Dumb and Down-Under

Just in case you thought America was the only country with stupid, paranoid, racist people running the show, consider Australia.

The Australian government has decided to ban alcohol and pornography. But only for those naughty Aborigines.

It seems that the (white) Australian government has recently unveiled a report called “Little Children Are Sacred” (cows?) that concludes alcohol and pornography are to blame for pedophilia among the country’s Aborigines. So in addition to imposing restrictions on how the Aborigines may spend their welfare checks, they are also going to make it illegal for them to possess alcohol and pornography.

There are so many things wrong with this - where do you start? But I could not possibly express this inanity better than Susie Bright has already in a blog post filed under “When Prudes Attack” (best category name ever):

Let me get this right:

1. You enter a new continent and colonize it, murdering thousands with superior firepower;

2. You steal the indigenous people’s land, dispossessing them forever;

3. You rape their women, kidnap their children and put them in “homes” to rape them, too;

4. You bring the booze in, of course—

6. And you exclude “the blacks” in every aspect of your new government.

Three centuries later, what do you do for a encore?

Apparently, you announce that you’re shocked— simply shocked— by the rampant violence, despair, and alcoholism, in the original people’s culture. It’s got to be stopped! It’s time to ban pornography! You’ve finally gotten to the root of the thing!

Well, finally! And they’d better act on it now, before those silly black people really get out of hand.

Everybody knows that pornography leads to pedophilia. Yes, watching ugly-as-sin white guys have sex with fake-boobed, fake-orgasming women always makes men want to run right out and have sex with children. But…only Aborigines men.

And alcohol is the tool of the devil, of course, although not because it makes one want to have sex (no one escapes the ravages of whiskey-dick). Rather, the report “shows” that alcohol leads to child neglect, and is also used as currency, i.e., alcohol offered in exchange for sex. But….only by Aborigines men.

The white community of Australia, which doubtless has the same problems with alcoholism and child abuse as any other community, is somehow exempt from this scrutiny and discipline. White people are on welfare, too, but no one is worried about how they are spending their checks. Porn is just as rampant in the cities and home computers of white Australians as anywhere else, but there are no hysterical sociologists rushing to report on its affects on their children.

The Australian government could have done a “report” on the utter poverty in which the Aborigines live, and how that may contribute to social problems they may have. But no, it’s not their destitution and dispossession that must end; it’s the alcohol and pornography that need to go.

Brilliant solution, considering how well banning vices has worked for other countries: “I voted for Prohibition and all I got was this lousy mafia.”

Even more outrageous than the Australian government’s deluded assessment of and answer to the Aborigines’ problems is their patronizing, plantation-owner attitude toward them in general. I’m flashing back to a time I never even lived in, a pre-Civil Rights world where white men believed “colored people” just weren’t hard-wired with certain intellectual and practical skills. If they have problems, it’s because they just don’t know how to handle things.

Daddy knows what’s best, that’s why he makes the rules. Rules that never seem to apply to Daddy’s people, only to the marginalized who have been stripped of their ability to give him any lip.

So be good and let Daddy finish his wine and Lady Chatterley’s Lover in peace.

Technorati Tags: Australian Aborigines, Australia, racism, paternalism

Filed under Human Rights, Rib Rants |