This wide, brown, racist land

“I felt like I wanted to cry, because it made me feel like I wasn’t an Australian.”

Message Stick Online reported Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin saying racism of any sort in Australia is unacceptable.

Ms Macklin says she is concerned about the allegations. “We don’t support any form of racism, it is just abominable in Australia today to imagine that this sort of racism is taking place,” she said.

It really does make you wonder how someone could be so alarmist about the physical appearance of 16 young Indigenous ladies who were in town to undergo Life Savers training. These fine fit young ladies traveled 300km to Alice Springs to gain extra life saving skills to better equip themselves should members of their community seek their assistance in times of trouble in the pool, river or in any other health related facet of their lives.

Several years ago I read an article that disturbed me immensely when the author quoted hotel guests in an eastern European city saying the group of visiting Central Australian Indigenous female artists and entertainers were “the ugliest people they have ever seen”.

I couldn’t believe the journalist in the first instance would give weight to such disparaging remarks from one human being of another. Second, what merit does a subjective view give to the question of the aesthetic beauty of one person over another?

I’m not naïve in ignoring the fact that bullying occurs at all levels of outward physical appearance; weight, height, hair colour, physical impairment and so on, but try as I may the notion of factoring in specific racial-ethnic characteristics as a generalisation to me is way over the top.

The Cunnamulla mayor aspirant said in one of his many interviews that the Aboriginal population had contributed little to the wealth of the township and thought the Vietnamese families could magically create prosperity by engaging in market garden type enterprises.

The patronising notion that Vietnamese people only make good market gardeners is an omission of the varied professional skills they currently contribute to communities in which they live.

Perhaps Kevin Wise’s thoughts, when writing his pamphlet, were still in the 1950s.

Kevin Wise and the Alice Spring’s backpacker hotel proprietor, Greg Zammit, are the ones who ought to rethink their roles in their respective communities as I’m sure many Australians are of the opinion that they are the ones who should be moved on and kept out of public view.