[PEN-L:862] Re: re: Pauline Hanson

[Rob Schaap <rws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day again,

Having alluded to something I'd said about Australian racism (as it applies
specifically to Oz Aboriginees), I thought I'd repost it here too.  It
ain't a class analysis, so it'll probably upset Lou, but I reckon it might
be importantly true.

Our racism (if I may treat Oz as a monolith for a stereotypifying moment)
is selective (we're a better place to be foreign, even non-white, in than
are many comparable countries - of this I'm quite convinced) and peculiar.
Aboriginal Ozzies do cop especially bad treatment, I reckon.  I've lived in
the UK, South Africa and NZ.  All do a strong line in racism, but there
seemed to me an element of fear in the attitude.  In the UK, it's the
weakening of the British bulldog strain and an implicit recognition that
certain peoples do have a collectivist work ethic that does better than the
'local' approach (competitive individualism, anti-intellectualism and
lager-fetishism do not stand up well).  The Jaapies and the Kiwis have a
little distorted respect (and in SA, of course, there is the small matter
that there are about 38 million people of whom to be afraid) in their
racist make-up.

The Jaapies fought hard for 'their' tribal land rights claims.  They had
to.  They were up against well-drilled, unbelievably selfless multitudes of
warriors (the gun outweighed all this - as Blood River or Rourkes Drift
shows, but much white blood did run).  All Jaapies remember with some
reverence the likes of Chaka, Moshweshwe, Mzilikazi etc etc).

The Kiwis too had to go toe-to-toe with organised armies of fantastic
warriors (hence 'Once Were Warriors').  They too met a force the European
mind could respect.  A force worth beating.

But Ozzies walked in on cultures based on 'bands' rather than armies.
Aboriginal warriors were as resourceful and courageous as any, but their
leaders fought at the head of dozens, not tens of thousands.  I reckon, we
never really felt we'd 'earned' our triumph.  It was a bit of a pain in the
arse to have to go out on punitive or pre-emptive slaughter campaigns, but
it was not the 'god'n'glory' carnage of British dreams.

Just to wobble off for a second, this is why I reckon we so ridiculously
refer to the Gallipolli campaign (a WW1 invasion of the Turkish
Dardanelles, for you outsiders) as 'the birth of our nation'.  Who else
thinks of a stunningly unsuccessful invasion of a country of which we'd
never heard, at the behest of another country, and as only a minor
participant, in this way.  NZ is proud of its ANZACS too, but does not
credit them with giving the nation-state birth, does it?  Nope, we were in
search of a blood ritual to mark our beginnings.

So I reckon we blame Aborigines for not giving us Geronimoes or Chakas.
And we do not hate or fear them.  We hold them in contempt.  And you can't
get nastier than that.  It's unselfconsciously culture-driven stuff (I
believe I discern traces of these thoughts in consciously anti-racist
Ozzies, once the pints start pumping), but it's a deep-seated, particularly
Australian racism.  I'm all for rehabilitating some salient Aboriginal
warriors - such efforts got a few mentions during the 1988 'bicentennial'
orgy - as it may help.  I dunno, though.  When the names do come up, there
are those (usually descendants of those who died at said warriors' hands)
who demand they not be called warriors - as there were not two gloriously
uniformed armies involved, every white fatality was a 'murder'.

Cheers,
Rob