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The Australian had a recent article by Caroline Overington in its Weekend edition on the subject of ‘race shifting’:
In the US they are known as “race-shifters”; in Canada they are “Pretendians”; and in Australia, they are more commonly known as “box-tickers” – people who discover, or else simply claim an Indigenous or First Nations heritage for themselves.
Some do so because they want to adopt a more exotic profile; others because being “just white” doesn’t have quite the cache it once did, especially in academia.
But the sheer number of people now laying claim to an Indigenous identity has begun to distort national statistics, at least according to Indigenous Australian academics and a group of international writers who took part in a lively roundtable on the topic of “race-shifting” at an anthropology conference in May.
That’s ‘cachet’ by the way, Caroline.
But who are these ‘race-shifters’? Are they exclusively white people falsely claiming Aboriginal 
identity, such as, let me think, oh yes, Professor Bruce Pascoe? Or do they include people with some portion of Aboriginal ancestry? That would seem to be the implication offered by Australian academic Victoria Grieve-Williams (right):
… a Warraimaay historian from the NSW mid-north coast, said: “In Australia the race shifting phenomenon is pervasive and well recognised by Aboriginal people. The statistics show that the increase is not natural, but it remains a difficult conversation for Australians to have. The race shifters hold the power, they stifle debate and resist scrutiny in various ways, including attacking Aboriginal people who ask who they are in our cultural terms.
“They tend to be urban-based, clustered in southeast Australia, and raised with all the privilege of being white”.
That last sentence seems to suggest she is referring to people who are not wholly white. In fact, if we are talking about wholly white people who claim to be Aboriginal, surely a better term would be race-imposters.
Regardless of that, the claim is that because the Aboriginal population is expanding year on year and this growth comes almost exclusively from well-educated, relatively well-off urban people, the Closing the Gap statistics are being distorted. Dr Gaynor McDonald, not indigenous, is quoted:
Take the Closing the Gap report as an example. Year after year, we are told there is no change in Indigenous statistics. Everything has stayed the same.
But if you are adding a whole lot of people who have lived a privileged white life, and had the benefits of good housing, and education, then for rural and remote communities, the conditions must be getting worse.”
But if that effect is real, surely it is exacerbated by the influx of genuinely indigenous newcomers to the tribe who are also urbanised, educated and well-off? Are these also race-shifters? Take newcomer Kirsten Banks:
Kirsten Banks is a proud Wiradjuri woman with an undeniable passion for all things space and astronomy. She grew up on Ku-ring-gai country in Sydney’s Northern Beaches always loving the sky. After graduating from Davidson High School in 2014 with the title of “Most Outstanding Student”, she started a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of New South Wales with a major in Physics. Within her first year of tertiary study, Kirsten completed a successful application and was appointed an Astronomy Guide position at Sydney Observatory.
It was at Sydney Observatory where Kirsten first sought out to determine where she and her ancestors came from: she learned she is of Wiradjuri descendent. Kirsten loves to share her passion for space and astronomy. Her role in the media started in February 2017 with the publication of a feature article about her in COSMOS Magazine’s Space Profile sections. Since then, Kirsten has experienced a whirlwind of opportunities in many different media realms. She’s appeared on countless radio shows and is the resident astronomer on Triple M’s Night Shift with Luke Bona. Kirsten’s ultimate goal in life is to become a famous Science Communicator, so she takes advantage of media engagement opportunities as they happen, but Kirsten’s favourite place to be is in front of people giving public talks. Kirsten speaks regularly at Sydney Observatory, has presented at numerous conferences and loves to present Aboriginal Astronomy workshops during and outside of NAIDOC Week and National Science Week.
Is Kirsten (below) distorting the statistics and inadvertently disadvantaging remote Aborigines? Is Dr McDonald suggesting that government is satisfied with things ‘staying the same’ and is therefore 
expending less money and effort than they otherwise would? If so, how does she suggest the government distinguish between those genuine, but well-off Indigenous people and the imposters?
Actually, I wonder about this ‘distorting the statistics’ claim. Surely, hopefully at least, government Closing the Gap policy, funding and reporting is based on metrics other than the number of people identifying as Aboriginal.
Ms Suzanne Ingram, also a proud Wiradjuri woman, tells us:
Wiradjuri people have been dealing with this for a couple of decades. What interests me is not simply that race-shifting is happening and on such a vast scale, it is the ways in which it is happening. Box-ticking is a social movement. My analysis in health communication shows how it affects policy – it seems to have 
started in housing policy – but it has soared in the education sector, and the stats show, probably unsurprisingly, that the east coast of Australia is the epicentre.
Ms Ingram (right) is in the education sector herself but does not seem disposed to name names.
To me, ‘race shifting’ would embrace anyone, no matter how much Aboriginal blood they have, who has grown up, been educated, lives and works in urban Australia and enjoys all the benefits this country has to offer, then decides to identify as Aboriginal for any reason other than to simply acquire the prenominal ‘proud’ and, occasionally, wear a red loincloth and white paint.
Very useful article.
Couple points:
1. Singin’ and dancin’ while daubed in coloured dirt is no substitute for applied efforts informed by experience of reality, esp the basics of hygiene and useful productivity, if one wishes to live a flourishing life.
2. “Closing the gaps” -in the case of racial/group differences in education attainment and consequent/subsequent productivity and therefore disposable income and wealth accumulation- is not achievable by governments transferring funds to low-end groups from high-end groups. Efforts within the education and training systems simply just do not close these gaps. There is a small proportion of smart, motivated kids who are helped -but that is the tiny minority. Check evidence in the USA, if relevant data here are suppressed.
3. Race-shifters are wokeist, naive, ignorant virtue seekers -and many are also malign money-grubbers and power-mongers.
4. Race-shifters are manipulated and puppetteered by power-mongering, marxist Big Statists who dominate the political, legal, news media, and education/training arenas.
5. The actions of race-shifters and all but one or two Aboriginal leaders/spox, and their non-Aboriginal boosters, condemn ordinary Aborigines, esp kids, to continued misery. That’s evil.
Begs the question- why are grown men wearing nappies, red ones at that.
I’ve never understood pride. Surely you should be proud of what you do, not who you are.
Tony,
I’m an unashamed Irish Australian.
Harry, from my days at uni, recently. Closing the gap is all about equity and equality (rubbish bin of victim hood) well, by George I think the left and their loony acolytes (element)in the Church’s have successfully achieved parity and some,
if BMI and obesity are in deed a human right and a measurable KPI.
If there is to be equity and equality , everyone , and that in includes the parasitic element on welfare be they black, white or yellow skinned need to contribute to both productivity and taxation.
The world ,not the left, really can do without welfare racial discrimination.
GET OFF YOUR BACKSIDE AND DO SOME WORK ,THAT WILL CLOSE THE GAP AND PUT AND END TO YOUR MISERABLE EXISTENCE. THAT WOULD BE TRUE EQUALITY AND EQUITY- WHEN WE ALL FEEL THE OTHERS PAIN.
Any journalist (or other writer) who unironically and unashamedly describes any individual as “a proud (insert Aboriginal tribe name)” should be taken outside, tarred and feathered and staked out on a teeming red ant hill. Over many years, I’ve known and worked with many people with indisputable Aboriginal ethnicity and am yet to hear any one of them voicing pride in their tribal ancestry. It’s as ersatz as Ernie Dingo’s ‘welcome to country’ nonsense.
I do hope readers understand my use of the term ‘proud’ is ironic.
I remember Michael Mansell complaining about this 25 years ago. in 1996 he claimed “”there were more phoney than real Aborigines in Tasmania and more than half the voters in the 1996 ATSIC election were not Aboriginal”. Back then the motive for “box ticking” was purely financial, and the corruption associated with ATSIC was a good example. The solution then would have been simple – spend government money on those in need only, regardless of race or any other irrelevant criteria. Of course that didn’t happen, so the financial motivation for claiming to be of a particular race has remained ever since. This still results in money given to people who are manifestly not in need, which in turn results in less money for those who are in need. Andrew Bolt payed a high price for trying to expose this.
The situation now is more complex. Alongside financial motives are considerations of status. In the Woke World, victims are king and, as Mel Brooks said, “it’s good to be the king”. In the case of “Professor” Bruce Pascoe it seems that the motives combine yielding both status and wealth. I doubt that he’s alone.
I don’t know what would solve the problem of wannabe “kings”, but it would still be a good thing to remove all considerations of race from the allocation of taxpayer funds or indeed from government business entirely. That would at least give people of genuine Aboriginal ancestry the satisfaction that box tickers aren’t getting money under false pretenses.
A recent comment about the gap on an article in The Conversation had this –
“What proportion of those who identify as indigenous never pass through the criminal system, hold regular jobs, enjoy family holidays, rent or purchase their homes in towns or cities, have hopes their children will study and attend university or open their own business. After that survey then figure out why the others don’t. Please drop the generalisations and stereotypes. There isn’t one single style of Aborigine.”
It was removed, censored, a banned cocept. Apparently questioning stereotypes is not permitted in academia.
There are many Irish Australians, both ashamed and unashamed.
Too many of ’em are reflexively, mindlessly anti-Pom.
Too many of them ignorant ingrates, unable to comprehend, let alone accept, that without the influence of/invasion by England, Ireland would still be a land of warring tribes, with quite good poetry.
Too many Irish Australians are unable to get over the past.
In this, they are similar to too many Aborigines. too many Chinese, too many Indians, too many Muslims, and too many other non-Westerners, and anti-Westernists generally who are here for the better life that can only be had in places founded and nurtured by England.
(Multiculturalism was started as anti-Englandism by Italian and Irish members of the Whitlam Mess. It has since expanded into full-scale anti-Westernism, protected and enabled by 18C, the AHRC, and by legions of “human rights” lawyers, judges and magistrates.)
I don’t know, in that picture above the article Bruce looks to me to be as Aboriginal as Kirsten. Maybe more so, what with his outfit and dancing and all. So maybe he is one of our first peoples after all.
As an Australian of 7/8th Irish ancestry, I can assure Henry that neither I nor my extended Irish family have ever felt any animosity against the English, at least within the last several generations. I can also assure him that such animosity that has existed in our family resulted not from any hatred of the English but from the bitter mutual Catholic v Protestant hatred of the early years of the 20th century. Much of that animosity was caused or exacerbated by the Archbishop Mannix of Melbourne and his anti-conscription campaign in World War I.
Although the worst of it was dissipated by the end of World War II when our Irish Service personnel pulled their weight, there was still considerable anti-Catholic discrimination when I first entered the workforce in the late 1950s. Catholics were believed to be heavily over-represented in the NSW Police Force. Some federal government departments were reputed to be strongly biassed towards one or the other religious group. I know these views persisted well into the late 20th century, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it in my own public service experience.
Real and virulent anti-English fanaticism exists in the United States, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it here.
Further to my last, the following book explains in great detail why any Irish hatred of the English that may continue to exist is well-founded historically. Her equally famous book, The Reason Why, has quite a bit on the subject too.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Great-Hunger-Ireland-1845-1849/dp/014014515X/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=Cecil+Woodham-Smith&qid=1625665870&s=books&sr=1-3
DT, it’s is best to look in the right places if one is to see what is significant.
One example, by no means minor: Paul Keating and his absurd, destructive anti-Englandism.
More generally, it runs through the entire BS of republicanism.
And the fakery/idiocy of the republican louts is in their ignorance, perhaps pretence, that the major threats to Australian governance reside not in the monarchy -but rather arise from our weak Constitution, our unfit Senate, and the morass of ambiguity about which public service departments -Fed and State-have responsibility for what important tasks.
And too many Australians of English descent are anti-Pom. Ingrates, idiots and ignoramuses. So there’s that.
DT, may haters hate all they want, I suppose. may they live in the past, that is their right eh. But to the extent that all that hate energy directed at the English of the past means less energy to save Western Civ.
Besides, Irish killed other Irish throughout their tribal history -with body counts higher inflicted by the English. Perhaps the book you cite fails to note that point.
And with Western Civ down for the count, it is time to assess things nett nett:
England has contributed far more nett benefits to humankind than has Ireland, and quite possibly also more than France and Germany, when all is added up.
We do not have much say in who our parents are or where we were born. What happens after that, you can do something about.
A. lot more on the subject here from last December
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2020/12/the-white-privilege-of-being-black/
@Peter O’Brien – *now* I get the ‘proud ‘ bit.
It’s a title not worked for but attached to ingeneity by the fakers.
[‘then decides to identify as Aboriginal for any reason other than to simply acquire the prenominal ‘proud’ and, occasionally, wear a red loincloth and white paint. ‘]
Don’t forget the red headband and dotty shirts to remind themselves who they identify with – maybe the dots is the white bit lols – except they don’t know it ha ha
Proud buggerum woman here – descendant of first Australians who arrived in 1788 🙂
It has always confused me that no matter how small a percentage of aboriginality a person has, they can and some do claim indigeneity, but why would they. Why not claim caucasian ancestry or consider yourself so instead. Perhaps going back 40 years things were different, as then there were not necessarily the same advantages or woke ideas in place.
Should have added “or any other ancestry”
Indeed, Peter. Unashamed is a good choice of word My comment was more of a general one about pronomial prouds.
Harry, I mostly agree with you about our dubious politicians and the bureaucracy. However, you frequently complain about our allegedly weak Constitution. Exactly what do you see as its weakness, and how would you propose to fix it?
Peter O’Brien. I would hope that you are an unashamed Australian of Irish descent. I am an unashamed, fourth generation Australian of English, Scots and Irish descent but I never talk about it. Why? Because, although I am proud of my forefathers, (or three of them, anyway, (little joke)), it doesn’t bloody-well matter. Why can’t we all just be Australians, first and last?
Biggles,
you were my favourite reading as a boy and I totally agree with you now. Regards to Algy and Bertie.
DT, thank you for asking.
On the Constitution: The problems reside in the Constitution not providing for protections against:
-Big Statism,
-marxism in any of its expressions and forms,
-the undermining of free enterprise and undermining the rights to private property (see what the ALP does in confiscating private wealth by way of taxes and charges)
-constraints/halts to proper economic productivity and proper investment in business innovation and entrepreneurial enterprises (see current the tax system)
-other constraints/halts to free enterprise due to union control of labour markets and key infrastructure (eg transport, wharves and much more)
-freelance anti-free enterprise activities by public servants
-constraints/halt of technological advances and productive economic enterprise by the ALP-Green anti-nuke legislation and by their anti-factual, anti-fossil fuel campaign
-the use of tax-payer funds to finance anti-Westernist ideology as channeled by the ABC, SBS, the universities, and the state school systems, and by way of 18C and the AHRC.
-The Senate, which is unfit for purpose of overseeing the long-term defence and development of Australia.
-the criminal justice systems which effectively endorses and encourages violence and other criminality, generally, and by certain select non-Western and anti-Westernist groups in particular
-the transfer of tax-payer funds to certain groups of home-grown and imported parasitic and/or violent non-Western and anti-Westernist groups -by way of welfare, free healthcare, community grants and “task forces”.
-generally, the destruction of proper education by way of the malign anti-Westernist campaign by marxist-inspired senior public servants and union officials who control the universities and state school systems.
DT, there is more.
Now, the Australian Constitution provides for no protection against any of these destructive activities -and provides for no remedies for their evil effects.
OK, the people who framed our Constitution in the 1890’s perhaps did not imagine that the marxist-inspired/anti-Westernist/anti-empirical/post-modernist/wokeist ideologies would arise and destroy our quite good version of British-flavoured Western Civ.
But events have shown that a Proper Viable Australia now has a very limited future.
We urgently need a re-do of the constitution of the basis of our society. We need to innovate and devise and implement the best ways to stop the Left/Big Statists/wokeists who have almost destroyed the joint-
-and instead to grant power to those who would spend their lives helping Proper Australia and Proper Australian contributing citizens to flourish.
How to do it?
Big job eh. Thinking caps on, pronto. And there is no quick, cheap remedy -that’s for sure. Big job indeed.
Biggles, there are several answers to your question. But start with multiculturalism.
From all of my reading, if the author of Dark Emu is ATSI, then so am I. I am at least 5th generation Aussie on both sides of my family. In fact, Mary Mackillop is one of my ancestors. Perhaps in the forthcoming census all of us who were born in Australia should tick the “ATSI” box. After all, as a man, it’s ok for me to identify as a woman, or as a Scorpio, I guess it’s ok to identify as a Pisces. Or maybe as a septuagenarian it’s ok to identify as a sexagenarian. Once all of us identified as ATSI then maybe the powers that be would start defining what actually constitutes a true ATSI, and then maybe we could start creating a better world for them. At the moment, the people who really need the assistance don’t seem to be getting it.
I have to declare that I am in the Biggles mob (despite my name here). I am republican bent but believe the monarchy works for us so would leave it alone. (Who wants a US style presidential election?)
I love the English, the Irish and the Scots and all of my other brothers and sisters of all nations.
And Harry, our constitution does provide protection against the things you rail against. Its called democracy, a poor system of government that just happens to be better than all the others. You should put your energies in to what we have by joining a political party that suits your views or working to bring that about instead of complaining about what we haven’t got.
Ian Mac says: “spend government money on those in need only, regardless of race or any other irrelevant criteria”. I agree. My feelings are as below. In the meantime I believe everyone should tick the ATSI box because we all came out of Africa originally and eventually if we were all in the ATSI box the government would eventually be spending the money on need.
HAPPY NAIDOC WEEK
We are a land of migrants, from the very first in their canoes or who even walked here. Those who came in chains, those who fled famine, those who fled or survived genocide and war and it’s consequences. To those who came by jet plane yesterday. We acknowledge that in our past, as in most nations, bad things have happened. But we strive to be one people, equality of opportunity for all, no privilege by birth, truly one nation.
Brian Boru -No.
As cautioned by those who first devised and championed democracy, in Ancient Greece/Rome, in Britain, and the USA, democracy is always at risk.
It is especially at risk when power-mongering Big Statists convince parasites that they can have everything they want for no effort on their part. At that point, the ordinary people will be enslaved by the power-mongering Big Statists, as we now are.
Regrettably, the recitation of cliches to the contrary will not save us.
To fix things, to save Proper Australia, a never-ending campaign is required that involves first dozens, then thousands, them millions of ordinary Australians to put their energies into re-forming the Libs and Nats. Then, every day of the week, to support and push the right kinds of MPs and local councillors to do the right things.
Voting every couple years is not enough to maintain proper democracy.
This is clear to those who have eyes to see.
Notice how people who like their comfort say many platitudes that maintain their sense of security and protect their inner peace, and attempt to mollify those who point out the dangers that are clear and present.
Harry, that sounds like a big job. I respectfully suggest you get started. As I said, you need to put your energies within the framework of our democracy, in a way you calculate will achieve your goals.
Brian Boru -thank you for your guidance. I take it that you will not volunteer for The Front, or for work in the supply system, or even to send in a few quid. The great majority of ordinary people are in those categories.
In my fifty-plus years working in areas where complex problems must be understood, and where robust solutions to those problems must be formulated and implemented, and there are long years of hard work involved, I have seen many spectators offering advice, and then they make fun of and even scapegoat those who ask others to get involved.
Many of these spectators have no comprehension that complex problems, which to solve require hard work over the decades, comprise the critical challenges of Life-on-Earth. And if these big challenges are avoided, the place collpases.
And this point is well-documented by proper historians.
And we see the demand for easy/no effort lives in which someone else does the heavy-lifting especially among those who vote ALP and Green, and now increasingly among those who vote Lib and Nat.
Harry, in your detailed critique of Australia’s political problems, I think what you have described is a functioning democracy in action. Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.
Our Constitution is just fine, in my opinion. As lawyers have opined in the context of altering the Constitution to give special recognition to Aborigines, any change will inevitably have unintended consequences. To amend it to make it possible to place restrictions on certain types of political activity will inevitably be used by the other side to restrict their political opponents’ rights. We can see this process in action in the US right now. At best we finish up with government by the High Court, just as their unelected Supreme Court effectively governs the US. At worst we have anarchy.
You are quite correct in saying that only we, the people, can change things, but we don’t need to amend the Constitution to change our political parties. The power is in our hands. It just needs leadership.
DT, I see no prospect of leadership -exactly because the legal system, and the Constitution on which it stands, provides no effective assistance for people who stand against the marxist-inspired, anti-empirical, wokeist Big Statists.
Look at the marxism channeled by the ABC, SBS, the universities, the state school systems -there is no legal remedy to any of that.
Leaders will not emerge until ordinary people .in their millions- get active in the anti-marxist cause.
Not that multiculturalism has killed the very idea of active, engaged, contributory citizenship -and its essential role in democracy.
Waiting for leadership is akin to victimhood.
And your reference to the US situation is off-beam. And your quote from Churchill is beside the point.
What we require is full-participation citizenship -thousands/millions of ordinary people spending a dozen hours a week working in their local Lib or Nat branch -and/or hosting in their own homes discussions among neighbours about what is right and how to get MPs and local council members to do the right thing.
The power is not in our hands -not yet. Power must be worked for, fought for.
And as I am sure you know, cliches, platitudes, and weak understanding of social/political/power dynamics have never saved a people from slavery.
DT, I wish to alter the tone of two of my comments above and say them this way:
That is my view that the US situation you refer to, and Churchill’s statement about democracy, are not relevant to the matters before use in Australia. You are stating things as you see them, and I am stating things as I see them. All best to you DT -Harry.
DT, you are without doubt right- we need men of real calibre and character. What ever happened to the heroic nature in men.
Prior to the arrival of feminism, the nature of woman was something worthy and well worth conserving- I believe feminism has robbed men and leadership of its core quality, hope.
Monash, Roden – Cutler, Bishop Muldoon, The Santamarias and the Weary Dunlop’s of this world.
These guys were by no means perfect, but they were believable, honest and trustworthy- the world is not an easy place to navigate.
The integrity of these men gave them presence , and all had the work ethic of a dog on a bone.
STD, we had just such a man as Prime Minister not long ago. He was treated with total contempt by the media and even his own party and replaced by a despicable “ghost”. His own electorate spat him out and replaced him with a vapid air-head.
To me the only genuinely impressive politician in this country isn’t even in Parliament yet. I pray that Jacinta Price is given the chance to excel, but I fear she’ll be destroyed by the media for daring to defy the politically correct.
Harry, you are wrong about me. For most of my life I have been at “The Front”. I am simply encouraging you to also go to “The Front”.
Ghost – being vain glory in the past.
Back on topic, I’m puzzled by the claim that rapid growth in self-identified, affluent, fortunate, urban ‘aboriginals’ means that the stagnancy or regression in aboriginal living standards is actually worse than measured.
Wouldn’t it be the case that the number of aboriginals counted to be illiterate, not attending school, obese or whatever is directly counted or estimated in one stream of work (eg the Productivity Commission’s ‘closing the gap’ reporting)? Then, in another stream of work (e.g the census) people identify themselves to be aboriginal or torres strait islander, or whatever.
The numerator – disadvantaged aboriginals – is more or less stable, regrettably but for easily understood reasons. The denominator – total self-identified ‘aboriginals’ – is rising. So the problem, as a proportion of all self-identified aboriginals, is actually falling.
The real problems is the one posed in Andrew Bolt’s challenge: affluent, capable urban Australians are claiming a racial entitlement to welfare programs, as self-identified aboriginals, to which they are not entitled by need. They are therefore diluting the assistance available to ‘real’ aboriginals who are entitled by need (as well as by race).
There is clearly no appetite in the clerisy to address this problem, so maybe the only way forward is for many of us to identify as aboriginal or torres strait islander in the forthcoming census. If the problem of aboriginal fakery is being ignored, let’s make it too big to ignore. That would be a very effective step also against special constitutional identification and privilege of aboriginals.
Let’s start a movement!
Tezza, nice to be back on track.
I know this is nit picking but I don’t believe anyone is “entitled”.
My belief is that we are obliged to help those in need, it is not a matter of their entitlement but of our duty.
And the matter of race should not be a consideration. Let us strive to be one nation.
Back on track, with all the cliches and feel-goods and platitudes, and let’s all just be nice and get along eh.
Harry ,Tezza’s right, that’s a brilliant idea – identify as Aboriginal in the upcoming census – if it’s good enough for Pascoe ,that will do me!
Good thinking Tezza.
Brian Boru there has been a welfare mentally in this Country ( not Nation) since the saintly tzar of the Left- your mate Gough Whitlam.
PS a dark emu is the equivalence of an ostrich with head in the sand . Real emu’s don’t hid their heads they stare you in the eye- Fact.
A lot of Australians including the sun tanned variance are lazy and expect others to do the heavy lifting while they take the spoils.
95% of refugees and asylum seekers are still on welfare after 5 years in Oz- WELFARE IS NOW A SCAM.
Greg Williams has opened the real can of worms. I’m also fifth (sixth?) generation Australian, on both sides of the family. So who is more connected to Australian history, me or someone straight off the boat who can claim some distant aboriginal ancestry? Who is more aboriginal? My wife is first generation Australian. Where does that place our son in the hierarchy of race? Frankly, like most others who don’t have an ideological axe to grind in the matter, I couldn’t care less.
But what does ‘race-identification’ really exist in? It would be laughable for contemporary Jews to claim direct descent from Abraham. That gene pool is probably part of all of us by now. Yet Judaism remains a highly distinct ‘race’ identifier. Many Jews aren’t even followers of their faith or customs, yet would still identify as Jewish.
Ultimately there must be some solid connection for such identification – direct ancestry by parents who raised you within the culture; living within geographical borders and embracing a culture; being in possession of legal documentation which proffers distinct rights; or embracing and adopting the racial beliefs and praxis. Genetics doesn’t really come into it, as Australia and other New World nations demonstrate.
So are any of these ‘white’ city folks really ‘aboriginal’? I don’t think it’s enough to just ‘decide’ to be, based on some vague genetic history. One also has to live the part.
Tezza’s suggestion, above, that we all identify as ATSIs in the upcoming census is possibly the most practical way to handle this mess. Why, they might even let you then vote for The Voice! But I also can’t help wondering how it will all pan out after we’re engulfed by the Middle Kingdom, as seems inevitable. Will there be any advantage in maintaining such self-identity once we’re all lumped together among the “ethnic minorities”, and treated accordingly, by our ruling Han Chinese bureaucrats? Western Civ. will become just a distant dream . . .
Harry Lee – you talk as if the Irish ‘anti-English’ viewpoint arose from the mere fact of an English ‘presence’ in Ireland. A short history may be useful to you, and perhaps to Doubting Thomas, who was quick to ascribe the antagonism to Archbishop Mannix and the usual tropes of the conflict being ‘religious ‘ (as though there was equal fault in both sides).
The English installed plantations with a view to the suppression of the Catholic Irish. They imposed the Scots crofters and drove the native Irish to west of the Shannon, which was not arable and where they were forced to subsist on potatoes. Of course, with the failure of the potato crop, millions died, even though there was food held by the English landlords and controlled by English government bodies. They call that ‘the famine’ as though it happened naturally. The Irish were subjected to persecution on the basis of their religion by which they were forbidden to celebrate Mass (priests and parishioners executed), practise the Catholic religion at all; forbidden an education; forbidden to speak Irish; forbidden to own a gun; forbidden to own a horse worth more than five pounds; forbidden to own property and excluded from voting. As a consequence, priests said Mass secretly at ‘Mass rocks’ in the fields, with lookouts for the soldiers and there were coded songs that were sung in the square to let people know whether or not it was safe to go to Mass. The Christian brothers and other orders held ‘hedge schools’ and educated secretly, and families who could afford it sent their young abroad for education (which itself was a criminal offence). Yes, a lot of these laws were overcome in principle after the Catholic Emancipation Acts, (1830) but the reality persisted and the native Irish were subjected to constant daily injustice. The situation persisted well throughout the twentieth century; The actions of the Black and Tans in the 1920’s rivalled the KGB on any level. Employment, education and property ownership was severely limited in Northern Ireland even in the 1980’s. Even then, areas in Northern Ireland did not allow equal voting rights for Catholics. So Archbishop Mannix was actually doing his job when he spoke so unecumenically – he was sticking up for the truly oppressed against a regime that was every bit as repressive as those which you, Harry Lee, would regard as beyond the pale (itself an Anglo Irish expression for the wilds beyond the pale of English settlement). And yes, the English had also tried slavery with the Irish, except the Irish were too weak and died like flies, so it was abandoned. Perhaps to colour the dispute as ‘religious ‘ has a ring of truth, but it is a ‘religious ‘ dispute only in the sense that the English state forbad one religion and imposed another and executed those who refused to subscribe. Those who adhered to the Catholic faith were severely penalised in employment and this discrimination was not confined to the times of the Penal laws but persisted well into the twentieth century and operated in Australia. The ‘sectarianism ‘ (which, again, is spoken of as if originating on both sides), operated when my father, a war hero (Military Medal and Bar, Tobruk veteran) returned from World War II and was unable to get a job because he was told ‘we don’t employ Catholics.’ He then got a job with Mark Foys, as they were Catholic and so employed Catholics to counter-act the denial of employment operating against Catholics.
So Harry, it might be that the Irish antipathy to the English seems silly to you (& I certainly don’t have any antipathy myself) but there is a long history there, with good reasons and there has never been a single acknowledgement by any English authority of the extent of the oppression or the origins of it because, while every kind of discrimination is vociferously decried throughout woke England there is still a provision in the English governance that provides that a Catholic cannot take a royal title. And, in regards to that discrimination, there is overwhelming silence.
The organisations themselves insist on this, as a way of proving how good they are: I’m legally Aborigine, so the ANU and other orgs loved being able to include in their figures.
It’s a scam.
That white aboriginals are now admitting that they’re contributing to race inflation isn’t necessarily a good sign.
.
I suspect it’s them saying, “actually The Problem is worse than it looks and needs more money”
Not me, I’m a white man.
Guilfoyle, I am aware of that history, which is why I posted the link to Cecil Woodham-Smith’s “The Great Hunger”.
I’m equally aware of the sometimes bitter discrimination here in Australia, but I disagree that Mannix was “actually doing his job” in his opposition to conscription as a defence of the truly oppressed. This was Australia where conscription applied to everyone, not just Catholics, and there was no official “regime” of anti-Irish or anti-Catholic oppression here, no matter what local bigotry there may have been. Mannix was wrong to conflate Irish historical grievances with Australian policy. He was more part of the problem than any part of a solution.
And I have no truck with any argument that conscription was introduced to defend the hated English. It was for our own defence as much as theirs, as anyone who knows geography ought to understand. Until they were defeated in World War I, a large slice of Oceania was German territory giving them sufficient bases to control our vital trade routes. Had they defeated Britain in that war, we’d have inevitably fallen too.
Finally, there is absolutely nothing discriminatory in the British barring Catholics from ascent to the Monarchy (basically still the only remaining restriction). The British Monarch is the titular head of the Church of England, so it’s perfectly reasonable to debar Catholics. I’ll take that objection seriously when an Anglican is elected Pope.