While I like the Guardian generally for its political reporting, there's no doubt at all that it likes to run indigenous victimhood stories, sometimes where the racial element is completely unproved.
Hence I find its current series "into the maternal health and infant removal crisis facing First Nations women in Australia" very annoying and actual harmful.
Today's instalment: an aboriginal mother lost her baby to poorly handled pre-eclampsia, and reading the account, I find it a bit hard to judge if her GP or the local (small) hospital was mainly at fault.
But here's the kicker:
Grace says she is unable to say if her Aboriginal heritage was a factor but strongly believes her concern that something was wrong was dismissed by both local doctors and the hospital. She sued NSW Health over the incident and the department settled without prejudice and with no admissions of liability.
Her lawyer, Linda Crawford, a former midwife who now works for Catherine Henry Lawyers, claims Grace was let down by the medical system.
So, let's just run with a hunch that it was because she was aboriginal?
I have become increasingly worried over the last decade or so that aboriginal advocacy has become completely overrun with promoting within its own community a victimhood mentality - and in the long run, putting too much emphasis in that direction is not helpful. (That's not to say that advocacy is never going to be talking about needs - obviously that's why it exists at all. But I think the older group of advocates were not as victimhood focused as the new, younger - and often purely urban and academic - advocacy voices.)
5 comments:
Well stated Steve. Unfortunately The Guardian represents indigenous issues with a very distinct bias. I even cancelled my subscription because of so many egregious examples of unbalanced reporting. The victimhood attitude is deeply entrenched in the younger generations. On some indigenous forums make one criticism about indigenous culture or behavior and you better make sure your identity is hidden.
I saw something very similar in a recent ABC article comparing the media focus on the story of the German backpacker who got lost in WA with the relatively unknown story about several Indigenous boys who have gone missing in WA. The parents of the Indigenous kids are understandably distraught and the investigator who is focusing on trying to find the kids says that clearly the difference in media focus is because of 'racism'. But in the process of emphasising that argument themselves, the ABC seem to make the story more about their own politics ('racism is bad') than actually these missing kids.
I think they are victims. But that it’s hard to pin down exactly how to make things better for them short of everyone at Catallaxy shutting up and listening to my entire economic program this time instead of trying to bullshit themselves that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
I think the key is to make sure aboriginal people can get good work and durable housing that they can’t easily trash, next to that good work. But not at this stage expect them to work all 5 days. 48 weeks.
We are all oppressed by this money and banking system we have now. All of us. You guys who were already Aussies in the 70’s didn’t likely see the connection since you had a mining boom in the 70’s. But the rest of the Western World always suffered weak labour markets as soon as the Bretton Woods system ended.
If you have a weak labour market it feels like oppression. Even if you can’t quite put your finger on it. It’s really not fair for us to take over this continent, scoop up the best land, and then not supply a strong demand for labour and a great supply of spacious hard to trash apartments for the people we have dispossessed.
You guys who were born Aussie and are sucky fucky to the usurious interest may think it’s fair but it’s not. And we should set them free and ourselves free. Since without a permanently tight labour market none of us are free. All of us are gimpified without a permanently tight labour market.
Permanent labour shortages are vital to any meaningful concept of liberty.
I've been a victim far more than most indigenous people and know whining about it doesn't help. I've been to hell and back so many times it is a holiday destination. Stupid parents, careless surgeons. The indigenous problem isn't about employment opportunities. The idea of remote communities is inherently ridiculous. No peoples living like that can thrive. The left has inculled in them a sense of hopelessness and blame shifting.
Our ancestors stole the land and did terrible things. Human beings have been doing that forever. There's no point complaining about it, it is not like we are going to give it back(FU Garrett!) and if we did they'd trash everything we've built just like they trash the houses we build for them.
Nobody ever said life was fair. God created an amoral universe which proves he\she\it\they\them is an asshole.
Your economic proposals don't even come close to addressing the epigenetic and physiological issues arising from intergenerational transmission of deleterious traits and behaviors(both psychological and physiological). Reducing this to just being an economic problem ignores too many other factors that continue to leave indigenous people in remote communities doomed to miserable and pointless lives. It's tragic and the best solution is found in the indigenous people I have known. They lived like us, the worked like us, and they thrived. That can't happen when you're living on the boondocks.
Apart from that, yeah, modern economics is as Max Tegmark(The Mathematical Universe) lamented: prostituting itself to the ruling class.
Yeah it’s about employment opportunities. If labour is scarce and employers are so desperate to find workers …… everyone is more free and happy.
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