not the motorcycle diaries

It’s endlessly fascinating and frustrating to follow the e-debates going on about the apology. I’ve been idly watching the ones going on under news items on the ABC website and that of the Daily Telegraph (if I didn’t have a thesis to write, I just know I’d start up a website like this one).

I am so struck by the way in which ‘debates’ like these open up a space for white settler descended Australians to, seemingly unconsciously, pour out so much of their own hurt and bitterness: ‘My Mum was white and taken away too, where’s her apology?’, in other words, ‘I’ve been so hurt in my life and no one came to help. Where’s my apology?’, ‘Aboriginal kids were taken away because they were NEGLECTED. They are still being NEGLECTED.’, in other words, ‘I have been NEGLECTED. I feel NEGLECTED’. Or, ‘I didn’t do anything, why should I have to apologise?’, i.e. ‘OGOD PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME CONFRONT WHAT THIS MEANS I LIKED THAT JOHN HOWARD FELLOW MUCH BETTER’.

So many seem so unable to give any ground because they are so obsessed with holding onto their own victimage: my ‘personal property’ is painful, poisoned - but goddamn it it’s mineminemine.