The Sins of the Fathers
Like most countries with a colonial past, Australia has an awkward time coming to terms with some of the acts of previous generations. Last week (May 27 — June 3, 2017) was Reconciliation Week, and amidst calls for constitutional reform to empower Aboriginal peoples and address systemic problems, I often hear variations on the same question asked in response:
“Why should I feel guilty for something that I didn’t do?”
It’s an understandable question. At times it can feel like an acknowledgement of personal guilt is being asked of us. Yet it wasn’t me who took the land, murdered the inhabitants, stole the children, withheld citizenship, or any of the other systematic acts of oppression which in that large-scale sense finished decades ago.
Perhaps we’re partly confusing a very real and necessary sorrow with guilt. But to acknowledge the past and feel sad about it doesn’t mean you’re being coerced into feeling guilty. It would be nonsense to suggest that anybody should feel personal guilt for acts committed by people now dead.
It’s not like guilt is very useful, either. As Paul Keating said in the 1992 Redfern Address:
“Down the years there has been no shortage of guilt, but it has not produced the response we need. Guilt — I think we’ve all learned — is not a very constructive emotion.”
So to focus on guilt misses the point, and to resist the question is to fight a mistaken battle. But maybe it’s a segue to a more useful conversation. Because if personal guilt isn’t on the table, what is?
Closing the Gap
Let’s accept as a starting point that there is a genuine problem to be addressed. Every year the Prime Minister delivers a report called Closing the Gap. Despite the title, the gaps are many, and those that exist are devastatingly wide, across infant mortality, life expectancy, incarceration rates, education, to name just a few.
If we can look at present day indigenous circumstance and feel some degree of discomfort, where does that take us? The answer to that depends on the degree to which we acknowledge responsibility to and for community. That’s an easy one for me intellectually, since as a Christian I’ve at least in theory embraced the ideas of “Love your neighbour as yourself”, and “Do unto others as you would have them to do you”, commonly referred to as The Golden Rule.
But it’s not just a Christian idea. The introduction in the Closing the Gap website says:
“It is clear that Closing the Gap is a national responsibility that belongs with every Australian.”
We live in a social democracy, we pay taxes that the government spends on infrastructure and collective resources, including education, social security, and the betterment of the disadvantaged in general. So Closing the Gap is a national responsibility, a burden the government has chosen to bear on our behalf. But the wording is careful to go beyond that, and asks us to personally embrace the responsibility as a worthy one belonging “with every Australian”.
So my answer to the original question can be expanded. No, nobody needs to feel guilty for things they didn’t do, but we are living with the results of those actions — indeed our society is partly built on them — and indigenous peoples to this day are suffering disproportionately. Are you and I willing to accept a communal responsibility to make things better?
Agreeing with the overall goal doesn’t mean we need to nod the head blindly at every government initiative aimed in that direction, but at least it will put us in a better place for evaluating them. Our response to government action is an indicator both of how well we understand the problems and our readiness to address them.
Aren’t we all equal? Why should one group get a leg up?
Among the objections to social policy in Australia is the vague sense that indigenous people are always on the receiving end of benefits that the rest of us don’t receive. If equality is what we’re seeking, that can seem kind of jarring. But it is worth remembering that there is a gap to be closed, and that doesn’t come without effort and targeted expenditure.
One of the reasons for the leg up is because poverty and disadvantage are cyclical, generational even. The notion of “meritocracy” — where talent emerges and rises inevitably to the top — is beguiling, but it sits awkwardly against reality, which is that it is hard for any genuinely disadvantaged group of people to overcome their background and succeed. While it’s true that history is filled with encouraging stories of true champions who through work and determination put aside a tough childhood to achieve great success, it’s also true that these stories stand out for how comparatively rare they are. Social mobility is constrained.
Given the genuinely horrific things that were done to our indigenous peoples, that’s a lot to overcome. It’s easy to shake the head when somebody starts talking about intergenerational trauma, to write it off as yet another excuse for bad behaviour. Yet anyone who has ever responded to a news story of delinquent kids with an exasperated “where are their parents?” is admitting that we’re all complex bundles of nature and nurture, and that for all the raw gifts in the world, a bad set of role models and circumstances can have very real effects on the life that emerges. It’s not the kids’ fault they got the parents they did. What are we doing to help?
One of the roles of government is to attempt to level the playing field for people in difficult circumstances, particularly the kinds of difficult circumstances that indigenous Australians are often raised in. Hey, that’s why public education is a thing at all. My kids are no more deserving of a better shot than a kid growing up in Aurukun, but a better shot is what they’ll get. Government-funded education and health programs will never make up all the difference, but for some of those families maybe it’ll be enough to break the cycle. For too many it won’t.
Funding is not enough
There is a risk that a post like this can read like another kind of paternalism, just another white guy giving his opinion about the things that should be done to indigenous Australians. And I suppose on one level that’s exactly what it is. I am a white guy, and these are my opinions.
But this post has a very narrow purpose: responding to the kinds of objections I hear when questions around reconciliation are raised. I can’t bring much to the table in terms of solving the problems except a readiness to listen and try to overcome inevitable prejudice and misunderstanding.
Functional communities aren’t just questions of who receives funding and for what; they’re not just simple equations of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator; they are complex networks of give and take, of respectful relationship and engagement. It’s not exactly letting the cat out of the bag to say we’ve got a long way to go on that front. Maybe the discussions of the last couple of weeks will be a good start.
