That attitude robs people of hope, Darlene. I think it is entirely possible to have successful interventions in communities that are suffering those types of privations. Of course it would be better if you could wave a magic wand and provide adequate housing etc first but the problem is too urgent to wait for that.

I would agree with that absolutely, although when someone makes blanket statements about any group, well…..

Commenting on culture, which is inherently about trends not perfect assimilation, can hardly be called a blanket statement. Suggesting that there was a racist culture in the colonial age isn’t a blanket statement that all people in that time were racist.

Parents with a strong education ethic will do extraordinary things to ensure their children get ahead. They’ll skip meals and wear second hand clothes if that’s what it takes- I’ve seen it happen.

Do children have the right to enjoy the fruits of their parents labor? Is it fair that one suffers because one’s parents were less effective (for whatever reason)?

How can a person think about education when they are barely getting by?

I think you’re confusing opportunity with aspiration. I think a better question would be: How does one teach the value of education to a person or people that are not interested in learning? Further, if formal education does not form a part of a people’s culture is it right to enforce our value of education onto such people?

The problem is when people are denied opportunities or are subject to structural disadvantage due to things like race (or are so excluded from society that can’t comprehend going to uni or whatever). This is something that’s deeply internalised. If a kid is talented (and I believe all kids are gifted, contrary to the rantings of some over-indulgent middle-class parents) but has no support systems and no enouragement and no sense of being part of the community, it’d be a hard road indeed to transcend that.

“I disagree with that. Parents with a strong education ethic will do extraordinary things to ensure their children get ahead. They’ll skip meals and wear second hand clothes if that’s what it takes- I’ve seen it happen.”

It’s true, of course it’s true, but what about the kids who don’t have parents like that? What about when structural disadvantage and racism and economic privation etc have left people unable to provide a strong education ethic?

Well we have a strange paradox then because I generally agree with the Burchell article for the reasons that you agree with.

Racism has nothing to do with melanin, it is a matter of imperialism and colonisation - historical and economic forces. The Irish Aborigines are white and the most imperialist nation on earth is about to elect a black president.”

I believe those who focus on personal racism are those who obscure the true nature of the situation for it ignores the historical and structural issues. A clear example of this is the ANTAR “racism makes me sick” campaign which is encouraging white homes and workplaces to watch their language so they dont stress out any Aborigines and exascerbate their health problems - white, self serving bullshit! http://www.antar.org.au/racism

I strongly agree with Burchells parting comment….”White liberals like to wax lyrical about how much there is for us to learn from traditional Aboriginal culture. Maybe we can learn from the contemporary disasters of Aboriginal society, too.” I think this was the point of his article.

That was my experience of the rural anglo-saxon lumpenproletariat. It was a lugubrious and self-defeating place. But then you say:

“How can a person think about education when they are barely getting by?”

I disagree with that. Parents with a strong education ethic will do extraordinary things to ensure their children get ahead. They’ll skip meals and wear second hand clothes if that’s what it takes- I’ve seen it happen.

But back onto “structural matters”, some kids will never be high paid professionals and society needs its street cleaners and ditch diggers as much as it needs its doctors and lawyers. Folks in those occupations deserve respect and should never be dismissed as failures.

Wave after wave of immigrant parents have worked in factories but inculcated into their children the belief that they could be doctors, lawyers or whatever and it has worked.

How many of those immigrants actually *were* doctors and lawyers before they came to Australia and couldn’t find work in that field? Or at least came from families where they had relatives who were doctors & lawyers? When they go to worship, how many of their community actually are doctors & lawyers?

That’s still a very different acculturation to education than coming from generations of people who have no such professionals hanging around anywhere on any branch of the family tree. It’s extremely difficult to adequately guide your kids in their educational path and elective choices etc without knowing people who’ve already done it who are also people you trust to advise you well.

If the children believe these are the only jobs on offer it is because they have had that idea inculcated into them by their parents. Wave after wave of immigrant parents have worked in factories but inculcated into their children the belief that they could be doctors, lawyers or whatever and it has worked.

I read some of those “classic works” by RW Connell etc and I was never convinced, being a product of the anglo-saxon rural lumpenproletariat myself.

I would agree with that absolutely, although when someone makes blanket statements about any group, well…..

Education wasn’t highly valued in the community I grew up in. You were expected to leave school at 15 and get a job. The apathy came from a belief that one had a “place” and that education wasn’t as important as doing real work (i.e. manual labour). In recent years, things have changed for the better and for the worse in said community. That is, some have fallen through the net and become part of the “underclass” (a class not known for pushing education) and some have experienced upward mobility (and embraced education).

How can a person think about education when they are barely getting by?

Mel, that is really sad. It is just extraordinary that after such an authoritarian upbringing you would wish to perpetrate the same cruel treatment on others.

Did you try therapy?

Obviously health, housing and nutritional factors (among others) also contribute to poor education outcomes. But it’s quite wrong to ascribe all these to some lack of “determination” on the part of parents rather than to stronger and mutually reinforcing structural causes.

Ummm. I never said it was unique. Nor do I dismiss the causal factors you cite as being behind the lack of determination. I pinpoint the “lack of determination” because it needs to be addressed in itself- whether this means addressing the underlying causal factors you identify is beside the point.

Where I tend to disagree with Tigtog is on the colour blindness of dysfunction.

Well I agree with everything you write there and I’m not quite sure how it in any way contradicts what I said about how those advocating “colourblindness” have the effect of OBSCURING systemic racism and covert discrimination.

I’m not claiming that there are no indigenous parents who are simply apathetic about education, just as there are many poor non-indigenous parents who are simply apathetic about education. Apathetic parents tend to be the substance abusers and /or suffering depression or other mental illnesses, which have a higher rate of occurrence amongst the poor. To say that the reaction of apathy is somehow unique to indigenous people rather than a reflection of their over-representation amongst the poor is to miss the point rather badly.

Asserting that race SHOULD have no practical impact on one’s potential as a human being does not mean pretending that community attitudes to race actually do not have any practical impact on one’s opportunities to realise one’s potential as a human being.

A persons race may result in them being unfairly discriminated against and I have no problem with systems that address this. The issue I have is the assumption that a person has been discriminated against solely on the basis of their race.

European colonisation all over the globe has stripped indigenous people of their inherited wealth and then blames the indigenous for not building the advantages that inherited wealth confers for themselves from scratch.

Just as its unfair to judge indigenous peoples by the values of western culture, I think its unfair to judge those from colonial times in the context of modern culture and values.

My comment indigenous Australian behaviour as it pertains to education is merely a statement of fact. Tigtog at #3 appears to acknowledge it is a fact then provide a sound explanation for why it is so but then goes on to label me racist at #6 anyway.

It worries me how often observations of trends in a culture or race are demonised with terms such as ‘racist’.

How then do you explain indigenous student absenteeism rates? http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/iae/analysis/learning/1/absenteeism.htm

What would you’re parents have done if you wagged school? I never dared as it would’ve meant being beaten from breakfast to bedtime.

Thanks, I can now agree with you on that point. I couldn’t find a convenient link to stone axes and knives as currency but they were important too - they had a trading value not connected to the cost of production or demand for that particular tool. They were currency. Ceremonial use of the tool was value adding to its tradable value too. There is a lot of talk about pituri as a currency because of the shock value of the drug trade being a central pillar of Aboriginal economy, but the tools were a central currency too (and probably many other things I am not aware of).

One of the major disruptions to the traditional economy was the introduction of steel axes, shovels and picks which, because of their high value in the Aboriginal economy, were a common item for cross cultural trade. The John Batman treaty for Melbourne consisted mainly of a yearly supply of tools.

However, the introduction of steel tools affected the economy the same as if a foreign country today built a mint in Australia, or a factory that produced gold bullion from coal, dual powering our present currency system. Because of the availability of the new tools the old currency subsided as did the trading value of the new tools.

Similarly, credit plays a very big role in the traditional economy but it is very complex and overlaps with non-market forces and structures so I wont begin to try and explain here.

As for Jews and Chinese, a big difference is that Aboriginal people were incarcerated for over 70 years - several generations. Unlike the Jews, who were released within one generation, surviving Aboriginal people did not have a homeland to return to upon release from internment.

Through the much publicised predicaments of a number of detained refugees in Australia we are aware of the mental health consequences of internment for several years. Many refugess have needed intensive medical care as a consequence of their detention for a few years. Intergenerational trauma in Aboriginal society has to be understood in terms of the socialising effect of 3 or 4 generations within concentration camps such as the missions and reserves.

The mental health needs, above and beyond market experience, of Aboriginal Australia puts it in a distinctly different category to Jews, Chinese or even white homeless people in our city streets.

Where I tend to disagree with Tigtog is on the colour blindness of dysfunction. I have refered to Aileen Moreton Robinson on another thread, her assertion that white people do not see our own whiteness is valid. The white ethic is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” - an inherently assimilationist ethic that places the (white) observer as the definer of reality and anything that is white and familiar to the white person is “normal” or even universal. In this sense colour blindness to our own culture is indeed a big part of dysfunction.

An example - Aboriginal deaths in custody.

The prison system is, according to deaths in custody statistics, colourblind. There is approximately the same per capita rate of deaths in custody for Aboriginal prisoners as for non-Aboriginal prisoners. The dysfunction lies in the prison, not in the culture of the prisoner. Prison kills indiscriminately.

However, an Aboriginal person is between 12 and 27 times (from memory) more likely to be arrested than a white person, depending on where they live. The high Aboriginal arrest rate and consequent high imprisonment rate and consequent high death in custody rate is a direct result of police culture and practice, not any cultural dysfunction of Aboriginal people.

While there are many racist dogs amongst the police force they are not all like that. The greater racism (from a Queensland perspective) is the Beattie/Bligh government who maintain genocidal policies such as grog restrictions. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in custody asserted, perhaps more emphatically than any other point, that alcoholim should be decriminalised as the criminalisation of drunkenness was the prime cause of deaths in custody. The commission reccomended a broad health and healing paradigm for alcoholism. However for the last 5 years the single Aboriginal policy of the Qld, government has been the imposition of grog prohibition and the primary agency of Aboriginal policy has been the police force. The government knows, through the RCIADIC that their policies will lead to many more Aboriginal deaths but they persist with their genocide because, in their white colour blindness such a genocidal policy appears normal to white society.

It is colourblindness to look at Aboriginal communities to see how deaths in custody might reduce. When the scales fall from our eyes we will refocus our attention on the white culture of the police, prisons, governments and public servants. But at present all these agencies are not even on our radar in terms of public policy.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t indigenous Australians on native title holdings have worse outcomes in areas like poverty, health, suicide etc than indigenous Australians in major cities?

I’ve said all along that indigenous disadvantage is primarily a structural problem- it is what happens time and time again when a primitive society (hunter-gatherer) is colonised by a more advanced society. The problem is when I point out certain cultural dysfunctions the luvvies interpret it as me allocating blame. I’m not- it has nothing to do with any innate quality of indigenous peoples themselves.

My comment indigenous Australian behaviour as it pertains to education is merely a statement of fact. Tigtog at #3 appears to acknowledge it is a fact then provide a sound explanation for why it is so but then goes on to label me racist at #6 anyway.

I certainly do not acknowledge as a fact that the education gap for indigenous Australians is due to anything as simply reductive and morally judgemental as some sort of “lack of determination” on the part of parents with respect to their children’s education.