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Stolen Re-Generation
David Curry is one of Webdiary's volunteer editors. His previous piece for Webdiary was Dealing with Islam.
by David Curry
There are few more vexed issues in Australia than the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Perhaps the foremost Aboriginal issue in the twentieth century was the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families to be assimilated into mainstream society, a policy that endured, with variations, from 1910 to 1970. Although Andrew Bolt still insists that the ‘stolen generation’ is a myth, it is a matter of public record that between one in ten and one in three Aboriginal children were separated from their families under this policy. While there has been some debate about particular details and provocative phrases such ‘cultural genocide’, the policy has been universally condemned for the incalculable trauma it did to the individual stolen children and to Aboriginal communities. Yet the Howard Government appears to be returning to the assimilationist policies that led to the stolen generation.
The Stolen Generation - Historical Context
The roots of the stolen generation are found at the beginning of the twentieth century. Because Aborigines did not begin to enter the labour force in significant numbers following dispossession, despite various ‘retraining’ programs, the focus of the authorities shifted to the need to ‘resocialise’ them (Hartwig, 1978, p. 132). To this end, Aborigines were forcibly removed to and from reserves (Hughes, 1995, p.72).
The control of Aboriginal children, in particular, including the severing of their ties to both kin and culture, was seen to be a crucial part of the process of ‘civilising’ the Aborigine. Aboriginal children were removed, often forcibly, from their own people and raised in dormitories, on missions and other institutions, throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century (Reynolds 2001, p. 160). The paternalistic notion that the ‘primitive’ Aborigine could be bettered just by living with ‘civilised’ whites led to many Aboriginal children being ‘adopted’ by the colonial elite and poor settler alike (Reynolds 2001, p.161), to be used often as virtual slave labour.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the concept of social Darwinism supported observations that the Aborigines were dying out, making way for the ‘fitter’ white race. The Government’s response was to ‘smooth the dying pillow’ by reserving land for the exclusive use of Aboriginal people and assigning responsibility for their welfare to a Chief Protector or Protection Board. By 1911 the Northern Territory and every State except Tasmania had ‘protectionist legislation’ giving the Chief Protector or Protection Board extensive power to control Aboriginal people (HREOC 1997, Introduction). Laws were passed that transferred Aboriginal parents’ common-law rights over their children to Protectors, Board or police officers. In Queensland such legislation endured until 1965 (Reynolds, 2001, p.163).
The Stolen Generation
The policy that led to the removal of mixed race Aborigines was spelt out in the 1937 Native Welfare Conference. Responding to a marked increase in the number of ‘half-caste’ Aborigines, against a continuing decrease in the number of ‘full blood’ Aborigines, Western Australian Chief Protector A. O. Neville proposed the half castes be absorbed into the general community (Flood 2006, p224). The formal policy adopted by the conference was:
The destiny of the natives of Aboriginal origin, but not of the full-blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth (quoted in Reynolds, in Flood 2006, p224).
The full-bloods, in Neville’s view, would be segregated from the general community to quietly die out. This absorption model, then, was biological – it was about race.
Until the late 1940’s mixed blood Aborigines were still being removed in some jurisdictions solely on the basis of their racial mix. By the end of the 1940’s all jurisdictions had made the removal of mixed blood Aborigines subject to the general child welfare law, under which the children had to be found to be ‘neglected’, ‘destitute’ or ‘uncontrollable’. However, the new period was marked more by continuity than change (HREOC 1994, National Overview). The criteria for child removal were based on the non-Aboriginal model of child rearing, and equated poverty with neglect (HREOC 1994, National Overview).
This period, beginning in the 1940’s, marked the transition to the assimilationist model, which was socio-cultural rather than biological. The 1937 absorption model had focused on mixed blood Aborigines, encouraging the states to educate them "with a view to their taking their place in the white community on an equal footing with the whites". The assimilationist policy, which broadened its focus to encompass all Aborigines, was explained by the federal Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, at the 1951 Native Welfare Conference:
Assimilation means, in practical terms, that, in the course of time, it is expected that all persons of aboriginal blood or mixed blood in Australia will live like other white Australians do (Hasluck, quoted in HREOC 1997, National Overview)
It is often argued that the policies underlying the stolen generation were well-meaning. Hasluck’s statements can be read as a crude forerunner of affirmative action and certainly some Aborigines has positive experiences under the policy (Flood 2006, pp. 227 – 229). The removal of Aboriginal children was sometimes about their welfare; some Aboriginal parents handed their children to authorities as a result of extreme hardship (Flood 2006, p. 227). However, the removal of children from their parents, except in the direst cases of neglect, is a fundamental breach of human rights.
Several underlying attitudes and beliefs can be discerned in the stolen generation policies, and these should concern us if they return under the Howard Government:
- a general disregard for the value of Aboriginal culture and of the need to protect it;
- a desire for Aborigines to be assimilated into mainstream Australian culture; a rejection of the idea that Aboriginal people should be able to determine their own fate;
- a paternalistic approach to Aborigines that discounts the ability of Aborigines to solve their own problems and gives primacy to the views of non-Aboriginal politicians; and
- a complete lack of acknowledgement of any obligations to Aborigines as the original custodians (or owners) of the country, or to redress their dispossession and other wrongs of the past.
Current Policy - The Howard Government
It is instructive in comparing the Howard Government policy on Aborigines with those that led to the stolen generation to begin by looking at the Government’s reaction to the 1997 HREOC inquiry into the stolen generation, generally known by the abbreviated title Bringing them Home. At the Australian Reconciliation Convention in May 1997, on the eve of the tabling of the report in Federal Parliament, Prime Minister John Howard firmly declared his opposition to a formal apology for past wrongs (as opposed to a personal expression of regret, which he gave). In an unedifying performance a red-faced Howard pounded the lectern and counselled the delegates, many of whom turned their back, to forget ‘symbolic’ gestures, insisting: "we must not join those who would portray Australia's history since 1788 as little more than a disgraceful record of imperialism, exploitation and racism" (Howard, in de Costa 2002).
The Howard Government was dismissive of Bringing them Home. While the report reduced the Opposition Leader to tears when he spoke about it in Parliament, the Government churlishly questioned whether one in ten children (the bottom end of the report’s estimate) should be referred to as a ‘generation’ and attacked HREOC’s methodology (de Costa 2002). The Government strenuously fought the 1999 Darwin test case in which two members of the stolen generation sued for compensation, using as part of its defence an attempt to rehabilitate the assimilationist policies behind the stolen generation (de Costa 2002). No compensation has yet been paid to any member of the stolen generation.
Reconciliation Derailed
The Howard Government’s approach to reconciliation with Aborigines, a formal process begun by the federal Labor Government in 1991, reflects a kind of selective amnesia with regard to Australia’s history not dissimilar from that of the policy makers responsible for the stolen generation. While Howard has lingered, for example, on the appalling treatment of Australian POWs by the Japanese during World War II, he has emphasised that "the reconciliation process must focus on the future" (Howard, in Short, p. 303). This position conveniently overlooks the obvious fact that the position of Aborigines as the most disadvantaged group in Australia has deep historical roots.
Howard has skilfully manipulated the concept of reconciliation so that, far from being a process for providing recognition and protection of rights and the provision of social justice for Aborigines, its meaning has been profoundly transformed in order to rationalise a return to assimilationist policies. The Howard Government now talks only of practical reconciliation, in which the focus is entirely on the economic and social disadvantage of Aborigines, at the exclusion of ‘symbolic’ issues such as self-determination. This conception of reconciliation reduces the social justice owed to Aborigines to a kind of charity.
While ‘practical’ reconciliation suggests a technical issue of improving services, infrastructure and so on, it clearly assumes a different dimension when the Government talks openly of removing the rights of Aborigines to control their own welfare payments (de Costa 2002), or makes the installation of basic infrastructure conditional on the cleanliness of an Aboriginal community’s children (SBS 2004). Benign-sounding phrases such as ‘mutual obligation’ and ‘shared responsibility’ mask a new paternalism (a phrase now being openly used by the Government) not dissimilar from an earlier paternalism that offered conditional citizenship to Aborigines in some states in the early twentieth century (Hughes, 1995, p. 74).
HREOC has strongly criticised the Howard Government’s reconciliation policy, arguing that its ‘highly controlled’ approach completely ignores many issues important to Aborigines. In the HREOC Social Justice Report 2001 the commissioner suggested the Government had an assimilationist agenda:
Currently, [reconciliation] is not about mutual accommodation on the basis of equality – it is about whether one group, indigenous people, are prepared to conform to the rest of society. If not, then the offer is closed (HREOC 2001, in HREOC 2003).
If reconciliation is in a critical condition, why are Aboriginal symbols and images more prominent than ever in national pageants such as the opening of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games? Damien Short argues that the supposed ‘shared history’ of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians has under Howard become a unidirectional transfer, in which the "immature settler culture" of non-Aboriginal Australia appropriates symbols of Aboriginal spirituality to provide a deep and historical connection to the land. Incorporating Aboriginality into the cultural fabric of the nation also undermines Aboriginal claims (such as recognition of sovereignty and political autonomy) based on their inherent separateness from the mainstream culture (Short 2003, p. 295).
Self-Determination and Land Rights
The Howard Government shares with the policy makers of the stolen generation era an antipathy towards the idea of Aboriginal self-determination. With the abolition of the Australian and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 2004, Howard effectively brought to an end the period of self-determination for Aborigines introduced by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1972. Undoubtedly, ATSIC needed a significant overhaul to address problems of financial mismanagement, nepotism and cronyism (Flood 2006, p. 242). However, as former ATSIC Chair Lowitja O’Donoghue pointed out when ATSIC was abolished:
Mainstream governments have had much longer than ATSIC to improve the conditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and they have failed and so this is no answer (AAP 2004).
ATSIC’s ‘replacement’, the National Indigenous Council, could hardly be said to represent Aborigines effectively when the Prime Minister handpicked its fourteen delegates and its role was purely advisory.
Inextricably linked with self-determination for Aborigines are land rights, a concept the policy makers responsible for the stolen generation would scarcely have been able to conceive and would almost certainly not have approved of. The Howard Government has a longstanding antipathy towards land rights for Aborigines, a position highlighted in September this year when a Federal Court judge declared the Noongar people the traditional owners of parts of Perth. Consistent with the Coalition’s alarmist reactions to the pivotal Mabo and Wik decisions, Attorney General Phillip Ruddock publicly suggested that Aborigines might block public access to beaches and parks. One legal expert described the comments as "extreme, uninformed and racist", pointing to a clause in the Native Title Act 1993 that allows the Government to intervene on any blockage attempt (Lion 2006). Nevertheless, Ruddock’s comments were dutifully picked up by the press and published under headlines like Aborigines Win Right to go Hunting in Perth (Squires 2006). Cape York Aboriginal Leader Noel Pearson offered a reason for the shock reaction:
The Noongar are shadow dwellers in their own country and these urban-dwelling blackfellas were not supposed to get native title (Pearson 2006).
Even long-held Aboriginal land seems to be an irritation to the Howard Government. Only this month the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, suggested the abolishment of the permit system in Arnhem Land. Currently, non-Aboriginal Australians must seek permission from the traditional owners to gain access, which is seldom denied. Brough’s central argument, that Aboriginal land is communal property and therefore more like public space than private property, is nothing other than an argument for assimilation (Brough 2006). Brough’s disingenuous conflation of Aboriginal land with public space implicitly rejects the right of Aboriginal people to self-determination, even on their own land - or even just their right to decide who enters their land.
Remote Communities Under Fire
In recent months the Howard Government has embarked on what some see as an insidious campaign to undermine remote Aboriginal communities, a campaign bolstered by a flood of news stories (and Government statements) about violence, alcohol abuse and the sexual abuse of children in ‘dysfunctional’ communities. Citing the cost to Government of providing infrastructure and the lack of access to education, Senator Amanda Vanstone has questioned the viability of small, remote Aboriginal communities, which she said were in danger of becoming ‘cultural museums’ (Heywood 2006). The inference is that the culture must change – again, the language of assimilation. The Opposition pointed to the special relationship between Aborigines and their land and reasonably asked whether the same concerns were going to close down remote non-Aboriginal communities (Heywood 2006).
An alternative view to Vanstone’s is that, particularly in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, the outstations are where ‘bush’ Aborigines have successfully revived traditional Aboriginal culture (albeit with the assistance of four-wheel-drives and rifles), and forcing them into the towns will only exacerbate existing social problems such as overcrowding, alcohol abuse and violence. As Paul Toohey wrote in The Bulletin:
The soft-sell message is that Aborigines gave it a good shot but must now consider final surrender of their lands. But Aborigines are not leaving … As we begin to take a good look at them, they've already had a good look at us. They did not like what they saw (Toohey 2006).
Problems in Aboriginal communities such as alcohol abuse and violence are manifestly real, but as David Martin argues, addressing them in an effective and sustainable way requires recognition of the links between culturally based values and practices, as well as recognition of and a willingness to harness the "passion, knowledge vitality, and creativity" that also exist in these ‘dysfunctional’ communities - just as they do in mainstream communities. Martin emphasises that "unless Aboriginal people themselves are involved in and ultimately committed to such changes, history shows us that they will be resisted" (2006, pp6 – 7).
The Aborigines in remote communities are understandably fearful of the apparent new order of economic assimilation, based on mainstream notions of individual ambition and the accumulation of wealth, which the Government justifies by framing Aboriginal communities exclusively in terms of their inherent dysfunctionality (Martin 2006, p 7). The Government’s policy direction ignores the communal emphasis of Aboriginal culture and is predicated on the assumption that, given the opportunity, Aborigines will choose lifestyles and adopt values consistent with those of the mainstream (Martin 2006, p. 8). There are obvious parallels between this kind of thinking and the aims of the policy makers responsible for the stolen generation.
Conclusion
The stolen generation is one of the blackest marks in Australia’s history. The policy of forcible removing Aboriginal children from their parents to absorb, and later assimilate, them into the non-Aboriginal mainstream was a gross violation of human rights. The policies were ethnocentric and paternalistic, with an underlying assumption that Aborigines could not know what was in their best interests. Above all, the policies sought to assimilate Aborigines into the mainstream, with a concomitant disregard for the fate of Aboriginal culture, which was regarded as vastly inferior to the culture introduced by Britain in 1788. Yet the policy makers responsible seemed to have sincerely believed they were doing the right thing for Aborigines.
Nobody would suggest the Howard Government is about to return to dragging Aboriginal children from their parents. However, the Government’s current policy direction on Aborigines, which has gained momentum in recent months, has all of the hallmarks of the assimilationism that led to the stolen generation. The methods and the rhetoric are far subtler – and obviously less cruel - than those of the Government’s predecessors, but the aim is identical and arguably just as pernicious: the assimilation of Aborigines into the mainstream. Just like their policy predecessors, the Howard Government couches its policy in terms of helping the Aborigines, of addressing problems etc. Good intentions. But as the proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
REFERENCES
AAP (15 April 2004). Moves to abolish ATSIC devastating - O'Donoghue. Accessed from the Factiva database, 22 October 2006.
Aboriginal & Torrest Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner (2003). Social Justice Report 2003. Sydney: J S McMillan Printing Group.
de Costa, Ravi (2002). Reconciliation as Abdication. (Aboriginal/white race relations in Australia). Australian Journal of Social Issues. 37.4 p397(23).
Flood, J. (2006). The Original Australians. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.
Hartwig, M. (1978). Capitalism and Aborigines: the theory of internal colonialism and its rivals. In Wheelright, E.L., and Buckley, K. (Eds), Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, Volume 3. Brookvale, NSW: Australia & New Zealand Book Co Pty Ltd.
Heywood, L. (2005, 10 December). Aboriginal settlements not viable: Vanstone. The Courier-Mail. Accessed from the Factiva database, 5 October 2006.
Hughes, I. (1995). Dependant Autonomy: A New Phase of Internal Colonialism. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 30, 4, pp.369-388.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1997). Bringing them Home - Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Accessed from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen/ on 22 October 2006.
Lion, P. (2006, 23 September). Ruddock `racist' on land rights. The Courier-Mail. Accessed from the Factiva database, 18 October 2006.
Martin, D. (2006). Why the ‘new direction’ in indigenous affairs policy is as likely to ‘fail’ as the old directions (Topical Issue No. 5/2006). Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Accessed from http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/topical.php on 23 October 2006.
Pearson, N. (2006, 23 September). A Mighty Moral Victory. The Australian. Accessed from the Factiva database, 22 October 2006.
Reynolds, H. (2001). An Indelible Stain? Ringwood: Penguin Books Australia Ltd. 2001
SBS (2004, 9 December). Govt Under Fire For Petrol-For-Wash Deal. 6.30pm TV World News Transcripts. Accessed from the Factiva database, 10 October 2006.
Short, Damien (2003). Australian Aboriginal Reconciliation: The Latest Phase in the Colonial Project 1. Citizenship Studies. 7, 3 p291 – 312. Accessed from the EBSCO database 10 October 2006.
Squires, N. (2006, 21 September). Aborigines win right to go hunting in Perth. The Daily Telegraph. Accessed from the Factiva database, 12 October 2006.
Toohey, Paul (2006, 26 July). Land Rites. The Bulletin. Accessed from the Factiva database, 15 October 2006.
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Mirror Mirror On The Wall Who's The.....
Roslyn: Charles: Yes, it is long but it is not a simple area we are exploring. I shall try however to be brief in my responses to you.
Charles: My reasons for exposing part of myself, was not to shift the emphasis of this topic, and I am feeling very self-conscious that I am getting a disproportionate amount of attention I don’t deserve on such a serious topic.
Roslyn: I don’t think anyone thought you were. For my part I simply picked up a sense that your experience had profoundly affected you and that influenced your approach to this topic. There’s nothing wrong with that. We are all of us subjective and it is useful to have some insight into individuals so we may assess more accurately that subjectivity.
My Reply:
Well yes my experience has affected me, but I don’t think I am any different to anyone else in that regard, so yes I can’t help but try to correlate my experience with others who have experienced a loss of their humanity.
How do you measure this loss? It seems to me an extremely difficult question.
You rightly pointed out that the human condition exposes all of us to the possibility of this loss to varying degrees, and it seems to me in a strange kind of logic that our creator gave us the possibility of loosing our humanity and having it taken away from us. With this also came the possibility we have of creative projections and transformation of our humanity.
We both agreed earlier how the isolation that can accompany trauma can be a source of strength for some, it’s almost like the loss of being can open the door of being itself, but off course it can also destroy as well and probably in most cases it does.
But in regards to the indigenous people and culture, we do have to bring the sociological perspective into the argument. An individual can not exist without a relationship to his collective; this collective is the life force of his identity. How do we extricate an individual from his collective and measure the loss of humanity? The only visible signs we have are the disintegration of the group, this is visible and measurable to an extant.
Pain and discrimination may be difficult concepts to measure, but that they exist, few can doubt.
How can I correlate my humanity with the humanity of someone else?
I recall a saying, the source I have forgotten, probably Jewish, “I believe nothing human is alien to me”
Charles: We are discussing the destruction of a collective culture, the discrimination you point to is of a different magnitude.
Roslyn: Yes and No. From my understanding the argument for compensation to those damaged by the circumstances we call the ‘stolen generation’ is approached upon an individual basis.
I would make the argument that your experience as an individual and the experience of those involved in TSG were the same and equally traumatic.
My Reply:
I would like to reiterate a point I previously made, which is that discrimination can function on many levels, I can discriminate against the individual with no ramifications to the collective, or I can discriminate in such away that the individual and collective are implicated.
This is an important distinction, because without it how do we assess that a culture has been violated at all?
I am extending the meaning of culture to Cultural Time, which I have defined elsewhere on Web Diary, so for example if I was to go back in time and kill Joseph Haydn, I would not only be killing Joseph Haydn, but I would also be almost critically affecting both Mozart and Beethoven. Not an easy thing to measure off course, and I chose an extreme example only to highlight what I am getting at.
You mentioned that you were discriminated because of poverty and I can empathise with this, but I think there is a distinction, no doubt others in your socio-economic class would also empathise with you, but if I make reference to your poverty with intent to hurt you, am I hurting everyone who is also poor?
Am I destroying a complete network of social relations that you rely on, as sustenance for your identity?
While I agree it can be traumatic, I still hold that the magnitude is of a different order.
In the case of the systematic destruction of a people and a culture, discrimination can be reference to a complete social network.
Off course we would have to establish intent, I may call someone a wog, in jest, we may both understand that the intention is light hearted and not meant to offend, but off course the opposite can also be true.
In this case the intent is to hurt and with this kind of discrimination comes the possibility of group and collective interconnection, if I hurt an aspect of your humanity that affects your cultural identity; I also am implicating your family, extended family, and social relations.
Many from the security of the dominant group or class have difficulty imagining this loss.
They can not imagine being thrown out of existence by a loss of identity, because the mirror of their identity is taken for granted, they live with it every day, and it is reflected back at them in so many ways that they never have to pause to contemplate its absence.
The only way we can measure this loss is by the collective disintegration of the group.
Charles: I have been trying to show the inadequacy of terms such as Multiculturalism and Assimilation in understanding the human condition.
Roslyn: Yes, I appreciate that. These are categorizations for experiences which are much more complex.
My Reply:
I have been doing this for good reason, because language can conceal reality, the argument surrounding the indigenous culture and multiculturalism in general has been obscured by artificial false alternatives.
The political ramifications for this are obvious.
This is difficult because again, it depends how sensitive you are to loss of being, and as I mentioned above in a perverse kind of logic the more threatened you are by this loss, the more your sense of being is heightened and off course for many a loss of being is the inner extinction of their being.
What determines a heightened sense of awareness and a destruction of awareness is a very interesting question.
The ambiguity of existence gives us the possibility for its creativity and destruction.
The mirror we look into for our identity in many instances is a mirage, a mirage that we cannot live without.
Charles: The members of the stolen generation went through a pain of a magnitude many times higher than the simple callousness that most children can experience and that most can out grow out of.
Roslyn: Again I would say yes and no. Some did and some did not. Some assimilated, some grew stronger as children experiencing other forms of discrimination did and some experienced pain of great magnitude.
My Reply:
This is difficult because how do we measure the relationship to collective disintegration and individual trauma?
But again, without the distinction, how can we claim that the indigenous culture was violated at all?
Charles: I think you may have all missed my point, it was a Polish kid who smashed me in the face, that’s how conformity works, and my humanity didn’t matter. Where did he get the idea that I was some how inferior?
Roslyn: I did not miss your point but I think it is difficult to know if he truly believed that your humanity did not matter or whether he, as an immigrant suffering discrimination himself, was so wounded that he found ‘strength’ in lashing out at others. You did not say if you knew the boy and anything of his circumstances. He may have been one of the local ‘bullies’ whether or not he was an immigrant, blonde or blue-eyed and you may have been the sort of sensitive child who would have been picked on whether or not you were a ‘wog.’
My Reply:
Well your point is valid, but the point I really wanted to make, is as you point out the Polish kid is also an immigrant, and he lashes out on me. He directed his anger at me because the social environment defined me as less than human, as I have been alluding to in previous posts if the social environment is saturated by symbols and images these will be engendered into the consciousness of the collective.
Can we measure this? Off course, I have spent most of my time here, trying to do just that.
Nazi Germany used the Jews as a scape goat, the German culture hand deteriorated; the mirror that Germans looked into was distorted.
How could they possibly get a human reflection back from a broken mirror?
The consequences were Hitler unleashed a power that was of immense destruction.
Charles: If I call you fat, am I denigrating your humanity?
Roslyn: No, but I don’t think calling someone else a wog denigrates their humanity either. You felt this but that is a different thing to the intent of the insult.
My Reply:
I covered this point above, I take it as a given for the sake of my argument that the intent is to hurt and discriminate.
Calling you fat does not directly implicate the humanity of your mother, but calling you a wog does, because its reference is wider and includes a cultural social network
This network can be affected by the social saturation I was talking about.
If the cultural mirror of the indigenous or ethnic minority is broken or distorted, the people of that culture have no reflection; this is of a totally different situation, when the mirror is the dominant ubiquitous mirror, which gives security to the mass.
So yes, there is a big difference between calling some one fat, who has a cultural mirror that gives him or her a reflection back, and calling someone a wog who has no reflection to bounce from.
Charles: Does this mean your mother is inferior?
Roslyn: No, but neither does calling you a wog mean this. Name-calling is name-calling whatever the word.
My Reply:
Yes as covered above, the reflection of a cultural mirror is the difference to uncovering the distinction.
Charles: But if I call you wog, I am making a statement about your humanity.
Roslyn: No, you are using my ethnicity as an excuse to insult and demean me. It has no greater meaning, in my book, than calling me fat or stupid.
My Reply:
Covered above
Charles: No, I am arguing for recognition of sociological conceptions that are prior to the terms multiculturalism and assimilation I am arguing about responsibility on a sociological level and recognition that there is a process where because of a set of cultural relationships within in any cultural time frame, dissonance will occur and psychological trauma will occur. This is not just about indigenous and ethnic minorities, this is also about the health of a society, this is also about understanding how we as a collective can be controlled and manipulated and how our health as individuals can suffer.
Roslyn: I agree with you but we also have to apply reality to any given situation and that means taking context into account. You have to have some understanding of the culture out of which this sort of discrimination came. It was a time when not just immigrants or aborigines suffered unjust persecution but a time when women did too. It was also a time when the mentally ill were considered shameful; when Down’s Syndrome children were an embarrassment and hidden away; when the needs of the disabled were generally ignored and when children were meant to be ‘seen and not heard.’
Understanding the environment in which discrimination breeds and flourishes does not condone it but it is simply not fair to impose contemporary standards and attitudes upon those who lived decades or more ago.
My Reply:
This is difficult to express.
If I violate the life of another human being knowingly, I think you would agree this is a violation of a human being with intent to hurt.
I quoted the saying above “I believe nothing human alien to me”
Now how can I violate another human being unknowingly?
I believe you cant, it is a fiction to contextualize such situations, the only possible excuse that I can think of is extreme mental illness, but all other situations, the individual is responsible for his actions.
The mirror the collective uses to base its human reflection on is also the responsibility of the custodians of culture and ultimately the responsibility of the people.
Nazi Germany must be held responsible for the distorted mirror, and must be held responsible for the humanity that was a consequence.
Charles: But we can try to understand, and this is what concerns me, the topic at hand is the Australian Aboriginals, and how our failure in dealing with the problem, we have tried Multiculturalism and it failed, we have try Assimilation and it was even a bigger disaster, in my opinion the reason for the failure is that the concepts were wrong in the first place, that is what I have been trying to explain that these terms are not the main essence of the human condition, in away they deflect from the human condition.
Roslyn: Yes, but we have not tried a compassionate assimilative approach. The assimilation we tried was a forced assimilation lacking in compassion and consideration. The multiculturalism we tried was equally flawed because it tried to ‘pin Aborigines in a cultural box’, believing that if they could hold onto their culture completely and their way of life, then everything would be alright. It wasn’t.
My Reply:
Well we are in agreement, but the compassionate approach as you say, brings us to issues I have been trying to discuss here, such as sociological saturation of symbols and images.
Compassion in a cultural context means nothing, without a relationship to a cultural mirror.
Roslyn: The Aboriginal nomadic way of life is dead and gone and it must be. Aborigines, like other nomadic peoples and peasants everywhere may want aspects of their culture but they also want what you and I have. The material possessions. One of the most difficult aspects dealing with Aboriginal communities negotiating with mining companies was getting the Aborigines to accept schools when what they wanted were Toyotas!
So in the modern world, let’s say we give Aborigines Western Australia and say, there, go and live your nomadic life. This means that in times of drought we must let them die; if they become sick we cannot send in the Flying Doctor or set up medical clinics; neither can we educate, house or clothe them.
My Reply:
I already touched on this, necrophiliac culture, a culture can be dead, and it can loose its life force, its relevance. But this is not the measure we should use to determine this.
What determines our humanity?
Does my individuality determine my humanity, or does the reflection that bounces back from the collective mirror determine my humanity?
Off course I am talking about cultural identity here, since I take it as a given that the essence of the destruction of the indigenous culture was its identity.
Roslyn: As you can see, it is impossible and their way of life is dead. That means that to some degree they must assimilate and in order to do that they need to be educated.
With education, and we have yet to master getting Aborigines well educated, comes a weakening of tribal life, the emancipation of women and a loosening of cultural ties because there is no point to an education unless you can use it and that means getting a job, either in the greater community, or a job which is created by or dependent upon the greater community.
Aborigines may well be hold onto the positive aspects of their culture but ultimately they must give up the patriarchy, the misogyny, the familial dependence, the child marriages, the violence against women and their primitive system of payback law. And in the doing their society and their culture changes and the process of joining the greater community instead of excluding it or remaining excluded from it continues.
My Reply:
Yes Roslyn, Cultural time is my attempt at exactly this. You see there is a danger of diluting the discussion with all these nested quotations and the argument gets lost.
I don’t think that anyone could possibly argue for the negative aspects of any culture, off course I am talking about the positive life giving creative aspects of culture, the spiritual etc.
But it is equally obvious that you cannot superficially impose a mirror on a culture.
All you will receive are destructive reflections.
The Cultural Dissonance I have talked about in the past posts here, have been my attempt to work out how we create a harmonious reflection, I am not talking about utopia, but we should at least be aware of the destruction we create and the stolen generation has given us proof of the possibility of this destruction.
Charles: The stolen generation was about deep destructive trauma, the denigration and dispossession of culture, it is closer to ethnic cleansing and should be considered as such, it is the destruction of something that is vital to our humanity it is the destruction of our being.
Roslyn: No, it is not ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is when you kill or remove a people from their land. Aboriginal half caste children who had links with both sides were taken into the European side because it was considered best for them. That this entailed suffering and trauma is without a doubt. It was not a policy which was carried out with enough compassion. But those children were not killed or sent to say Fiji ….. they were housed, fed and educated with the hope that they would join the greater community.
My Reply:
You could make that argument, but you could also see it as systematic of the dehumanization that started with the arrival of the first settlers.
A consequence of a cultural mirror with no reflection, this is a valid reason for calling the stolen generation an act of cultural genocide this is the same as ethnic cleansing in my opinion.
We have a different sensitivity and awareness of the relationship to the mirror.
Charles: If we can’t make this distinction than there is no basis for any human quality, like the Polish kid in the swimming pool, he was smashing something human in me, and may I add with hatred.
Do you see what I mean by Authenticity?
Roslyn: No, I don’t see what you mean by authenticity. Behind anger there is always fear. The sort of anger you describe was not personal. How could it be. It was not about you the human being or you the individual it was about this boy who was angry, frightened, confused, damaged or whatever.
You are upset because you believe he denied your humanity but unless you can see the humanity of that boy then you are doing the same thing as he did. I hold to the belief that people are more damaged than evil and more frightened than cruel.
My Reply:
Well again, this is a possible interpretation, but I would disagree, I see it as systematic of dehumanization, because he chose to attack me on the basis of my physical characteristics.
Hitler did it with the Jews, the propaganda was used in all aspects of German society, in education etc, and it was systematic dehumanization
The Polish kid had to get the message from somewhere, he may have been hurt, but I made no mention of my relationship to him or that I have any ill feelings towards him, I actually am not a vindictive person at all, and I try very hard not to take out my hurt on other people, I see this as a weakness.
How far can we take this reasoning?
When does a society take responsibility for the mirror?
I will reiterate the people and the cultural custodians of culture are responsible, for the violence unleased, when they choose to disregard the humanity of others and set of a chain of events that lead to the destruction of others, both the physical and mental destruction of others, the mirror that reflects back a persons identity.
Charles: Can’t you acknowledge that I was born into a society that didn’t accept my humanity?
Roslyn: No I cannot. I can acknowledge that you were born into a society where some people, perhaps many, had difficulty accepting the presence of immigrants but that was not about you personally.
My Reply:
We have to establish social responsibility, that is all I am asking, if we can’t do that, why take any responsibility at all for the indigenous people, why take any responsibility for the Iraqi people?
Roslyn, I cannot understand your position, I am not arguing that all members of a society are cruel and inhumane, all I am saying is that a society can be destructive, this mass of anonymous beings can be misled, can be decadent.
Why contextualize and rationalise this?
Evil exists, I exist in the world and I am held responsible for my existence.
Charles: Can you see the difference, on one hand you choose one set of symbols, but you’re rejected, and on the other hand you choose the alternative set of symbols and they don’t make sense.
Roslyn: Yes I can see that but I don’t see why it has to be absolutely one or the other. Surely you become you by weaving together strands of both. And, in a compassionate society, that is what we would encourage people in your position or those of the ‘stolen generation’ to do.
In the best of worlds and the best of processes we would have a combination of the best aspects of multiculturalism combined with an assimilative process. Each on its own, interpreted literally, is deeply flawed as we know from experience. But each has basic and admirable tenets which are worth maintaining.
My Reply:
Well Roslyn, I agree completely, but you are misconstruing my argument, I have been arguing for a long time here, my feelings about cultural matters, and I don’t know if you have read any of it.
But let’s not negate the reality of what societies are capable of doing, which is destroy, the humanity of other human beings.
Charles: The aboriginal problem has been an on going problem for over two hundred years, and has Jenny pointed out, why haven’t they assimilated?
Roslyn: Well, some have but we don’t hear about them. It is important to remember that other historically recent colonizing nations have the same problem. The US, Canada and New Zealand for example face exactly the same issues as we do. Whatever has been done has not worked anywhere.
Part of it is that in times past the conquered peoples were killed or forced to assimilate. In the past few hundred years those attitudes began to dilute although the American settlers certainly put a lot of effort into trying to kill off their indigenous peoples, to a far greater degree than they did in Australia, Canada or NZ.
My Reply:
This may be the case; I don’t know the percentages of success stories.
But never the less, we have an indigenous problem, and this is the basis of this discussion.
Charles: I don’t agree with you here, I think with understanding we can avoid the mistakes of the past, the mistakes that have been the reason for this discussion.
You see my point is that if we don’t have a human vision, how can we have a human outcome?
Roslyn: I am not sure which bit you don’t agree with. I agree with you that understanding is all in order to avoid future mistakes and that is why we need to understand the societies in which the mistakes, as we define them now, arose.
My Reply:
Understanding our humanity on the individual level, but more importantly understanding that we are not separate, our being cannot exist in isolation
“We can discover our souls, only through the mirror of the eyes of those who look at us” Paul Tillich
Charles: My view is no context or rationalization can justify a inhumane act, we may be able to understand the motives and the situation that caused the act but not excuse the act itself.
Roslyn: And as I said, to understand is not to condone. Rationalization when it is used to aid understanding is not an excuse. There is a difference between trying to rationalize something away and using ones capacity for rational thought to understand a situation and the acts committed in that situation. As someone who thinks it is important to understand I can only assume you use your rational capacity for thought, combined with your emotional intuition, to understand things. None of that amounts to excusing anything.
My Reply:
If an individual does not take responsibility for or is not totally aware of all aspects of the consequences of his actions all we can expect are rationalizations.
I am not arguing against using reason, but that we have to develop our awareness on a higher level in order to understand the matter under discussion.
Fiona: Charles, I hope I have done justice to your comment with the formatting. Please let me know if it is not as you want.
Mirror mirror on the wall who's the..............
"Charles: Yes, it is long but it is not a simple area we are exploring. I shall try however to be brief in my responses to you. You said: My reasons for exposing part of myself, was not to shift the emphasis of this topic, and I am feeling very self-conscious that I am getting a disproportionate amount of attention I don’t deserve on such a serious topic. I don’t think anyone thought you were. For my part I simply picked up a sense that your experience had profoundly affected you and that influenced your approach to this topic. There’s nothing wrong with that. We are all of us subjective and it is useful to have some insight into individuals so we may assess more accurately that subjectivity."
My Reply: Well yes my experience has affected me, but I don’t think I am any different to anyone else in that regard, so yes I can’t help but try to correlate my experience with others who have experienced a loss of their humanity. How do you measure this loss? It seems to me an extremely difficult question. You rightly pointed out that the human condition exposes all of us to the possibility of this loss to varying degrees, and it seems to me in a strange kind of logic that our creator gave us the possibility of loosing our humanity and having it taken away from us. With this also came the possibility we have of creative projections and transformation of our humanity. We both agreed earlier how the isolation that can accompany trauma can be a source of strength for some, it’s almost like the loss of being can open the door of being itself, but off course it can also destroy as well and probably in most cases it does. But in regards to the indigenous people and culture, we do have to bring the sociological perspective into the argument. An individual can not exist without a relationship to his collective; this collective is the life force of his identity. How do we extricate an individual from his collective and measure the loss of humanity? The only visible signs we have are the disintegration of the group, this is visible and measurable to an extant. Pain and discrimination may be difficult concepts to measure, but that they exist, few can doubt. How can I correlate my humanity with the humanity of someone else? I recall a saying, the source I have forgotten, probably Jewish, “I believe nothing human is alien to me”
You said: "We are discussing the destruction of a collective culture, the discrimination you point to is of a different magnitude. Yes and No. From my understanding the argument for compensation to those damaged by the circumstances we call the ‘stolen generation’ is approached upon an individual basis. I would make the argument that your experience as an individual and the experience of those involved in TSG were the same and equally traumatic."
My Reply: I would like to reiterate a point I previously made, which is that discrimination can function on many levels, I can discriminate against the individual with no ramifications to the collective, or I can discriminate in such away that the individual and collective are implicated. This is an important distinction, because without it how do we assess that a culture has been violated at all? I am extending the meaning of culture to Cultural Time, which I have defined elsewhere on Webdiary, so for example if I was to go back in time and kill Joseph Haydn, I would not only be killing Joseph Haydn, but I would also be almost critically affecting both Mozart and Beethoven. Not an easy thing to measure off course, and I chose an extreme example only to highlight what I am getting at. You mentioned that you were discriminated because of poverty and I can empathise with this, but I think there is a distinction, no doubt others in your socio-economic class would also empathise with you, but if I make reference to your poverty with intent to hurt you, am I hurting everyone who is also poor? Am I destroying a complete network of social relations that you rely on, as sustenance for your identity? While I agree it can be traumatic, I still hold that the magnitude is of a different order. In the case of the systematic destruction of a people and a culture, discrimination can be reference to a complete social network. Off course we would have to establish intent, I may call someone a wog, in jest, we may both understand that the intention is light hearted and not meant to offend, but off course the opposite can also be true. In this case the intent is to hurt and with this kind of discrimination comes the possibility of group and collective interconnection, if I hurt an aspect of your humanity that affects your cultural identity; I also am implicating your family, extended family, and social relations. Many from the security of the dominant group or class have difficulty imagining this loss. They can not imagine being thrown out of existence by a loss of identity, because the mirror of their identity is taken for granted, they live with it every day, and it is reflected back at them in so many ways, that they never have to pause to contemplate its absence. The only way we can measure this loss is by the collective disintegration of the group.
You said: "I have been trying to show the inadequacy of terms such as Multiculturalism and Assimilation in understanding the human condition. Yes, I appreciate that. These are categorizations for experiences which are much more complex."
My Reply: I have been doing this for good reason, because language can conceal reality, the argument surrounding the indigenous culture and multiculturalism in general has been obscured by artificial false alternatives. The political ramifications for this are obvious. This is difficult because again, it depends how sensitive you are to loss of being, and as I mentioned above in a perverse kind of logic the more threatened you are by this loss, the more your sense of being is heightened and off course for many a loss of being is the inner extinction of their being. What determines a heightened sense of awareness and a destruction of awareness is a very interesting question. The ambiguity of existence gives us the possibility for its creativity and destruction. The mirror we look into for our identity in many instances is a mirage, a mirage that we cannot live without.
You said: "The members of the stolen generation went through a pain of a magnitude many times higher than the simple callousness that most children can experience and that most can out grow out of. Again I would say yes and no. Some did and some did not. Some assimilated, some grew stronger as children experiencing other forms of discrimination did and some experienced pain of great magnitude."
My Reply: This is difficult because how do we measure the relationship to collective disintegration and individual trauma? But again, without the distinction, how can we claim that the indigenous culture was violated at all?
You said: "I think you may have all missed my point, it was a Polish kid who smashed me in the face, that’s how conformity works, and my humanity didn’t matter. Where did he get the idea that I was some how inferior? I did not miss your point but I think it is difficult to know if he truly believed that your humanity did not matter or whether he, as an immigrant suffering discrimination himself, was so wounded that he found ‘strength’ in lashing out at others. You did not say if you knew the boy and anything of his circumstances. He may have been one of the local ‘bullies’ whether or not he was an immigrant, blonde or blue-eyed and you may have been the sort of sensitive child who would have been picked on whether or not you were a ‘wog.’"
My Reply: Well your point is valid, but the point I really wanted to make, is as you point out the Polish kid is also an immigrant, and he lashes out on me. He directed his anger at me because the social environment defined me as less than human, as I have been alluding to in previous posts if the social environment is saturated by symbols and images these will be engendered into the consciousness of the collective. Can we measure this? Off course, I have spent most of my time here, trying to do just that. Nazi Germany used the Jews as a scape goat, the German culture hand deteriorated; the mirror that Germans looked into was distorted. How could they possibly get a human reflection back from a broken mirror? The consequences were Hitler unleashed a power that was of immense destruction.
You said: "If I call you fat, am I denigrating your humanity? No, but I don’t think calling someone else a wog denigrates their humanity either. You felt this but that is a different thing to the intent of the insult."
My Reply: I covered this point above, I take it as a given for the sake of my argument that the intent is to hurt and discriminate. Calling you fat does not directly implicate the humanity of your mother, but calling you a wog does, because its reference is wider and includes a cultural social network This network can be affected by the social saturation I was talking about. If the cultural mirror of the indigenous or ethnic minority is broken or distorted, the people of that culture have no reflection; this is of a totally different situation, when the mirror is the dominant ubiquitous mirror, which gives security to the mass. So yes there is a big difference between calling some one fat, who has a cultural mirror that gives he or she a reflection back, and calling someone a wog who has no reflection to bounce from.
You said: "Does this mean your mother is inferior? No, but neither does calling you a wog mean this. Name-calling is name-calling whatever the word."
My Reply: Yes as covered above, the reflection of a cultural mirror is the difference to uncovering the distinction.
You said: "But if I call you wog, I am making a statement about your humanity. No, you are using my ethnicity as an excuse to insult and demean me. It has no greater meaning, in my book, than calling me fat or stupid."
My Reply: Covered above.
You said: "No, I am arguing for recognition of sociological conceptions that are prior to the terms multiculturalism and assimilation I am arguing about responsibility on a sociological level and recognition that there is a process where because of a set of cultural relationships within in any cultural time frame, dissonance will occur and psychological trauma will occur. This is not just about indigenous and ethnic minorities, this is also about the health of a society, this is also about understanding how we as a collective can be controlled and manipulated and how our health as individuals can suffer. I agree with you but we also have to apply reality to any given situation and that means taking context into account. You have to have some understanding of the culture out of which this sort of discrimination came. It was a time when not just immigrants or aborigines suffered unjust persecution but a time when women did too. It was also a time when the mentally ill were considered shameful; when Down’s Syndrome children were an embarrassment and hidden away; when the needs of the disabled were generally ignored and when children were meant to be ‘seen and not heard.’ Understanding the environment in which discrimination breeds and flourishes does not condone it but it is simply not fair to impose contemporary standards and attitudes upon those who lived decades or more ago."
My Reply: This is difficult to express. If I violate the life of another human being knowingly, I think you would agree this is a violation of a human being with intent to hurt. I quoted the saying above “I believe nothing human alien to me” Now how can I violate another human being unknowingly? I believe you cant, it is a fiction to contextualize such situations, the only possible excuse that I can think of is extreme mental illness, but all other situations, the individual is responsible for his actions. The mirror the collective uses to base its human reflection on is also the responsibility of the custodians of culture and ultimately the responsibility of the people. Nazi Germany must be held responsible for the distorted mirror, and must be held responsible for the humanity that was a consequence.
You said: "But we can try to understand, and this is what concerns me, the topic at hand is the Australian Aboriginals, and how our failure in dealing with the problem, we have tried Multiculturalism and it failed, we have try Assimilation and it was even a bigger disaster, in my opinion the reason for the failure is that the concepts were wrong in the first place, that is what I have been trying to explain that these terms are not the main essence of the human condition, in away they deflect from the human condition. Yes, but we have not tried a compassionate assimilative approach. The assimilation we tried was a forced assimilation lacking in compassion and consideration. The multiculturalism we tried was equally flawed because it tried to ‘pin Aborigines in a cultural box’, believing that if they could hold onto their culture completely and their way of life, then everything would be alright. It wasn’t."
My Reply: Well we are in agreement, but the compassionate approach as you say, brings us to issues I have been trying to discuss here, such as sociological saturation of symbols and images. Compassion in a cultural context means nothing, without a relationship to a cultural mirror.
"The Aboriginal nomadic way of life is dead and gone and it must be. Aborigines, like other nomadic peoples and peasants everywhere may want aspects of their culture but they also want what you and I have. The material possessions. One of the most difficult aspects dealing with Aboriginal communities negotiating with mining companies was getting the Aborigines to accept schools when what they wanted were Toyotas! So in the modern world, let’s say we give Aborigines Western Australia and say, there, go and live your nomadic life. This means that in times of drought we must let them die; if they become sick we cannot send in the Flying Doctor or set up medical clinics; neither can we educate, house or clothe them."
My Reply: I already touched on this, necrophiliac culture, a culture can be dead, and it can loose its life force, its relevance. But this is not the measure we should use to determine this. What determines our humanity? Does my individuality determine my humanity, or does the reflection that bounces back from the collective mirror determine my humanity? Off course I am talking about cultural identity here, since I take it as a given that the essence of the destruction of the indigenous culture was its identity.
"As you can see, it is impossible and their way of life is dead. That means that to some degree they must assimilate and in order to do that they need to be educated. With education, and we have yet to master getting Aborigines well educated, comes a weakening of tribal life, the emancipation of women and a loosening of cultural ties because there is no point to an education unless you can use it and that means getting a job, either in the greater community, or a job which is created by or dependent upon the greater community. Aborigines may well be hold onto the positive aspects of their culture but ultimately they must give up the patriarchy, the misogyny, the familial dependence, the child marriages, the violence against women and their primitive system of payback law. And in the doing their society and their culture changes and the process of joining the greater community instead of excluding it or remaining excluded from it continues."
My Reply: Yes Roslyn, Cultural time is my attempt at exactly this. You see there is a danger of diluting the discussion with all these nested quotations and the argument gets lost. I don’t think that anyone could possibly argue for the negative aspects of any culture, off course I am talking about the positive life giving creative aspects of culture, the spiritual etc. But it is equally obvious that you cannot superficially impose a mirror on a culture. All you will receive are destructive reflections. The Cultural Dissonance I have talked about in the past posts here, have been my attempt to work out how we create a harmonious reflection, I am not talking about utopia, but we should at least be aware of the destruction we create and the stolen generation has given us proof of the possibility of this destruction.
You said: "The stolen generation was about deep destructive trauma, the denigration and dispossession of culture, it is closer to ethnic cleansing and should be considered as such, it is the destruction of something that is vital to our humanity it is the destruction of our being. No, it is not ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is when you kill or remove a people from their land. Aboriginal half caste children who had links with both sides were taken into the European side because it was considered best for them. That this entailed suffering and trauma is without a doubt. It was not a policy which was carried out with enough compassion. But those children were not killed or sent to say Fiji ….. they were housed, fed and educated with the hope that they would join the greater community."
My Reply: You could make that argument, but you could also see it as systematic of the dehumanization that started with the arrival of the first settlers. A consequence of a cultural mirror with no reflection, this is a valid reason for calling the stolen generation an act of cultural genocide this is the same as ethnic cleansing in my opinion. We have a different sensitivity and awareness of the relationship to the mirror.
You said: "If we can’t make this distinction than there is no basis for any human quality, like the Polish kid in the swimming pool, he was smashing something human in me, and may I add with hatred. Do you see what I mean by Authenticity? No, I don’t see what you mean by authenticity. Behind anger there is always fear. The sort of anger you describe was not personal. How could it be. It was not about you the human being or you the individual it was about this boy who was angry, frightened, confused, damaged or whatever. You are upset because you believe he denied your humanity but unless you can see the humanity of that boy then you are doing the same thing as he did. I hold to the belief that people are more damaged than evil and more frightened than cruel."
My Reply: Well again, this is a possible interpretation, but I would disagree, I see it as systematic of dehumanization, because he chose to attack me on the basis of my physical characteristics. Hitler did it with the Jews, the propaganda was used in all aspects of German society, in education etc, and it was systematic dehumanization The Polish kid had to get the message from somewhere, he may have been hurt, but I made no mention of my relationship to him or that I have any ill feelings towards him, I actually am not a vindictive person at all, and I try very hard not to take out my hurt on other people, I see this as a weakness. How far can we take this reasoning? When does a society take responsibility for the mirror? I will reiterate the people and the cultural custodians of culture are responsible, for the violence unleased, when they choose to disregard the humanity of others and set of a chain of events that lead to the destruction of others, both the physical and mental destruction of others, the mirror that reflects back a persons identity. -
You said: "Can’t you acknowledge that I was born into a society that didn’t accept my humanity? No I cannot. I can acknowledge that you were born into a society where some people, perhaps many, had difficulty accepting the presence of immigrants but that was not about you personally."
My Reply: We have to establish social responsibility, that is all I am asking, if we can’t do that, why take any responsibility at all for the indigenous people, why take any responsibility for the Iraqi people? Roslyn I cannot understand your position, I am not arguing that all members of a society are cruel and inhumane, all I am saying is that a society can be destructive, this mass of anonymous beings can be misled, can be decadent. Why contextualize and rationalise this? Evil exists, I exist in the world and I am held responsible for my existence.
You said: "Can you see the difference, on one hand you choose one set of symbols, but you’re rejected, and on the other hand you choose the alternative set of symbols and they don’t make sense. Yes I can see that but I don’t see why it has to be absolutely one or the other. Surely you become you by weaving together strands of both. And, in a compassionate society, that is what we would encourage people in your position or those of the ‘stolen generation’ to do. In the best of worlds and the best of processes we would have a combination of the best aspects of multiculturalism combined with an assimilative process. Each on its own, interpreted literally, is deeply flawed as we know from experience. But each has basic and admirable tenets which are worth maintaining."
My Reply: Well Roslyn, I agree completely, but you are misconstruing my argument, I have been arguing for a long time here, my feelings about cultural matters, and I don’t know if you have read any of it. But let’s not negate the reality of what societies are capable of doing, which is destroy, the humanity of other human beings.
You said: "The aboriginal problem has been an on going problem for over two hundred years, and has Jenny pointed out, why haven’t they assimilated? Well, some have but we don’t hear about them. It is important to remember that other historically recent colonizing nations have the same problem. The US, Canada and New Zealand for example face exactly the same issues as we do. Whatever has been done has not worked anywhere. Part of it is that in times past the conquered peoples were killed or forced to assimilate. In the past few hundred years those attitudes began to dilute although the American settlers certainly put a lot of effort into trying to kill off their indigenous peoples, to a far greater degree than they did in Australia, Canada or NZ."
My Reply: This may be the case; I don’t know the percentages of success stories. But never the less, we have an indigenous problem, and this is the basis of this discussion.
You said: "I don’t agree with you here, I think with understanding we can avoid the mistakes of the past, the mistakes that have been the reason for this discussion. You see my point is that if we don’t have a human vision, how can we have a human outcome? I am not sure which bit you don’t agree with. I agree with you that understanding is all in order to avoid future mistakes and that is why we need to understand the societies in which the mistakes, as we define them now, arose."
My Reply: Understanding our humanity on the individual level, but more importantly understanding that we are not separate, our being cannot exist in isolation “We can discover our souls, only through the mirror of the eyes of those who look at us” Paul Tillich
You said: "My view is no context or rationalization can justify a inhumane act, we may be able to understand the motives and the situation that caused the act but not excuse the act itself. And as I said, to understand is not to condone. Rationalization when it is used to aid understanding is not an excuse. There is a difference between trying to rationalize something away and using ones capacity for rational thought to understand a situation and the acts committed in that situation. As someone who thinks it is important to understand I can only assume you use your rational capacity for thought, combined with your emotional intuition, to understand things. None of that amounts to excusing anything."
My Reply: If an individual does not take responsibility for or is not totally aware of all aspects of the consequences of his actions all we can expect are rationalizations. I am not arguing against using reason, but that we have to develop our awareness on a higher level in order to understand the matter under discussion.
Understanding is not condoning or excusing
Charles: Yes, it is long but it is not a simple area we are exploring. I shall try however to be brief in my responses to you.
You said:My reasons for exposing part of myself, was not to shift the emphasis of this topic, and I am feeling very self-conscious that I am getting a disproportionate amount of attention I don’t deserve on such a serious topic.
I don’t think anyone thought you were. For my part I simply picked up a sense that your experience had profoundly affected you and that influenced your approach to this topic. There’s nothing wrong with that. We are all of us subjective and it is useful to have some insight into individuals so we may assess more accurately that subjectivity.
You said: We are discussing the destruction of a collective culture, the discrimination you point to is of a different magnitude.
Yes and No. From my understanding the argument for compensation to those damaged by the circumstances we call the ‘stolen generation’ is approached upon an individual basis.
I would make the argument that your experience as an individual and the experience of those involved in TSG were the same and equally traumatic.
You said: I have been trying to show the inadequacy of terms such as Multiculturalism and Assimilation in understanding the human condition.
Yes, I appreciate that. These are categorizations for experiences which are much more complex.
You said: The members of the stolen generation went through a pain of a magnitude many times higher than the simple callousness that most children can experience and that most can out grow out of.
Again I would say yes and no. Some did and some did not. Some assimilated, some grew stronger as children experiencing other forms of discrimination did and some experienced pain of great magnitude.
You said: I think you may have all missed my point, it was a Polish kid who smashed me in the face, that’s how conformity works, and my humanity didn’t matter. Where did he get the idea that I was some how inferior?
I did not miss your point but I think it is difficult to know if he truly believed that your humanity did not matter or whether he, as an immigrant suffering discrimination himself, was so wounded that he found ‘strength’ in lashing out at others. You did not say if you knew the boy and anything of his circumstances. He may have been one of the local ‘bullies’ whether or not he was an immigrant, blonde or blue-eyed and you may have been the sort of sensitive child who would have been picked on whether or not you were a ‘wog.’
You said: If I call you fat, am I denigrating your humanity?
No, but I don’t think calling someone else a wog denigrates their humanity either. You felt this but that is a different thing to the intent of the insult.
You said: Does this mean your mother is inferior?
No, but neither does calling you a wog mean this. Name-calling is name-calling whatever the word.
You said: But if I call you wog, I am making a statement about your humanity.
No, you are using my ethnicity as an excuse to insult and demean me. It has no greater meaning, in my book, than calling me fat or stupid.
You said: No, I am arguing for recognition of sociological conceptions that are prior to the terms multiculturalism and assimilationI am arguing about responsibility on a sociological level and recognition that there is a process where because of a set of cultural relationships within in any cultural time frame, dissonance will occur and psychological trauma will occur. This is not just about indigenous and ethnic minorities, this is also about the health of a society, this is also about understanding how we as a collective can be controlled and manipulated and how our health as individuals can suffer.
I agree with you but we also have to apply reality to any given situation and that means taking context into account. You have to have some understanding of the culture out of which this sort of discrimination came. It was a time when not just immigrants or aborigines suffered unjust persecution but a time when women did too. It was also a time when the mentally ill were considered shameful; when Down’s Syndrome children were an embarrassment and hidden away; when the needs of the disabled were generally ignored and when children were meant to be ‘seen and not heard.’
Understanding the environment in which discrimination breeds and flourishes does not condone it but it is simply not fair to impose contemporary standards and attitudes upon those who lived decades or more ago.
You said: But we can try to understand, and this is what concerns me, the topic at hand is the Australian Aboriginals, and how our failure in dealing with the problem, we have tried Multiculturalism and it failed, we have try Assimilation and it was even a bigger disaster, in my opinion the reason for the failure is that the concepts were wrong in the first place, that is what I have been trying to explain that these terms are not the main essence of the human condition, in away they deflect from the human condition.
Yes, but we have not tried a compassionate assimilative approach. The assimilation we tried was a forced assimilation lacking in compassion and consideration. The multiculturalism we tried was equally flawed because it tried to ‘pin Aborigines in a cultural box’, believing that if they could hold onto their culture completely and their way of life, then everything would be alright. It wasn’t.
The Aboriginal nomadic way of life is dead and gone and it must be. Aborigines, like other nomadic peoples and peasants everywhere may want aspects of their culture but they also want what you and I have. The material possessions. One of the most difficult aspects dealing with Aboriginal communities negotiating with mining companies was getting the Aborigines to accept schools when what they wanted were Toyotas!
So in the modern world, let’s say we give Aborigines Western Australia and say, there, go and live your nomadic life. This means that in times of drought we must let them die; if they become sick we cannot send in the Flying Doctor or set up medical clinics; neither can we educate, house or clothe them.
As you can see, it is impossible and their way of life is dead. That means that to some degree they must assimilate and in order to do that they need to be educated. With education, and we have yet to master getting Aborigines well educated, comes a weakening of tribal life, the emancipation of women and a loosening of cultural ties because there is no point to an education unless you can use it and that means getting a job, either in the greater community, or a job which is created by or dependent upon the greater community.
Aborigines may well be hold onto the positive aspects of their culture but ultimately they must give up the patriarchy, the misogyny, the familial dependence, the child marriages, the violence against women and their primitive system of payback law. And in the doing their society and their culture changes and the process of joining the greater community instead of excluding it or remaining excluded from it continues.
You said: The stolen generation was about deep destructive trauma, the denigration and dispossession of culture, it is closer to ethnic cleansing and should be considered as such, it is the destruction of something that is vital to our humanity it is the destruction of our being.
No, it is not ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is when you kill or remove a people from their land. Aboriginal half caste children who had links with both sides were taken into the European side because it was considered best for them. That this entailed suffering and trauma is without a doubt. It was not a policy which was carried out with enough compassion. But those children were not killed or sent to say Fiji ….. they were housed, fed and educated with the hope that they would join the greater community.
You said: If we can’t make this distinction than there is no basis for any human quality, like the Polish kid in the swimming pool, he was smashing something human in me, and may I add with hatred.
Do you see what I mean by Authenticity?
No, I don’t see what you mean by authenticity. Behind anger there is always fear. The sort of anger you describe was not personal. How could it be. It was not about you the human being or you the individual it was about this boy who was angry, frightened, confused, damaged or whatever.
You are upset because you believe he denied your humanity but unless you can see the humanity of that boy then you are doing the same thing as he did. I hold to the belief that people are more damaged than evil and more frightened than cruel.
You said: Can’t you acknowledge that I was born into a society that didn’t accept my humanity?
No I cannot. I can acknowledge that you were born into a society where some people, perhaps many, had difficulty accepting the presence of immigrants but that was not about you personally.
You said: Can you see the difference, on one hand you choose one set of symbols, but you’re rejected, and on the other hand you choose the alternative set of symbols and they don’t make sense.
Yes I can see that but I don’t see why it has to be absolutely one or the other. Surely you become you by weaving together strands of both. And, in a compassionate society, that is what we would encourage people in your position or those of the ‘stolen generation’ to do.
In the best of worlds and the best of processes we would have a combination of the best aspects of multiculturalism combined with an assimilative process. Each on its own, interpreted literally, is deeply flawed as we know from experience. But each has basic and admirable tenets which are worth maintaining.
You said: The aboriginal problem has been an on going problem for over two hundred years, and has Jenny pointed out, why haven’t they assimilated?
Well, some have but we don’t hear about them. It is important to remember that other historically recent colonizing nations have the same problem. The US, Canada and New Zealand for example face exactly the same issues as we do. Whatever has been done has not worked anywhere.
Part of it is that in times past the conquered peoples were killed or forced to assimilate. In the past few hundred years those attitudes began to dilute although the American settlers certainly put a lot of effort into trying to kill off their indigenous peoples, to a far greater degree than they did in Australia, Canada or NZ.
You said: I don’t agree with you here, I think with understanding we can avoid the mistakes of the past, the mistakes that have been the reason for this discussion.
You see my point is that if we don’t have a human vision, how can we have a human outcome?
I am not sure which bit you don’t agree with. I agree with you that understanding is all in order to avoid future mistakes and that is why we need to understand the societies in which the mistakes, as we define them now, arose.
You said: My view is no context or rationalization can justify a inhumane act, we may be able to understand the motives and the situation that caused the act but not excuse the act itself.
And as I said, to understand is not to condone. Rationalization when it is used to aid understanding is not an excuse. There is a difference between trying to rationalize something away and using ones capacity for rational thought to understand a situation and the acts committed in that situation. As someone who thinks it is important to understand I can only assume you use your rational capacity for thought, combined with your emotional intuition, to understand things. None of that amounts to excusing anything.
Alternatives to Multiculturalism and Assimialtion
This discussion is becoming quite long, and I think we should keep in mind the main themes, which to me are Indigenous Culture, the false alternatives of Multiculturalism and Assimilation, and a human reality.
David, thank you for your post, I appreciate your empathy, I cant add much at this point, only to say that you have stimulated me to look into other regions in the world where different cultures exist side by side as your wife has done.
Roslyn this is kind of getting long, hope you don’t mind, and in places I am probably loosing site of the overall structure I have spent a lot of time thinking of these issues in my own mind, so my thoughts are an ongoing project for me, so rather than try to force myself into some definitive final answer, I have decided to post warts and all.
Roslyn:
“Charles: I get the impression that your experiences as a migrant child were traumatic. It is irrelevant how particular those circumstances were and how particular your emotional and psychological resilience were, one can only sympathise with you.
You make a number of points to which I shall reply but I want also to say that I think it is difficult to quantify suffering, if only because there is so much of it about. I also feel it is difficult to entirely do away with discrimination. Even if we lived in a world where every migrant or migrant child were embraced with unconditional acceptance, there would still be children who were discriminated against. Sadly, this is part of our society and probably always will be. It used to be worse; we need to bear that in mind.
As a child I was discriminated against, harassed and humiliated because I was poor and the clothes I wore clearly demonstrated that fact. There were other children who were picked on because they were fat, plain, not clever, too clever, bad at sport or just different.
Kids can be cruel. I suspect that migrants are an 'easy target' if you like because often they 'look' different or talk differently or eat different things. No, none of it is right but I think we need to retain perspective by acknowledging that it was and is not just migrants who are discriminated against and so the discrimination, however painful, should not be taken personally.”
I think some re-focussing is in order.
My reasons for exposing part of myself, was not to shift the emphasis of this topic, and I am feeling very self-conscious that I am getting a disproportionate amount of attention I don’t deserve on such a serious topic.
We are discussing the destruction of a collective culture, the discrimination you point to is of a different magnitude. I have been trying to show the inadequacy of terms such as Multiculturalism and Assimilation in understanding the human condition. The members of the stolen generation went through a pain of a magnitude many times higher than the simple callousness that most children can experience and that most can out grow out of.
Something I wrote in the previous post will illustrate:
“I remember being in a swimming pool when and I was a child, maybe about 12, cant remember the exact details, but one thing I do remember is being smashed in the face, by another student and being called a wog. The person who did this was Polish, and his only claim to fame was that he had blonde hair and blue eyes.
Multiculturalism offered me no line of defence, because technically this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
I think you may have all missed my point, it was a Polish kid who smashed me in the face, that’s how conformity works, and my humanity didn’t matter.
Where did he get the idea that I was some how inferior?
If I call you fat, am I denigrating your humanity?
Does this mean your mother is inferior?
But if I call you wog, I am making a statement about your humanity.
Roslyn:
I originally wrote:
“You said: But that’s exactly the problem, Australia may have a multicultural policy on paper, but if institutions and power groups can create control mechanism from within that society, that can saturate the environment with the messages and cultural aspects that it would like engendered in the community, it is not multiculturalism but assimilation that will occur. “
Roslyn replied:
“But are you arguing against assimilation? You often do not seem to be.”
No, I am arguing for recognition of sociological conceptions that are prior to the terms multiculturalism and assimilation, David understood, read his response.
I am arguing about responsibility on a sociological level and recognition that there is a process where because of a set of cultural relationships within in any cultural time frame, dissonance will occur and psychological trauma will occur. This is not just about indigenous and ethnic minorities, this is also about the health of a society, this is also about understanding how we as a collective can be controlled and manipulated and how our health as individuals can suffer.
Roslyn:
“You said: Isolation is very difficult for most human beings, and from my experience, a person who under certain conditions chooses isolation has been forced by his society to search for a different reality that is dormant from within.
And this can be a source of strength. Whether you feel isolated or an 'outsider' because you are a migrant child or because you come from a poor family is irrelevant. It all feels the same. At best it has the positive aspect of pushing you to find a foundation within. I would add, some people are not 'programmed' to do this and so instead of being wounded, as I would consider myself to have been, they are damaged, sometimes severely. But the same circumstances may bring positive attributes to one personality and dangerously weaken another.”
Yes I agree with you, and the line I wrote almost wrote itself, not sure why, maybe my intuitions were close to something else.
Roslyn:
“You said: I would like simple acknowledgment of a human reality; I would like simple acknowledgment that Cultural Time is a real mechanism that operates in all human societies, and a mechanism that can be controlled to various degrees to affect the well being of the community.
What you would like is respect for all individuals regardless of race, creed or sex .... and I would add shape or wealth. In a civilized world this is what happens and, to be fair, it happens more now than it did fifty or a hundred years ago. But we still have a long way to go.”
But we can try to understand, and this is what concerns me, the topic at hand is the Australian Aboriginals, and how our failure in dealing with the problem, we have tried Multiculturalism and it failed, we have try Assimilation and it was even a bigger disaster, in my opinion the reason for the failure is that the concepts were wrong in the first place, that is what I have been trying to explain that these terms are not the main essence of the human condition, in away they deflect from the human condition.
To be honest, two parables from the bible that I remember as a child, recently came flooding to my consciousness, the first is the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the second is Jesus over turning the tables in the temples.
Think about these two simple parables, and they conceal some very deep and important truths. The notion of a Multicultural Society and the process of Assimilation
Convey no truth at all.
Roslyn:
“You said: See, that’s exactly the problem we have when we can’t distinguish conformity from authenticity, and it is a difficult thing to do, because of what I mentioned above, humans fear isolation.”
Roslyn replied:
"Yes, that is true and I think it is much more difficult for children who do not feel they really 'belong' to their parents culture, nor to the culture without. They have somehow fallen between a cultural 'crack' and must drag themselves up and find a way to bestride both.”
Yes Roslyn, cant you see that this is of a different order of magnitude than other forms of discrimination, we are talking about seeing your parents in pain, we are talking about seeing the humiliation of your parents and your culture, we are talking about a continuous discrimination that doesn’t stop when a child looses her pimples, when a child starts jogging and looses wait.
The stolen generation was about deep destructive trauma, the denigration and dispossession of culture, it is closer to ethnic cleansing and should be considered as such, it is the destruction of something that is vital to our humanity it is the destruction of our being.
If we can’t make this distinction than there is no basis for any human quality, like the Polish kid in the swimming pool, he was smashing something human in me, and may I add with hatred.
Do you see what I mean by Authenticity?
Roslyn:
"You said: the problem was the country I was born in didn’t accept me. It turned me into an abstraction, because it had difficulty accepting my humanity, rather than face up to the dissonance from within its own collective psyche, it externalised this dissonance into an abstract notion called multiculturalism. Do you understand?
I understand that your experiences severely wounded if not damaged you. Colin Wilson wrote a book many years ago called The Outsider. You might find it comforting. Perhaps you would not truly have belonged either even if your parents had not emigrated to Australia. Perhaps by your nature there is something of The Outsider in you. This can be a painful state, but it can also be a rewarding one. I don't think a country rejects an individual, as you seem to feel, but I do believe an individual can be so sensitive as to feel more rejected than he or she might truly be. At the end of the day, what really matters is not what our society thinks of us but what we think of ourselves. In truth, the judgements of a society are merely that.... judgements. And we have to be careful that we don't, when we feel victimised, whether by parents, society or individuals, cast ourselves as victim and 'find' in all we experience, yet more evidence that the world is 'against us."
Your focus on my statement is a valid one I feel, but not the only possible focus and it is not the one I intended.
Can’t you acknowledge that I was born into a society that didn’t accept my humanity?
I was the one who had to choose, from a conflicting set of symbols.
I am talking about a double bind, if I choose one set of symbols, let us say the Australian set of symbols I am rejected because I am not seen as an Australian, and lets be clear here, there is a big difference between being accepted and false acceptance, see Jenny’s questions concerning the invitation to dinner etc and on the other hand there are the symbols of my parents, the problem here is culture is dynamic and can be dead, the symbols of my parents out of context and many thousands of miles away from the original place of origin have no meaning.
Can you see the difference, on one hand you choose one set of symbols, but you’re rejected, and on the other hand you choose the alternative set of symbols and they don’t make sense.
I would ask you to think about this, it is quite hard to put into words.
I believe there is something to this that could help us understand why Multiculturalism and Assimilation are false alternatives.
Roslyn:
“Until we can forgive all those who have wronged us, or at least be at peace with all we have experienced, then we are trapped in the past. The only thing we can change is ourselves and changing the way we see the world is an important part of that.”
In theory I would agree, so how long till the Aboriginals forget the past? See I don’t think this is all there is to it, there is much more.
Roslyn:
"You said: Exactly. See above, the difference between the externalisations of the collective psyche of the dominant culture and the notions it invents to control the minorities, these notions are to achieve balance from within the dominant culture, and not to achieve balance from within the minority culture.
That is hardly surprising. Democracy is about the will of the majority and the dominant culture, understandably, will dominate. The important thing though about living in a democracy is that, while abiding by the law, we have great freedom in how we may choose to express ourselves and live our lives, no matter what the dominant culture does. At least we do as adults. Children do not have that freedom."
Again this is about how we focus, seen out of context there is nothing much wrong with what you are saying. But the context is about what happens to the psyche of an individual from within minority and indigenous cultures, so I don’t feel it is pertinent to the discussion.
Let’s keep our eyes and ears on the essential themes and motives, which are indigenous culture, the false alternatives of Multiculturalism and Assimilation, and my extrapolation of my experience as an ethnic minority in a Conformist Multicultural Society.
Roslyn: "In reality it is the children who truly inherit the benefits of their parents’ capacity to assimilate"
You said: Wrong, because you have to clearly differentiate authentic acceptance of cultural symbols from forced conformity out of fear.
No, it is not wrong. I used the term capacity to assimilate which takes into account the degrees to which parents may assimilate. What I said was children will inherit the benefits of that process but those benefits may be greater for some than for others. "
I still don’t agree, and maybe we are misunderstanding each others position.
My focus is the indigenous culture but I used my own experience and extrapolated my experience onto the indigenous issue.
The aboriginal problem has been an on going problem for over two hundred years, and has Jenny pointed out, why haven’t they assimilated?
So my point was that there is more to this word called Assimilation we have to deal with a totally different dimension, if we are to understand the real human problem, and not get bogged down with semantics.
Roslyn "This is why I feel great compassion for the children whose parents follow orthodox religions because they can never be truly assimilated into the society at large. But that is a digression."
You said: I don’t understand how this follows.
Well, we previously touched upon the ability of parents or the capacity of parents to assimilate. Orthodox religions, by their nature, need and encourage the loyalty of their followers to the exclusion of the greater society, to varying degrees. Orthodox religions recognise the importance of influencing young minds and have their own schools which tend to keep the children isolated from the greater community. (I happen to think there should be no religious schools before high school unless all religious schools accept all children whether they are of the same faith, another faith or no faith..... simply because this at least helps the children of the dominant religion in this instance to be exposed to the greater community.)
When children are brought up in an orthodox faith, that faith, whether it be Christian, Moslem, Jewish or Hindu will have rigid tenets of belief and behaviour and the children will be educated within the system, at their own schools, cut off from the greater community. The religion prevents the adults from assimilating because that is seen to weaken the faith and so the children move from the prison their parents inhabit to the prison of their school and are never able to truly participate in the greater society.
And that is why I feel sorry for them because, having been raised in a closed environment, they can never truly belong to the world outside of it. They can 'see' that world but they cannot be a part of it without rejecting their religious 'prison.' And in the rejecting of religion they are rejecting their parents and their extended family and community. That is very difficult for any child, or adult for that matter, to do.”
Ok Roslyn good points, I think I touched on this in an indirect way, when I said a culture can become irrelevant. Maybe I am digressing but why do people hold on to cultures that are simply out of tune to a different social environment?
Maybe this shows up the negative side of all religions, and shows up the positive side of Science as an approach to life, mind you, I am not criticizing belief and inner relationships of creativity and spirituality.
Roslyn:
“You said: Well exactly, but who in the hell made up this stupid ignorant racist term in the first place? If I see a person do I have to categorise him or her? If I do have to, categorise the person, who has the problem?
I agree. In the best of worlds we don't categorize but we do not live in the best of worlds. The categories are many and varied: migrant, local, indigenous, rich, poor, fat, thin, clever, dumb, beautiful, ugly, light-hearted, serious, funny, crass ...... this is what human beings do all the time. We differentiate. It only becomes a problem when the differentiation involves issues of superiority and inferiority and that only happens when people are fearful..... for whatever reason.”
Yes I agree.
My statement was badly thought out.
Roslyn:
“You said: On the basis of this category I was expected to behave a certain way; the reality was, I was insulted by being categorized in the first place, who are you? Can’t you see this is just another way of controlling people and depriving them of their humanity?”
You replied:
“I agree with you it is about controlling even in its weakest form. I think it is only about depriving people of their humanity in its strongest form and that is when there is a great deal of fear involved. “
Ok I agree.
Roslyn: "I don't happen to think there is any alternative to assimilation and policies which seek to limit it are not in the interests of the migrant or the society at large
You said: Yes there is an alternative: understanding human reality and understanding when you as a collective psyche are stealing the life force which is a person’s identity and dignity from under his or her feet.
I agree, and I think this 'alternative' was behind the idea of multiculturalism. I think people really did mean well. They really did think it was for the best as I am sure they did with the Stolen Generation. But, like religion and communism, two other wonderful ideas, multiculturalism did not take human nature into account. The ideal could only ever be an ideal because it was too easily corrupted by human instinct. "
I don’t agree with you here, I think with understanding we can avoid the mistakes of the past, the mistakes that have been the reason for this discussion.
You see my point is that if we don’t have a human vision, how can we have a human outcome?
Roslyn:"That is not to say people should be forced, merely gently helped and encouraged to make that terrifying leap beyond identity, into confusion, and back once more into identity."
You said: Without an understanding of a human reality, one not based on contextual rationalisations, but one based on the truth of human existence, you are forcing people, you are only rationalizing your own deeper fears if you don’t acknowledge this plain simple fact. Sorry: no excuses, no need for context, no need for rationalizations”.
I'm not quite sure which bit of what I said was rationalizing. And there is always a need for context."
As I replied in a previous post, if I put a knife through someone’s heart, this may have something to do with context, I could have been drunk, or in a state where I was beside myself with anger.
But does the context justify the act?
My view is no context or rationalization can justify a inhumane act, we may be able to understand the motives and the situation that caused the act but not excuse the act itself.
Many kinds of discrimination
Charles: I get the impression that your experiences as a migrant child were traumatic. It is irrelevant how particular those circumstances were and how particular your emotional and psychological resilience were, one can only sympathise with you.
You make a number of points to which I shall reply but I want also to say that I think it is difficult to quantify suffering, if only because there is so much of it about. I also feel it is difficult to entirely do away with discrimination. Even if we lived in a world where every migrant or migrant child were embraced with unconditional acceptance, there would still be children who were discriminated against. Sadly, this is part of our society and probably always will be. It used to be worse; we need to bear that in mind.
As a child I was discriminated against, harassed and humiliated because I was poor and the clothes I wore clearly demonstrated that fact. There were other children who were picked on because they were fat, plain, not clever, too clever, bad at sport or just different.
Kids can be cruel. I suspect that migrants are an 'easy target' if you like because often they 'look' different or talk differently or eat different things. No, none of it is right but I think we need to retain perspective by acknowledging that it was and is not just migrants who are discriminated against and so the discrimination, however painful, should not be taken personally.
You said: But that’s exactly the problem, Australia may have a multicultural policy on paper, but if institutions and power groups can create control mechanism from within that society, that can saturate the environment with the messages and cultural aspects that it would like engendered in the community, it is not multiculturalism but assimilation that will occur.
But are you arguing against assimilation? You often do not seem to be.
You said: Isolation is very difficult for most human beings, and from my experience, a person who under certain conditions chooses isolation has been forced by his society to search for a different reality that is dormant from within.
And this can be a source of strength. Whether you feel isolated or an 'outsider' because you are a migrant child or because you come from a poor family is irrelevant. It all feels the same. At best it has the positive aspect of pushing you to find a foundation within. I would add, some people are not 'programmed' to do this and so instead of being wounded, as I would consider myself to have been, they are damaged, sometimes severely. But the same circumstances may bring positive attributes to one personality and dangerously weaken another.
You said: I would like simple acknowledgment of a human reality; I would like simple acknowledgment that Cultural Time is a real mechanism that operates in all human societies, and a mechanism that can be controlled to various degrees to affect the well being of the community.
What you would like is respect for all individuals regardless of race, creed or sex .... and I would add shape or wealth. In a civilized world this is what happens and, to be fair, it happens more now than it did fifty or a hundred years ago. But we still have a long way to go.
You said: See, that’s exactly the problem we have when we can’t distinguish conformity from authenticity, and it is a difficult thing to do, because of what I mentioned above, humans fear isolation.
Yes, that is true and I think it is much more difficult for children who do not feel they really 'belong' to their parents culture, nor to the culture without. They have somehow fallen between a cultural 'crack' and must drag themselves up and find a way to bestride both.
You said: the problem was the country I was born in didn’t accept me. It turned me into an abstraction, because it had difficulty accepting my humanity, rather than face up to the dissonance from within its own collective psyche, it externalised this dissonance into an abstract notion called multiculturalism. Do you understand?
I understand that your experiences severely wounded if not damaged you. Colin Wilson wrote a book many years ago called The Outsider. You might find it comforting. Perhaps you would not truly have belonged either even if your parents had not emigrated to Australia. Perhaps by your nature there is something of The Outsider in you. This can be a painful state, but it can also be a rewarding one. I don't think a country rejects an individual, as you seem to feel, but I do believe an individual can be so sensitive as to feel more rejected than he or she might truly be. At the end of the day, what really matters is not what our society thinks of us but what we think of ourselves. In truth, the judgements of a society are merely that.... judgements. And we have to be careful that we don't, when we feel victimised, whether by parents, society or individuals, cast ourselves as victim and 'find' in all we experience, yet more evidence that the world is 'against us.'
Until we can forgive all those who have wronged us, or at least be at peace with all we have experienced, then we are trapped in the past. The only thing we can change is ourselves and changing the way we see the world is an important part of that.
You said: Exactly. See above, the difference between the externalisations of the collective psyche of the dominant culture and the notions it invents to control the minorities, these notions are to achieve balance from within the dominant culture, and not to achieve balance from within the minority culture.
That is hardly surprising. Democracy is about the will of the majority and the dominant culture, understandably, will dominate. The important thing though about living in a democracy is that, while abiding by the law, we have great freedom in how we may choose to express ourselves and live our lives, no matter what the dominant culture does. At least we do as adults. Children do not have that freedom.
Roslyn: "In reality it is the children who truly inherit the benefits of their parents’ capacity to assimilate"
You said: Wrong, because you have to clearly differentiate authentic acceptance of cultural symbols from forced conformity out of fear.
No, it is not wrong. I used the term capacity to assimilate which takes into account the degrees to which parents may assimilate. What I said was children will inherit the benefits of that process but those benefits may be greater for some than for others.
Roslyn: "This is why I feel great compassion for the children whose parents follow orthodox religions because they can never be truly assimilated into the society at large. But that is a digression."
You said: I don’t understand how this follows.
Well, we previously touched upon the ability of parents or the capacity of parents to assimilate. Orthodox religions, by their nature, need and encourage the loyalty of their followers to the exclusion of the greater society, to varying degrees. Orthodox religions recognise the importance of influencing young minds and have their own schools which tend to keep the children isolated from the greater community. (I happen to think there should be no religious schools before high school unless all religious schools accept all children whether they are of the same faith, another faith or no faith..... simply because this at least helps the children of the dominant religion in this instance to be exposed to the greater community.)
When children are brought up in an orthodox faith, that faith, whether it be Christian, Moslem, Jewish or Hindu will have rigid tenets of belief and behaviour and the children will be educated within the system, at their own schools, cut off from the greater community. The religion prevents the adults from assimilating because that is seen to weaken the faith and so the children move from the prison their parents inhabit to the prison of their school and are never able to truly participate in the greater society.
And that is why I feel sorry for them because, having been raised in a closed environment, they can never truly belong to the world outside of it. They can 'see' that world but they cannot be a part of it without rejecting their religious 'prison.' And in the rejecting of religion they are rejecting their parents and their extended family and community. That is very difficult for any child, or adult for that matter, to do.
You said: Well exactly, but who in the hell made up this stupid ignorant racist term in the first place? If I see a person do I have to categorise him or her? If I do have to, categorise the person, who has the problem?
I agree. In the best of worlds we don't categorize but we do not live in the best of worlds. The categories are many and varied: migrant, local, indigenous, rich, poor, fat, thin, clever, dumb, beautiful, ugly, light-hearted, serious, funny, crass ...... this is what human beings do all the time. We differentiate. It only becomes a problem when the differentiation involves issues of superiority and inferiority and that only happens when people are fearful..... for whatever reason.
You said: On the basis of this category I was expected to behave a certain way; the reality was, I was insulted by being categorized in the first place, who are you? Can’t you see this is just another way of controlling people and depriving them of their humanity?
I agree with you it is about controlling even in its weakest form. I think it is only about depriving people of their humanity in its strongest form and that is when there is a great deal of fear involved.
Roslyn: "I don't happen to think there is any alternative to assimilation and policies which seek to limit it are not in the interests of the migrant or the society at large
You said: Yes there is an alternative: understanding human reality and understanding when you as a collective psyche are stealing the life force which is a person’s identity and dignity from under his or her feet.
I agree, and I think this 'alternative' was behind the idea of multiculturalism. I think people really did mean well. They really did think it was for the best as I am sure they did with the Stolen Generation. But, like religion and communism, two other wonderful ideas, multiculturalism did not take human nature into account. The ideal could only ever be an ideal because it was too easily corrupted by human instinct.
Roslyn: "That is not to say people should be forced, merely gently helped and encouraged to make that terrifying leap beyond identity, into confusion, and back once more into identity."
You said: Without an understanding of a human reality, one not based on contextual rationalisations, but one based on the truth of human existence, you are forcing people, you are only rationalizing your own deeper fears if you don’t acknowledge this plain simple fact. Sorry: no excuses, no need for context, no need for rationalizations.
I'm not quite sure which bit of what I said was rationalizing. And there is always a need for context.
You said: I liken it to a dinosaur, who has to understand if he places his foot on me he will squash me to death, brute force either of the physical kind or of the manipulative subtle kind is not a fiction of my imagination.
As I said, you have clearly been traumatized by your experiences and while I am sure your reality was also experienced by others I doubt it was a universal experience.
You said: Yes, the world does move on, but not just for the object of your abstractions but also the world the observer of those abstractions inhabits. There is a difference
Quite right. Which is why it is so important for people to communicate, to share their views and perceptions and for all of us to have some understanding of the context which is relevant to the other, whether that context be physical, emotional or psychological.
Assimilation, multiculturalism and pluralism
Charles – thank you for your post, I found it very interesting. Have you thought about doing a piece for Webdiary? (If you have and I’ve missed it, I apologise).
I think you’ve raised a number of issues here, in quite an insightful way, and I can barely begin to respond to them.
Your comments resonate with me because my wife is of Indian origin, growing up in Australia since the age of five. She suffered racism at an early age, from teachers as well as fellow students, and it has left a deep wound. We have had many robust discussions about racism and multiculturalism in Australia and it has taken me some time (I’m slow) to realise that as a member of the dominant culture my view on multiculturalism is often way off the mark. Multiculturalism seems like a success here because we don’t have riots on the streets – Cronulla aside – but as indicated by your experiences, and those of many other children of immigrants from non-Anglo families (and of course indigenous), the reality is very different if you're at the sharp end.
I think the reality is closer to what you allude to in your statement:
“without an acknowledgement of the difference between conformity that is induced by fear of being isolated, and a true cultural independence that is based on the ability to stand alone in confidence and dignity based on a strong sense of identity, we have no way of differentiating multiculturalism from assimilation”.
My wife distinguishes between what we call ‘multiculturalism’ in Australia and the plurality that exists in countries like India and Indonesia. We don’t have anything like a plurality of cultures in Australia. The cultures are expected to be assimilate – not, as you note, on paper, but in reality. We ‘respect’ other cultures, just don’t wear your wacky clothes in public and make sure you speak English with your friends so you can’t say nasty things about us. Keep the food, but lose the culture, thanks very much. In a truly pluralistic country people from ‘other’ cultures would feel just as ‘Australian’ as the Anglos and would be just as comfortable walking around in their saris, headscarves, whatever. Doesn’t happen, for the most part.
My wife notes the gulf between how her mother is treated when she wears Western clothing and when she wears a sari. If she wears a sari, first of all people stare openly, like she’s a freak show. On top of that, white Australians speak to her as if she can’t speak a word of English (she’s fluent).
To be honest, I’ve surprised myself with the same assumptions: I meet a person of Asian appearance and I’m surprised when I hear a broad Australian accent. Why should I be, after decades of immigration from Asia? No wonder so many people of non-Anglo backgrounds say they feel like visitors in this country, even after living here for years. We treat them like visitors – often in subtle ways, but we do it nonetheless.
Recently I met a man of African origin who was a lawyer for some years in London. He went to Melbourne for an interview for a lawyer’s job but when he turned up it was assumed he’d applied for the secretary’s job. The law firm was distinctly cool towards him when they realised he was there for the lawyer’s job. He was shocked at how differently Australians responded to his black skin, compared to Britain (which of course has its own race issues). These are little things, perhaps, but indicative of how far Australia has to go. It’ll take decades, I think, and several Governments that don’t subscribe to the politics of division and xenophobia, like the current one.
Even guitarist John Butler, who is a white man of American origins, remembers being slammed up against walls in school – and singled out by teachers – for being a ‘yank’!!
We’re dealing with universal issues, of course – racism and prejudice is everywhere – but Australia is a curious place because we crow about ‘multiculturalism’. (Not John Howard, of course, but then he’s done more than anybody to return Australia to an assimilationist mindset). I think you’re right, in that ‘multiculturalism’ is more a concept than reality. Bear in mind that it came straight after the official end to decades of the White Australia policy, so it was an attempt to begin to come to terms with the fact that Australia has people from a variety of different ethnic and cultural origins. Australia is an infant in this regard, and a slow learner.
As you say, Charles, even if you have absolutely no intentions of asserting your cultural roots, you’re singled out anyway as a ‘wog’, or an ‘Abo’, or a ‘powerpoint’, or other charming term. It’s perhaps less blatant now than in the past, but I still see it around. You can’t win, in that situation, and I feel for anybody who has to go through it. I think Australia is very immature in this way.
I’ll just say in closing that as a fully-fledged member of the dominant culture (albeit with many reservations about it) I can’t imagine what you must have gone through as a child singled out as a ‘wog’. My wife has given me some insight into those kinds of experiences, and I am sorry you had to go through it. One day, hopefully, Australia will grow up.
Jenny, Roslyn and David
Even though I have concentrated on Roslyn’s post, I feel it is equally valid for anyone to respond if they so choose.
Roslyn: "Do you mean assimilation rather than multiculturalism? Multiculturalism, as practised in Australia, from my understanding anyway, did not encourage people to assimilate but rather to hold on to their cultural 'heritage'."
That may have been the intention; I have no real way of knowing the sincerity of the original multiculturalists. They may have been sincere but misguided or they may have understood what I have come to understand, and that is, culture is dynamic, without a process of genuine interaction rooted in real human transactions based on a time dimension that allows a germination process in consciousness, that is authentic, a culture cannot survive, the members of the minority are forced to assimilate.
Roslyn: "If you meant the impact that assimilation might have on people then to be honest, how can we know, since Australia has not had an assimilative policy for quite a few years and I doubt records were kept in our past history which might throw light upon it. Before we became more politically correct there was a basic assumption that if you immigrated to Australia you became an Australia and assimilated. It was an unspoken 'rule' if you like."
But that’s exactly the problem, Australia may have a multicultural policy on paper, but if institutions and power groups can create control mechanism from within that society, that can saturate the environment with the messages and cultural aspects that it would like engendered in the community, it is not multiculturalism but assimilation that will occur. Isolation is very difficult for most human beings, and from my experience, a person who under certain conditions chooses isolation has been forced by his society to search for a different reality that is dormant from within. So without an acknowledgement of the difference between conformity that is induced by fear of being isolated, and a true cultural independence that is based on the ability to stand alone in confidence and dignity based on a strong sense of identity, we have no way of differentiating multiculturalism from assimilation. You hit on a good point, about no records being kept. All I have are my intuitions and imagination, and without statistics how can I reach any conclusions, about the number of health-related issues, such as depression, suicide
Roslyn: "One supposes it was that way because it has always been that way throughout history and the only way that new nations have come into being."
I agree, but this is the crucial difference: why weren’t we told the truth? This may mean very little to people who are comfortable about the position in society and their place in the world, but for a person who has had his identity shattered, the most painful thing to endure is a lie. It is bad enough to have to feel disorientated from lack of identity, and it is doubly painful not to know why you feel disorientated. I remember being in a swimming pool when and I was a child, maybe about 12, can’t remember the exact details, but one thing I do remember is being smashed in the face by another student and being called a wog. The person who did this was Polish, and his only claim to fame was that he had blonde hair and blue eyes. Multiculturalism offered me no line of defence, because technically this wasn’t supposed to happen.
Roslyn: "But, to answer your question, presuming you meant assimilation as to the impact that loss of identity and or dignity might have. I would say it is highly likely that some immigrants committed suicide because of what they experienced but I would also guess that most of those who could not or would not assimilate simply went home."
Yes, except I was born here in Australia
Roslyn: "Assimilation must by its nature involve a process where one loses an old identity in order to create a new one. "
I accept this and actually embrace it, because without it culture is a dead process practised by necrophiliacs, and I use this term in the sense of a people who cannot regenerate and transcend the symbols that make up their culture. In other words, they fall in love with dead objects.
Roslyn: "Of course there would be for some people, depending upon how developed their ego is, a sense of loss of dignity. Do a loss of identity and a loss of dignity push one toward suicide? I don't think so, or the pages of history would have been strewn with the suicides of women who were denied 'identity and dignity' for centuries. "
I didn’t mean to suggest that in all cases a loss of identity and dignity drive a person to suicide, and I am not quite sure of how to correlate the issues of gender identity and cultural identity. But my main reason for bringing this up in this thread on indigenous issues is to point out that all human beings have a relationship to identity and that this identity can be controlled via the social structures of a society to either enhance the process of a healthy identity or to destroy the process of a healthy identity. I would like simple acknowledgment of a human reality; I would like simple acknowledgment that Cultural Time is a real mechanism that operates in all human societies, and a mechanism that can be controlled to various degrees to affect the well being of the community.
Roslyn: "Could a loss of identity or dignity push a vulnerable person toward suicide? Of course. But could this same person have been pushed toward suicide if they had remained in their own country? Of course. Are you arguing against assimilation? Just what do you believe are the alternatives?"
See, that’s exactly the problem we have when we can’t distinguish conformity from authenticity, and it is a difficult thing to do, because of what I mentioned above, humans fear isolation. What I am saying may seem a surprise to you, but the problem is that multiculturalism forces you into a stereotype: on the one hand you are born into a social environment with kangaroos, koalas, fish and chips or whatever forms the symbols of that culture and on the other hand you have the symbols of your parents’ culture, which you have no direct experience off. So what happens is this. It is the dominant society that stereotypes you into a set of symbols and than forces you to accept multiculturalism, whereas for me accepting the country I was born in was not a problem, the problem was the country I was born in didn’t accept me. It turned me into an abstraction, because it had difficulty accepting my humanity, rather than face up to the dissonance from within its own collective psyche, it externalised this dissonance into an abstract notion called multiculturalism. Do you understand?
Roslyn: "I would not exist as an Australian if dozens of my ancestors had not assimilated. Most of us would not. The process of adapting to a new country and assimilating is hard but not to do so leaves one in limbo, belonging nowhere. "
Exactly. See above, the difference between the externalisations of the collective psyche of the dominant culture and the notions it invents to control the minorities, these notions are to achieve balance from within the dominant culture, and not to achieve balance from within the minority culture.
Roslyn: "In reality it is the children who truly inherit the benefits of their parents’ capacity to assimilate"
Wrong, because you have to clearly differentiate authentic acceptance of cultural symbols from forced conformity out of fear. Yes, with time, maybe generations, the dissonance will achieve some kind of consonance, and no one will ever even understand what all the fuss was about.
Roslyn: "This is why I feel great compassion for the children whose parents follow orthodox religions because they can never be truly assimilated into the society at large. But that is a digression."
I don’t understand how this follows
Roslyn: "I guess my view is that multiculturalism was flawed because immigrants do not need to be encouraged to hold on to their culture, they will do that instinctively...... they need to be encouraged to let go of it and embrace a new one. Of course they will retain some aspects of their culture, hopefully the best aspects, and that will be stirred into the pot which is Australian society, making it, as we know, a varied and interesting mix of cultures."
I think you are coming to my side here, but without having a deeper awareness of why.
Roslyn: "Without assimilation I would need to choose whether or not I should be Greek, English, Scottish, German or Danish and I would need to choose between various religions including Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran and Judaism. With assimilation I am simply an Australian, with no religion but interested in spirituality and fascinated with the many cultural strands which make up my past."
Well exactly, but who in the hell made up this stupid ignorant racist term in the first place? If I see a person do I have to categorise him or her? If I do have to, categorise the person, who has the problem? The person being categorized, or the person doing the categorizing. Can’t you see, I never had any problems in the first place, I was born here, I didn’t categorize myself, you did. On the basis of this category I was expected to behave a certain way; the reality was, I was insulted by being categorized in the first place, who are you? Can’t you see this is just another way of controlling people and depriving them of their humanity?
Roslyn: "I don't happen to think there is any alternative to assimilation and policies which seek to limit it are not in the interests of the migrant or the society at large
Yes there is an alternative: understanding human reality and understanding when you as a collective psyche are stealing the life force which is a person’s identity and dignity from under his or her feet.
Roslyn: "That is not to say people should be forced, merely gently helped and encouraged to make that terrifying leap beyond identity, into confusion, and back once more into identity."
Without an understanding of a human reality, one not based on contextual rationalisations, but one based on the truth of human existence, you are forcing people, you are only rationalizing your own deeper fears if you don’t acknowledge this plain simple fact. Sorry: no excuses, no need for context, no need for rationalizations.
Roslyn: "I liken it to a crab, which, when it grows too 'large' for its shell, must cast it off and remain vulnerable, easily hurt, easily killed, and unprotected, until at last a new shell grows to protect its larger self."
I liken it to a dinosaur, who has to understand if he places his foot on me he will squash me to death, brute force either of the physical kind or of the manipulative subtle kind is not a fiction of my imagination.
Roslyn: "That I think is what being a migrant is about. When you leave what you know, you must, by necessity, become 'larger' than you have been and you will need, in time, a new 'shell.' I have touched upon this in my experience of living in other countries for many years .... but I would add, touched upon. It is so much harder for those who know they will not go back. Interestingly, more often than not, when migrants do return to their old country they find it is nothing at all like what they left. The world has moved on, their country has grown and it too has grown a new 'shell.'"
Yes, the world does move on, but not just for the object of your abstractions but also the world the observer of those abstractions inhabits. There is a difference
Jenny: "But I think on this thread we are trying to address the issues that face our indigenous people and the lack of progress in assisting them to find a meaningful place for themselves in the Australian society as it is today. If impoverished immigrants from war-torn Vietnam can carve out a future for themselves in our midst and with us, then why not our indigenous people? "
Yes, I agree with you, and I didn’t mean to steal the topic, but in my own mind there are some underlying connections. If I can use your example, impoverished immigrants who come here of their own free will, and I can almost count my own parents here, are not the same thing as an indigenous culture that was destroyed by the society that wants to assimilate them. But you’re right and I do not wish to draw the parallels too closely, only to find an underlying meaning to our common humanity
Jenny: "If assimilation as opposed to multiculturalism is the best possible outcome, then why has it simply not just happened? You cannot force assimilation. As I wrote earlier, we have a virtual voluntary apartheid situation in many areas where there is a large indigenous population. Why is that so?"
I agree, and it’s a great question. Maybe it’s because numerically they have no power. I believe identity and power are correlated. When I was a child growing up in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, the school playground consisted of just about everyone you could think of at that time. Greeks, Italians, English, Irish etc That was my world I knew no different. But Australian Aboriginals!!!! Who were they? I had no direct experience, and they might as well have been from another universe. Jenny, I really don’t know what the exact difference is, but I do know my own experience of feeling like an object in someone else’s presence. I never felt this when I was very young like before the age of 10, but when all this crap about wogs, ethnic minorities, multicultural etc came into my mind, my response was, what is all this crap, I am me, simply me. Why do I need to be how you see me? First wog has such an ugly physical hit to it. Second, ethnic, what the hell, I was born here, why am I ethnic? Third minority, minority compared to what!! I am only giving how I thought about things in my own mind. Just a simple look from a person can still trigger these thoughts and they are hard to get rid off. Everyone’s different. Not all so-called ethnics would feel it the same way. But everyone’s human in the end, so what hurts me probably hurts you, we just don’t have the same experiences. All I can say is the obvious, if the alienation of the Australian aboriginal was not here before we all got here, than the source of the problem is obvious, as Phil so eloquently put it, it is US.
Jenny: "The one thing that nobody ever dares say in this or any other forum is that most white families would not invite an aboriginal family into their home if you paid them. Oh, they will go and march across bridges, scream for Howard to say Sorry and all that. But how often do they actually sit down to dine with an aboriginal family at their table? And if the answer is never, then why is that so?"
Great question, Jenny, and I appreciate your honesty here, it rings very true. Maybe my experiences of being an object in the eyes of a necrophiliac culture, a culture that reduces me to a thing that is observed an object with no intrinsic life of its own, an object that has no right to determine itself, gives the key to the real truth. Jenny you can’t see these things, and we are not always conscious of them, but they are there, and they make a human reality. Any person who has been forced to look into themselves will instantly sense it, even if it is beyond conscious awareness. You have really answered your own question; let’s face it because they are not fully human. Human beings have the capacity to dehumanize, don’t know why, I don’t know if a frog can defroganize another frog.
Jenny: "Yes Charles, when a race of people loses their land, their culture, their language, their food supply, their health, and their society begins to break down under the weight of cultural influences totally alien to it, then the dignity, social cohesion and pride of that race of people is going to take a mortal blow. Human history is littered with such. The outcome for the conquered or dispossessed peoples is and was either total slaughter, gradual assimilation, or life as a disadvantaged, disempowered, and oppressed minority."
Yes they got it with the lot.
Jenny: "To fully assimilate all barriers to assimilation have to break down. When that happens, one thing you will see is that marriage and cohabitation between conquered and conqueror becomes as much a norm as an exception. That has not happened in Australia as far as I can see."
It will happen when they achieve humanization in the dominant collective psyche, and I mean real humanization not that of a necrophiliac relationship.
Jenny: "How many of your friends, your children, or the children of your friends have married into or cohabit with partners from aboriginal families? I suggest that the answer, for the vast majority of us, is none."
Yes but remember, for some reason all wogs, dagoes, or whatever are all thrown into one big multicultural society, but the Australian aboriginal goes it alone. Like my schoolyard experience. So if an Australian marries a German, Polish, Italian or whatever, its like she’s married one sub-category, but if she marries an aboriginal its like a different sub-category altogether. I have thought about this before and written here about it, why is there a supposed multicultural society with a totally different sub-category for the original indigenous? Is our use of language and categories keeping them separate from all of us?
Jenny: "Why don't we start getting the real issue on the table? And ask ourselves WHY, and be prepared to answer that honestly. Then and only then might some progress be made in breaking down the apartheid I see around me in the western country towns. And no doubt, it is the same in places like Redfern."
Yes, you are asking the right truthful questions, because you have started to look truthfully into the dominant collective psyche. God I hate psychology, but what else is there? Jenny, let me ask you, without drawing too close a parallel, don’t you think that multiculturalism as I experience it and the indigenous issues are closer than you think in essence? In other words, there is a peculiar relationship to a dominant culture and how it sees the other? Do you think there is some validity to thinking in terms of Cultural Time and dissonance? And that this would unify a single human experience as opposed to categories that for the most part are an invention of the dominant group?
Submitted by David Curry on November 25, 2006 - 11:33pm. Charles - happy to provide an answer - and a truthful one - but like Roslyn and Jenny I'm not sure what you're driving at. If you are referring to the deep trauma many of the stolen generation suffered from been ripped from their mother's arms and then growing up between cultures ('nowhere people'), then you'll get no argument from me. It was terrible. Is that what you're referring to?
Feelings of rejection
Charles: I have read with interest what you, Roslyn and David have said here. A lot of ground is covered and I can agree with much of what was said but not all.
I agree with Roslyn on the points she makes about the capacity for some people to hurt others, and not only on the basis of implied inferiority of their culture or race. Many people can be very cruel, and, at times, children more so than adults as they do not have the checks and balances on their attitudes and behaviours that maturity hopefully brings. Nor do they have the capacity to perceive the damage they do. Clearly education has an important role to play in fostering tolerance and understanding at an early age.
You seem to have had unfortunate experiences in childhood which have left a lasting negative effect on you. That is sad as it could have been so different had there been mechanisms for helping you deal with that at the time. But we did not have school counsellors in those days, and I am sure many immigrants and children of immigrants share your negative experiences, but not all. I hope we have become more tolerant since that time, but I fear we are regressing now with all this hostility to Muslim people.
I recall vividly the headmaster in my country town primary school calling a special assembly. I was around 8 at the time and the children there were from families long resident in Australia, and all white of course. He told us all that on the following Monday two new children would be starting at the school, but that they did not speak English. He told us we were not to stare, and we were to be friendly even though we would not be able to understand them. Of course, kids being kids, we did stare, but only briefly and soon those children were totally accepted. So that headmaster gave us all an early lesson in tolerance of difference. They were as I recall from Yugoslavia which to us kids might as well have been the moon for all we knew!
Interestingly, although there was a large aboriginal community in the district, not one aboriginal child was in the school, and we never met or played with those children. Apartheid was well and truly established by then and prevails to this day, whether we like to admit it or not. Imagine how much good that headmaster could have done if there had been a policy of getting those children into school.
I do not agree with Roslyn about orthodox religions. I grew up in a very Christian home, and at age ten was put in a religious school. I joined a religious fellowship group in late teens and I continue in my church, fairly low key I admit, but it is still very important to me. Some here call me deluded for being a believer and some even try to put me down for being so. Others try all sorts of intellectual argument to show me how wrong I am, but it all rolls off my back. I do not feel that my religion isolates me in any way at all, nor do I feel discriminated against here because of it. Of course that would not hold true for all those of religious faith, and discrimination on the basis of religion is going to be a big issue in our society for quite some time now.
You ask me, Charles: "Without drawing too close a parallel, don’t you think that multiculturalism as I experience it and the indigenous issues are closer than you think in essence? In other words, there is a peculiar relationship to a dominant culture and how it sees the other? Do you think there is some validity to thinking in terms of Cultural Time and dissonance? And that this would unify a single human experience as opposed to categories that for the most part are an invention of the dominant group?
To be honest I find those questions to be far too abstract. .
I am sure the feelings of rejection you had are similar to those anyone would feel in the situation you faced. And that goes for our indigenous people as well. But while you were born of, I assume, immigrant parents who at least elected to come to this country with a desire to assimilate, our indigenous people were treated as an inferior race, not even worth counting as part of the population until the 60s. I think it is one thing to be discriminated against because of ignorance. Ignorance can be addressed. But when a people are treated almost like vermin it is far far worse. That has taken some getting over and there is a long way to go yet.
The impression I get is that many of our indigenous people have no interest in multiculturalism and probably no understanding of what it is even supposed to mean, let alone any desire to assimilate into the white community. So no, I think there are some different issues there and I do not accept that the problem as Phil puts it is just US.
I am sorry I do not have time to pursue the discussion here, as I am off interstate next week, then back to the farm, with all the hubbub of this time of the year about to hit. Cheers anyway.
On growing new 'shells'
Charles: You may need to elaborate on the point you are seeking to make as I am not sure I understand quite from whence you come.
You said: Have there been any victims of Australia’s Multiculturalism? People, who could not assimilate, people who committed suicide because they had lost their identity and dignity, people who were given no choice at all of a decent life. I don’t think I am being totally off topic here, because the main theme for me is about loss of identity and dignity and the causes and consequences of that loss.
Do you mean assimilation rather than multiculturalism? Multiculturalism, as practised in Australia, from my understanding anyway, did not encourage people to assimilate but rather to hold on to their cultural 'heritage'.
If you meant the impact that assimilation might have on people then to be honest, how can we know, since Australia has not had an assimilative policy for quite a few years and I doubt records were kept in our past history which might throw light upon it. Before we became more politically correct there was a basic assumption that if you immigrated to Australia you became an Australia and assimilated. It was an unspoken 'rule' if you like.
One supposes it was that way because it has always been that way throughout history and the only way that new nations have come into being.
But, to answer your question, presuming you meant assimilation as to the impact that loss of identity and or dignity might have. I would say it is highly likely that some immigrants committed suicide because of what they experienced but I would also guess that most of those who could not or would not assimilate simply went home.
Assimilation must by its nature involve a process where one loses an old identity in order to create a new one. Of course there would be for some people, depending upon how developed their ego is, a sense of loss of dignity. Do a loss of identity and a loss of dignity push one toward suicide? I don't think so, or the pages of history would have been strewn with the suicides of women who were denied 'identity and dignity' for centuries.
Could a loss of identity or dignity push a vulnerable person toward suicide? Of course. But could this same person have been pushed toward suicide if they had remained in their own country? Of course.
Are you arguing against assimilation? Just what do you believe are the alternatives?
I would not exist as an Australian if dozens of my ancestors had not assimilated. Most of us would not. The process of adapting to a new country and assimilating is hard but not to do so leaves one in limbo, belonging nowhere. In reality it is the children who truly inherit the benefits of their parents’ capacity to assimilate. This is why I feel great compassion for the children whose parents follow orthodox religions because they can never be truly assimilated into the society at large. But that is a digression.
I guess my view is that multiculturalism was flawed because immigrants do not need to be encouraged to hold on to their culture, they will do that instinctively...... they need to be encouraged to let go of it and embrace a new one. Of course they will retain some aspects of their culture, hopefully the best aspects, and that will be stirred into the pot which is Australian society, making it, as we know, a varied and interesting mix of cultures.
Without assimilation I would need to choose whether or not I should be Greek, English, Scottish, German or Danish and I would need to choose between various religions including Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran and Judaism.
With assimilation I am simply an Australian, with no religion but interested in spirituality and fascinated with the many cultural strands which make up my past.
I don't happen to think there is any alternative to assimilation and policies which seek to limit it are not in the interests of the migrant or the society at large. That is not to say people should be forced, merely gently helped and encouraged to make that terrifying leap beyond identity, into confusion, and back once more into identity.
I liken it to a crab, which, when it grows too 'large' for its shell, must cast it off and remain vulnerable, easily hurt, easily killed, and unprotected, until at last a new shell grows to protect its larger self.
That I think is what being a migrant is about. When you leave what you know, you must, by necessity, become 'larger' than you have been and you will need, in time, a new 'shell.' I have touched upon this in my experience of living in other countries for many years .... but I would add, touched upon. It is so much harder for those who know they will not go back.
Interestingly, more often than not, when migrants do return to their old country they find it is nothing at all like what they left. The world has moved on, their country has grown and it too has grown a new 'shell.'
Question
So let me ask one last question, and I would appreciate an answer, I don’t think that’s asking too much, and I would appreciate that the three people taking part in this discussion do me the courtesy of replying truthfully.
Jenny, Roslyn, David:.
Have there been any victims of Australia’s Multiculturalism?
People, who could not assimilate, people who committed suicide because they had lost their identity and dignity, people who were given no choice at all of a decent life.
I don’t think I am being totally off topic here, because the main theme for me is about loss of identity and dignity and the causes and consequences of that loss
Please clarify the question
Charles - happy to provide an answer - and a truthful one - but like Roslyn and Jenny I'm not sure what you're driving at. If you are referring to the deep trauma many of the stolen generation suffered from been ripped from their mother's arms and then growing up between cultures ('nowhere people'), then you'll get no argument from me. It was terrible.
Is that what you're referring to?
What is the real issue
Charles: I, like Roslyn, am not sure what you are suggesting or asking here and I agree with much of what she has written about assimilation as opposed to multiculturalism. But having been out in the heat most of today I am too tired to wade through what has been said on this thread since I last posted a week or so ago.
Except for the indigenous population, all Australians since 1788 are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants to this country. The longer one's family has been here the greater one's ethnic mix, which surely tells us something about our capacity for integration and assimilation.
Since the end of the white Australia policy we have people from most corners of the earth, and many children of my friends are now married to young immigrants from Asian countries – something almost unheard of in my parents' generation. So assimilation continues and the ethnic mix of our population has widened considerably in the last thirty or so years.
But I think on this thread we are trying to address the issues that face our indigenous people and the lack of progress in assisting them to find a meaningful place for themselves in the Australian society as it is today. If impoverished immigrants from war-torn Vietnam can carve out a future for themselves in our midst and with us, then why not our indigenous people?
If assimilation as opposed to multiculturalism is the best possible outcome, then why has it simply not just happened? You cannot force assimilation. As I wrote earlier, we have a virtual voluntary apartheid situation in many areas where there is a large indigenous population. Why is that so?
The one thing that nobody ever dares say in this or any other forum is that most white families would not invite an aboriginal family into their home if you paid them. Oh, they will go and march across bridges, scream for Howard to say Sorry and all that. But how often do they actually sit down to dine with an aboriginal family at their table? And if the answer is never, then why is that so?
Yes Charles, when a race of people loses their land, their culture, their language, their food supply, their health, and their society begins to break down under the weight of cultural influences totally alien to it, then the dignity, social cohesion and pride of that race of people is going to take a mortal blow. Human history is littered with such. The outcome for the conquered or dispossessed peoples is and was either total slaughter, gradual assimilation, or life as a disadvantaged, disempowered, and oppressed minority.
To fully assimilate all barriers to assimilation have to break down. When that happens, one thing you will see is that marriage and cohabitation between conquered and conqueror becomes as much a norm as an exception. That has not happened in Australia as far as I can see.
How many of your friends, your children, or the children of your friends have married into or cohabit with partners from aboriginal families? I suggest that the answer, for the vast majority of us, is none.
Why don't we start getting the real issue on the table? And ask ourselves WHY, and be prepared to answer that honestly. Then and only then might some progress be made in breaking down the apartheid I see around me in the western country towns. And no doubt, it is the same in places like Redfern.
What is good?
On the same side
David: I agree with your position completely in regard to the Howard Governments responsibility and its hypocrisy and double standards.
On the compensation issue I have less problem with compensation being paid to individuals who suffered than I do with it being paid to their descendants or relatives. This is where it gets tricky. But I don't have a fixed view on it. If such things are done sensibly then there will be less abuse.
And if it can be proven that the 'mistreatment' brought about the premature death of an individual and causes hardship and suffering to his or her family, particularly children, then clearly compensation of some sort is due to them.
It is obviously easy to ascertain such things where physical illness is involved, as it is in the James Hardie case, than where mental or emotional illness is involved, as it may be with the stolen generation.
But I think in essence we are on the same side.
Suffering as a commodity
David: I think accountability, or rather assessing accountability, is difficult. When I said we did not execute this wrong we inherited it I meant it literally. I was most certainly not involved as a voter in this process and neither were many Australians, a. because they were not even here, or b. because they were not old enough.
I suppose my view is that as an Australian I inherit the best and the worst of my nation and to that degree I am accountable as an adult Australian for what I do to correct past wrongs or to prevent future ones.
But just as I am not literally accountable for any wrong done by my parents or grandparents, so I don't feel literally accountable for wrongs done by my country.
This does not mean that as an Australian citizen I am not responsible in some way, and as I said in the previous post, admitting responsibility symbolically as a citizen of a nation, or as the Government of a nation, is important and is part of a healing process.
I don't happen to agree with Dodson's position. I think as Australians we need to explore our history and acknowledge past wrongs and if those wrongs are creating suffering still we need to look at one can be done to heal that suffering but I don't consider myself responsible for what was done in the past any more than I consider Germans who were children during the Nazi era, or who have been born since, to be 'responsible' for what was done by their country.
The German nation accepted, as it should, responsibility for those terrible wrongs and sought to compensate and that no doubt had an impact on future generations which meant that whether they were involved or not they 'shouldered responsibility.' They 'inherited' if you like their nation's history just as we have done with our own history.
But I accept responsibility in a general, more symbolic sense, as an Australian citizen, not as an individual which was what I meant. I think it is very difficult holding people accountable, or suggesting they should feel accountable, for wrongs done long ago, even if those wrongs have impacted upon future generations.
I, like many Australians, am the result of a mixture of immigrants, many of whom suffered greatly through persecution in the lands that they left. I suppose I wonder how long does one hold onto suffering and how much more will one hold onto it when it is easier for old wrongs to be held accountable. I, like many others, can do nothing about the suffering of my ancestors in Germany, Greece and England for instance...... but suffering it was and it impacted upon my ancestors and I am sure, was 'handed down,' in some way.
So where does one stop? My view is that the wrong which constituted the 'stolen generation' should be fully acknowledged and it is the responsibility of the government to apologise for wrongs done by previous governments. As an Australian, and as a voter, I have a responsibility to ensure that is done but I take the responsibility no further.
And as I said before, I am not sure that financial compensation is a good idea because it turns suffering into a commodity.
Roslyn – I think we
Roslyn – I think we agree that the Howard Government had – and still has - a responsibility to apologise to the Aboriginal people, on behalf of the Government institutions he represents, for the policies that led to the stolen generation.
However, I think Dodson’s anger was understandable because Howard has always referred to the stolen generation as if it happened centuries ago. It didn’t, ithappened within living memory and the consequences are very much in the present.
As I said in the article, Howard applies a double standard: he chastises the Japanese for not having apologised for World War II atrocities, but when it comes to Aborigines we should look forward, not back. Many Australians express a similar sentiment, arguing they have no responsibility for things that happened “two hundred years ago”. But as the stolen generation illustrates, gross injustices have been committed against Aborigines until very recently.
My own view on financial compensation is that it is a reasonable way of applying justice. Of course there are people who make frivolous claims, but to my mind, justice is seen to be done when an institution or organisation is forced to pay compensation to an individual they have been proved to have harmed in some way. The offending institution is punished and the victim is compensated. Let’s face it, if compensation wasn’t payable under law for breaching duty of care etc. it would happen a lot more often.
Surely justice demands compensation, for example, for the poor buggers who worked for James Hardie who are now debilitated from asbestosis and other nasty diseases – if they’re still alive? How else would you apply justice? Given that the impact on the victim is often financial – loss of income, medical costs etc. – money is surely the most appropriate form of compensation.
That’s my twenty cents, anyway.
Reality
Why are Corporate Racist Multiculturalism, and the racist treatment of the indigenous people, not to mention the corporate racist exploitation of the third world kept in separate air tight containers?
What does everyone have to hide?
Come on lets get into some truth, not rationalisations.
The Australian social scene has been very skilfully manufactured by the corporate sector by controlling the debate on both sides of the political spectrum. This is very easy to do, in a democratic fascist corporate state that controls all avenues of power and can manufacture consent by a collusive control of all the necessary power structures needed to saturate the social environment with the necessary time and space for the messages to enter the social unconscious, the vacuum of a one party state is filled by cleverly chosen candidates that have learnt to unconsciously express the wishes of the corporate state, this gives the necessary illusion of plurality and acts as a pacifier and controller of the victims of a psychology that does not take any consideration of Cultural Time.
It has set up a honary White system of Social Control, where it can control the assimilation of the ethnic minorities.
It has managed to do this for the simple reason that it has full control of all the necessary institutions.
But what our racist corporate sector has not managed to do is control the pain and loss of the identity and the futility of existence that it has engendered in the hearts of its victims, its victims are just collateral damage, swept underneath the carpet and rationalised away.
Its victims are reduced to a paradigm of institutionalised corporate thought process’s that have become the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry.
1- Corporate Multiculturalism is an institutionalised manufactured lie, because all culture is dynamic and requires a life giving nurturing approach, not a necrophiliac relationship based on the control of power and identity.
2- The indigenous issue is part of the exact same problem; it is not a separate issue.
3- How do you isolate a social structure based on mass conformity from the issue of identity?
4- Multiculturalism fulfils the need of a racist necrophiliac culture to retain its class structure and avoid any challenges to its established order and power relations.
5- Cultural Time would force a life giving and truthful reality that would be forced to take into account a human reality that is not based on exploitation. It would also free its victims from the institutionalised paradigms of control that have become the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry.
6- The corporate state sector has to be made accountable for its crime, both in terms of its foreign policy and its relationship to its domestic populations.
The issue of context gets us
The issue of context gets us nowhere in my opinion, because you can rationalise just about anything.
If I stick a knife into someone’s heart both physically and symbolically, does this have anything to do with context?
Nazi Germany happened because of Socio-economic and historical context, does that justify the actions of Germany?
The west has plundered the third world for a long time now, yet all I hear is intellectual rationalisations, and let’s face it, most of this thread is exactly the same, just rationalisations.
Rationalisations are good value, because it gives one the feeling of at least trying to understand and solve the problem, and human beings have a propensity to self deception.
The facts are the aboriginal people are a minority with no power in the overall scheme of things; it’s a cruel fact and also a reality.
Identity and Power go hand in hand, how can a minority have power and identity from within a dominant class structure based on materialism?
To talk of aboriginal spirituality and assimilation into a dominant material class is just more rationalisation.
The facts are that the history of the west or any other major power was based on conquest, you can choose to forget this truth, but this forgetting is part of the luxury of the power to rationalise away the truth.
On human suffering and money
David: Yes, I suspect we agree more than disagree. I think we are debating degrees rather than the substance.
There are so many things which would not happen in TBOW (the best of worlds) but of course, we don't have that 'world' and have never had it.
I sympathise enormously with the suffering of those children who were removed under the policy which has become known as 'the stolen generation,' but I am enough of a realist, or a cynic, to know that such things can also be manipulated.
I think it is a great pity that the Howard Government has not been able to say sorry, or a few sorries, for things which were done in the past. And I know the argument is that Sorry brings legal responsibility but I don't hold with that. I think Sorry as a symbol can go a long way and I am sure that lawyers can also find their way around any 'legalities' attached to it.
I am not sure I agree with paying 'compensation' to those wronged because it encourages victimhood but I am not saying I am opposed to it either. I really do not know. I guess if you are going to pay compensation to one lot of victims then you have to pay it to everyone who has been victimised in some way whether it be by government, church, society or individuals. Maybe we do. I do not know how much compensation has been paid by churches to their victims.
Anyway, like most things in life there are pluses and minuses with all of this and anything can become an 'industry' if it is seen to have financial benefits. And that is a pity because that detracts from the injustice itself. I am sure some Australians, maybe many, think the Stolen Generation issue has been magnified because it brings financial benefit and I guess that is why I prefer to see expressions of sorrow rather than monetary payment. After all, we did not execute this wrong..... we inherited it. I doubt that many people would want to pay for something their grandfather did, or father even, although expressing sorrow for a wrong committed by an ancestor may well be a part of a healing process.
I think the wrongs inherent in the policy which created the 'stolen generation' should be addressed ..... I just don't want to see them turned into a commodity. I am not saying that has happened although I think there must, by the very nature of it all, be some element of that involved.
You said: However, as the stolen generation, and perhaps even the sperm donor generation have illustrated, being in touch with our biological and cultural roots is fundamentally important to our sense of identity and wellbeing. Under the absorption model, at least, children were denied both, for spurious reasons.
I could not agree with you more. I think this aspect alone enhanced any capacity for injustice and wrong which the policy may have had.
It is like a lot of things, it is not so much WHAT you do but HOW you do it. If those children who were considered to be better off being removed had been encouraged to retain contact and respect for their Aboriginal heritage along with their European heritage then it would have involved less suffering. But I suspect at the time, most of those involved in the removal were so appalled by aspects of the primitive Aboriginal life, and there were cruel and negative aspects along with the positive and admirable, that they truly believed it was in the best interests for the child to be removed totally.
It does not make it right but I suspect there was also a lot of fear that if the children were not isolated they would somehow be drawn back into that 'primitive' existence. People of the time were more religious and I am sure that had an impact in how they 'saw' Aborigines..... the primitive heathen if you like as opposed to the god-fearing European. Again, not condoning but trying to understand how people might have seen the problem in their time based upon their knowledge and beliefs.
There was a time too when sexually active women were considered mentally ill and more than one was lobotomised to 'make her better.'
And nice exchanging thoughts with you too. Courteous and reasoned exchanges are always welcome given the alternative on other threads at times.
And this is a digression but returning to your point about being in touch with cultural and biological roots I find it ironic that given the suffering we know was caused by the stolen generation, by adoption in the past where all contact was cut off just as it was with Aboriginal kids who were taken away, that we now, in this day and age, support policies and attitudes which are creating yet more of the same kind of suffering. Sperm donation, and now egg donation, and often surrogate mother donation, are creating human beings who are likely to be not only confused about their cultural and biological roots but in some cases will never be able to know them completely.
If you have been created by donated sperm, donated egg, donated womb and brought up by 'donated' parents, there's a minefield of cultural and biological 'roots' to find your way through. But then IVF is big business these days and as with many things, money always talks louder than any human suffering.
Shifting the blame
Roslyn – I would just like to challenge your assertion that “we did not execute this wrong..... we inherited it”. I’ll give the floor to Aboriginal leader Mick Dodson, who himself was directly affected by the policies of assimilation:
Historical shades of grey....
David, I agree with much that you say and with your sentiment that more needs to be done. However, I think that, despite your correct assertion that aboriginal culture has historically been communal, this is also one of the large factors that is holding back indigenous development.
This appears to be the conclusion of Noel Pearson and the Cape York Institute that are working with various community partnerships, businesses and individuals to assist in the development of Aboriginal businesses and also encouraging Aboriginal tertiary studies and professional development.
Although I think that strong links to community and indeed society are important we need to be mindful when considering policy development that welfare dependency, even if it is dressed in other clothes, is poison not only to blacks but large sections of the white and migrant community as well.
The question as I see it is, how do you foster support mechanisms for black and white society whilst still insisting that individuals have personal responsibility for their actions?
Endemic rates of welfare in black and white society would suggest to me that the balance is not right.
On the 'stolen generation' I am sure you are right that there were many cases of inappropriate separation, especially in later years.
Near where I have a property In North Queensland, however, cannibalism was widely practised even in the early 1900’s. I don’t think you can generalise about the motives of earlier generations unless you can put into perspective both the time and the location.
A distinction needs to be made
David: I think it is important to make a distinction between taking account of context in order to understand why something happened and 'excusing' it. One may understand and yet not condone.
I certainly do not condone all that happened under this policy but I think that when we are looking back over many years it is important to moderate our judgement with context. In this day and age many people are outraged by things which happened in the past, but outrage over an historical event does not get us far. The reality is that actions were taken sourced in the beliefs, both bigoted and altruistic, of the time and some good came out of those actions along with some bad ..... great suffering in fact.
The important thing is not to rail at our ancestors but to ensure we do not repeat the same mistakes.
You said: To say “it could have been done better” is, it seems to me, a gross understatement
Perhaps, but that it seems to me is not a judgement we can truly make unless we know exactly what percentage benefited from the system and what percentage suffered. The voice of suffering is loudest in the world and it also makes a better story. I don't know what the truth is but I make that qualified statement because I do not know how 'bad' it really was. Perhaps you do, and can elaborate.
You said:– it shouldn’t have been done at all. It’s hard to begin to imagine the grief those mothers must have felt – not to mention the children.
That is a statement made with hindsight and in safety. And it is emotive, presupposing that all mothers were perfect and all children were wanted and loved.
And who knows what went through people's minds when they saw neglected children? And clearly if Aborigines had been getting along fine I am sure they would have been pretty much left to their own devices..... but they were not and the half caste children were not a created problem, they were an identifiable problem. You can read the reports of missionaries and see that quite clearly there was a need for intervention in order to improve the quality of life for Aborigines. And I guess people believed then, as we do now, that education was crucial.
This is such a difficult area. We see stories in the news now of children who have died because welfare authorities have not stepped in. The public is appalled by that. What is worse, to take away a child which is considered at risk and ensure its life is saved or to leave it with its mother .... in the belief that there is something special about all mothering relationships..... trust me, there isn't .... and perhaps condemn it to awful suffering if not death?
Like many things in life it is not black and white.
You said: On the heritage argument, it hardly "honoured" the child's European heritage to drag the child from its own mother simple because the father was of European origin.
The 'honoured' was in quotes because I was using the word lightly.
You said: From accounts I've read most of these kids were regarded as 'Abos' anyway by whiteys, making it doubly tragic, because they had no sense of cultural identity.
I am not sure about most. Many in fact did assimilate and went on to live fulfilled lives as Australians conscious of their Aboriginal heritage. I've met quite a few.
You said: I’m also wary of the argument that removing children from their parents as a result of their racial makeup was “reflective of the times” and therefore excusable.
As I said above, I was not excusing it. But there is no point forming a judgement based upon the values of today when people simply had different values. You have to take the values of the day into account, whether you approve of them or not.
To do today what was done then would be reprehensible simply because it runs counter to what our society now believes. Then it did not. It was reflective of the society and therefore, if you like, less of a 'crime.' That is not to say it should not be condemned but merely to make the point that people can only act from what they know and what they believe. They believed they were doing the right thing.
As an example, in the fifties, when a child was sick and hospitalised, and I was one of them, 12 months old, it was believed that it was better to keep the parents away from the child. I nearly died of pneumonia and did not see my parents for two weeks, left sick, terrified no doubt, and in the care of strangers who often inflicted pain. This early trauma had a lasting effect on me I suspect, understandably.
And of course, as the years passed, people began to realise what an insane policy this was and to understand that sick children got better much faster if their mother or father were with them ..... these days beds are put in the room so parents can stay with the child. All very sensible, all very humane, all very reasonable ..... it makes the earlier beliefs seem barbaric if not criminal. And yet, as people caused that awful suffering they truly believed they were acting in the best interests of the child. It seems crazy to us now, as does the policy surrounding the 'stolen generation,' but those policies existed within the context of the times.
You said: I wonder if the Government employees who had to physically drag children from their screaming mothers had any second thoughts.
I am sure some did, probably many. To take a child from its mother touches upon the deepest fears a human being can have.
You said: People could equally argue that that locking up asylum seekers indefinitely is “reflective” of our times.
No, that is not reflective of our times because it runs counter to the principles which underpin our modern world. It is reflective of fear and the debasement of politics which is a different thing altogether.
You said: Maybe it is, but it’s still morally repugnant.
Does that mean you believe that taking into care children who are considered at risk, today, is morally repugnant? I doubt it.
Jenny: Good post. And thankyou for your courteous conclusion on the other thread.
Race, not welfare
Roslyn – I suspect we agree more than we disagree.
I certainly have a better understanding of the stolen generation now than I did when Bringing Them Home came out. As you say, some Aborigines actually flourished and in Josephine Flood’s book I found some very fond recollections by some Aborigines of their adopters.
I also take your earlier point about how badly some half-cast Aboriginal children were treated by their own people. I’ve read some accounts that corroborate this.
However, I can’t find any way to accept the early ‘absorption’ model, under which the welfare of the child was not even a consideration. The rule was simple: if the child is mixed blood, it has to be removed. You say, “if Aborigines had been getting along fine I am sure they would have been pretty much left to their own devices” – but that’s not true. It didn’t matter how they were getting along.
So even accepting that some of those children were better off being away from their Aboriginal families, such a policy meant many children and mothers suffered terribly and needlessly – not because of welfare concerns, but for some very misguided notions about race and culture.
Even when the removal policy came under the general child welfare law in the 1940’s, when welfare was a consideration, the policy was marked “more by continuity than change”, according to HREOC. Laws can change overnight, attitudes take much longer. According to HREOC poverty was equated with neglect, which would have put the vast majority of Aborigines at that time in the gun.
I concede that context is important when making moral and ethical judgements, and that understanding why something happened is different to excusing it. I had to remind myself that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights only dates back to 1948 – about the time the absorption policy became assimilation. So yes, perhaps the analogy with Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers is unfair. I wonder how future generations will look back on it, though? Will it be considered ‘understandable’ in the context? That’s another thread, of course …
Removing children is, as you say, a difficult issue. The idea that biological parents are automatically the best people to raise their children is challenged every time you read a horrific case of child abuse – and there’s plenty of it around. However, as the stolen generation, and perhaps even the sperm donor generation have illustrated, being in touch with our biological and cultural roots is fundamentally important to our sense of identity and wellbeing. Under the absorption model, at least, children were denied both, for spurious reasons.
Nice exchanging thoughts with you, by the way.
Replies
Jenny – thanks for your considered comments, it’s good to get your perspective on this issue (and to know that we won’t have to stick to butterflies when we catch up!)
I think you put your finger on the heart of the problem I’ve tried to point to here when you said that the solutions will only come about “through partnership programs that give the people in those communities a large say in how they live their lives”. That’s the thing that struck me in the Federal Government’s approach to Indigenous issues: where are the Indigenous voices?
I highly recommend a read of the David Martin article I referred to in the piece, which can be found here. He puts it like this:
Along the lines of what you’ve suggested, Martin stresses the need for creative solutions to problems like alcohol abuse that involve the Indigenous people themselves, rather than a one-size-fits-all policy dreamed up by Government policy makers.
As an example he points to the way the Wik people’s cultural framework was factored into policy and legislative development that addressed alcohol abuse. The legislation, according to Martin, aimed to reduce the consumption of alcohol in public places but
Martin also makes some interesting points about the ‘moral economy’ of Indigenous people, being “the allocation of resources to the reproduction of social relations at the cost of profit maximisation and obvious immediate benefit … characterised by the centrality and persistence of sharing”.
As you point out using the example of your worker from Warren, this has pros and cons for the Indigenous people themselves. The point is that Governments should at least try to understand – and respect - these cultural practises when they’re developing policy.
I know what you mean about apartheid in country towns. My parents live in a part of Orange where there is a large proportion of Indigenous people, but walk through the shops on the main street and you’ve got Buckley’s of finding an Indigenous employee. Affirmative action at the local level has to be part of the solution, I think.
These problems are complex, to be sure, and I certainly don’t have the answers. I mainly wanted to stimulate discussion on the Government’s current policy direction.
Roslyn – Hi, thanks for commenting. “A decision had to be made when a child was seen to be at risk and many were … Should the child be left with its Aboriginal community, at risk, to 'honour' that 'half' of its heritage, or should the child be taken and assimilated into it's European heritage 'half.'?”
First, as I’ve acknowledged in the article, there were instances when Indigenous children were in fact offered to authorities by their parents as a result of extreme hardship. There would have been cases when children were in dire circumstances. And certainly not every member of the stolen generation was abused or exploited.
However, the racial absorption policy that created the stolen generation paid no regard to the circumstances in which the ‘half-castes’ lived, and that is why it is rightly condemned. To say “it could have been done better” is, it seems to me, a gross understatement – it shouldn’t have been done at all. It’s hard to begin to imagine the grief those mothers must have felt – not to mention the children.
On the heritage argument, it hardly "honoured" the child's European heritage to drag the child from its own mother simple because the father was of European orgin. From accounts I've read most of these kids were regarded as 'Abos' anyway by whiteys, making it doubly tragic, because they had no sense of cultural identity. "Nowhere people", as Henry Reynolds calls them.
I’m also wary of the argument that removing children from their parents as a result of their racial makeup was “reflective of the times” and therefore excusable. I wonder if the Government employees who had to physically drag children from their screaming mothers had any second thoughts. People could equally argue that that locking up asylum seekers indefinitely is “reflective” of our times. Maybe it is, but it’s still morally repugnant.
Business as usual
“And so, the powers that be, faced with this situation of a child at risk had to make a choice. Should the child be left with its Aboriginal community, at risk, to 'honour' that 'half' of its heritage, or should the child be taken and assimilated into it's European heritage 'half.'? writes Ros.
Maybe it would have been best to ask the kids if they wanted to be europeanised. Of course the kids not knowing better (or worse) would most likely choose to stay with Mum; and that’s they way it should have been.
Our Aboriginals ended up under the “protection” and control of the state because they were a “problem”. A problem that few understood nor had the intelligence and compassion to solve. And why would we, after all, we have stolen and polluted their land, destroyed their culture and encourage and reward them when they behave like us.
Paternalistic?
Arrogant!
When we finally deal with the latter then we may be able to solve the problem.
The recent court challenge (and fear mongering) in Western Australia (re Perth land title) says heaps about our desire to give our indigenous people even a (notional) shred of self respect.
We ain’t gunna change, the “problem” ain’t gunna change, course we are the problem.
Something has to be done
David: I agree there were many flaws in Government policy over the last century and longer, in regard to our indigenous population but I agree with much of what Roslyn writes here. It is easy to be wise with hindsight and the way ahead is by no means clear. But certainly something has to be done to try and address the appalling situation that so many in the indigenous communities face.
There are two distinct groups and their needs and no doubt their aspirations are vastly different and they will have to be addressed differently. Many of the full blood predominant communities still have close links to their lands, their customs and their languages and any form of assimilation seems a long way off to me, if ever. So solutions to the poverty, domestic violence and health will probably only come about through partnership programs that give the people in those communities a large say in how they live their lives. And it may not be anything like what we might chose for ourselves.
Probably easier to address are the issues facing urban indigenous people, most of whom are not full blood and who no longer speak their own languages or adhere to old customs. Unfortunately it is almost and apartheid situation in many small and even larger country centres these days, due to the level of petty and other crime arising out of the boredom and lack of opportunity. But there are some people doing some inspiring work amongst those disaffected youth in the larger centres. And I think where those programs are seen to work they should expanded.
In the small country towns however little effort if any effort is made to foster better understanding and cooperation between the two populations, black and white. In the small town near where I live most of the time (population 500, half white and half part indigenous) a sort of voluntary apartheid exists. There is little communication between the two groups and in 15 years I have never had a conversation with anyone other than a white person in that town in all that time. When meetings are held in the town to discuss issues and ways for the town to survive, rarely do you see a face that is not white. I soon found out that conversation with the indigenous population is not welcomed by them, something which surprised me greatly when I first moved up there 15 years ago, as I had had very good aboriginal friends when I worked in the Territory, and I have part aboriginal relatives. So I backed off from any contact and that is how it has remained. Two populations living side by side, and rarely the twain do meet.
There are few jobs if any in the town, and those there are are mostly held by white people.
Clearly there are education and health issues. The children in the school are given milo and a vegemite sandwich on arrival at school, presumably on the assumption they are not necessary fed properly at home. Whether that is true or not, I would not know. Yet there is an obvious obesity problem in some at least of the adult population, as there is overall in this country.
As it was noted recently, unless obesity and its ally diabetes are tackled there is going to be a growing health and services crisis in the near future. And it is the indigenous population that is suffering the most from this disease with rapid rise in the death rate..
We have shared our home with several indigenous people in recent years and I have talked to them about the problems they faced in trying to make a future for themselves and their families.
For two weeks we had a lad from Warren living with us while he worked for a Dubbo firm to install a bore articulated water system on our property. He was married with two small children. His biggest concern was that his "people" left him alone to get on with his life. He told us he was under constant pressure to, as he put it. 'return to the tribe". Sadly I later heard he had not survived that pressure and had left his job and "returned". He was a very skilled worker too.
Another who drove a truck and delivered cattle to the farm sat and talked to us about his similar problem. He said: "Because I have a job, my 15 brothers who do not, think I should share my wage with them." Clearly family or skin ties are very important, but it does work against individuals wanting to assimilate and make a better future and life for themselves. I do not have a clue how one can overcome this. It would I think have to come through better education of the community as a whole. It is not something that will change over night. And of course there are many families who have been able to retain independence for themselves and their families. We must not assume that what holds true for some, holds true for all.
I have thought a lot about these problems, but I do not have the answers and I don't know anyone who does. The situation many of our indigenous people face is not dissimilar to that in other countries. But I agree with Roslyn, more of the same is unlikely to work. And any imposed solution will highly likely fail, as such have done in the past.
Not an easy one David, by any measure. Our indigenous people have to want to be part of mainstream Australian society and I am not sure that all of them do. Why else would the spending of billions of dollars over the past fifty years seem to have achieved so little?
Assimilation is not a dirty word
David Curry: is quite right when he says 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions,' but the reality is that a whole lot of 'good intentions', across the spectrum, over the centuries have still not succeeded in improving the lot of Aboriginal people.
Surely, given past failures which sought to 'preserve' or 'protect' Aboriginal 'lifestyles,' it is worth trying assimilation once more. Where on this planet has a policy of 'keeping indigenous people separate' resulted in success? I can't think of one. The successes seem to me to be where indigenous people are assimilated into the broader society and yet maintain aspects of their cultural and spiritual heritage. But first must come assimilation to some degree.
David says: The pollicy of forcible removing Aboriginal children from their parents to absorb, and later assimilate, them into the non-Aboriginal mainstream was a gross violation of human rights.
Yes, but it must also be judged in context. It took place at a time when human rights were grossly violated in many instances. It was not only Aboriginal children who were removed if they were considered to be at risk, non-Aboriginal children were summarily taken away from their parents as well. And we all remember the story of the English orphans who were told their parents were dead and who were then summarily shipped out to orphanages in Australia, where, tragically, many of them were abused.
David Curry suggests that it was worse for these Aboriginal children because they were forced to assimilate and yet these children were half caste. A decision had to be made when a child was seen to be at risk and many were. Some Aboriginal parents accepted their half-caste children completely but many did not. Half caste children were more likely to be neglected than full blood Aboriginal children. (Nothing unusual about this. The same thing happened to Vietnamese children who had been fathered by Americans or Australians during the war.)
And so, the powers that be, faced with this situation of a child at risk had to make a choice. Should the child be left with its Aboriginal community, at risk, to 'honour' that 'half' of its heritage, or should the child be taken and assimilated into it's European heritage 'half.'? One would imagine that most people, then and now, while appreciating the pain it caused to parents, would reason, as welfare organisations tend to do, that the important thing was the welfare of the child.
Could it have been done better? Of course it could but it was reflective of the times.
It is worth taking into consideration also the fact that the closing of the missions had a major impact upon Aboriginal welfare. At the same time Aborigines were afforded full rights, as they deserved, there was also a push to diminish or destroy the power of the missions. Another good intention which had a bad outcome..... the missions, with all their flaws and failings, as a woman with half Aboriginal heritage said to me many years ago (she being at this time a successful senior executive with a deep respect for her Aboriginal ancestry) were vital to Aboriginal children in that they enabled the children to receive an education and yet remain with their family.
David said:The policies were ethnocentric and paternalistic, with an underlying assumption that Aborigines could not know what was in their best interests.
All policies were ethnocentric and paternalistic at the time. It was not particular to Aborigines. Women were also considered incapable of knowing what was in their best interests. Context is important when we are pointing the finger.
David said:Above all, the policies sought to assimilate Aborigines into the mainstream, with a concomitant disregard for the fate of Aboriginal culture, which was regarded as vastly inferior to the culture introduced by Britain in 1788. Yet the policy makers responsible seemed to have sincerely believed they were doing the right thing for Aborigines.
Yes, they did and I doubt there are many Australians who when travelling in Africa for instance are not glad they live in a house with running water and a flushing toilet. And this is not to disregard the importance of Aboriginal culture, well, the healthy and productive aspects of it. This attitude is completely understandable. A current television programme, very staged but interesting all the same, has children of immigrants from Third World countries returning to their place of birth or heritage..... not surprisingly they consider their life in the more developed world to be superior.
It is also worth noting that there were people who did appreciate and in fact recorded, Aboriginal life and culture. It was just that at the time, and really until the 1960's society was patriarchal and ethnocentric and everyone suffered for it, not just Aborigines.
David said: but the aim is identical and arguably just as pernicious: the assimilation of Aborigines into the mainstream. Just like their policy predecessors, the Howard Government couches its policy in terms of helping the Aborigines, of addressing problems etc. Good intentions.
No doubt the Government has returned to a more assimilationist approach but what would David recommend as an alternative? He spends a great deal of time decrying the stolen generation and the other 'mistakes' made in trying to improve the lot of Aboriginal people but there do not seem to be many suggestions made as to what else could be done.
From what I can see we have had an assimilationist policy which caused great suffering at times...... but not always ..... we just don't tend to hear about the half-caste kids who did assimilate happily; then we had the opposite, a policy of 'preserving Aboriginal culture,' of trying to assist them in maintaining their lifestyle and that has been a disaster of epic proportions and has caused far, far more suffering than the assimilationist policy ever did I suspect .....Aboriginal health is the worst it has been, violence in their communities is the worst it has been; drinking and drugtaking is rife and probably the worst it has been; education of children is so poor it is criminal (partly caused by dysfunctional society and the fact that Aboriginal people are not forced by law to send their children to school) and billions of dollars have been spent for nothing ......
so is it surprising that the Government is returning to a gentler form of assimilation and how on earth can it be worse than what we already have?
And at what point do we accept that, like it or not, the only way that human being survive is by becoming a part of the greater community? Australia would not exist without assimilation. It was forced on our ancestors just as it has been forced, to varying degrees, on all people, throughout time. No nation on this planet exists without assimilation.
Assimilation is not a dirty word. The theory is sound, what matters is how it is done but even then, such changes do not come without pain. Every migrant suffers through a process of assimilation for the sake of their children. Why should Aboriginal people not do the same?
If the previous policy of 'preserving' had worked and Aboriginal people were happy, healthy, fulfilled and flourishing then I and many other Australians would be absolutely delighted. But it has not and its criminal failure stands, I think, as just as black a mark in our history as the 'stolen generation.' I would be prepared to bet that more psychologically healthy people came out of the policy of separation and assimilation than have come out of the policy of preservation. We only hear the stories of those who suffered under the policy, not the stories of those who bloomed...... and many did..... I have met quite a few of them and I bet others have as well.
So let's try something new on the basis that only a fool keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different result.