Truth, apologies and framings
I have a very big problem with the “Sorry” because of the way it frames the issues about the treatment of indigenous Australians.
The taking of Aboriginal children under regulations and in circumstances that did not also apply to other Australians was part of a much wider structure of repression of Aboriginal Australians, the so-called “protective” regimes. These regimes systematically denied Aborginal Australians the same legal rights as other Australiains. Something Aboriginal activists denounced at the time, as well they might. All Aborigines - whether or not they, or their children, were taken and whether or not such taking was done for good reasons or bad - had their lives restricted and shadowed by these laws which acted to sabotage their interaction with the rest of society. Including their economic interaction, since any action they took could be overruled by the discretion of the various Aboriginal Welfare Boards, or their officials, at any time.
I strongly suspect that many people suppressed their Aboriginal heritage to escape those restrictions: those who could so “pass” denying their Aboriginal ancestry so they could be full legal adults. Those regimes are absolutely worth apologising for. They were a far greater wrong that encompassed the narrower wrongs of taken children.
I have a very big problem with the term Stolen Generation(s) because of the way it frames the specific issue of taken children. Stolen Generation(s) immediately gets one into a game of semantics. What counts as stolen? If the removal was temporary (as it often was) does that count? Can we make any general statement about the motives of those involved? How different was it from what was dong to other Australian children at the time?
And into a numbers game - what counts as a generation? Given there were only a small number of orphanage places for Aboriginal children, in the periods when out-adoption was not permitted, the numbers involved cannot have been very great.
The term Stolen Generation(s) implies simplicity when the reality was much more complicated. But taken children just doesn’t have the moral grandeur of Stolen Generation(s). To steal an entire generation is clearly genocidal. To steal a significant part of a generation is semi-genocidal. To have been somewhat too keen to remove Aboriginal kids too often for too long, is bad policy. Bad policy with sometimes personally devastating effects, but not even quasi-genocidal.
This is not semantic quibbling. If human experience is worth taking morally seriously, it is worth being truthful about. Being propagandistic about it is precisely not taking it seriously, it is misusing it for other purposes. If we do not understand what happened in the past, we are much more likely to repeat its wrongs. Truthfulness is necessary for moral seriousness. So that we know what going wrong actually looks like, rather than what is congenial to pretend that it looks like.
For those whose sense of moral virtue is based on critique of the surrounding society, the term Stolen Generation(s) is unproblematic, a mere rhetorical flourish. For those who do not base themselves on such critique, the mendacity is an insult. But accepting the rhetorical flourish, passing over the inherent mendacity, marks you as a good person. Rejecting the patent exaggeration, as a bad one. So is public virtue ostentatiously disconnected from care about evidence. This is not serious moral concern, it is moral ostentation. Not the same thing at all.
After all, what was there in PM Rudd’s speech in February 2008 that wasn’t in PM Keating’s speech of December 1992 and all the State and Territory apologies. And what was there lacking in PM Howard’s motion and speech of August 1999 compared to February 2008 which was worth even a fraction of the moral grandstanding we have just been through?
It looks much like members of the current generation congratulating itself on how superior it is to previous generations. Despite the fact that the social collapse in indigenous communities has actually got worse over the last 40 years. But any such inconvenience can be blamed on “racism”, the perennial excuse, despite the fact that the personal relations between white and black (indicated, amongst other things, by the burgeoning intermarriage rate) is one area of clear improvement in recent decades.
And one wonders if the celebration of the age of indigenous culture, its respect for the wisdom of ancestors and elders, by the morally ostentatious isn’t a compensation for the perennial contempt handed out for their own ancestors and inherited culture.
But the great sin of the protective regimes was not to treat Aboriginal Australians as other Australians. If one is currently pushing policies that make a virtue of not treating Aboriginal Australians as other Australians, such a comparison might be a touch embarrassing: especially if one pays attention to the consequences of such policies.
Even worse, such an apology would invoke the one set of rules for everyone value which Australians overwhelmingly endorse (most famously, in the 1967 referendum). Something that Australians would overwhelmingly endorse just doesn’t have the same cachet of moral specialness that something folk are going to object to has.
And the protection regime was phased out by the Commonwealth under (Sir Paul Hasluck’s ministry) in favour of assimilation, one of the great moral bugbears of the Progressivist Ascendancy. Making a public fuss about how wrong the protective regimes were might reflect well on the policy regime that the Progressivist Ascendancy has made a big fuss about replacing. Further inviting invidious comparisons with the grotesque failures of the last four decades.
The way the “Sorry” has been framed is very convenient for the moral grandstanding of the Progressivist Ascendancy. It is a lot less convenient for understanding what happened, why it was wrong and what not to do in future.
The taking of Aboriginal children under regulations and in circumstances that did not also apply to other Australians was part of a much wider structure of repression of Aboriginal Australians, the so-called “protective” regimes. These regimes systematically denied Aborginal Australians the same legal rights as other Australiains. Something Aboriginal activists denounced at the time, as well they might. All Aborigines - whether or not they, or their children, were taken and whether or not such taking was done for good reasons or bad - had their lives restricted and shadowed by these laws which acted to sabotage their interaction with the rest of society. Including their economic interaction, since any action they took could be overruled by the discretion of the various Aboriginal Welfare Boards, or their officials, at any time.
I strongly suspect that many people suppressed their Aboriginal heritage to escape those restrictions: those who could so “pass” denying their Aboriginal ancestry so they could be full legal adults. Those regimes are absolutely worth apologising for. They were a far greater wrong that encompassed the narrower wrongs of taken children.
I have a very big problem with the term Stolen Generation(s) because of the way it frames the specific issue of taken children. Stolen Generation(s) immediately gets one into a game of semantics. What counts as stolen? If the removal was temporary (as it often was) does that count? Can we make any general statement about the motives of those involved? How different was it from what was dong to other Australian children at the time?
And into a numbers game - what counts as a generation? Given there were only a small number of orphanage places for Aboriginal children, in the periods when out-adoption was not permitted, the numbers involved cannot have been very great.
The term Stolen Generation(s) implies simplicity when the reality was much more complicated. But taken children just doesn’t have the moral grandeur of Stolen Generation(s). To steal an entire generation is clearly genocidal. To steal a significant part of a generation is semi-genocidal. To have been somewhat too keen to remove Aboriginal kids too often for too long, is bad policy. Bad policy with sometimes personally devastating effects, but not even quasi-genocidal.
This is not semantic quibbling. If human experience is worth taking morally seriously, it is worth being truthful about. Being propagandistic about it is precisely not taking it seriously, it is misusing it for other purposes. If we do not understand what happened in the past, we are much more likely to repeat its wrongs. Truthfulness is necessary for moral seriousness. So that we know what going wrong actually looks like, rather than what is congenial to pretend that it looks like.
For those whose sense of moral virtue is based on critique of the surrounding society, the term Stolen Generation(s) is unproblematic, a mere rhetorical flourish. For those who do not base themselves on such critique, the mendacity is an insult. But accepting the rhetorical flourish, passing over the inherent mendacity, marks you as a good person. Rejecting the patent exaggeration, as a bad one. So is public virtue ostentatiously disconnected from care about evidence. This is not serious moral concern, it is moral ostentation. Not the same thing at all.
After all, what was there in PM Rudd’s speech in February 2008 that wasn’t in PM Keating’s speech of December 1992 and all the State and Territory apologies. And what was there lacking in PM Howard’s motion and speech of August 1999 compared to February 2008 which was worth even a fraction of the moral grandstanding we have just been through?
It looks much like members of the current generation congratulating itself on how superior it is to previous generations. Despite the fact that the social collapse in indigenous communities has actually got worse over the last 40 years. But any such inconvenience can be blamed on “racism”, the perennial excuse, despite the fact that the personal relations between white and black (indicated, amongst other things, by the burgeoning intermarriage rate) is one area of clear improvement in recent decades.
And one wonders if the celebration of the age of indigenous culture, its respect for the wisdom of ancestors and elders, by the morally ostentatious isn’t a compensation for the perennial contempt handed out for their own ancestors and inherited culture.
But the great sin of the protective regimes was not to treat Aboriginal Australians as other Australians. If one is currently pushing policies that make a virtue of not treating Aboriginal Australians as other Australians, such a comparison might be a touch embarrassing: especially if one pays attention to the consequences of such policies.
Even worse, such an apology would invoke the one set of rules for everyone value which Australians overwhelmingly endorse (most famously, in the 1967 referendum). Something that Australians would overwhelmingly endorse just doesn’t have the same cachet of moral specialness that something folk are going to object to has.
And the protection regime was phased out by the Commonwealth under (Sir Paul Hasluck’s ministry) in favour of assimilation, one of the great moral bugbears of the Progressivist Ascendancy. Making a public fuss about how wrong the protective regimes were might reflect well on the policy regime that the Progressivist Ascendancy has made a big fuss about replacing. Further inviting invidious comparisons with the grotesque failures of the last four decades.
The way the “Sorry” has been framed is very convenient for the moral grandstanding of the Progressivist Ascendancy. It is a lot less convenient for understanding what happened, why it was wrong and what not to do in future.