Thanks Mr. Magoo.
Mackka
Mackka
What is a Aboriginal today
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Yes, that is true Mackka. There is a big difference between celebrating a slave trader with a monument, and celebrating one of the architects of our constitution or European settlement. We all have to get along, thankfully it's a big block of land that we have to do it on.
Trouble is many famous historic figures potentially have a chequered past when judged by today's ultra PC standards.Deepseeker said:
One they were talking about on the news today was Baden Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts...It seems that prior to WW2, he was quite right wing, and supported or endorsed, Hitler...So while I don't support the protests/riots, I do realise history is not always clear cut on matters such as these...
Goldtarget
(AKA OldGT)
Pete E said:
If you go looking for snakes all you will tend to see is snakes.
You've highlighted the problem, context and the time period matters. Still amuses me that during the peak of the modern era (aka right now) some groups choose to ignore whats right in front of them, instead wading into the deep and murky waters of history, where sadly they have no influence.
Maybe the could go and watch (or rewatch) The Lion King, and look past the fact its marketed as a kids cartoon movie made by Disney. Modern version of a very old tale.
Giving the Devil his due isnt always ignorance, it can be acceptance.
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Pete E said:
Valid point PeteE. The revisionists among us will always find something that doesn't fit modern acceptance. Churchill being responsible for the Gallipoli debacle, Mountbatten for Dieppe, Jefferson owning slaves, and as you mention Baden Powells earlier support of Hitler. Many people start off on the wrong side of history until the experiment fails or grows ugly, and often it's that part of their personal growth that brings them to the later realization/point in their life where they try something else that launches them into great feats or ideas that are celebrated by later generations. Even here in Oz we have our own, Henry Lawson springs to mind- A shocking racist by todays standards, and yet what is the point of ripping down his statues/ busts and burning his literary contributions? He was a man of his time, and I'm sure one day in the future people will rip down statues of Mandela, or Mother Theresa shouting "They ATE Animals!!"
And by the way OldGT, I'm Arachnophobic, I look for spiders and I find the bastards! :awful:
I read today that a young black man has been lynched on a tree outside the Town Hall in the USA at approx. 3AM this morning.
Mackka
Prayers are with his family.
Mackka
Prayers are with his family.
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That was a Halloween stunt (see USA news)
OldGT said:
You and GT re spot on..
Re the slave trade, the other thing that never gets mentioned is that many black and Arab traders off the time participated heavily in the slave trade and were at it long before the whites arrived. It was said the sea bed of the waters around Zanzibar looked white from the bones of the dead slaves chucked overboard from the ship's of those traders...
Goldtarget
(AKA OldGT)
And here we come full circle, greeting with the left hand as the warriors from Africa did...
I remember getting indoctrinated by all sorts of strange ideas in cubs and scouts, the flag and its meaning, learning about the Queen, keeping your fingernails clean and uniform tidy, bush survival, cooperation and competition, respect for elders, taking care of the environment, astronomy, but I must have missed the Nazi meetings.
My mates Mother was a scout leader for a number of years, who knew that suburban housewife was actually a facist.
I remember getting indoctrinated by all sorts of strange ideas in cubs and scouts, the flag and its meaning, learning about the Queen, keeping your fingernails clean and uniform tidy, bush survival, cooperation and competition, respect for elders, taking care of the environment, astronomy, but I must have missed the Nazi meetings.
My mates Mother was a scout leader for a number of years, who knew that suburban housewife was actually a facist.
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That's strange PeteE. Were you married to my ex wife before or after me? :lol:
My Eldest sister was born in Redfern 1948 she was taken away a few days later and adopted .
35 years later my sister started searching for her birth mother and found a mother father and 5 siblings..
She also found out why she was darker than her adopted parents .
The past can be painful but like all history it can teach us valuable lessons too ..
35 years later my sister started searching for her birth mother and found a mother father and 5 siblings..
She also found out why she was darker than her adopted parents .
The past can be painful but like all history it can teach us valuable lessons too ..
Firstly, race is an outdated concept. It was originally based on things like skin colour, hair curliness, ear wax, eye colour, skin folds around the eyes etc. We now know that these things are superficial - if you and your descendants lived on the equator for as little as a few thousand years, your descendants would be black. Those with high melanin in their skin are more likely to survive (less melanomas) so gradually the colour of a group of people changes. Sometimes things like blue eyes and fair hair are favoured by a group of people, so those people will be favoured mates and gradually that genetic characteristic will become common in a population. But that is a just a gene or two and does not alter the overall genetic makeup of people. The dark-skinned Berbers of North Africa migrated to the Arctic when the ice caps over Europe (kms thick) melted 8,000 years ago after the last glacial period. and their descendants are the light-skinned Laps (Saami). Why. Dark-skinned people are at a genetic disadvantage in the low-light of polar regions - the melanin prevents them manufacturing enough vitamin D, so over a few thousand years the people who survive will be lighter-skinned. Things like North Asian skinfolds around the eyes (Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian) are thought to reflect adaptation to dry and windy desert climates - even today eye problems are an issue for aborigines because they do not have this protection against constant dust in their eyes (Australia was much wetter until a few thousand years ago, as when aborigines arrived here from the tropics). Poor eyesight or blindness used to be fatal. People of thick rainforests often tend to be tall, those of high altitudes have larger lungs....
We have modern DNA subdivisions of people, that we call haplogroups and subdivisions of haplogroups (subclades). These are a measure of many genes, not just a few. Unfortunately these are of limited use as well, because people of very different descent take on the same physical appearance over time as a response to the environment that they live in (and by intermarriage - eg you might have many of an Irish mothers physical characteristics and X chromosome haplogroup but you would still carry your fathers Y chromosome haplogroup, which might be Balkan - just lack his outward physical characteristics . And even with identical X and Y haplogroups, your descendants would gradually change their appearance to suit their environment - we distinguish this as their "ethnicity" in DNA tests, as it is also imprinted later onto some of their genes. So you would say I am Irish/English descent to look at, but my haplogroup is that of a group of people who only left Africa 16,000 years ago (long after the aborigines ancestors reached Australia) - only 1% of Europeans have my Y haplogroup and today it is most characteristic of a small group of Arabs in the Levant (it did not originate their, it has simply survived better there - about 13% of the population there, most others having a semitic - Arab and Jewish - haplogroup). My ancestors may have come to England in the Roman legions as conscripts from the Balkans, where my haplogroup used to be common more than a thousand years ago
So there is no genetic race (Mongolian, Caucasian, Negroid is now considered a bit meaningless) and we have haplogroups (which do not determine our external appearance in many cases, but trace our internal genetic route of descent over tens of thousands of years) and genetic ethnicity (which may give us a similar appearance to each other, despite coming from an originally Celtic, Saxon, Scot, Viking, Pict or even Moroccan slave or Basque ancestry). For example I have blue eyes, fair hair and pale skin despite my ancestry.
What else do we have? We have cultural ethnicity as well, the beliefs and practices of people, So you can have a particular haplogroup, be genetically ethnically Middle Eastern, but you might be Christian, Muslim or Jewish or none of those, you might speak Hebrew or Assyrian or Persian. And of course you might now live in Melbourne, speak fluent English and everyone takes you for a Sicilian ancestry, but to you, you might be an atheist football-loving beer-swilling Aussie, and accepted by others as such, and you might not even know where dad and mum came from, much less grandpas and grandmas. In the end it is your PRESENT cultural ethnicity that you identify most closely with. So what are you if you eat bush yams for tukker and speak Arrente, but are relatively light skinned? You are really whatever ethnic culture that you live and identify with - and whatever those around you in that same culture consider you to be.
Long-winded, but you can see the problem when we mix this with old and faulty ideas of race, and those of family lineage, and those Western ideas of inheritance and land title. Hence the emphasis in Australian law on continuous attachment to the land, and of being recognised as aboriginal by other aborigines.
We have modern DNA subdivisions of people, that we call haplogroups and subdivisions of haplogroups (subclades). These are a measure of many genes, not just a few. Unfortunately these are of limited use as well, because people of very different descent take on the same physical appearance over time as a response to the environment that they live in (and by intermarriage - eg you might have many of an Irish mothers physical characteristics and X chromosome haplogroup but you would still carry your fathers Y chromosome haplogroup, which might be Balkan - just lack his outward physical characteristics . And even with identical X and Y haplogroups, your descendants would gradually change their appearance to suit their environment - we distinguish this as their "ethnicity" in DNA tests, as it is also imprinted later onto some of their genes. So you would say I am Irish/English descent to look at, but my haplogroup is that of a group of people who only left Africa 16,000 years ago (long after the aborigines ancestors reached Australia) - only 1% of Europeans have my Y haplogroup and today it is most characteristic of a small group of Arabs in the Levant (it did not originate their, it has simply survived better there - about 13% of the population there, most others having a semitic - Arab and Jewish - haplogroup). My ancestors may have come to England in the Roman legions as conscripts from the Balkans, where my haplogroup used to be common more than a thousand years ago
So there is no genetic race (Mongolian, Caucasian, Negroid is now considered a bit meaningless) and we have haplogroups (which do not determine our external appearance in many cases, but trace our internal genetic route of descent over tens of thousands of years) and genetic ethnicity (which may give us a similar appearance to each other, despite coming from an originally Celtic, Saxon, Scot, Viking, Pict or even Moroccan slave or Basque ancestry). For example I have blue eyes, fair hair and pale skin despite my ancestry.
What else do we have? We have cultural ethnicity as well, the beliefs and practices of people, So you can have a particular haplogroup, be genetically ethnically Middle Eastern, but you might be Christian, Muslim or Jewish or none of those, you might speak Hebrew or Assyrian or Persian. And of course you might now live in Melbourne, speak fluent English and everyone takes you for a Sicilian ancestry, but to you, you might be an atheist football-loving beer-swilling Aussie, and accepted by others as such, and you might not even know where dad and mum came from, much less grandpas and grandmas. In the end it is your PRESENT cultural ethnicity that you identify most closely with. So what are you if you eat bush yams for tukker and speak Arrente, but are relatively light skinned? You are really whatever ethnic culture that you live and identify with - and whatever those around you in that same culture consider you to be.
Long-winded, but you can see the problem when we mix this with old and faulty ideas of race, and those of family lineage, and those Western ideas of inheritance and land title. Hence the emphasis in Australian law on continuous attachment to the land, and of being recognised as aboriginal by other aborigines.
So when are we going to discount Race, gender, religious leanings, entirely and treat everybody exactly the same under the law? No discrimination at all, but equally no special measures for any "minority" or "special interest" groups?
Won't ever happen.Pete E said:
Who would the politicians pander to then? O
True...mbasko said:Won't ever happen.Pete E said:
Who would the politicians pander to then? O
Latest news is that the grave stone of Guy Gibsons black lab , Nigger, has been removed from the Dambusters Memorial...The dog was the unofficial squadron mascot around the time of the raid. It was run over shortly before the actual attack, but it's death was initially hushed up incase the squadron saw it as a bad omen.
Nothing really to do with this thread, but it does show what a pig's ear is being made of modern race relations....
mbasko said:Won't ever happen.Pete E said:
Who would the politicians pander to then? O
Are you having a go at Australians like me, of English heritage (we are a minority group as only 38% of Australians have English heritage)? 25% of Australians are born overseas, and the majority of Australians have at least one parent born overseas. I am descended from 1939 settlers in SA and 1841 settlers in WA (among the first few thousand Europeans there).
It isn't 1945 anymore......as much as we might want otherwise, Henry Lawson, swaggies, the gold rushes and even Gallipoli are long past I have to remind myself at times.
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Pete E said:
Great point Pete ! :Y:
Cheers
jack .
The point I was making is that although the things I mention are important parts of our history, they are the past not the future of our country. It will not surge ahead as the results of old farts like me reminiscing in our rocking chairs on the veranda, but because of the actions of the young. And most of the young today are immigrants, children of last-generation immigrants, and increasingly aboriginal children (the latter are a small percent but it is a young population, and present projections are that most Australians will have some aboriginal ancestry by the end of this century). Contrary to many assumptions of the Aust6ralian general public, emigrants have given us more economic growth than we would have had otherwise, rather than costing us. So this is where governments tend to put their emphasis - on emigrants and aborigines etc, because their young are dominant and need to not be disadvantaged. So it is in the interests of this country to ensure their well-being.
Older people remember that our large-scale emigration did not result from a desire for multiculturalism. but by recognition by both major parties after WW2, that Australia's tiny population could not defend itself in Asia. Australia only had 7.5 million people when I was born in 1948 compared with 25 million now, and that is largely a result of emigration - our population would be in decline like most European countries otherwise. Gradually governments came to recognise the economic benefits of emigrants to all Australians (and that aborigines were not the "dying race" that they had claimed until then), and ultimately decided that being less hostile to foreign cultures went hand in hand with economic development. There can certainly be a case for varying rates, and for varying where most migrants come from, but supporting the young and not being hostile to other cultures is the future (while retaining, modifying and pushing our own Australian value system) - otherwise we join the dinosaurs. Obviously there will always be discussion about what form that support should take, and how much. As for our indigenous people, my ancestors took their land at the barrel of a gun, and all that is left to return is hardly very highly productive land - I want to see their youngsters better educated and not welfare dependant - and so do many aborigines - a large proportion of the young indigenous guys I have worked with in NT want a house, a car, a family - they respect their culture but see no future hunting lizards. But they have to put up with a lot of crap....
Older people remember that our large-scale emigration did not result from a desire for multiculturalism. but by recognition by both major parties after WW2, that Australia's tiny population could not defend itself in Asia. Australia only had 7.5 million people when I was born in 1948 compared with 25 million now, and that is largely a result of emigration - our population would be in decline like most European countries otherwise. Gradually governments came to recognise the economic benefits of emigrants to all Australians (and that aborigines were not the "dying race" that they had claimed until then), and ultimately decided that being less hostile to foreign cultures went hand in hand with economic development. There can certainly be a case for varying rates, and for varying where most migrants come from, but supporting the young and not being hostile to other cultures is the future (while retaining, modifying and pushing our own Australian value system) - otherwise we join the dinosaurs. Obviously there will always be discussion about what form that support should take, and how much. As for our indigenous people, my ancestors took their land at the barrel of a gun, and all that is left to return is hardly very highly productive land - I want to see their youngsters better educated and not welfare dependant - and so do many aborigines - a large proportion of the young indigenous guys I have worked with in NT want a house, a car, a family - they respect their culture but see no future hunting lizards. But they have to put up with a lot of crap....
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