefully we are not just assuming that all abortions are a matter of convenience for someone too careless to plan ahead. Would you say, if a pregnancy threatened the life of the mother (e.g. in a case of pre-eclampsia), that we must choose the foetus over the mother? Could we, perhaps, choose on the basis of who was most likely to survive the threat? Should the father of the foetus or the mother of the foetus have greatest right or equal right to choose? Let's not assume that if the mother dies there are no other children or dependents who will be deprived of her care.

Recently I saw that in the state of Arkansas a rape victim, if she wants an abortion, must have permission from the rapist who impregnated her. Is this a case in which the rights of the child (as assessed by the father) should be greater than the rights of the mother? And no, you don't get to dismiss this question just because you claim rape is "rare". One woman is murdered in this country every week (more if you agree Indigenous Women dying in custody are just as important as the white victims the media actually gives a shit about.)

Would you prefer that women have access to safe contraception? It’s difficult for me to imagine a totally abortion free world even if contraception is readily available, because contraception sometimes fails, men and women each sometimes fail, and sometimes nature steps in to make a pregnancy dangerous.

Until “safe” abortion was legalised in most Australian states, women still had to contend with two major problems (amongst others). The first was that contraception was not then freely available because of National Security Regulations (Contraceptives & Venereal Diseases) 1942.

Secondly, even when the pill finally became “available” the assumption still prevailed that single women were chaste and that married women required the permission of husbands before a doctor would prescribe the pill.

Sadly, there are places in the west where the gains made in giving women access to contraception are being clawed back – the US is a good example (which makes me fearful for Australia). Further, many of the other social reforms that made pregnancy less frightening have also been clawed back. On the one hand, we may be told constantly by governments that taxpayers should not have the burden of supporting single parents, but on the other, we must again be careful what assumptions we make about why parents may be single. Many of the social reforms now criticised as irresponsible, unaffordable and so on are reforms fought for by men who knew what it was like to be raised in poverty – perhaps because a father had died, or their mother had left a violent spouse.

If we must show reverence for unborn children

why do we have no reverence for life once a child is born?

You say the unborn child does not get any choice if they live or not. I say the unborn child does not get any choice about what the quality of their life will be for far too many of their early years. Birth is a lottery, and too often becomes a life sentence. Shouldn’t a child’s lack of choice continue to matter to us after they are born?

Is the race of a child a significant factor in determining the worth of a life? Is age a significant factor? Gender? A child’s citizenship status? At what point do a community’s or an individual’s rights begin and end?

The greatest tragedy is that all of these questions are being decided by a predominantly male parliament, while the most immediate impact, when there are no safe abortion of reproductive rights, falls on women and children.

These decisions are being made by people whose deeds, with respect to far too many parliamentary matters, show their respect for life is limited and selective at best.

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Reproductive Rights in Post-Invasion Oz

Yes, it’s usually the woman’s fault. In December 1942, National Security Regulations gave Health Reps and Cops power to force a “person” to have a test for VD. The same regulations also made it mandatory to provide the names of any soldier who had been infected.

(Can’t imagine for the life of me that any soldier would, in 1942, admit to being infected by a male “person”.)

 

 

The same regulations also effectively made contraceptives unavailable in states where their promotion had not already been banned. Rather ironic, no? The thinking was that the best way to use contraceptive protection was to make contraceptives unavailable. All the women who were currently so keen to have sex with soldiers would give up, and no one would get none. In the minds of some government genius, a ban on contraception was pretty much a ban on sexing.

Victoria jumped the gun in 1942 and introduced a Liquor Control Order, raising the drinking age for women to 21, and making it illegal to serve women alcohol in a public bar. It goes without saying – but what the heck, I’ll just say it – female drunkenness is a pox upon society.

Prevention of VD was one of the prime reasons usually given to justify control of prostitution.

One last fun fact – in 1915 when a VD Bill was under debate in NSW, a clause was proposed requiring doctors to tell a woman if her husband had VD. This proposal was rejected on the grounds it would undermine a wife’s trust in her husband, and threaten the stability of the family.

 

A Long Fall From Grace

Today Chief Judge Peter Kidd finally outlined the sentence Cardinal George Pell would receive for sexually abusing two boys at St Patrick's Cathedral in the 1990s.

The sentencing report was lengthy, because Judge Kidd was legally required to outline his reasoning when handing down the custodial sentence of 6 years (3 years and 8 months non parole).

Key highlights of Judge Kidd's remarks include phrases like "breathtaking arrogance" to describe Pell's behaviour. The sentence assumes Pell has not re-offended and has therefore "reformed" in the last 22 years because we have a legal system based on the concept of innocent til proven guilty. I do not have a problem with this concept.

Judge Kidd felt that the community is also protected from any future assaults by Pell because in addition to a custodial sentence he is required to register as a serious sex offender and will not have further opportunities to offend against children.

No legal system is perfect, and ours is flawed in that many other complaints did not make it to trial, but Judge Kidd's remarks suggest that the sentence was reasonable in terms of what the law allows.

Other factors included Pell's advanced age and the possibility of him being released before he dies, the state of Pell's health, and the fact that Pell is now subject to a great deal of public scorn.

I am particularly chuffed that the fall from Grace has been spectacular. Pell's life and all that he once believed he achieved now counts for less than zero. Financial Controller for the Vatican, good mates with Pope Francis, and so close to being Pope Himself he must have been able to taste it. History will not forget him, but will remember him unkindly - itself one hell of a sentence.

Most galling about the sentencing business - aside from the appalling public suggestion from Pell's QC that the offences were "vanilla" - was the enormous media support given to Pell after the verdict of guilty was delivered.

More than one former PM sprang to his defence claiming he was of good character, and several right wing pundits funded by a media moghul also went to town. All of them have been in the habit of showing no concern for others, but in this instance shat on the memory of all victims of assault everywhere.

A Guardian report offers more info on the charges and sentencing comments.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/13/cardinal-george-pell-to-spend-nearly-four-years-in-jail-for-child-sexual-assault

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For posterity, I would like to share here the comments of Clare Linane, a Ballarat woman whose response to the right wing mouthpiece Andrew Bolt went viral.

It makes for brilliant and informative reading on the topic of child sexual abuse generally.
 
Clare is a hero.

Clare Kathleen is with Peter Blenkiron.

March 2 at 9:50 PM ·

An Open Response to Andrew Bolt

*******
Dear Mr Bolt,

My name is Clare Linane. As you know, I am a Ballarat local who has been living with the aftermath of child sexual abuse for many years. My husband, Peter Blenkiron, is a survivor of clergy abuse at 11 years old. You met him whilst in Rome three years ago.
I am compelled to write to you after you expressed your opinion that George Pell has been falsely convicted (27 & 28 Feb, Herald Sun).
You are entitled to your opinion.
What concerns me, however, is your statement that your opinion is based on “overwhelming evidence”. I believe this is misleading, irresponsible and ignorant. Your lack of genuine insight into the issue of sexual child abuse makes a mockery of survivors and all they have endured.
The “overwhelming evidence” you mention includes some of the following points (*), which I would like to respond to in an attempt to help educate you about this issue:

* “One of the boys, now dead, denied he’d been abused”

To provide context for readers, when the mother of the now deceased victim asked him, more than once, if he had been sexually assaulted - he denied it.
Among survivors of clergy (and non-clergy) childhood sexual abuse, it is common for them to deny the abuse occurred. As vulnerable children, they are incredibly embarrassed, confused, and ashamed. They do not understand what has happened to them, and their shame is magnified by the revered status of their abuser. According to the rigorous Report for the Royal Commission into The Impact of Delayed Reporting on the Prosecution and Outcomes of Child Sexual Abuse Cases….“children have also been found to be less likely to disclose and more likely to delay if the perpetrator is a parent or parent figure, or a person in a position of trust and authority”
I asked my own husband about this. Although Brother Edward Dowlan had molested and raped him in 1974, when his parents asked him in 1975 if anything had happened to him, his response was to vehemently deny it. He states, “You deny it because you don’t want them to feel guilty. You don’t want them to carry the guilt of having sent you to this wonderful school, within their wonderful Church….only for you to be abused. So you just deny it, to protect them”.
The piece of important evidence you do fail to point out, is that the deceased victim began using heroin at 14 years of age, after enduring the abuse at 13. He abandoned a scholarship at St Kevins, spiraled into drug abuse, and died of a heroin overdose at 30.
This pathway is sadly all too common for sexual abuse victims.

* “The other (alleged victim) whose identity and testimony remain secret, didn’t speak of it for many years”

According to the same report, “Boys and adolescent males are less likely than their female counterparts to disclose child sexual abuse at the time of the abuse. When they do disclose, they take longer to do so….For example…in a 2008 study…for nearly half the men (45 per cent), it took at least 20 years for them to discuss their abuse”.
Additionally, The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse Final Report (2017) found that the average time it took for men to disclose was 25.7 years. The surviving choirboy disclosed 19 years after his abuse – earlier than average. The other choirboy died 18 years after his abuse, so was also well inside the average.
Given this evidence, the fact that one of the complainants didn’t speak of his abuse for many years is, it would seem, indicative of a genuine abuse survivor; not a reason to doubt, as you imply.

* “It allegedly happened in the sacristy, normally a very busy room”

You state in your article that you are not a Catholic. I am curious to know why you believe the sacristy is normally a very busy room?
I was raised a Catholic, and have asked my extensive network of Catholic friends and family about the sacristy. I’m yet to find one who tells me the sacristy was, or is, ‘normally’ very busy. The adjectives used have included “quiet…weird…uncomfortable…scary…silent…solemn”.

* “.where Pell would have known people were almost certain to walk in”

The prospect of discovery did not deter clergy abusers. Children were raped with their parents in the next room. In St Alipius, Ballarat, one child I know of was physically carried away from the playground by Ridsdale and Best, screaming for his life, in front of the other children. At St Patricks College, boys were physically punished at the back of the classroom then molested while the rest of the class faced forward.
To use your words, at any stage all of these abusers would have known “people were almost certain to walk in”. And yet they proceeded. Their revered status as ‘next to God’, and their knowledge that the organisation for which they worked was not about to hold them accountable, meant the risk of discovery was not a deterrent.

* “There is no history or pattern of similar abuse by Pell, unlike with real Church pedophiles such as Gerard Ridsdale”.

This point is totally irrelevant to Pell’s guilt or otherwise.
Sexual abuse of children is a crime. You don’t have to do it to (at least) 65 children like Ridsdale; just the once.
Furthermore, it is incorrect. There is a pattern in the allegations about Pell. The fifth count relates to Pell pushing one of the choirboys and grabbing his genitals. The Southwell inquiry in 2002 saw a complainant making an allegation of Pell “getting a good handful” of his genitals in the water at Phillip Island. In that internal Church Inquiry Justice Southwell found that he believed both the complainant and Pell. Similar claims were made by the Eureka Pool complainants, one of whom died, another of whom was to be the complainant in the so-called “swimming pool trial”. That trial was dropped because of the evidence of another complainant was ruled inadmissible. The judge did NOT rule out the evidence of the complainant who made the grabbing allegations.

* ”the man I know seems not just incapable of such abuse, but so intelligent and cautious that he would never risk his brilliant career or good name on such a mad assault in such a public place”.

I’ve never met George Pell so I cannot give a personal opinion of what he is capable of. Even if I could, it would be totally irrelevant to his likely guilt or innocence and would most certainly not be ‘overwhelming evidence’.
Pedophiles can be otherwise lovely, intelligent, charismatic people. We know from history they include extremely successful politicians, celebrities, judges, teachers, priests….they are from all walks of life and run the whole gamut from stupid to brilliant, charming to repulsive.

* “Maybe they misremembered. Maybe they had the wrong guy”

Please spend some time listening to survivors recount their experiences. You’ll notice that whilst they might be blurry with exact dates and times, the details of the perpetrator they sadly cannot get out of their head. My husband struggles to wear aftershave because Dowlan wore it whilst he abused him. He remembers looking at the shaving nicks on his abusers neck as the molestation took place, and the scent of what came to be, to him, the sickening smell of cologne. Another survivor I know gets physically ill when someone smokes Alpine cigarettes around him, because one of his abusers smoked them.
Furthermore, these boys were 13, not 3. Their brain development at that age makes them well and truly capable of facial recognition. George Pell has always had a very distinctive physical presence and had been Archbishop for several months at the time. He was extremely well-known, not just in the cathedral but also in the media and society more generally. The victim in this case is unlikely to have mixed Pell up with another 6 foot 4 archbishop.

* “I would, and did, read the transcripts of the trial”.

No Andrew, you may have read a partial transcript. The full transcript is not available to you or any of us. Only the survivor, the police, the lawyers, the judge, the jury and Pell have heard all the evidence. So please stop implying that you know all the facts: you do not, and nor do I.

* “Could this attack have happened when not a single witness corroborated a single one of the accuser’s’ claims?”

Yes, it could. I am yet to meet a survivor who had a witness to the crime committed against them. And yet these crimes occurred.
To conclude, Andrew, I reiterate that you are certainly entitled to your opinion. But please don't make the irresponsible claim that it is based on "overwhelming evidence"

This week, I’ve been asked my opinion many, many times. My response?
“Any opinion I have is irrelevant and ill-informed, because I am not privy to all the facts of the case.”

How about everyone stops trying to convince people of Pell’s innocence or guilt; it is not the most important issue here.

We have hundreds, potentially thousands of survivors throughout Australia who have not yet come forward. And when the likes of yourself, and other commentators, use your public profile to cast doubt over the outcome of a trial, you make these people even less likely to come forward and get the assistance they so desperately need.
If you want to support Pell, go and visit him in jail. Help fund his appeal. Take Miranda Devine with you.
In the meantime, here in Ballarat we are going to continue to try to deal with the fact that our suicide rate among males is twice that of Melbourne and 65 percent greater than the Victorian average.
We are going to keep helping women, children, mothers, fathers, and siblings pick up the pieces as their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers prematurely end their lives.
We are going to keep lobbying for the redress scheme that the Royal Commission recommended, so that our survivors get the practical and emotional assistance they need.
We are going to keep trying to figure out how to reverse what has now become a cultural problem whereby males in our community resort to suicide instead of seeking help.

Honestly, the fact that our most senior Catholic has been jailed is the least of our worries right now.

 

Another Race Bait Election

Mark Latham proposes we test the DNA of those claiming Indigenous Blood.

This is meant to IMPLY Indigenous Australians enjoy privileges over and above those enjoyed by the non-Indigenous majority, though nothing could be further from the truth. Funny how genetic testing was never required when taking stuff from Indigenous Peoples in the first place, like land, way of life, children and – let’s face it – lives, in fact.

This is just blatant race-bait electioneering which, sadly, will probably be rewarded. Let us add this tool and his proposal to Australia’s growing shame file.

Okay, point 1
the human genome project is not yet complete and is inadequate, and won’t correctly identify the true genetic ancestry of many of those tested at all.

Point 2
cultural identity in this country is not based on DNA. To change this basis of identification would involve some sort of retrospective legislation – a dangerous thing for any nation to play with.

I am a white, anglo-celtic Australian – although only 6% Irish genetically, I was raised 100% Irish Catholic. Does this make me some kind of con merchant? Can anyone presume to dictate or know another person’s cultural identity based on appearance or bloodlines?

Point 3
race is a social construct, not a biological one. It is a real construct, but not necessarily a moral one. The whole point of race always has been and probably always will be to assess a person’s socioeconomic and political class.

As for the notion Indigenous Australians are somehow privileged – I beg to differ: Karma is rarely instant but it is on its way.

Here’s something that should concern any white citizen of Australia.
Section 51 of our constitution is a shameful pox on our history.

Seriously. I am not just taking the piss now, I really want to know - in how many other countries on earth is there a constitutional provision giving the government the right to make laws with respect to:

"The people of any race

for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws".

Every time someone tells me the government gives a free Rolls Royce and other special treatment to Indigenous Australians I wonder in what fucking sane universe they imagine everyone who is Indigenous even ticks the box on forms? I know one shire where I used to have some workmates who were Indigenous yet the Census figures said there were none in the area at all. Obama granted amnesty to some “illegal immigrants” in America, for example, and his successor is using the list of those who registered to round them up and deport them.

Latham’s proposal is a good example of why, given S51 of the Constitution, we should all be afraid. The Constitution does refer to “any race”.

Yes, there have been and sometimes still are one or two schemes that did not apply to whitefellas.
The earliest of these focused on rounding Indigenous People up and murdering or torturing them. In more recent times, some of them were kinder schemes or even favoured Indigenous People.

There have been and sometimes still are one or two schemes that do not apply to blackfellas, such as when rich private schools get money to build things like auditoriums or pools. Just a few years ago this happened in my old electorate while the local public schools - also attended mostly by whites - only got a tied grant to fix their toilets. Okay, the grants were not made using the race powers of our constitution, but it's not hard to look at the colour of the students as they walk through the gates. Financial favouritism always has been and always will be practised by politicians - it's how they buy votes or feather their own nests.
Should we blame the rich white schoolkids who attend classy schools? Should we vilify them simply because some politician chose to favour them? Assault them? Hate them for these policies?

Just look at Latham's face in the photo above - he seems inordinately proud of how pissed off he appears.

This would just be more "special treatment" using a Constitution that would have made Hitler dance.

Often today, though not always, benefits paid to Indigenous and white people are the same but simply have different names - this is usually an accounting thing with some government advertising thrown in. "Aren't we wonderful we paid income to Indigenous People and can claim we are trying to close the gap".

To our shame, there are also negative programs deliberately aimed at Indigenous Australians. There are also "non-racist" government programs aimed at "all" Australians that are only ever tested in areas where huge numbers of Indigenous people rely on benefits, like the Indue Card program. And "tested" repeatedly.

https://theconversation.com/the-cashless-debit-card-causes-social-and-economic-harm-so-why-trial-it-again-74985

We have such a deficiency of provisions in our constitution for anything that matters, but s51(xxvi) this gobsmackingly blatant piece of racist engineering, survives! It could be used for good...

In Australia our Systemic Racism is sometimes subtle but if we look it's not really hidden or hard to find - for starters our Systemic Racism is right there in black and white in our Constitution and laws as much as in the outcomes these laws deliver. What is most telling is that most of us can't see what is under our noses or don't care enough to look.

But the whole of Section 51 of our Constitution is not just about making laws with respect to Indigenous Australians - this section is so bad on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin - it certainly gives an enormous amount of power to a handful of undemocratically elected people who rarely do anything to inspire trust.

What checks and balances? "Tradition" you say? Excuse me while I go to the bathroom so you won't notice I just PMSL.

--oo0oo--

(This is an edited version of a larger post on my other blog, where I discuss what systemic racism is and what we need to do to fix it.

https://maudesdramaticreviews.blogspot.com/2018/12/sets-systems-race-other-isms.html

 

 

What IS systemic racism, and how do we fix it?

Australia is a place where basically decent, well-meaning white people go about their business not wanting to harm black people… here’s a picture of a 1 /4 of a million Australians marching across the Harbour Bridge to prove it.

Yes, there are one or two haters, but if we are basically decent white folk, how is it bad things keep happening to black people?

The best solutions “fix the problem, not the person”. When it comes to bad things happening to black people, the problem is "Systemic Racism".

What IS systemic racism, and how do we fix it?  It's actually quite simple.

..--oo0oo--..

About Sets and Systems

A set is a number of things that belong together, or are thought of as a group

All sorts of stuff belongs in groups or sets – sets of drawers, chess sets, sets of teeth and so on.

One of the significant things about a set of stuff is that it doesn’t do much except just sit around existing.
What would happen if we put more than one set of stuff together? For example, leave a chess set on top of a set of drawers for eternity? The answer is, the chess set would probably get dusty and covered in cobwebs.

 

The elements of a set never really change: Unless someone interferes or there is a dramatic intervention like maybe an earthquake, sets tend to remain static.


Here is a diagram of a set of Hydrogen atoms and another diagram of a set of Oxygen atoms at a party. The Hydrogen atoms are outside hanging around the barbecue. The Oxygen atoms are inside watching something on the TV in the lounge room. They are not interacting. It’s a boring party. Both sets of atoms are static.

A system, on the other hand, is not static, it is dynamic.
A system is what results if two or more sets of stuff change when you put them together.

The chess set and the set of drawers did not become dynamic when we put them together, but if we put all the Hydrogen and Oxygen together in the same room at the party… something changes.

 

No, I did not consciously set this up so I could make strained jokes about atoms meeting at a party and creating puddles – I was just trying to find a simple example of a few atoms existing statically at a micro level, staying with their own set, minding their own business and not making a conscious decision to change, like the H and O in the first diagram.

At a macro level, when they were required to co-exist in the same space and interact, something bigger than themselves caused the H and the O atoms to combine in a dynamic way to create molecules of water.

Water is H2O - Hydrogen two parts, Oxygen one, but there is also a third thing that makes it water and for a long time nobody knew what it was. The answer is the electrical charges of the atoms causes them to combine. There was more to the story than was first obvious.

You’ve heard someone – many someones – say “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” or, more correctly,

the whole is OTHER than the sum of its parts

 

It doesn’t matter whether we are talking chemistry or economics or philosophy or psychology – or race: the principle is the same:

When we put two or more sets of certain variables together, something changes.

Ordinary, well-meaning white people go about their business not wanting to harm black people…
so how is it when white and black people are together we can end up with negative outcomes of various kinds against black people?
The answer is "Systemic Racism". No one has changed. The white people are still mostly well-meaning people.
But the whole is other than the sum of its parts.

Something more than the intentions of the individual white people is influencing what happens when the white and the black people come close together.

Here are two sets: White people and Black people. Separate and apart and at a micro level they are fine. No, I am not proposing Apartheid.

Now let's put them together.

Just as with Hydrogen and Oxygen, where a third thing (electrical charges) caused the two sets to change into something else altogether and become water, when we put white people and black people together in most countries of the world we get a result called

systemic racism

and the extra thing that causes this, the “electrical charge” if you will, consists mainly of

1) historical events and
2) the questionable attitudes of one or two coalholes.

With Systemic Racism, the mostly historical bits that make the whole other than the sum of its parts are numerous and go way beyond any individual conscience or any single moment in time –

systemic racism does not care about

the number of chill people in a room

This is why it will take more than chill attitudes to fix. Hence the saying, in some Quality System Engineering circles, "Fix the Problem, not the Person".

The only way to fix Systemic Racism is to fix

• The results of history, not just
• Bad attitudes.

Not wanting to forget the past is not about holding grudges. We need to know the truth about the past and to acknowledge the past in order to fix it.

ANTI-Racism is needed which means things like fixing bad laws, or correcting myths, or spotting where we went wrong and learning from our mistakes, changing unconscious bad habits - anything but assuming there is nothing to fix but racist attitudes.

 

Non-racism is not a moral position. Being indifferent enough to do nothing is not an action.

No one important is saying it's not OK to be white -  that's just nonsense put about by stirrers. No one is saying white Australians today need to feel guilty about the past (though it is hardly cause for celebration) and no one is saying anybody has to hate anybody else.
No one is asking for blood in the streets revolution (all the bridge marches were peaceful)  - but there is a lot we can do and need to do because we should feel bad about what is happening today.

This is adapted from a longer post in my other blog. If you want to read more about how we know White Privilege is real (though the word "privilege" is a huge PR mistake) and listen to me get really wound up and rant about a whole heap of related stuff, please visit

https://maudesdramaticreviews.blogspot.com/2018/12/sets-systems-race-other-isms.html

 Cheers

Why I Threw My Golliwog In The Bin

 

As a white Australian and an old fart I can’t help but feel frustrated. I understand what some white Australians are thinking and why they resist changing their opinions about golliwogs or blackface – really I do.

But thinking about what seems* such an insignificant thing – dolls and facepaint – helped me work out something bigger; it helped me work out why it is that, as a nation, we don’t own our racism at all. If our heads are stuck up our arses when it comes to our history and if we are in denial when it comes to the present, we are not all bad – there is a perfectly simple explanation. Well, it’s a bit long winded, but it’s simple just the same.

Most white Australians do not own their racism because so many of us really did grow up in a white Australia. You can’t be a racist if there is no one to be racist against.#

Yep – the maps all show it – just lots of white folks huddled around the coastline of this big country [and some islands], with the Indigenous population mostly concentrated anywhere but where the white folks are.
In states like Qld where there were high numbers of Indigenous people near white centres, Joh kept Indigenous people on reserves. In states like Victoria, there were whole shires where Indigenous people had “disappeared” (coincidentally around the time my people arrived).
I grew up in the Western suburbs of Melbourne in an era when Greeks and Southern Italians were considered “dark” people. I saw some Aboriginal kids at the local pool when I was 7 years old because they had come for a holiday with the Harold Blair project (it must have been terrifying for them, being prodded and poked by swarms of curious white kids). I did not see another non-European until I was 19 years old^. But that was THEN.

The people selling Elka and similar modern Golliwogs today, and peddling imported stories explaining the meaning and history of golliwogs, are mostly talking shit. Golliwogs have bugger all to do with the origins of the word wog, and everything to do with Blackface and Jim Crow laws.

Yes, we once lived in a white world and we were exposed to imported images and stories of golliwogs and blackface, and these were largely imported into a cultural and racial vacuum – in our cosy white world, we once had no way to give these ideas the sinister meanings they had in the UK and the US. But that was THEN.

Let me expand, by starting with a brief history of Blackface in the US. This was the source of and the inspiration for the forms taken by Golliwogs and minstrelsy – later exported to the UK, and only reaching Australia indirectly.

We don’t have to be Marxists to understand that Race had a lot to do with economic class in the early years of settlement of the American colonies. Some US states legalised slavery, and some did not. Some allowed free black men to live freely within their borders, and some did not "encourage" it. And whether or not slavery was permitted, all American states benefitted from the availability of a pool of cheap white labour.

As in Europe, American leaders found that keeping a pool of cheap white labour on hand proved dangerous. If they all have jobs, white labourers start expecting decent pay and conditions. If they don’t all have jobs, they can become hungry, and hungry men can be restless. America solved its economic and social problems quite early by turning cheap workers against each other – by pitting poor white trash against blacks. Sure, white workers were entitled to a slightly higher rate of pay than emancipated black workers, but they were also entitled to cost free perks like being seen as more human than black workers; allowed to look someone in the eye, given separate park benches to sit on, separate taps to drink from and so on.
The Jim Crow laws and the Blackface routines of travelling carnivals and minstrel shows were an essential part of the early American economy, and of reconstruction after the Civil War. In their earliest and most extreme forms, these laws and Blackface itself were brutal, violent and dehumanising. It was vital that poor white people feel no sympathy for their black neighbours, and the easiest way to do this was to sell the idea that blacks were different; that they were sub-human, stupid, un-helpable, and to blame for their own problems. (A bit like what Australia’s politicians say to the unemployed or the aged in Australia today.)

 

These are the very same images adopted and sanitised into golliwogs and music hall routines; rendered friendly and harmless by Enid Blyton books, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musicals, or Al Jolson.

Some people have tried to make the point by suggesting an Adolf Hitler doll would be just as loveable – unfortunately the point is a little too subtle. We know Hitler is responsible for the murder of millions, and that his followers were creative about the way their victims were murdered.

When we look at a picture of a minstrel, we don’t associate it with a system as vile as Nazism; with a system that once encouraged people to throw large rocks at the head of a live black man at a carnival sideshow and not give a shit how long it took for him to die in agony.
(Well, perhaps in the 1890s, not so much in the 1930s when people were making "nice" movies that only joked about it.)

 

Let me digress for a minute, in support of my point. I was disappointed by Leunig’s cartoon about his tiny little dick. It’s just a piece of skin, why are women so offended by a little piece of skin, he wondered? What part of rape does he simply refuse to understand?
At some point, women are entitled to ask men who don't rape to acknowledge that some bad men do. No women are saying that all men are rapists. Some women have good reason to always be nervous around men, just like some men have good reason to always be nervous around priests.

Little bit of skin looks harmless, Leunig, but sometimes isn’t.

At some point, people of colour are entitled to ask decent people who aren't racists to acknowledge that racism exists. No black people are saying that all white people are arseholes. But some black people have good reason to always be nervous around white people. We are all a product of our experiences, and none of us ever knows everyone else's story.

Little bit of blackface paint looks harmless, but sometimes isn’t.

 

So there we were, back in the 1950s and 60s reading our Noddy books and singing along to the Black and White Minstrel Show on the telly. That was THEN. It was a world where everything was hand made unless we were upper class rich bastards, so along with knitting patterns for vests and cardies, came patterns for knitting things like these;

 

I desperately wanted one, because it looked so bright and colourful. My brother had one, but before it was my turn to take custody my mother threw it away – Tom had thrown it in the toilet one time too many and she was over it. I could be in therapy til I’m 90 and might never recover. Sigh.

I remember getting this book from the library when I was much younger and thicker than I am now and thinking the story was clever, but I was confused by two things: there were no dark people in the story at all, and I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would hang a golliwog.

 

It wasn’t til 2009 when Harry Connick Jr was a guest judge on New Faces that I finally understood the cover on the Agatha Christie book all those years ago. But first I had to try and work out the blackface thing. You see, I had grown up in a white world, and all those imported images and ideas about golliwogs and blackface had meant nothing to me. They did not teach me to be racist because they could not be processed in a vacuum. I had no context for them.

 

It's hard to feel guilty of anything without any mens rea – without any criminal intent. And I think that is why Australians of the "White Australia" variety, for the most part, struggle to own their racism. We never have felt guilty about the past, and there is no reason we should feel guilty about the past. Whether we should feel guilty or not should be just about what we do or fail to do today.
We certainly don’t see any leadership about taking responsibility for systemic racism from any major parties. Our government’s line (and Close the Gap) is still total BS - our official history is total fantasy and fabrication and denial. We don't believe we are racist because our parliament is still full of people who don't get it.

Time for another little digression - not all of us whitefullas who are still in denial are products of the 1950s or 1960s, but it can take a generation or two for these things to change. Whitlam's government didn't finally change our immigration laws until 1973.

The biggest, simplest and most straightforward lie is that we never had slavery here.

We did have slavery on stations, in the sugar cane industry, and in the exploitation of stolen children and other ripoffs of Indigenous Australians. Even if we did not use Blackface to turn white trash against Indigenous Australians, it’s time we stopped looking at Blackface as a reason to say “America Bad Australia Good”, because that is just crap. Our hands are not clean at all.

Bad stuff did happen and it does still happen, and we have to own it before we can seriously expect people to get over anything. Of course, owning it is not just about being politically correct – stopping un-necessary deaths in custody and fixing a whole heap of other problems are the reasons we should start thinking more correctly.

If we didn't have Blackface here in its American or UK forms, it's only because we had so many other ways of creating and maintaining white privilege - White Policies and laws, different economic systems, different demographics and so on. We whitefullas simply weren't threatened enough to need a sophisticated social system dedicated to making non-whites feel like shit - more traditional methods of discrimination were enough to take up the slack in White Australia.

If a golliwog didn’t offend anyone in 1950 that was because non-whites were locked up, or not allowed to say they were offended. The 1950s were like that. People were also expected to give away illegitimate children, or hide handicapped children as if they should be ashamed of them. Poofter bashing was a sport, and murders of gays were encouraged rather than investigated. Abortions were illegal and expensive and women died from them. The threat of rape was a constant for women, especially if they had a black face. The 1950s were like that. Small wonder golliwogs weren't offensive in a world as phuct as that.
But that was THEN.

This is 2017, heading for 2018. There are people here now from all over the world, and I have no idea what they have lived through or experienced. On the balance of probability, a golliwog in a shop window is more likely to hurt or offend someone than give pleasure, and there is no actor or role in any show that requires coloured face make-up. It’s time for us white people to just get over it.

A few years ago I told someone the story of how I never got a chance to own the colourful, hand knitted golliwog my brother used to shove down the toilet. Okay, I'm stuck in the anal stage of development and my focus was on the toilet aspect of the story, with a bit of sibling rivalry thrown in. It was the golliwog's pants that were colourful, not its face. My friend completely missed all these great points and, with the best of intentions, gave me one of those Elka golliwogs for a present.
At first I didn't see anything wrong with it, but when I thought it through decided I had to put it in the bin - Seriously, the last thing the world needs is another golliwog.

*Yes, I know it is not insignificant, but to some people who don’t know any better, it seems that way. Until they know better.

#Okay, a lot of white people think they never got a chance to be racist. And a lot of not-white people who read this line are probably thinking “Fuck me gently, every white &+$% I met treated me like shit!!!” but I’m talking about the larger numbers of white people who never had contact with non whites. I am not denying the reality of non-white readers. And I’m not talking about systemic racism or other equally important stuff… Roma wasn’t built in a day.

^Well, not that I was aware of. Who knows?

 

True Lies

One question which keeps coming up over and over is just what many of us actually learned in Australian schools about Australian/ or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history.

The answer is what we learned depends on where we went to school in Australia, and when we went to school. For those of us who are baby boomers, or our parents, the official line was that a) there was no one and nothing here before white people b) if we must think about "the blacks" let's forget them cos they achieved nothing and they are a dying race anyway. Today's examples show just how subtle that message was. [Trouble is they also prove just how boring school was back in the day!]
 
Primary and Secondary Education in Australia are, under the Constitution, State responsibilities. This means that for most of new Australia’s history there has been a different curriculum for each state. Different states have always had different Aboriginal Protection policies and agendas, so we might expect some differences in curriculum material, but it seems a lot of material was fairly standard from one state to another.

This post looks at what was current in Victoria in the 1960s.

I’ve a variety of stuff I’d like to share, but for now I’ll start with the State School Readers, and specifically the 8^th Grade Reader, because it goes straight to the question of whether or not we were lied to, or fed a distorted version of history. And also, the content was directed at an age group most likely to be soon leaving school and heading into the work force if they did not have a professional future or advanced education planned for them.

Victorian State School Readers

The particular set of readers I used at school were standard in Victoria between 1927 and 1968. This means I read pretty much the same poems, essays and stories at school that my mother’s generation read – stuff that might have influenced Victorians who voted in the 1967 referendum. [On the plus side, large families saved a heap of money by passing the same old text books from one kid to the next.]

 

While looking for hints for this post, I stumbled across an essay by Clare Bradford, which talks about the 8^th Grade Reader. Some of the articles she refers to were omitted from the second edition of the reader [which is the edition I have] but the most noteworthy article is called On Pyramid Hill, Victoria, 1836. [In the second edition the article appears on pages 2 and 3, as shown in my scans:]

 

 

 
In her essay, Clare provides 3 examples of an original account by explorer Thomas Mitchell, and how his text was edited for inclusion in the School Reader. [Edited versions of Charles Dickens or noted writers normally have “adapted from” or “abridged from” in the credits at the end of the article in Readers. At the end of the Pyramid Hill article, as you can see in the scans, there is no acknowledgment at all that the text has been edited.]

I.

As I stood, the first European intruder on the sublime solitude of these verdant plains, as yet untouched by flocks or herds; I felt conscious of being the harbinger of mighty changes ....
Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions (159)

As I stood, the first intruder in the sublime solitude of those verdant plains as yet untouched by flocks or herds, I felt certain of being the harbinger of mighty changes there....
Victorian Readers: Eighth Book (4)

II.

We had at length discovered a country ready for the immediate reception of civilized man; and destined perhaps to become eventually a portion of a great empire.
Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions (1839: 171)

We had at length discovered a country for the immediate reception of civilized man, and fit to become the abode of one of the great nations of the earth.
Victorian Readers: Eighth Book (4)

III.

Of this Eden I was the first European to explore its mountains and streams-to behold its scenery-to investigate its geological character-and, by my survey, to develope those natural advantages, certain to become, at no distant date, of vast importance to a new people.
Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions (171)

Of this Eden it seemed that I was the only Adam; and, indeed, it was a sort of paradise to me, permitted thus to be the first to explore its mountains and streams, to behold its scenery, to investigate its geological character, and, finally, by my survey to develop those natural advantages, all still unknown to the civilized world, but yet certain to become, at no distant date, of vast importance to a new people.
Victorian Readers:Eighth Book (4–5) 

Clare draws her own conclusions about the significance of these changes – it would be hard to look at them and not conclude something negative. But what I am keen to do here is look beyond those deliberate changes at the very question of “why this particular part of Mitchell’s work?”  
 
On page 21 of Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe quotes a passage from just a few pages further [p194] on in Mitchell’s Three Expeditions;

“…some huts… being large, circular; and made of straight rods meeting at an upright pole in the centre; the outside had first been covered with bark and grass, and the entirety coated over with clay. The fire appeared to have been made nearly in the centre; and a hole at the top had been left as a chimney.”

The Pyramid Hill article in the 8^th Reader provides an extreme example of pretending “no human being has ever been here before us great white bwanas”, completely ignoring the evidence Mitchell and others provide of pre-1788 agriculture, aquaculture, housing, villages and more. It’s as if saying the houses and the activities did not exist means the people did not exist either.
 
Until, in my fifties, I set out to answer questions about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Australia, I always assumed that if there had been any evidence of more than my poor “knowledge” and set of stereotypes allowed me to believe, I would have been told at school. Or heard about it from somewhere. I was wrong, and the information has been a long time emerging.

If you are in search of truth in Australian History, there is no better place to start than with a copy of Dark Emu. If you haven’t already, throw all of your old assumptions out the window, and prepare to re-visit Australia’s history starting from scratch.

 

If you are in search of more than what Dark Emu offers, explore the Sovereign Union website. If you want interesting discussion about relevant issues, follow the Blackfulla Revolution page on Facebook.

While I can hardly reproduce an entire 8^th Grade Reader here, there are a few more articles to share in this post which relate directly to what “we” learned in school about Indigenous Australia. It’s worth remembering that these are situated in a book of more than 200 pages; a book that uses words like “Australian” or “our” to refer to whitefullas – as in John Howard’s dreadful proposed Constitutional Preamble, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders are always “other”. I guess if any blackfulla kids going to school had to read this stuff “they” [sorry] were probably supposed to squirm, renounce their black heritage and identify exclusively with the white part of themselves, (assuming they were lucky enough to have some).

In the article The Old Inhabitants, CEW Bean has nothing complimentary to say about Australia’s FNPs. Even their ruins are not as good as the ruins in other countries. The people are spoken about in the past tense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nardoo is rubbished as “the blackfellow’s poor equivalent for flour”. The surviving members of the Burke & Wills expedition had been kept alive with gifts of fish and nardoo from the Yandruwandha people at Cooper’s Creek, but when the explorers tried to harvest nardoo for themselves they did not know how to process it properly, and it made them sick. I wonder if this coloured Bean’s assessment of the plant?

The doom and gloom continue for Indigenous Australia with The Last of His Tribe. Even more Eurocentric than average, and sexist claptrap to boot: - the poet was born in NSW and published 3 volumes of poetry – spare me days, there must have been slim pickings at the local library. The illustrator did not know about Aboriginal housing.

 

 

Finally – cos all the racist, imperialistic, sexist twaddle in this Reader is doing my head in – the first verse is more than enough of The Nation Builders, by George Essex Evans. If you are not beginning to see the party-line emerging from this book by now, you never will, i.e. it’s an anthem to white pride:

A handful of workers seeking the star of a strong intent -
A handful of heroes scattered to conquer a continent -
Thirst, and fever, and famine, drought, and ruin, and flood,
And the bones that bleach on the sandhill, and the spears that redden with blood;
And the pitiless might of the molten skies, at noon, on the sun-cracked plain,
And the walls of the northern jungles, shall front them ever in vain,
Till the land that lies like a giant asleep shall wake to the victory won,
And the hearts of the Nation Builders shall know that the work is done.

Next time: A bit more from other Grade readers, and an extract from The Victorian Education Department’s masterpiece Arithmetic for Grade V.






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