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My picture is to the left of this post. I want to make two things clear. First, I was sixty-one at the time and have long since decided to remain stuck in a black hole as the ravages of time inevitably reduce me to a state of decrepitude. One has one’s pride. Second, I am not of Australian Aboriginal descent. When challenged on this point I produce a $2 coin from my pocket and note the absence of any similarity to the chap on the obverse.
I look nothing like him, I say defiantly. Come on, they say, looks aren’t everything. And that’s true, even axiomatic, these days. I notice that many self-identifying “Aboriginal” men certainly don’t look remotely like the chap on the coin. And the same can be said, with equal force, for the gentler sex. So, in fact, I have to concede the point. My fair skin and blue eyes might not rule me out by the standards du jour.
But hold on, I’m a £10 Pom! I have pictures of me mum and dad and they look as white as white. Proves nothing, apparently. Who knows whether a travelling Aborigine had his wicked way with one of my floozy ancestors. Might have done. Nevertheless, I’m insistent. And here goes. I am self-identifying as being of English heritage. That’ll do it. No one can dare question that.
Still, you have to say, Englishmen (the white kind) are the progeny of a melting pot of different tribal groupings and ethnicities: Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Franks, Romans, Vikings, Normans and more. I’m not sure to which mob to pledge my undying allegiance. Ah-ha! Let’s not forget, we all came out of Africa, or so the evolutionary experts theorise. Could I self-identify as African together with my Aboriginal cousins? Don’t want to; don’t necessarily buy the theory. However, a thought just came to me. In a word, Neanderthal. Bear with me and I will get to it.
There does seem to be advantages in Australia and North America in identifying as indigenous. There are the billions of dollars in aid for fanciful schemes; more welfare benefits than for poor non-indigenous folk; special educational, job and promotion opportunities; insulation from getting sacked for incompetence (apropos Linda Burney); free rights to large tracts of land, and even your very own parliament if enough Aussies fall for the Voice. And all of this while claiming perpetual victimhood and, to boot, without attracting the ignominy of being beneficiaries of racially-based preferment. Call me old-school if you like, but this smells and feels like racial discrimination.
So I have dream, one which brings me back to Neanderthals.
Apparently, all non-sub-Saharan African populations have a quantum (about 2 per cent) of Neanderthal DNA; including Australian Aboriginal people. Now to put 2 per cent in perspective; it is more DNA than US Senator Elizabeth Warren has of Cherokee DNA; and, I suspect, more than some self-identifying Aboriginal people have of Aboriginal DNA. Thus, we can justifiably say, all non-indigenous Australians share the same ancestor with Aboriginal people; the preeminent primordial ancestor. We are many yet we are one. We all share in the one breed, so to speak. Henceforth, I intend self-identifying as Neanderthal and invite all Australians to join me. Equal at last. No special privileges. We are many but one in our Homo neanderthalensis heritage. Each judged by his or her character.
Come to think of it, this chap does look at bit like me now, sans most of his hair.
Neanderthal consciousness lives on today in those with Asperger’s Syndrome: the Faculty of Will as one with the Faculty of Understanding and no sense of Boundary to limit the scope of one’s domain centred on Self.
It was a consciousness quite appropriate in the early millenia of human consciousness but not once consciousness fragmented when ego consciousnes emerged. Their extinction is recorded mythologically in Genesis in The Flood and Modern Humans emerged from them with a reconfigured brain to support a new consciousness and brain to support it, depicted in the design of The Ark with its compartmentalisation supporting the decoupling of the Understanding from the Will enabling one to consider the agendas and perspectives of Other, AKA empathy.
And physically they live on with red hair attributed to Neanderthal genetic admixture.
Margaret Thatcher was a prime example of Neanderthal / Aspergic ginger (altho she went bottle blondr as she aged) and her unyielding iron will was a manifestation of her faculty of Will fused to her faculty of Understanding.
Ha. We all revert somewhat to our inner Neanderthal with the vissicitudes of ageing Peter. I’m sure that explains the ever increasing hair in my nose, ears and toes! Human DNA is complex, in that we all share enough of the same to readily interbreed with any other given race but different races often ‘express’ their DNA differently. I.e. some genes are consistently switched on or off in different races despite being shared across races. But as your most recent article (previous to this) identified – this is rapidly becoming a mute point in a modern mixed multiracial world where race will ultimately be more or less extinguished in the not too distant future. So let’s put race based identity politics behind us – vote NO!
Peter, an aboriginal cricket team toured England in 1868. Who knows what frisky business they got up to? Some of you Ten Pound Poms might have more aboriginal DNA in you than many of our home-grown, self-proclaimed aborigines. (Here’s looking at you, Bruce.)
Yes and just like Bruce, if Peter really thought hard he may recall a family tale from a grandparent about it. Of course such things were not documented because of the prejudices of those days but that would not make your aboriginality any less real Peter.
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Reminds me what a chap said when I told him he was very like somebody else I knew. He said, “my old man got around quite a bit in his day”.
I could never understand why people get lathered up over skin colour. There is a simple explanation which I wrote about some time back when a migrant of middle eastern appearance made a comment on the ABC to the effect that white people don’t belong in Australia because they need sunscreen to prevent sun cancers which I thought at the time was just another sad, pitiable attempt by the ABC at humour. On an equally humorous note the same could be said about dark skinned people who should not live in cold parts of the world like Europe and North America because of the possible need for Vitamin D supplements – which is garbage of course and not even a skerrick of humour. Vitamin D deficiency is implicated in Rickets in Children and Osteoporosis in adults. All humans require a standard amount of Vitamin D as part of their bone health and over the millennia their bodies have adapted to the climate in which they live. Vitamin D is formed in the body by exposure to sunlight. Vitamin D and its derivatives are potentially toxic – large doses are used in rodent bait, for example – so it’s important that each person gets the standard amount through exposure to sunlight and possibly diet. In very sunny areas of the world around the equator, for instance in Sudan and parts of India, people have developed very dark skins to ensure they get the standard safe amount of Vitamin D while people in the south of Africa are paler. In contrast, people in Western Europe and Sweden and places near the North Pole have varying degrees of exposure to sunlight for large parts of the year and hence they developed a pale skin that allows more sunlight through so that they too receive a standard amount of Vitamin D and the skin colour darkens as you go from Sweden down to the Mediterranean. But humans adapt – white people in Australia if exposed a lot to sunlight get a suntan to prevent them from developing too much Vitamin D, and the opposite is true. I knew some dark skinned people in London when working there who had been there for several years continuously and they said their skin colour had become paler (to let in more sunlight), so much so that when they went to a beachside resort in southern Italy for a summer holiday they got sunburnt for the first time in their life, complete with peeling skin like we get. I once saw an old UK public health movie aimed at showing new mothers how to prevent their baby from getting Rickets in a UK winter by putting them in a crib, minus their clothing, next to a closed window with that weak winter sun coming through the window onto their skin and leaving them there for a certain period of time. This concern about Rickets in white children persisted culturally in Australia (where it was largely unnecessary because of our sunlight) in the form of being dosed with Cod Liver Oil Emulsion, a practice which has largely died out in Australia. (Thank goodness – I remember getting dosed with it as a child – it was up there with boiled cabbage for taste and ingestion). However, it may be a good idea for our migrant children with darker skins. Some time back there was a rethink about the “slip-slop-slap + big hats” campaign when it was seen as inappropriate for schoolchildren with dark skin because of the potential for causing Vitamin D deficiency. Some years back I met a health professional who had worked in Canberra during a winter there and who saw a case of Rickets in a young African child whose parents had been working in Yugoslavia for several years and, like in cold Canberra, had clothed the child in warm clothing for considerable periods of time thus minimising exposure to sunlight and this resulted in Rickets. So irrespective of our skin colour “we are all in this together” in Australia and hopefully it will stay that way after next Saturday. Getting sun cancers burnt off occasionally does not stop us from enjoying a common Australian citizenship.
“..long since decided to remain stuck in a black hole..”
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But PS, wasn’t it you who said during a discussion about the youthful photos accompanying many media articles, that you had forwarded an up-to-date photo but Quadrant persisted in using the old one?
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It’s good to see Greg Sheridan’s is now more recent in The Australian.