CONNECTION OVERRIDES PERCENTAGES.

A number of people on twitter have become justifiably angry with Jacinta Price for referring to herself by an outdated term. I know that I prefer identity first language for my autism, but most people find racial terms offensive, because of how they were used in the Stolen Generation.

A number of right-wing racists have become claimed that people with an Aboriginal grandparent or great-grandparent are not genuine, but that is false. And the way that Australia was until Gough Whitlam came to power is sad.

Think of it like this. Say a person in their early 40s living in Australia had a Japanese grandmother (their father was born in Australia to European parents, but their grandfather was about to go to war in Korea, in 1951, and he excitedly said to his Japanese girlfriend, “We can now get married!” and did so just before serving nine months in Korea, and he returned to Japan to collect his pregnant Japanese wife, and they stayed in Japan until after her mother was born and returned to Australia) and they had a close relationship with their grandmother. They might feel a strong connection to Japan through their maternal grandmother. The same connection to an Indigenous culture may be felt, if say, an Australian was born to a European father and a mother whose father was a European stockman who married an Aboriginal woman employed as a domestic. I remember watching a documentary where an Aboriginal woman was employed as a domestic by a European family, and they had a small son. The son ran out of the house after his mother had done something, in tears, and the Aboriginal woman comforted him. The European woman abused the Aboriginal woman and told her not to ever touch the son again, purely for racial reasons. If, however, an Aboriginal domestic had been treated kindly by a European family, and had taught the children about her culture, they may understand.

My story, Ghosts From The Past, demonstrates that having mixed ancestry isn’t always as benign as some paint it as, but I believe it is far nicer for an Australian with some Aboriginal ancestry who had a warm relationship with an Aboriginal grandparent or great-grandparent to be able to take pride in that than to have it buried as a terrible secret. And that trumps any argument by the right-wing!