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Aboriginals Probably Don’t Give A Fuck About Facebook
Other | Tuesday 21st August 2012 | Osh
But the people at Australian Communications and Media Authority and the Race Discrimination Commission do.
A presumed to be white kid from Perth set up a Facebook page mocking Aboriginals for the stereotypes going around about them in Australian society. This mushroomed into an international scandal over the fine lines between "controversial humor", racism and the American principles of free expression. HuffPost breaks it all down here.
We aren’t gonna repeat the whole story again, what we will do, however, is opinionate recklessly on the deeper social aspects behind this non-issue. Here goes:
I believe this controversy about what is acceptable to laugh at on Facebook is another overreaching token of sensitivity from a government afflicted by white guilt. Aboriginals have been fucked pretty bad by the settlers back in the day - genocide, slavery, camps, the lot. Later, some so-called “socialist” laws put them in reservations on their own land and Australian society has gone through a political current borderlining on Apartheid, which history seemed to ignore.
And now, a Facebook page gets shut. I have been trying to get a hold of an aboriginal to ask him what he thinks about this, but I’ve had no luck. The opinions among the 10 or so white Australian people living in the same youth house as me vary quite a lot depending on political sympathies and IQ. I’ve been told these quotes pretty much illustrate where lots of white Australians stand on the subject:
‘Considering how the great majority of Aboriginals are useless drunks, the page was right to have a laugh and what the Government did was censorship. We give them enough money to not have to live like that, but they choose to.’ (Julien)
Oshi, the publisher of The Guestlist Network, pitched in a statement of his views on the issue:
“Australians just do not get it. Lest we forget Australia was a black country and the USA belonged to the Native Americans. If the world was to turn history the right way up, all white Australians would leave the wealthy Australian land to its rightful owners. The ex-convicts could be sent back from the British colonies, haha! Also, yes, the farms in Zimbabwe should have been taken from the white farmers (maybe not given to Mugabe’s cronies) but to the people. And yes, white people should return all misappropriated mineral wealth and then maybe … just maybe all the blacks will go back to Africa!”
Bad craziness? Who knows. The discussion is open.
Said Stacy: ‘The page shouldn’t have been put up in the first place. Only ignorants and racists get a kick out of this type of humour.’ Yes, Stacy. Captain Obvious.
Asha rationalises: ‘I can’t be bothered to even go there now. I’ll just get angrier. This is a complicated situation, however, taking down the page gives the wrong perception that there is a social conflict based on skin in Australia - and that’s simply not the case. This is more an issue of Australian legislation than of racism.’
As you can see, the issue has not been treated from the Aboriginal perspective at all. The Internet, however is awash with articles sounding the same - central Australia seems to be the epicentre of Facebook racism – with Alice Springs raising concerns about unrest earlier this year in April.
Considering all this, it might be that the last thing on the average Aboriginal’s mind is a Facebook page mocking his kind. Probably his concerns are more geared towards the
social conditioning conducted by the state through smoke screen procedures seemingly in favour of the underprivileged. In reality, what happens is it all deepens the Aboriginal feelings of non-belonging in their own country, of helplessness and hopelessness to achieve anything, being governed by laws who treat them as an almost extinct species. The collective subconscious is a powerful tool if manipulated, with the results obvious in every country where people of different colours and cultures cohabit, not just Australia. Hate and fear of the man who’s different than yourself are too often encountered in all countries – among whites, blacks, yellows and browns. It all just appears more polarized in Australia because of the redneck factor, and also because it’s an island.
People aren’t racist or ignorant because they are evil - not most of them at least. The racists I know have that shitty mentality because at some point in their childhood they found it easier to blame people of a different skin colour than theirs, as opposed to actually think, which is lazy. As we all know, laziness quickly develops mental patterns to further enable itself, so I might argue that there’s a thin line between intellectual sloth and evil ignorance. Aliens.
Harry Cathead @harrymatei
