Somehow, Andrew Bolt, Australia’s foremost and loudest racist, has managed to divide the Aboriginal community by giving voice to some Aboriginal people that, for purely political reasons, have chosen also to deny those that claim Aboriginal heritage any rights that other more obviously Aboriginal people are able to currently enjoy.
Little do they realise that these people are cutting off their noses to spite their face.
Bolt’s intention ultimately is simply to deny all Aboriginal people any special rights or privileges based on their Aboriginality. Bolt has begun his racist campaign by attempting to pick on Aboriginal people that had lost their appearance of being Aboriginal arguing that they were not actually Aboriginal and therefore not entitled to the various rights and privileges that other Aboriginal people enjoy.
Bolt came unstuck with this endeavour when, not only did he claim that some Aboriginal were not Aboriginal and therefore not entitled to these various special rights and privileges, but they were being fraudulent in claiming these rights and privileges because, so Bolt claimed, they knew that were not Aboriginal and were only claiming Aboriginality in order to have the rights and privileges accorded to Aboriginal people.
Fortunately, the Aboriginal people that were thus maligned took Bolt to court on the basis that Bolt had defamed them by saying they were frauds. Judge Mordy agreed that they had, indeed, been defamed because the Aboriginal people concerned had identified as Aboriginal long before any of them could have had any understanding about what rights and privileges were available to them. The Judge also found that, while they may have lost their Aboriginal appearance, it did not make them any the less Aboriginal from the point of view of heritage.
Now Bolt is trying another tack. A few Aboriginal people have stated that some people who claim Aboriginal heritage look like ‘whitefellas’ to them. Bolt has given these people a voice at this blog. But you have to wonder why these people are turning against their own. There could be two reasons. One, they are racist themselves and see the full-blood Aboriginal as the only true Aboriginal and, therefore, are the only people entitled to the rights and privileges afforded to Aboriginal people, and, two, they want to big note them selves for political reasons, as clearly Bess Price, an Aboriginal women who wants to stand as a Country Liberal Party candidate in the upcoming Northern Territory elections, is doing. Similarly, one has to wonder why Aboriginal artist Dallas Scott would also want to split hairs over Aboriginality.
Aboriginal people have been abused ever since ‘whitefellas’ first stepped foot in their lands. It’s a pity that it is ‘whitefellas’ that are again abusing Aboriginal people by causing divisions amongst them in this way. It will be the beginning of the end for Aboriginal people if people like Bolt succeed in getting those with more obvious Aboriginality to also shun those with a less obvious claim to Aboriginality in their heritage as Bolt has.
It’ll be a very dark day indeed when some groups of Aboriginal people tell another group of Aboriginal people that their Aboriginality has been effectively bred out of them, because it will then be only a matter of time before they are all gone forever.
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