Or: TL;DR
Quite a few people have already posted on this hideous post by Andrew Bolt a few weeks back. It’s been sitting in my “blog about this” pile since then, and I’ve sat down a few times to try and address it. Unfortunately, each time I’ve done so I’ve ended up so completely livid that I’ve completely failed to put together a coherent post. Today I figured I might as well just let the rage out onto this blog.
For those who are unaware of Bolt, I envy you. He’s a leading voice in Stolen Generation denial in this country which, like being a leading voice in the active denial of atrocities committed against any oppressed racial group, is not something any decent human would be proud of. This particular piece covers his complaint about Indigenous Australians who pass as white having the audacity to identify as Aboriginal, rather than accepting their “true” race as determined by Andrew Bolt. He claims there is great political clout to be gained through such an identification, which is of course news to actual Indigenous Australians.
From the article:
MEET the white face of a new black race – the political Aborigine.
Meet, say, acclaimed St Kilda artist Bindi Cole, who was raised by her English-Jewish mother yet calls herself “Aboriginal but white”.
She rarely saw her part-Aboriginal father, and could in truth join any one of several ethnic groups, but chose Aboriginal, insisting on a racial identity you could not guess from her features.
Apparently Indigenous people “choose” their racial identity, rather than grow into it like people of any other ethnicity. In a fashion that reminds me of the classic “You chose to be gay, but I just turned out straight” manoeuvre, Bolt doesn’t seem to think that he “chose” to be white.
We end up with our racial identities the same way everyone else done, Bolt. We inherit them, and make them our own by living them. Those people who are exceptions to this pattern tend to be exceptions for very good reasons.
She also chose, incidentally, the one identity open to her that has political and career clout.
Ah, of course, the clout. That political weight that explains the totally epic representation of Indigenous Australians in parliament. The career clout that… um… profit??
And how popular a choice that now is. Ask Annette Sax [...] Her father was Swiss, and her mother only part-Aboriginal. Racially, if these things mattered, she is more Caucasian than anything else. Culturally, she’s more European. In looks, she’s Swiss.
Note how the whiteness is automatically ranked as the most significant part of her absent mother’s racial identity?
And what does “in looks, she’s Swiss” even mean?
But she, too, has chosen to call herself Aboriginal, which happily means she could be shortlisted for this year’s Victorian Indigenous Art Award.
“Aboriginal” is an adjective. And “Indigenous Art” is a category. How DARE those uppity blackfellas have an award for their own category of art!
Then meet now Tara June Winch, who is just 26 and has written only one book, Swallow the Air, yet is already an ambassador for the Australia Council’s Indigenous Literacy Project.
*sigh*
What amazes me so frequently about Andrew Bolt is how many times he presents information with the assumption that any person reading will immediately jump to his conservative, racist conclusions about that information… and how many times those conclusions are so incredibly far from the conclusions I immediately jump to.
Bolt clearly expects the reader to respond to this paragraph with “Shock! Only one book and she’s an ambassador for the ILP? This is a clear example of someone adopting an Aboriginal identity for personal gain!”
I read that paragraph and think how frickin’ hard it is for Indigenous authors to achieve mainstream publication, how Indigenous illiteracy is such an issue that we just don’t have that many Indigenous authors, and those Indigenous Australians who are recognised in the mainstream are those who can benefit from white privilege, and who live in areas that are generally non-remote and non-traditional. I think how vital it is to have those ambassadors, and lament that the pool of Indigenous authors is so small. And I feel pride that a mixed race Wiradjuri woman has written such a recognised and rewarded book that deals largely with themes of mixed racial Indigenous identity.
Oh, sorry, Bolt. Did you miss the bit where this championed Indigenous author’s “one book” was actually written about being a contemporary mixed race Indigenous Australian? That that might have played a part in her recognition as a relevant author to other Indigenous people, as her book and her story might appeal directly to them? Or did you just forget to mention it?
Yes, indeed, because despite her auburn hair and charmingly freckled face, she, too, is an Aborigine, who claims her “country is Wiradjuri”.
So wait… we can’t have freckles now? Phenotypes do not work the way you think they do, fucko. And the scare quotes and the emphasis on “claims” is just disgusting.
Wiradjuri pride, btw!
Yet her mother, who raised her in industrial Wollongong, is in fact boringly English, and her father has both Afghan and Aboriginal heritage.
She could call herself English, Afghan, Aboriginal, Australian or just a take-me-as-I-am human being called Tara June Winch. Race irrelevant.
Actually, all the media I’ve encountered indicates she specifically IDs as being of Wiradjuri, Afghan and English heritage. Seems to me that she “calls herself” mixed race… but that concept seems to be a bit beyond Bolt.
Instead, she’s an official Aborigine, and hired as such in a nation that now institutionalises even racial differences you cannot detect with a naked eye.
How dare we not all wear our heritage on our foreheads for Andrew Bolt to see!
I’m curious to know if Bolt thinks he can identify every different ethnicity “with the naked eye”. Or is he happy to lump all the ones that look similar together, just as insists all mixed race people be lumped into “white”?
Larissa Behrendt has also worked as a professional Aborigine ever since leaving Harvard Law School [...] She chose to be Aboriginal, as well, a member of the “Eualayai and Kammillaroi nations”, and is now a senior professor at the University of Technology in Sydney’s Indigenous House of Learning.
She’s won many positions and honours as an Aborigine, including the David Unaipon Award for Indigenous Writers, and is often interviewed demanding special rights for “my people”.
“Special rights”, huh? Now there’s a conservative dogwhistle if ever I heard one.
But which people are “yours”, exactly, Larissa? And isn’t it bizarre to demands laws to give you more rights as a white Aborigine than your own white mum?
Any examples of those “rights” that would be denied white people, Bolt?
Feel free to read this interview, where she counters some of the misconceptions non-Indigenous people tend to have when it comes to her work on Indigenous land rights. Behrendt, incidentally, has worked internationally with First Nations people on the fronts of land rights and gender equality.
Meet now Associate Professor Anita Heiss [...] Heiss’s father was Austrian, and her mother only part-Aboriginal. What’s more, she was raised in Sydney and educated at Saint Claire’s Catholic College.
Shock! Indigenous people can be Catholic now? Or is the emphasis supposed to be on the quality of her education, with the implication that that is what makes her un-Aboriginal?
She, too, could identify as a member of more than one race, if joining up to any at all was important.
“Joining up to”. Again, the implication being that white, as the default, is not a race one “joins”. Only the Others are.
As it happens, her decision to identify as Aboriginal, joining four other “Austrian Aborigines” she knows, was lucky, given how it’s helped her career.
Heiss not only took out the Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry, but won plum jobs reserved for Aborigines at Koori Radio, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board and Macquarie University’s Warawara Department of Indigenous Studies.
Whereas if she had not identified as Aboriginal, she obviously would not have a “plum job” with anyone.
Once again, Bolt neglects to mention that the person he’s talking about is well known not only as an Indigenous author, but as an author of materials relevant to Indigenous Australians. The fact that this woman has made a career out of writing some quite celebrated pieces about Aboriginality and Aboriginal Australia is apparently irrelevant to her collection of an Indigenous poetry prize, according to Bolt. No, she entered and won only because of her racial identity. She’s probably rubbish, anyway.
I’m not saying any of those I’ve named chose to be Aboriginal for anything but the most heartfelt and honest of reasons. I certainly don’t accuse them of opportunism, even if full-blood Aborigines may wonder how such fair people can claim to be one of them and in some cases take black jobs.
Oh, that’s just magic. If Andrew Bolt can point to one single “full-blood Aborigine” with whom he has discussed this matter and who expressed that sentiment, I’ll eat my hat. No, even more extreme… I’ll fuck Andrew Bolt.
I have some extremely dark skinned relatives and friends (as well as some extremely pale ones… some tribes have very different ratios of mixed race and pale skinned members, and I come from the largest Koori nation). Not a single one of them has ever expressed concern over the fact that I identify as Wiradjuri whilst being wajin-looking. Hell, we have a commonly used word for people like me. Note the emphasis on looking. The only people who have ever expressed disbelief of my Aboriginality based on my skin tone have been over-privileged white fuckwits who feel entitled to decide who does and does not get to claim membership of a demographic they themselves have no connection at all to.
I’m saying only that this self-identification as Aboriginal strikes me as self-obsessed, and driven more by politics than by any racial reality.
I find myself wondering if Andrew Bolt was raised in a bubble by his mother and father, with no other relatives in sight. He consistently derides “part-Aboriginal” parents for producing mixed race children who identify as Aboriginal, yet doesn’t seem to have cast his mind’s eye on where those “part-Aboriginal” parents came from. Does he presume that all of these paler Indigenous people grew up without any grandparents? Without Aunties or Uncles (important in many cultures, vital in ours) around to identify with and discuss their family and their heritage with? Without siblings who may have inherited different features? It’s not unusual for a mixed race Indigenous family to have some children who present as darker skinned than others, what with the recessive genes and all. Where there’s a mixed-race kid, somewhere in the family there has to be at least two people who aren’t mixed race. Does Bolt presume that all those people vanish as soon as they’ve passed on their unmixed-and-hence-superior genes?
My identification as Aboriginal has a lot more to do with my contact with my Aboriginal relatives than anything else. I am Aboriginal because my family is. That is my racial reality, not what some white guy thinks of my skin tone.
It’s also divisive, feeding a new movement to stress pointless or even invented racial differences we once swore to overcome. What happened to wanting us all to become colour blind?
Uh, we didn’t want you to become colour-blind. StrawAborigine much?
Of course, the white Aborigine – or “political Aborigine” – is not new.
In 1972, Pat Eatock, founding secretary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, officially became the first Aborigine to stand for federal parliament in the ACT, even though she looked as white as her Scottish mother, or some of her father’s British relatives.
Mixed race people do that sometimes, ya know.
And again, different conclusions. To me, this is one of many clear examples of Australian society valuing those Indigenous people who can be passed as white over those who cannot. That is something that is certainly not new, and which Indigenous people have been dealing with for centuries.
Indeed, Eatock only started to identify as Aboriginal when she was 19, after attending a political rally, so little did any racial difference matter to her before her awakening to far-Left causes.
Here Bolt presumes again that he’s saying something that IS somehow new. He ignores the pressure that Indigenous people who can be passed as white have been under for so long to do exactly that: deny who we are and pretend to be white. Up until very recently, to embrace one’s Aboriginality was to embrace being an un-person.
I have relatives who deny their Aboriginality; I respect their choice to do so. My pale skin has certainly not protected me from racism. If any of those relatives decided to embrace their Indigenous heritage in the future, I would be glad for them. Andrew Bolt would label them Fakey Fake Fakers because at some point in their life, they bowed to the pressure to accept white privilege.
When one’s family treats Aboriginal heritage as something to be ashamed of, it’s usually not until one begins to establish one’s identity outside of that (say, around the age of 19) that one questions why that shame should be continued, and what one can do to help get rid of it. For many, holding their head up and saying “Yes, fuck it, I AM Aboriginal!” is one first step on that journey.
The white Aboriginal artist, too, is more than 15 years old. Kim Scott was hailed as the first Aborigine to win the Miles Franklin Award, and calls himself a Noongar, despite conceding that the Aborigines who did not know him called him wadjila – a white.
No doubt he has Aboriginal ancestry, but why does he not also identify with his obvious European background?
Conceded?? Quite the contrary, Bolt. He’s written quite extensively on what it was like growing up as a mixed race Indigenous person, and on why he moved from identifying as “of Aboriginal descent” to “Noongar”. If you ever feel like reading any of those pieces (which I doubt you will, you seem too fond of criticising Indigenous writers without bothering to even look up summaries of their work) you’ll note the emphasis placed on his relationship with tribal elders and their encouragement of his use of the latter term.
“Aboriginal” and “Indigenous”, whilst the preferable labels compared to the others on option, are not the names our peoples gave to themselves. They are English words referring to a monolithic people that does not exist. Amongst ourselves we are Koori, Noongar, Wiradjuri, etc.
That is now a question even for our most famous Aboriginal leaders. Geoff Clarke, the last chairman of ATSIC, the Aboriginal “parliament”, had an English father. Lowtija O’Donohue, another ATSIC chairman, had an Irish father. Blue-eyed Michael Mansell, the Tasmanian firebrand, clearly has more European than Aboriginal ancestry.
For many Indigenous Australians, our mixed racial heritage is not something that was chosen, either by us or by our Indigenous ancestors. Ah, but Bolt has pre-empted this point… he denies that the atrocities that lead to so many examples of mixed race and pale skin ever actually happened. Somehow he think it’s the fault of this generation, some of whom are pale skinned because they… um… wait, what?
Even Professor Mick Dodson, the Australian of the Year and a fierce advocate for a treaty between black and white, had a white father and from the age of 10 was a boarder at a Victorian Catholic school. Sign a treaty with yourself, Mick.
Again with the Catholic school! Apparently there’s something in the places that makes you white. Oh, sorry, I mean without race.
Or take the most prominent Yorta Yorta leaders – Melbourne University academic Wayne Atkinson and Victorian Traditional Owners Land Justice Group co-chair Graham Atkinson. Both are Aboriginal because their Indian great-grandfather married a part-Aboriginal woman.
Uh… no. That would be “their great-grandmother was Aboriginal”, for one thing. She’s a person in her own right. For another, the definition of “Aboriginal” used in this country necessitates acceptance by the community and self-identification as Aboriginal. That community bit is kinda non-negotiable.
We get Daniel Browning, host of ABC radio’s Awaye! program for Aborigines, insisting he’s Aboriginal when he looks more like one of his West Indian ancestors, and could just as correctly claim to be South Sea Islander, English, Australian or who-cares.
More of Andrew Bolt’s magical gaze of racial distinction. But it’s good to know he’s not just bitching out mixed race Indigenous people who dare to resemble their white non-Indigenous ancestors.
To me, this blacker-than-thou
Blacker than thou? It’s not a game we play, Bolt, although you seem pretty keen to get a round started.
offends the deepest humanist ideals, and our “enlightened” opinion is debased when it takes a Casey Donovan, a mere Australian Idol winner, to hint at the healthier truth, saying she’s proud of being Aboriginal, but “proud of being half-white, too”.
A concept Bolt claims the Indigenous people mentioned do not also embrace, yet not a single piece of evidence for that has been provided. Where are the examples of these people renouncing their non-Indigenous heritage? Or is Bolt just presuming that unless otherwise stated Aboriginal identity is incompatible with appreciating one’s non-Indigenous family? I can’t help but infer that this means he sees Aboriginality as incompatible with being “Australian”, that to him it means something fundamentally other and fundamentally opposed to his good, white values. Perhaps that’s oversensitive of me.
In fact, let’s go beyond racial pride. Beyond black and white. Let’s be proud only of being human beings set on this land together, determined to find what unites us and not to invent such racist and trivial excuses to divide. Deal?
Racial and trivial excuses like skin tone? Sure. You first. Then white Australia. Once that’s taken care of, the rest of us will get on board.
Since that was ranty and disjointed enough to drop the readability of my blog by several points just by being posted, I’d usually leave it there. But the cesspool that is Andrew Bolt’s comment threads is a special kind of revolting, and I can’t resist pulling out a few key pieces.
Rossco replied to AussieTraveller
Wed 15 Apr 09 (07:50am)
If you’re an aborigine you go straight to the top of the class for the art prize or the film award, because you have overcome the inherent racism in Australia. You bash someone to death with a cricket bat and you get a slap on the wrist, as long as you have suffered for your race. Aboriginality is the get out of jail or get ahead free card. It means you don’t have to behave or do the work that others need to do to get ahead. How about we DNA anybody that wants aboriginal benefits and set a level of 1/16th or less. Imagine what that would do in welfare savings alone.
By the way, every time I see one of those dot paintings i just want to get out my NeoMajic and join em up.
To begin with, I’m sure the massive numbers of Indigenous Australians in gaol would be surprised to hear about this “get out of gaol free” card. We only make up 2-3% of the Australian population, yet made up 22% of the prison population in 2005. And that’s not even getting started on the volatile issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody.
This comment also bears the first of hundreds of references in that comment thread to these mythical “Aboriginal benefits” that Bolt’s commentariat believe are handed to everyone who declares themselves to be Indigenous. Bolt surely must know that all government benefits, Indigenous or otherwise, are means-tested… yet he fails to correct a single one of the commenters who espouse the obvious truth of Giant Aboriginal Handouts. Let’s play pretend: you take a bunch of people currently receiving “Aboriginal benefits” and declare them ineligible for those benefits. You know what happens next? They all become eligible for benefits of a very similar amount that are available to non-Indigenous Australians. If they wouldn’t be eligible for those based on a means test, then they don’t receive “Aboriginal benefits” either.
This myth is a persistent one in Australian society: that all Indigenous Australians receive mysterious chunks of money from the government that are somehow never mentioned in a State or Federal budget. Frankly, I want my fucking cheque.
uptothebackteeth replied to AussieTraveller
Wed 15 Apr 09 (05:18pm)
Andrew..Perusing the comments on this blog, I get the distinct impression that people are not only over this white aboriginal scam, but are postively furious about it too.
On another matter
I note one very intersting comment in this area is section from a part aborigine who has been initiated under traditional Aboriginal law and can participate in traditional Aboriginal ceremonies etc. That is most unusual for other than full blood to be initiated. Maybe CharlesG could advise if this process of initiation of part aboriginals is now more widespread than is generally considered.
This one is easy to deal with: You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.
Dave from Perth replied to sillyfilly
Wed 15 Apr 09 (08:53am)
Quite a silly thing to say. These people have no Aboriginal culture, heritage or geneology to speak of. If you want to find those elements you actually have to go where the real aboriginals live. NT, WA, Western NSW etc etc. There you’ll find real aboriginal people who can legitimately trace their hereditary line with cultural practices, languages, genetic makeup and, in case youmissed it, the colour of their skin.
What these interlopers are doing is damaging real aboriginal causes for their own financial ends. It should be stopped.
Oh, Dave, you funny little concern troll. Your genuine worry for “real [A]boriginal causes” is just dripping off the screen.
I notice a lot of these commenters refer, often proudly, to Australian culture… that is, the culture that has grown in this country in the last 200+ years alone. Prior to that, there was no Australia and thus no Australian culture.
“Aboriginal culture”, however, is decided by these commenters to mean only that which existed prior to 1788, intact and handed down directly to modern day Indigenous Australians. Contemporary Indigenous culture is not only ignored, but specifically stated to be bunk, a farce, proof that modern Indigenous Australians are not worthy of the label… unless, of course, they’re dark skinned enough that Andrew Bolt can judge them Aboriginal on sight.
Why is “Australian culture” allowed to be something that has gone through a natural evolution over the last 221 years, but “Indigenous culture” must be stagnant to deserve recognition?
Eskimo replied to LEGAL SNIP
Wed 15 Apr 09 (09:34am)
That’s the point. The people in this article are not presenting themselves to be judged on their merits but are seeking an advantage based on their ethinicity.
As this example Bolta gives points out -
And how popular a choice that now is. Ask Annette Sax, another artist and – as the very correct Age newspaper described her – a “white Koori”.
Her father was Swiss, and her mother only part-Aboriginal. Racially, if these things mattered, she is more Caucasian than anything else. Culturally, she’s more European. In looks, she’s Swiss.
But she, too, has chosen to call herself Aboriginal, which happily means she could be shortlisted for this year’s Victorian Indigenous Art Award.
If she only wants to be judged on merit, why enter the Victorian Indigenous Art Award?
I actually sat there blinking at the sheer stupid in this one for a while. Why enter an Indigenous Art Award if you only want to be judged on merit? Uh… to begin with, it IS judged on merit. That’s kinda implied by it being a competition.
I’m getting the impression that these people think Indigenous art competitions, exhibitions and such are just collections of art indistinguishable from that appearing in any other gallery in Australia, only with a “NO WHITIES ALLOWED” sign on the front, and some mysteriously taxpayer funded giant pile of money as a prize. On the contrary, they are put together to showcase Indigenous artists, who usually focus on subject matter relevant to an Indigenous audience and to themselves as Indigenous Australian artists.
The catalogues from the last four years of the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards can be found here.
kae replied to wally
Wed 15 Apr 09 (08:11am)
I wonder how much of the improvement in aboriginal longevity is due to stats from people who are mostly white, brought up as white, living in urban areas?
Nothing’s changed much out in the boonies.
Living in a city, it seems, is being “brought up as white”. I see this one as being much in the same vein as the frequent references in Bolt’s article to “Catholic schooling” as a marker of faux-Aboriginality.
We see this again here:
I wonder if all these so-called Aborigines have ever seen a REAL Aborigine, let alone lived with them in their communities?
They do not look like they could handle the REAL Aboriginal lifestyle – whether living rough around the towns and cities of northern Australia or living in an isolated Aboriginal settlement!
Dave Wane of Darwin (Reply)
Wed 15 Apr 09 (08:40am)
Bolt and his commenters set an impossible standard for Indigenous Australians to engage in dialogue with white Australia. The only “real” Indigenous Australians, to these people, are blackest black, living in remote rural areas in traditional environments and living a tribal lifestyle. Yet those who do fit this narrow, racist definition are those who are deprived of opportunity to engage in dialogue with white Australia… and those who label them the “only real Aboriginal people” certainly make no move to change that. It is a silencing tactic only, aimed at limiting the labels “Aboriginal” and “Indigenous” to the those least likely to be able to object to decisions made on their behalf by white Australians.
Of course, some of them even apply their Bizzaro World ideas of what it’s like to be Indigenous in Australia today to those who fit their narrow standards of Aboriginality:
On a positive note these Aborigines mentioned all look healthy, and appear educated. How many will they go to Arnhem Land and help their cousins achieve the same prosperity?
Tron of Real World (Reply)
Wed 15 Apr 09 (09:56am)
and
Fabulously wealthy replied to Tron
Wed 15 Apr 09 (05:08pm)
They already achieved prosperity; nice cheques regularly from the government and from mining companies, no need to do anything. Who could ask for more?
Yes. Apparently Indigenous people in Arnhem land make a good living off the Mystery Cheques that roll in for each of them from the government and from various mining companies. It’s at this point that this bullshit starts to give hints of the fact that it’s genuinely dangerous.
Many years ago all it took was for someone aboriginal to recognise you as a family member (by adoption in action, no legalities), and you were considered aboriginal. I know. A friend offered to nominate me. Such was the standard.
kae (Reply)
Wed 15 Apr 09 (08:00am)
and then
kae replied to kae
Wed 15 Apr 09 (01:10pm)
In the early 80s an ‘aboriginal’ friend offered to say that I was a “sister” and accepted by her “tribe”, if I wanted to get on the gravy train. I just had to be accepted as part of the family.
I passed.
This is one of the comments I mentally filed under “giant, slanderous lie”. There’s distressingly many of them.
This is another:
My daughter’s best friend (blonde, blue eyed) is doing the same UNI course as my daughter. When she enrolled she declared herself aboriginal (she is 1/32 aboriginal). This was news to me daughter who has grown up with her and never knew of this heritage.
But the end result is she pays no costs for her UNI course, but my daughter doing the same course will be left with a large HEX debt at the end. My daughter has no problems with her friend’s benefit and would have done the same if she was able.
But the question is when this girls marries (most likely to a non aboriginal), and her kids then 1/64 aboriginal, are they still able to call themselves aboriginal, and get free UNI or other defined benefits to assist the disadvantaged group.
Mike of Port Macquarie (Reply)
Wed 15 Apr 09 (08:06am)
Giant. Fucking. Lie. Indigenous people do not get free university education, and the only time we did so was in those halcyon days where a university education was free to all Australians.
This Giant Lie comment, unlike the previous one, is actually called out by a few commenters. Others, of course, simply accept Mike’s story on face value, as for some stupid fucking reason it makes perfect sense to them that the Howard government would have left Aboriginal people as the only ones entitled to a free education… the Howard government being so incredibly pro-Aboriginal rights and all.
A commenter called “Pete” chimes in to clarify things with another Giant Fucking Lie:
pete replied to Mike
Wed 15 Apr 09 (02:49pm)
i do know that TAFE fees (maybe thats where the confusion lies, tafe/uni) are capped at a maximum rate of $55 per year for aborigines/torres strait islanders, same rate as anyone on a health care card. I don’t know anything about concessions for university, if any.
-pete
Nope, TAFE fees aren’t capped for Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders either. I can see why you’d be so confused, though, what with all the bullshit flying around.
Now check out THIS pile of crap:
I knew a person years ago who found out that she had aboriginal ancestory. She also found out that there was money in it. She left her family and went to live with the group in northern victoria for the one and only thing she wanted in the world. Money. She actually told me that she got a house loan at 3% (ours at the time was 13%) She didn’t have to work and was paid a pension which was over and above the norm. There were a lot of other benefits as well. So why wouldn’t you do it? We have made it so easy to scam the general public that anyone who can claim will claim and we the suckers pay for it. It is interesting to note the explosion in the numbers of aborigines in this country over the last twenty years. Your article points out exactly where we are at with this nonsense.
neil of country (Reply)
Wed 15 Apr 09 (10:50am)
… wow. I’m actually genuinely astonished that people living in the same country as me can believe this stuff is going on.
I might do another post from this comment thread later.
Similar Posts:
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- The UN Declaration. by Lauredhel
- Australian linguistocide, and antipodeal approaches to aboriginal education by Lauredhel
- “I can’t believe I forgot!” by Lauredhel
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{ 21 comments }
I want to say something smart and insightful, but my jaw is still on the floor.
I see similar arguments playing out here in Canada, of course, with First Nations folks and “special rights” and “free government cheques” and blah blah blah. I can’t even be arsed to engage with these people because they’re so convinced that someone, someplace, is getting a free ride, and yet completely unable to look at their own situations.
Hexy, I saw this on your blog the other day, and I wanted to say something, but it was hard to think clearly after reading through all of those terrible comments that you quoted — but I was so glad to read the way you cut down all those lies and show them for what they are; I’m definitely bookmarking it for future reference.
Ack. I’m going to save this for the next time I hear arguments like this, since my natural reaction tends to be incoherent angry flailing.
I wasn’t going to read this because I saw the words “Andrew Bolt” near the top, but I’m glad I did – I often forget (and of course I am privileged to be able to forget) how widespread the lies, silencing tactics and flat-out racism are. I live near Warrnambool, Victoria, home of the Gunditjmara people, notably Geoff Clark – who is both a pale-skinned, freckled, ginger-haired Aboriginal man and a politician. All these arguments come up again and again, notably in the sense of Aboriginal “privilege”, and who is really Aboriginal, but your exposure of Andrew Bolt’s argument of white as natural, as a non-category, a non-race is really fascinating and revealing, as is the apparent “whitening” influence of Catholic and boarding schools – particularly revolting considering the role of churches and boarding schools in past genocide attempts. Thank you for your brilliant analysis, and I’m so glad I read it.
Really good analysis Hexy.
Generally speaking I turn off as soon as I see ‘Andrew Bolt’. He only writes for lazy and ignorant people who love to get outraged over some perceived injustice without doing a skerrick of looking into whether what he says is right, logical or rational.
He lazily pushes buttons with emotive language and his readers brainlessly and obediently bounce around to his tune. Pathetic bunch.Though it does show how many humans are simple sheep.
As far as I’m concerned, if I were a conservative I’d be deeply embarrassed to have the likes of him identify with ‘conservative’ politics.
Fantastic post, hexy. It’s attitudes like Bolt’s that lead to so many people of non-Caucasian heritage who can “pass” denying their cultural heritage to their children.
I have a cousin who is black. I didn’t even notice this when I was growing up, it was only after I didn’t see him for years and finally caught up with him at a family reunion that I noticed. My parents deny that there is any Aboriginal blood in the family, at the same time as my mother confirms that this cousin is the spitting image of her brother (who was so dark-skinned that his nickname was Snowy). I look at pictures of my grandmother and wonder that she ‘passed’ as thoroughly as she so obviously did. And I’ll probably never know who her people were.
P.S. For any hostile lurkers wondering, this lack of familiarity with any possible indigenous relatives of mine means that even if I weren’t disqualified from indigenous govt benefits due to my income level, I also would not qualify on the grounds of not being known and accepted by any indigenous community. It really isn’t as easy as the bigots claim.
My favourite sentence of Mr Bolt’s is probably this one:
Larissa Behrendt has also worked as a professional Aborigine ever since leaving Harvard Law School
Because of course the indigenous Australian folks I see down at Centrelink when I go to hand in my fortnightly dole form are just amateurs. They’re not people who are coping with the reality of having the wrong skin colour in a society which is still profoundly WASP-centric. They’re not people who are trying to deal with a world in which you really *need* either the White, Anglo-Celtic, Middle-Class family background to succeed, or you need one hell of a lot of determination and the ability to cope with an almost total lack of support. They’re not people who are growing up in a culture which is still in shock from having had a head-on encounter with the equivalent of alien invaders about six generations back. They aren’t “professional Aborigines”, because they’re obviously not parlaying their heritage into some form of government handout. Which is why they’re handing in the forms at Centrelink, obviously.
Just like me. Except I did have the white, Anglo-Celtic, middle-class thing going on. I do have the right skin colour. I’m not the one who was brought up in a culture which is completely at odds with the dominant one. So what was the difference again?
What Anna said.
“Why enter an Indigenous Art Award if you only want to be judged on merit? Uh… to begin with, it IS judged on merit. That’s kinda implied by it being a competition.”
I suspect the subtext here is that a White person could easily win a competition against Indigenous competitors because they’re White and, therefore, better at everything. That Indigenous art and culture are but poor primitive attempts at the real thing, and that’s the reason they’re in separate competitions, sort of like (and I gag to say this) a “Special Olympics” for art.
Make a noise through a big hollow stick? You’re in. Swish around some pigment on a flat surface? Well done! Like the singing dog, the wonder is that they can do any of it at all, not that their work shows any talent or inspiration or technique whatsoever, because that would be impossible.
It’s a perfect convergence of privilege and ethnocentricity.
So glad to see this posted over here.
And to everyone who says they normally turn off when they see the words “Andrew Bolt” – well, so do I, normally. But I think some lies need to be ignored and some are worth engaging. For me, this post addresses some of the latter.
Well if I were Tara I’d sue the bastard. The Australia Council does not run nor fund ILP. It is a not-for-profit that raises funds with Australian publishing & bookselling industries, and in conjunction with communities, provides books for use in schools and community libraries. Tara does not get paid. Her travel costs may be covered, but she is not paid a wage. As are not Larissa or Anita for the hours and hours of voluntary & community works they do for innumerable organisations they work with.
What though makes the nonsense & bile of Bolt worse is that so many white Australians share his beliefs. Australia is appallingly racist. And appallingly ignorant. Wilful petty mean-spirited ignorant. Should send Bolt a copy of Anita’s “I’m not racist but….” Waste of postage though. Suspect Bolt is warming up the hate industry as the creation of a new Indigenous national representative body gains pace. Stockpiling lots of ammo to fling at people likely to be involved.
Great piece. Thought about a complaint re Bolt’s piece to the Press Council? If Alan Jones could get pinged, why not this git?
Fabulous post, Hexy, and I’m glad it’s over here. Andrew Bolt is an ignorant hate-monger. I just hate that ignorance seems to so abound that so many people just believe him.
I’m also looking forward to further guest posts from you!
Great post Hexy. Bolt is an ignoramus who puts Indigenous Australians in an entirely impossible position. They can only be ‘authentic’ if they fit his stereotype of a ‘full blood’ probably living in the desert and using a traditional life. Yet, he’s the first to lambast Indigenous Australians for not living modern lives and becoming part od the ‘mainstream’. He’s a toxic mixture of Australian and South African racism in which you get to definitively categorise people by how dark their skin is and you never listen to a word Indigenous people actualy say. Plus it’s completely unscientific.
Thank you for this post. My mother’s boyfriend laps up waste of airs like Andrew Bolt (His solution is to ’shoot all the fuckers’).
My creative writing tutor in uni was Kim Scott. He was awesome. :) He was the only CW tutor I had at uni that ‘got’ that I didn’t write mainstream literary fiction (I write genre fiction like SF) and supported that.
Holy Crap – I never read Bolt anymore since the comments are almost uniformly self-congratulatory – tuned for those who live in the Boltiverse. Great analysis of his idiocy.
I was discussing racism with Beppie this morning, and she sent me here saying that I would find your post educational. I have. Your rebuttals to Bolt’s assertions will definitely lead me to do more research. Bolt and the people in the comments you quoted are horrifying – I’m so glad that you took the time and effort to expose his lies for what they are.
It would seem that someone being middle class and Aboriginal is something that Andrew Bolt can’t accept. The man is an idiot. Unfortunately someone gave him a newspaper column and air time.
Both are Aboriginal because their Indian great-grandfather married a part-Aboriginal woman.
Not sure I’ve ever seen a clearer expression of the idea “male=default.” It’s as if the women didn’t talk or raise children or get married or anything. They just kind of sat there and somehow someone got their genes a couple generations later.
Thanks for the positive feedback, all!
hexy’s last blog post..Link: Feminist On Testosterone: The View From An Intersexual FTM
Hey hexy
When I read Bolt’s article I was so outraged all I could was link to it under the text of “wanker” on my personal LJ. I read your post about it at hexpletive and was SO thankful you were able to put into words the outrage I was bubbling over with. As I think I have told you, my husband is Ngario- Gunditjmara , so obivously is my daughter. My husband looks more like a huge Maori and my daughter looks like any other little white girl. But they aren’t. They are proud Aboriginal people. My husband is the CEO of one of the local co-ops and he encounters this sort of racist crap on a more bureaucratic level than the every day racist crap other Indigenous people encounter. I encounter it with my daughter every time a health professional says “Oh she doesn’t look Aboriginal”. Next time someone says that I am going to reply with “And you don’t look like a racist bigot”. I know I am white and I can never relate to the racism like an Indigenous person can but it still enrages me and I will do what I can to educate people about their inherent and institutionalised racism. Thank YOU for what you do. And thanks to the Hoydens for having you post here.
Oh Hexy…it’s taken me three separate attempts to work my way through it since I would hit a rage wall and have to go away to cry/scream/take a run until I could read more of the vile shit he’s written again.
Thanks so much for your post, an excellent take – down of an absolutely despicable piece of writing from Bolt.
These mysterious ‘handouts’…so many people seem to believe in them. It just staggers me, the level of hate people have to sit by while government policies that continue discrimination and theft of land, dispossession and disempowerment are passed and allowed to pass in silence, and then to act as though the very people who have been robbed, disrespected, imprisoned, killed, tripped at every turn are actually getting ‘free handouts’, are actually privileged above all others.
I cannot believe the absolute contempt with which he treated so many activists and scholars…’make a treaty with yourself’???
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