Friday, April 15, 2011

UPDATE: Bolt litigation, Marcia Langton & Larissa Behrendt's twitter apology

Marcia Langton.

Professor... Yes! She's a Professor at a tertiary institution. Professor Behrendt repents, but not before denying the twitter by stating it was "taken out of context".

Integrity is in shifting shades of black and white, read letters from Susan Birch of Bronte, and others, in the Australian today.

Who tweets for Aborigines?

That Behrendt is herself involved in a racial vilification case against News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt adds irony to her comments. That action has people across the political spectrum concerned because of its implications for free speech. At its core is the identification by Behrendt and others as Aboriginal. This is not the place to argue the merits of the action, but Behrendt's professional career is central to the split exposed on Twitter. Like others who work in the urban indigenous industry, she has built a career on indigenous issues and policy. Like others, she argues against the 2007 intervention initiated in response to appalling levels of violence, addiction and child abuse. Difficult as it is to believe, this newspaper has been lobbied directly by Aboriginal leaders in Canberra to stop reporting on the despair of communities in the far-north, central Australia and the Kimberley, and to focus on success stories of urban Aborigines. In essence, these leaders have urged us to ignore the shameful state of affairs in so many areas and boost the good-news quota in our pages. Such a view is not just out of touch with the needs of remote Aborigines, it casts them as unworthy of attention. These urban dwellers are prepared to risk the health, education, physical safety and futures of other Aborigines in the cause of an out-dated, leftist agenda which privileges "rights" above well-being. There is a "let them eat cake" touch about it all.
Read more.

Update: 7:27pm 15/4/11
The comments on the article by Ms Langton are heartening.

8 comments:

stackja1945 said...

kae, Green-Left black fellas again. Stop the gravy train. I know of one young black who enjoyed the government funded activities he was allowed to get up to because of his colour.

Anonymous said...

I hear you stack. I hear you.
They get Special Treatment.
Makes em so well off eh?
Here is a great australian supporting your point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDdpxgJGXvM

Cheers
Phil of Anglers Rest

kae said...

Special Treatment lyric
http://lyrics.wikia.com/Paul_Kelly_&_The_Messengers:Special_Treatment

You know Phil, the treatment in the song is based on stolen gen, which is a myth. It's also very old. Aboriginal stockmen who worked on farms weren't paid as much as the white men as the property owner/manager used to look after the whole extended family of the aboriginal worker. Clothing, feeding and housing them at their expense. Sure, there were bad bosses. The issues here are not these ones of the past, but the here and now where women and children are physically and sexually abused and noone seems to know what to do.
The city intellectuals like Beherendt seem to think that doing nothing will help their people - shovelling money at ATSIC didn't achieve much at all except make the tribes of the heirarchy better off, and the other aboriginal people without connection to the people who ran ATSIC and many of its offshoots were worse off.

Doing nothing and continuing to shovel money at either inept or corrupt organisers when empirical evidence is that none of the needy aboriginals are getting the help (special treatment) they need because of the ineptitude or corruption, and those urban aborigines who have hopped on the gravy train are sucking the money and the life out of their own people by permanent attachment on the public teat know that if the problems are successfully addressed there will be no more gravy for them.

I have no problem with helping people who need help, but urban aborigines don't need the help that those in remote communities need.

There's not enough space here for me to address the issues I know about.

Anonymous said...

True kae.
The stolen generation was a myth and a massive fabrication of the truth.
Andrew Bolt has already proved this time and time again.
But I truly do think that blacks and half castes get special treatment for being aboriginal.
This is racisct and unfair. Why do they get this?
And what have we whites done to deserve this? I work as hard as I can. I pay my taxes, I pay my mortgage slowly with interest and give to charity and the church whip round.
It's not right. Kelly's song taken literally is true. Humbugs the lot of em. Australian is for all of us. Not the elite few. One Nation. under God.
Phil

kae said...

Read the words of Kelly's song.

His "special treatment" is the low pay of the stockman, it's the stolen generation. The song is tripe.

I'd cut and paste it here so you can read it, but it won't let me.

Go to the link and read the words.

kae said...

Disadvantaged people in our society are, er, assisted. I don't see why we can't assist disadvantaged aboriginal people.

But those growing up in urban areas have all the opportunities of white and other people growing up in urban areas, it's not our fault if they don't work hard and take advantage of those opportunities.

When someone gets a scholarship or let into uni with a lower result than others because they are aboriginal I call racism. If they get in becuase they've worked hard and shown they're smart and capable, well, jolly good on them, they win the scholarship.

Aboriginal scholarships should be done away with, advantages for aboriginals should be done away with. Instead there should be a system where gifted aboriginal kids living in remote communities can win scholarships.

Not because they're black. Because they are smart and willing to work toward a goal.

People whinge about language and how many aboriginals don't know their language - well, which one should be taught? How? There are over 1,000 languages. I'd suggest that the government concentrate on educating the kids so they can read and write to a level where they can work. If the families want to tech them language they need to get their elders to help before the languages die.

So many problems and stupid issues like teaching aboriginal language in 'white man's' school.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
kae said...

Anonymous
re: Special Treatment
I provided a link to the words. That's enough. I don't want blocks of cut and paste put into comments, it's messy as it is. If you want to put the words in comments tidy it up.
I'm deleting the comment.