The above article is a good article and is an indicative parallel to the broader issues of global racism. The issues outlined in the article are issues that Americans should be able to relate to.  Australia generally has little tolerance towards the Aboriginal community and yet exploits the historical track for purely commercial reasons. Growing up under the white Australia policy we never mentioned our neighbours and were taught little about one of the oldest continuous cultures in the world.  We  certainly never went to the same school or sat next to them at a cinema and continually still joke about how ill kept they are and their drinking habits. The issue with many Australian academics is that they are products of history most having grown up under the white Australia policy, we are our fathers. While travelling in the outback I heard a woman shopkeeper say ‘an Aboriginal woman came in here this morning, she was very nice and really polite’. Why wouldn’t she be what was the shopkeeper expecting to be mugged? Australian Academia does not have a silver bullet more like a smoking gun. This country of immigrants still dislikes diversity in most of its forms. The surface practical issues can be cleaned up and like justice seen to be done but the deep rooted psychological issues inherited from our forefathers takes time and is harder to banish.
At sometime whether Aboriginal or European it is necessary to ring-fence but also to look beyond our own cultures.

It could be a parallel for Brexit. We still dislike difference we still distrust diversity without really knowing why an insecurity that Australia and the world must face at sometime if we are to survive as an educated, enlightened  species. We must also find ways to not forget but to forgive the past or next we will be prosecuting the descendents of Alexander the Great for his misdemeanors of 323 BC.

The featured image by photographer Shane Aurousseau could be called ‘Which way to Look Now’.  

  Images Shane Aurousseau