“Cultural appropriation” is one of the direst sins of Wokeism, outside of the plethora of “-isms” and “-phobias”, anyway. But what about racial appropriation?
The early adopters, the trailblazers as it were, of racial appropriation, Rachel Dolezal and Oli London, were pilloried for their racial transitions. But there’s a whole lotta racial appropriation goin’ on, here in Australia – and the left are cheering it on.
One of the striking findings of Australia’s 2021 census, is the growth in the indigenous population […] in just one decade, the indigenous population has exploded by 48.2 per cent, more than three times the rate of growth of the population as a whole. If true, this would take the Aboriginal share of the population from 2.5 per cent to 3.2 per cent.
As the ABS admits, this cannot be explained by fertility. In fact, Aboriginal fertility rates have declined steeply since the 1950s and ’60s. Today, they are still higher than the national average, but nowhere near 48.2 per cent.
As whiteness continues to be devalued and, as guilt for the dark side of colonisation gathers intellectual and political momentum, pretending to be of Aboriginal descent has become fashionable.
Indeed, it’s notable the stark difference between the left media’s treatment of ‘whiteness’ (uniformly denigrating), compared to the invariable description of ‘proud [insert tribe] man/woman’.
With not just the raft of benefits, scholarships, sponsorships, prizes and jobs on offer to anyone claiming “Indigenous” status, but the plain cachet, it’s no wonder that activists, NGO employees and politicians are slapping on some RapidTan and ginning up a distant “Indigenous” ancestor. Would anyone have bothered with Bruce Pascoe’s ludicrous taradiddle, if they hadn’t bought his claims to “Aboriginality”?
Michael Mansell, chair of Tasmania’s Aboriginal Land Council, has been outspoken on this and pointedly called on high profile author Bruce Pascoe to stop claiming Aboriginality. Pascoe has variously identified as non-Aboriginal, as a Yuin man and as being related to the Boonwurrung people. However, checks on his genealogy reveal no evidence to support his claims, and he refuses to produce documentation.
That’s irrelevant, though. Pascoe meets the “official” definition of an “Aborigine”. Or at least one of them.
Historically, different states have adopted different definitions. In Western Australia, the test was ‘a person with more than a quarter of Aboriginal blood’. In Victoria, it is ‘any person of Aboriginal descent’. The definition most commonly used by the Commonwealth is:
“a person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and is accepted as such by the community in which he (or she) lives”.
Such splendidly circular logic can only have come from a government bureaucracy.
What’s particularly notable about the sudden outbreak of blackface is that the legitimately blacker the faces, the less well they’re doing out of the whole circus. Australia spends tens of billions every year on “Indigenous” matters. Double what it spends on everyone else. What have, say, remote Aboriginal communities got to show for it?
Despite annual expenditure on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of $45,000 per person, double that on non-indigenous people, their misery abounds. And that expenditure excludes the hundreds of millions of dollars received in mining royalties and the 40 per cent of Australia now covered by native title, both exclusive and shared.
Spectator Australia
While women and children in remote Aboriginal communities endure appalling violence, criminality and sexual abuse, a perusal of the plethora of “Indigenous” feeding troughs in the parliaments, the NGOs and the halls of academia shows a gallery of startlingly pale faces.
The $34+ billion that Australian taxpayers shovel annually into Aboriginal affairs is going somewhere, with bugger-all “closing the gap” to show for it.
But we do suddenly have a whole lot more “Aborigines” than we used to. Funny that.