UnSubRocky wrote on Sep 24
th, 2023 at 10:29pm:
Frank wrote on Sep 24
th, 2023 at 10:37am:
Langton:
“I imagine that most Australians who are non-Indigenous, if we lose the referendum, will not be able to look me in the eye,” she says. “How are they going to ever ask an Indigenous person, a Traditional Owner, for a welcome to country? How are they ever going to be able to ask me to come and speak at their conference? If they have the temerity to do it, of course the answer is going to be no.”
That ALONE is worth a NO vote on 14 October - no more welcome to country, no more genuflection to 'elders, past present and recovering from hangover'.
Although I would have loved a link to check on the credibility of the quote, I did my own research to find a quick search only giving links to pay-walled news sites.
But, before even doing a search for the quote, I was face-palming at what I had read by Langton. The absolute arrogance of Langton to claim that she is a traditional owner of the country. Langton should be able to concede that she is part of a racial group that was conquered at least 100 years ago. And no, I do not mean when the Galactic Empire took over the galaxy and Langton had to flee to Dagobah to await Luke Skywalker to continue his Jedi training.
The senile old woman should just pack her shhhtuff up and retire from public life. She obviously cannot read the room in terms of what the Australian public want for the country. We are sick of certain segments of the 3% being a real drag on the progress of the country. And we are sick of other people who entertain that segment of the 3% and allow their backwardness to continue.
Link
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/marcia-langtons-fig...Some other extracts from the same, long magazine profile article:
Another example: When Langton delivered the Boyer Lectures on Radio National in 2012 she focused on mining and its potential to enrich Indigenous economies but quickly found herself the target of environmentalists, blasted for not declaring that a research project with which she had been associated had been partly funded by the mining sector. “Most of the left-wingers who attacked my lectures did not read them and they viciously attacked me on the basis of what they thought I was saying, not what I actually said,” she says. “They let the industry off the hook because they tried to humiliate me and diminish my arguments. I blame the left for so much of the damage caused to us because of their arrogant racism, and particularly many of the environmentalists who do not take us seriously as the First Peoples of this land.”
There’s that word again – racism. Langton uses it often. “Racists don’t understand the horrible impact they have,” she says. “They don’t realise the wear and tear of constant racism is a huge factor in the suicide of young Indigenous Australians. So don’t say to an Aboriginal person ‘you’re too fair to be Aboriginal’, or ‘you’re too pretty to be Aboriginal’, or, ‘did you write that?’” Langton is astonished at the “mischievous” demands for a definition of Aboriginality that have emerged in the Voice debate. Being Aboriginal, she says, has nothing to do with race, but is “a cultural link, a claim of descent, an assertion or claim of identity, and acceptance by the community; it’s about being a member of a community by descent and culture”. She references the High Court decision in the 1983 Tasmanian dam case, which defined an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person as one of “Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and is accepted as such by the community in which he or she lives”.
...
She says the “terrible history” of the stolen generations continues for their descendants, some of whom are “as white as the driven snow”. “What they cop is, ‘you’re not dark enough to be Aboriginal’,” says Langton. “It’s a different kind of racism that they have to wear but it’s far removed from the racism you experience when you walk down the street in this country if you have dark skin. They might suffer occasional racism, they might not get the job, the promotion to professor that they wanted, they might not get an Australian Research Council grant. [But] there are a lot of Aboriginal people who will never be able to get a taxi. These young, fair-skinned people, they’ll get a taxi OK. They suffer a very different kind of racism, and it’s more in the zone of the typical … identity attacks of, ‘you’re doing it so you can get money’.”
To Langton, there’s a certain irony in columnists questioning the authenticity of those who don’t “look” Aboriginal: after all, she says, if there are fraudsters, they are ipso facto white, not Aboriginal. She has never felt confusion about her own identity, although she is still asked by some why she doesn’t “pass” as a white person. Overseas she’s often mistaken for Palestinan, Moroccan, Algerian, Puerto Rican, Indian or Anglo-Indian or even Brazilian Portuguese.