The Peopling Process of Australia since 1788 Has Been Dominated by Racism - Essay Example

The peopling process of Australia since 1788 has been dominated by racism. Name: Lecturer: Course: Date: 17th April 2012 Introduction The peopling process of Australia since 1788 has been dominated by racism is a fair statement. The year 1788 saw the British conquer the Australian continent, though they did not conquer the uninhabited continent. With around 350, 000 of indigenous people living in Australia at the time, these people split into 250 individual indigenous nations and they were called the Australian Aborigines. It is around this time that we can trace the domination of racism with the British taking the best land while pushing the very indigenous owners “aborigine tribes” into the remote areas of that country where their thriving was next to impossible (Larson et al 2007). On the other hand, it is clearly stated that the Britons had no respect for the indigenous people for the only use that they found for these people was using them for the scientific purposes, they had no respect for their culture and worse enough, it is said that they took by force the remains of the Aborigines ancestors to London for those scientific researches. As such, in the early years of invasion there lacked a systematic elaboration that is in the Australian context for the Aborigine’s ideological justification of innate racial inferiority on the basis of the skin color as well as other physical differences (Nakata, 2007). Nevertheless, the colonists and the Aborigines had several things that commonly distinguished them one them being the categories of the savage and civilized. Much as these distinctions existed, they are a clear evidence of racial discrimination aspects and also being derogatory and oppressive distinctions (Larson et al 2007). For racism, it is not about the racist ideas and the attitudes alone; it is actually tied to something more than material and long-term at stake. This is seen by the way the system of racial inequality was established in Australia and was maintained over generations. One of the most central figures of this was the expansion of private property in land; besides the burgeoning of the pastoral interests of the 1800s, there was a coherent racial oppression practice that begun taking root. This was a steady, deliberate, systematic, and a calculated expropriation of the land that was held by the aborigines by the class of the colonial settlers who were property owning. The Aborigines were disposed of their land and most properties, massacred and driven to the margins of Australian society. This may not have a direct relation with the racial convictions that the colonialists but it was on the reason that there was something valuable that was to be gained with the continent theft (Stokes, 1997). What followed this was the passing of policies that can only be termed as hostile policies as well as actions against the Aborigines. There was resultant war which saw the Aborigines being massacred and later confined on reserves. This can be justified and explained by the central racist notion that came up in the 19th century in Australia. This was the notion that the Aborigines were bound to die out for being the inferior race. The frontier war escalation conveniently coincided with the rise of the scientific racism of Europe and the United States of America leading to the evolutionary Law of the survival for the fittest being imported and then being converted for the racist use against the Aborigines. This part of the evidence there is that the peopling process of Australia being dominated by racism dates back from 1788 (Stokes, 1997). As the settlers “whites” created an independent, wealthy capitalist economy which flourished on the sheep’s back. As the primary production became more expansive and industrialized, the Aborigines treatment by the white settlers became even more brutal. The Aborigines were slaughtered by regular hunters with thousands of Aborigine children being forcibly taken away from their parents and taken away to camps where they were trained as domestic, laborers or even worse stockmen. Racism at the State level It was until the year 1969 that the states run Aboriginal Protection or call them the welfare boards that controlled and supervised the Indigenous Australian lives were somewhat abolished. The boards begun their operation in the early 1900 had the power to decide where the Indigenous people could settle or live, the people they would marry or even have relationships with and even how and where their children could be raised (Stokes, 1997). This was done based on the fact that they were the Aborigines and a clear cut on their color and therefore a very racist policy to employ on a human population. The board also determined the jobs that the Aborigines could have, and worse still, they withheld their wages indefinitely. To a greater extent the board governed what the Indigenous people would own as their property and even their mode of disposing of it. Moreover their travel had no freedom for where they travelled and who they could visit was determined by the board(Stokes, 1997). Despite the fact that there were exemptions for the people who were felt to have reached acceptable standards of non-Indigenous civilization, it was a heinous racist act to control the life of a fellow human by those standards those life standards while those standards were based on the European lifestyle. On the other hand, these indigenous people were offered some sort of honorary citizenship which could nevertheless be taken back or withdrawn at will by the authorities. These were some of the exemptions that the Aborigines referred to as “dog tags”. The curtained closed on this board in 1969 when it was disbanded and the responsibilities for the Indigenous resumed by the Commonwealth. This only meant under the constitution that the Indigenous Australians were entitled to the same rights as any other Australian citizen but this was another start for a long struggle for the Aborigines or the Indigenous people as they fought for title deeds to be fully owners of land and properties. This led to many demonstrations which include the famous “freedom riders” who took a bus tour of northern and western New South Wales protesting against racial discrimination (Milroy, 2003). They focused the attention of the nation on racism that had been generated and had the support of the “white Australian Policy” which saw the indigenous people being denied services in shops, being separated from whites in Cinemas, banned from hotels as well as clubs and in the fact that they were excluded from the swimming pools that the white people were using. These riders experienced hostility in most towns and even violence in some (Milroy, 2003). Eventually, the so called “White Australia” was formally ended in the mid-1970s where the Race Discrimination Act was passed but nevertheless the struggle for the same social justice that was there at this time continues today. Australia Today Today, Australia is a multiethnic society being a product of more than two centuries of immigration. Despite the fact that the law forbids racial and any other form of discrimination and this law protects the freedom of religion. Initially, it is well documented that the indigenous Australians were deprived off their rights to full citizenship in most states in the new nation. They were denied this right on the grounds of their race and that of restrictive immigration laws which by all means were put in preference to the white Europeans immigrants who settled in Australia. This can only proof beyond doubt that the peopling process in Australia is highly dominated by racism. For as we have seen, the recognition of the Aborigines as equal dwellers and citizens have highly been disregarded with the settlers taking and having more rights than the indigenous people of Australia(McGrath, 1995). The results of the racist history live on today more within the catastrophic indicators present in Australia. A 1990 National Inquiry into Racist Violence found that the Indigenous people as well as other minority groups hold that the Media through the television and Newspapers as a major influence in the racism maintenance. As a result, the oppression of the Aborigines as well as the racist justification is still existence since the Australian capitalism is founded on it and because it continues to thrive on the same soil of Aboriginal dispossession with the question of land tenure still being a very sensitive issue (McGrath, 1995). Conclusion The 21st century social interests ruling Australian are only a couple of generation removed from them that sponsored genocidal hunting parties which guarded the stealing of land as well as forcibly separating the Aboriginal children from their parents in what would be seen as an equally genocidal policy. This in essence means that those social interests are the same ones today. There has shown no reversal of those extreme social, economic, and political disadvantages that have accumulated as a result of the Aboriginal society being disposed and destructed. The Australian peopling process have put very little or no amendments for the recent policies of the racist social control. For this reason, full reparations to the stolen generations are denied; the state governments have refused to compensate the millions of dollars of the Aboriginal wages that was taken away from them under the racist “protector” system. References Larson, A., Gilles, M., Howard, P. J., & Coffin J. (2007). It’s enough to make you sick: The impact of racism on the health of Aboriginal Australians. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 31(4), 322–29 Accessed from http://www.aihw.gov.au/closingthegap/resources/item.cfm?item_id=3293&group_type=BB&group_id=3&q=&start=938 Milroy, J. (2003). Foreword: Prisoners of history. In G. Dixon (Ed.), Holocaust revisited: Killing time (pp. 7–14). Perth: University of Western Australia, Centre for Indigenous History and the Arts. Morgan, S. (2002). Echoes of the past: Sister Kate’s home revisited. Perth: Centre for Indigenous History and the Arts, University of Western Australia. Nakata, M. (2007). Disciplining the savages, savaging the disciplines. Canberra: Aboriginal StudiesPress. Accessed from; http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=pg__RrtyLegC&pg=PA226&lpg=PA226&dq=Nakata,+M.+(2007).+Disciplining+the+savages,+savaging+the+disciplines&source=bl&ots=3pyNGaWUbI&sig=-9zfOkboNrA-2mapTaHyZR4odx0&hl=sw&sa=X&ei=MouWT_SBJsnHrQffgrXNDQ&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false Read More