When the new Australian Parliament comes into the session the first order of business reportedly will be an official apology to the aboriginal population for the wrongs committed against it by, and this is the Australian govt’s wording, past generations. And notice that while the Times isn’t shy about publicizing the white atonement, it isn’t nearly as forthcoming with context as to what, specifically, the apology is for. Haha. If nothing else you must admire white racial ingenuity. I’ve commented on this before, this ingenuity…this psychosis, as a part of the pathological mindset required to be an American. And it is true but more than that, this apology is a snapshot of the larger pathology associated with being white on this planet at this point in history.
A compelling dramatization of what went down in Australia is the subject of the movie, Rabbit Proof Fence, for those of you that don’t know the history down under. It’s a good way to get a quick sense of the historical scene, so to speak. Although the current global white supremacist order has managed, of course, to put a happy go lucky face on the country, in the real world, white Aussies are a sordid little gaggle that attempted to destroy an entire people as govt policy. And it was all done specifically along racial lines as it was in the US and the colonies of England, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and the rest of white Europe. Definitely a movie to see if you are thinking that Australia is only about kangaroos and crocodile hunters. Rabbit Proof Fence is about the stolen generations. The stolen generations were Aboriginal kids taken from their families at a young age. The conservative estimate of children kidnapped by the white Australian govt is 100,000. That’s what the govt admits to. That number has been disputed. The reason for the kidnappings was the hope that the kids could be culturally assimilated and eventual subsequent generations bred white. Yes. The folks down under hoped to wipe the Aborigines off the planet. The operative word for official Australian policy is genocide. A conversation on that plane is what Australia and the white world generally, attempts to avoid.
As in the US and most of the world, whites have a disproportionate amount of influence over the lives of non-whites. This is true in Australia, a country that came into being as a penal colony, making that country’s historic role in the global white order particularly harsh and obvious. Even still, Australians, like contemporary US whites, see no connection to them being on top, so to speak, and the racial crimes of previous generations of whites against non-whites.
They see no connection.
Of course they really do see a connection, making hypocrisy and willful ignorance a prerequisite of even being white. A white person must pretend to not understand how privilege and white opportunity today is connected with the overt crimes of yesterday, not to mention contemporary crimes. Not to be overstated, this is an essential component of the psychology of whiteness. Every white person participates and drinks from this cup, to varying degrees, of course. White Australians are in a particularly difficult situation as many of the actual people they beat up, commonly known as the Aborigines, are still alive. This presents a problem. White countries absolutely must present a liberal social facade for economic purposes (something white South Afrikans evidently had to learn the hard way). The answer to this problem of course is the shell game being played in the Australian Parliament right now. Hollow ceremonial apologies are but one slight of hand in the game. Monuments and museums are another. All of the tactics are consistent with one primary motive. To put as much temporal distance between the lifespans of those directly affected and the present moment. If enough time is allowed to pass, eventually those living will be able to throw their hands up and claim that everyone affected is dead and no one living is actually responsible. This game was and is played very well inside the United States, another basestar of normalized racism and white hypocrisy. Here, the main issue is, of course, the enslavement of blacks by whites. The waiting game was played here to perfection. Although the white US population had advantages that the Australians do not have relating to global moral standards which allowed US whites more latitude in denying financial reparations to obviously wronged people. Disadvantaged in this regard, still the Australians are soldiering on in their quest to avoid justice and uphold the mantle of global white supremacy. Will Australian white power succeed? I would hope that in 2008 the global tide might be turning against such rank injustice but the clock is surely ticking on the Aborigines. Soon, very soon, whites will move into the amnesia phase of their act, combined with parallel claims that too much time has passed for financial reparations. Financial reparations alongside land redistribution to those who lived on and maintained it, before the killers arrived, is long overdue. I know what side of the issue I’m on.
Can't Hold My Tongue 