From America, a Lesson Unheeded

Seventy years ago, on May 17, 1954, the American Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Brown v Board of Education. The unanimous decision, written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, is authority for the proposition that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools constitutes a violation of the 14^th Amendment to the United States Constitution, according to which no State shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

In its decision, the Court said that education is “the very foundation of good citizenship” and that educational opportunities must be available to all “on equal terms.” The Court then decreed that “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

In doing so, the Court overruled the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine propagated by the now infamous case of Plessy v Ferguson. Homer Plessy, who was of seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eight African blood, purchased a train ticket to travel from New Orleans to Covington. Upon entering a coach reserved for whites, the rail authorities ordered him to sit in the coach reserved for people of colour. He refused to comply with the directive and was subsequently charged with violating a Louisiana statute passed in 1890 which provided for separate but equal facilities for Black people and White people.

The Brown decision effectively rejected government-sponsored apartheid, and not just in educational institutions. As such, it holds particularly important lessons for Australia. Indeed, Australia, by not heeding the lessons of Brown, is trending towards the establishment of apartheid as official government policy, and has embarked on a path that facilitates preferential, and separate, treatment for Indigenous Australians.

In this context, it is useful to remind readers of the failed attempt by the federal Labor government to railroad the entrenchment of the Voice in the Australian Constitution. It is fair to speculate that a successful “Yes” vote would have generated, over time, incessant demands for political power, reparations, land rights, treaties, ‘truth-telling’ commissions, and more. A successful “Yes” result would also have overturned the noble aspirations and achievements of the 1967 referendum, credited for developing a colour-blind society, coupled with an expectation that governments would assist those who needed help to overcome serious handicaps – regardless of race or ethnicity.

However, the defeat of the Voice has not impeded the trend to separateness and preferential treatment of Indigenous Australians. This is because this defeat did not end the grovelling, obsequious, prelude that speakers recite, at the beginning of meetings, paying fake tribute to past, present and emerging tribal ‘elders. Nor will it stop the anodyne Acknowledgment of Country announcements. For example, those who travel on Qantas-operated flights would know that, at the place of destination, an announcer welcomes people to the land of its traditional owners, thereby indicating that their passengers are trespassers on Indigenous land. It is a shameful spectacle that very few travellers take seriously anymore, but it is symptomatic of the general culture that promotes one group of people over others.

Australia needs to implement the principle of political equality, which would ensure that the distribution of burdens and benefits is not determined merely by the race of a person – a characteristic over which people have no control. A genuine attempt to be proud of the achievements of our ancestors, regardless of whether they are Indigenous or Non-Indigenous, should complement this principle. There is thus no need to be ashamed of the contributions made by Australia’s early settlers. In this context, Bella d’Abrera commented that in 1788:

…the British colonists brought with them centuries of ­accumulated knowledge and the basis of our cultural heritage. They brought with them the values of liberty, inquiry, toleration, religious plurality, and economic freedom. They brought with them Christianity, which had positioned the individual as the locus of meaning, sovereignty, and significance. Equality of man, individual dignity and the abolition of slavery were all bequeathed to the world by Christianity and Christian thinkers.

Yet, the repudiation of this principle of political equality continues unabated in Australia. The Aboriginal flag stills flies in the Australian parliament, suggesting parity with the Australian flag, under which Australians fought and died in defending a free society that is rapidly becoming unfree. In this context, Geoff McDonald described in 1982 in his book Red Over Black, that during the Cold War, the KGB supported the victimisation narrative of the Aboriginal ‘industry’. The publisher describes this book as “the chilling and almost unbelievable story of the Marxist manipulation of the Aboriginal land rights movement, told by a man who learned of Communist strategy while in the Communist Party” and “the long-range Communist strategy for the establishment of an Aboriginal republic under Communist control.”

The complete disregard for the people who overwhelmingly voted against the entrenchment of apartheid in the Constitution, when they defeated the Voice, is truly staggering. This is because governments try to do indirectly, what they could not achieve directly because of the defeat of The Voice. For example, in South Australia, where 64.17 per cent of voters rejected the entrenchment of The Voice in the Constitution, the state Labor government has now installed a state Voice, with only a few hundred Indigenous people voting for their representatives. This farce confirms that some people have more voting rights than others, and an expensive administrative structure will surely inhibit the workings of good government. In Victoria, the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s truth-telling inquiry may well have the same effect, and in Western Australia, the Cook Labor government only reluctantly shelved its contentious Aboriginal Heritage legislation, which would have encumbered the agricultural industry and made even small improvements to a person’s property dependent on the permission of an Indigenous quango.

So, the defeat of the Voice proposal is only a small, but crucial, step in the direction of entrenching the principle of political equality in Australia. This is because the relentless pressure for special rights for Indigenous Australians will undoubtedly continue and may even accelerate. Yet, the demonstrable, and justifiable, moral obligation to close the ‘Gap’ will succeed only if a united and prosperous country can fix critical issues such as homelessness, energy security, foreign aggression, and morale.

It is thus time to celebrate the anniversary of Brown v Board of Education, and to appreciate the wisdom of its main lesson, that separate facilities (even if they are equal) violate the principle of political equality.