Why is this so? Africa, America, Great Britain, Australia and even New Zealand have historically always had a problem with people of colour. Was it that the invaders we called colonists were all white? Was it that the occupiers believed they were far superior? Even scientists and doctors, researchers and theorists in the pure fields of science came up with theories as to why the ‘paleface’ was more advanced, more civilised and more religious than non-whites. The studies and measurements that proved they had different shaped heads was one of the more serious attempts to prove white supremacy.
Whilst a worker with indigenous children and young people, even though I was a ‘whitey’, it was a disappointing fact that 38% of aboriginal children were under some form of supervision order and 44% of them were in detention. When the aboriginal community make up only around 2% of the population, even smaller than some migrant minorities, this is an horrific figure. Even though juvenile crime is presently on the decline, despite the panic and pessimism of the popular press, young people have double the rate of offending than adults and aboriginals of all ages are 23 times more likely to be locked up compared to their white brethren.
There is cause for optimism however, as indigenous young people begin to utilise more and more of the resources available to them. In the last twenty odd years there has been a reduction of about a third in crimes and subsequent detention of aboriginals in the justice system. There may be cause for pessimism when we have had an increase in crimes perpetrated by minorities from a non-English speaking background. Perhaps the increase is the foreign born population is creating an arithmetical decline and not an actual one. Only more data, over a longer time period, by bureaucrats whose job it is to create statistics for people like myself, may show a more informed trend.
One thing for sure is that my prediction 20 odd years ago that the indigenous population would catch up is coming to fruition. It was only 1965 when aboriginals were counted separately to dingoes and kangaroos. It was not until 1972 that they began getting any rights to themselves, even to their land. The parents of 1988, were, for all intents and purposes only just catching up with the development of the rest of the population, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, but in the context of the positive development of the ‘koorie’ community.
For the parents I worked with schooling was virtually non-existent especially if they had come off missions. The majority of youngster I worked with came from either Burke, Kempsey or Wilcannia where aboriginals were particularly and intentionally isolated from the rest of the community. The parents of 1988 were having limited success in getting their children to attend school and these were the children with which I was to become most involved. But I predicted that these children I was working with, by the time they became parents themselves would be ensuring better school attendance for their children. By now one suspects that these parents in 2013 would be just seeing off their youngest to high school and to a far better life than their parents or grandparents are still enduring.
The Block in Redfern is no longer a ‘no-go-zone’ for firemen, ambulances and even police vehicles. It is no longer a haven for heroine and cocaine dealers, no longer a place you could not park a car or even stop at a traffic light without a problem. Maybe the aboriginal community of Redfern-Waterloo have had their ‘Road to Gundagai’ moment too.
Years ago during the women’s movement it was known that women worked twice as hard, twice as long and twice as diligently as their male counterparts just to prove they were equal with men. Many things have changed since then, except equal pay, and women are now accepted as 98% equal to men. There are still pockets of resistance in big business, which can be overcome with time, amongst chauvinists who have been taught since boys by their abusive fathers that women are inferior, and amongst conservative religious leaders who insist that as God is a man therefore all men must be superior. Over the last fifty years our aboriginal community, given the right resources and encouragement have forged ahead by at least 200 white years.
Back in the 60’s while making documentaries about our aboriginal community it was written in the narration that ‘these aboriginals you see here are almost civilised’. In the 60’s we thought that was an interesting fact but today we might cringe in horror at the comment. The little old ladies who feared that we could not mix with blacks or Australia would end up chocolate coloured, or the insistence of government workers in aboriginal affairs that they would eventually ‘become extinct’ anyway. All this helped to ingrain in the pensioners of today a continuing disdain for anything black.
On a more humorous note an aboriginal lady at a conference, wearing an all white outfit, dropped cigarette ash on herself. In endeavouring to wipe it off she mumbled distinctly that white was a bloody difficult colour. Then she looked up at the sea of white faces and went a distinctive burgundy colour with realisation of what she had said. The funny thing is she was bloody right. It is not black but white that is the difficult colour.
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