PERCENTAGES CANNOT BE EQUATED WITH CONNECTION.

During The Voice, there have been numerous people, especially conservatives, who have made disparaging comments about Indigenous Australians and claiming how fair they are. There is an alternative side to this that needs to be considered.

If one reads “The Chant Of Jimmy Blacksmith” by Thomas Kenneally, one will see how Jimmy, an Aboriginal man hanged for murder, was pressured and encouraged to marry a European woman not because they had had a one-night stand and she’d fallen pregnant, but because some states in Australia had a plan. Former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, vindicated those who say that Americans cannot recognise fascism unless it mirrors exactly Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini or Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. Australia did not bring the Aborigines into places and say that they were going to let them off the train to have a shower and delouse their clothes only to spread sarin nerve gas through the roses, but it poisoned waterholes, gave them TB infested blankets and poisoned flour, as well as following a program of having them inter-marry with the Europeans. They went on the belief that if someone with an Aboriginal parent and a European parent married a European, their child would be less Indigenous. There was another similarity with Nazi Germany in that Hitler considered a person who had a Jewish grandparent as Jewish. Australia, however, ranked Aborigines according to percentage and was more lenient on someone with an Aboriginal grandparent than Hitler was on a person with one Jewish grandparent.

Many of today’s Aborigines find terms such as a quarter or an eighth offensive and justifiably so, too. Consider this. Many people who were adopted want to find their natural parents. Many people who were not adopted want to know who their ancestors were. And sometimes, in blended families, say, a woman from The Philippines has a child whose father was Filipino, but when that child was two, she married a Western man and had two more children, the child may wonder why they’re skin is darker or they have black hair yet their siblings have brown hair. Now apply this to someone in their late 40s who is curious about their ancestry. When they were born, they had four grandparents, but they learn that their mother was adopted. Their mother wants to find her parents, and she learns that her father was a stockman, and he had an affair with a woman employed as a domestic and she had an Aboriginal mother and a European father, so they have an Indigenous grandparent. They may become angry, and they may feel that a part of their story is missing. They may experience intergenerational trauma.

Speaking for myself, I was told that my great-great-grandmother was Scottish, but she was Scots-Irish. I was told that my great-grandfather (my mother’s maternal grandfather) was a remittance man from Scotland, when in reality, he was born to a West Indian father and a Dorset-born mother. I felt as though part of my story was missing. Okay, I don’t have West Indian citizenship, but the more I learn, the greater an affinity I have with Afro-Caribbean people. I have had people invalidate me, but I say, it’s not about what percentage West Indian I am, but I joke with people that that’s probably why I like some reggae music (I like Aswad and Bob Marley), it’s what connection I feel and how my story affects me.