Australia Day sounds similar to Columbus Day here in the States. I don't celebrate it but it makes me mad when I think about it. We've got a long way to go.
I get the impression that it's kind of what Columbus Day would be if you celebrated it like the 4th of July. The historical reasons why celebrating it are a bad idea are very similar!
On facebook I have a tendency to just bluntly tell people when they're being bigoted, and then defriend them if they consistently spout awful nonsense. As a result, my friends list there is mostly full of reasonable people who are actually my friends, not just facebook "friends". It's definitely a difficult place to manage friendly acquaintances, work colleagues, and others who you need to stay on good terms with for whatever reason. If I had to add people who I'm required to be friendly with but whose views I find repellent, I'm sure I would get into a lot of trouble!
The history of public holidays in post-colonial countries is often really difficult to digest. Every now and then somebody here will begin talking about how we should move the date that we celebrate all things Australian to a less gross date, and then they will be drowned out by people saying that you can't change tradition (usually for very silly reasons). I wish there was an easy solution where we could all just pick new dates that aren't marked by disgusting racist events to continue the good parts of our traditions without the inherent celebration of genocide, but I wonder if moving the date would be enough?
How privileged we are to be able to forget it and say that "it's all over now" without feeling the long lasting repercussions of a history of pain and suffering on a daily basis.
I respect Australia enough to know that the timing of this public holiday does not do it any favours. Naturally, I don't think your Facebook friend would even begin to understand what that means.
In his (not-exactly) defence, he is young, idealistic and naive, and he was pretty drunk. Some of his friends who were also part of the conversation have none of those reasons for being morons though. The entire thread was saturated in white privilege.
I did eventually convince a few of them that continuing to celebrate the anniversary of the day we declared Aboriginal people to be sub-human and that we owned their land and began slaughtering them as a day of national pride was pretty screwed up. I may have sprained my eyes from rolling them too many times along the way.
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I respect Australia enough to know that the timing of this public holiday does not do it any favours. Naturally, I don't think your Facebook friend would even begin to understand what that means.
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I did eventually convince a few of them that continuing to celebrate the anniversary of the day we declared Aboriginal people to be sub-human and that we owned their land and began slaughtering them as a day of national pride was pretty screwed up. I may have sprained my eyes from rolling them too many times along the way.
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