Christopher Pearson, and most people's expectations of what Aborigines should look like ...

(Above: time for a fresh invasion?)


In recent weeks, that indefatigable, always obliging and helpful member of the commentariat, Christopher Pearson, has been beavering away, doing what he can to sort out the federal Labor party.

Bring back Simon Crean, he thundered one week, to be followed by a clamorous demand for the return of Chairman Rudd the next, and above all the removal of that outrageous, ruinous hussy Julia Gillard, and an election if not be this week, then certainly by the next. A massacre at the polls would offer a chance for reflection and self-improvement, and perhaps a chance to govern sometime in the next century ...

But this week, in Repeal dusty sections of Racial Discrimination Act, Pearson has more important business, not sorry business or sit down business, but business business, which is to explain blackness to blacks, and anyone else who will listen.

It seems there are amazing advantages to being black in Australia, a fact seized upon by some about the time that aboriginality became "negotiable", when it's always been as clear cut as quadroon, octoroon and terceron:

It was a development that suited some people very well. For example, a poor, fair-skinned Tasmanian could claim a slight element of Aboriginal descent but, being unable to prove it beyond doubt, could affirm their identity, claim their extended family had a mixed-race connection they'd been encouraged to keep quiet about, and suddenly be eligible to apply for various grants and special entitlements.

Yes, if you ever head off to Tasmania, you'll find whites, thinly disguised as blacks, living as high as hogs off the various grants and special entitlements they managed to collar by claiming a mixed race connection.

Come to think of it, look around Australia anywhere you like, and the major advantage of being black will become apparent to you. In my old town of Tamworth, it immediately earned you the right to live in Coledale, a run down community with a derelict school on the edge of town ...

I google mapped it just to make sure it's still doing well ...

Yep, looking good. You see, there's no end to the lavish lifestyle for blacks in Australia, and truly on some dark days when seized with resentment, I've often thought of doing a blackface, getting out the boot polish, and going black because of all the various grants, special entitlements, lavish riches, endless suitors and community respect that I'd garner on the spot.

Or at least a job in the Black and White Minstrels. What's that you say, they've fallen out of favour? Is there no end to discrimination and prejudice?

Yep, look around. Note well the number of blacks in major board rooms, in the dominant political parties, leading the way in health and longevity of life, and you too would be itching for a slice of all those various grants and special entitlements.

Unless of course you turn into a lazy black, a ne'er do well who simply won't work for a living, a bludger, who pisses their various grants and special entitlements up against the wall.

So goes the politics of race envy.

Of course instead of reading Pearson, you might want to read a more informed view of matters of kinship and identity and legal definitions of Aboriginality, and you'll find it here at the ALRC.

There you might find hints that the Pearson argument about personal or financial gains by Tasmanians of a non-indigenous kind led to something of a ruckus:

These concerns led ATSIC to trial an Indigenous Electoral Roll for the purpose of the Tasmanian Regional Aboriginal Council Elections. Individuals could object to an applicant being included on the roll on the basis that he or she was not of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. Where an objection was made, the applicant was required to provide documentary evidence addressing his or her Aboriginal ancestry, self-identification and community acceptance. To prove ancestry, the person generally was required to provide a verifiable family tree, or archival or historical documentation that linked the person to a traditional family or person. The Inquiry understands that several applicants sought genetic testing to produce evidence supporting their claims of Aboriginal descent.

Now you might wonder if the fuss and the ruckus was worth it, given that the alleged advantages of being a black in Australia amounts to three fifths of bugger all.

But Pearson's real target is the world from which he came:

In the early 1980s the politics of identity were played pretty relentlessly. Any of the usual indicators from what Marxists would describe as your class position to your sexual orientation, ethnic origins and faith or lack of it could be used in a combative way, with scant regard for individual complexity, to pin down who essentially you were.

Yes indeed the thousands of Marxists roaming the streets in Tamworth had scant regard for the individual complexity of family and cultural connections on view in Coledale. But let's zero in on that matter of sexuality:

Marxists of various kinds tended to think your class position determined and explained almost everything about you. For women's and gay liberation, it was at least as much about where you located yourself on the straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender spectrum. (If you had the misfortune to be both male and straight, it helped if you were noisily apologetic about it.)

But hang on a second. Pearson claims to be homosexual, though at times when it comes to Catholicism, he sometimes sounds noisily apologetic about it.

What would be the odds he'd take offence if someone claimed he'd been claiming a homosexual connection because it suddenly made him eligible to apply for various grants and special entitlements?

Sounds extraordinary? Sounds offensive?

Well in the day in Adelaide, you only had to stop a passer by in the streets and ask them about the gay mafia running Adelaide, and you'd be told that Don Dunstan was gay, and the gays ran the arts ministry, and several other ministries able to offer various grants and special entitlements and being gay wasn't so much an innate thing as a matter of choice and advantage, because gays were being showered with all kinds of advantages.

Yep it was a closet brother and sisterhood collective roughly equivalent to the Masons and the Catholics all rolled into one giant, vast conspiracy, giving each other a leg up over the hets.

Except of course when they had the stuffing beaten out of them, and then they were tossed into the Torrens river, and left there to drown.

But back to the rambling Pearson and his musings:

Just about any non-English racial connections tended to be seen as assets in those days. Aboriginal ancestry brought instant credibility, as did African and African-American origins. They were in a special category where religious affiliation was not merely able to be overlooked but was a positive advantage, especially if funky and tribal.

And at that point you suddenly realise - if you hadn't already - that whatever Pearson is drinking, you need some of it, and at once, and whatever planet he's living on, it surely isn't planet earth.

What on earth - since earlier he'd talked of a judge's gnomic utterances in the matter of descent - does his second sentence mean? They were in a special category where religious affiliation was not merely able to be overlooked but was a positive advantage, especially if funky and tribal?

For the life of me, I can't remember meeting a practitioner of voodoo (Haitian or Louisiana) while living in Adelaide, and for the life of me I can't remember encountering anyone connected to the sundry secretisms of other Afro-American religions, nor for that matter all the richly diverse kinds of witchcraft to be found in Africa. In fact in Adelaide in the eighties you had to look long and hard to find anyone of colour, in contrast to recent times where the relentless wasp tone has loosened its grip a little (and thank the absent lord for that).

Suddenly Pearson realises he might be sounding a tad weird, and slips in a disclaimer:

For younger readers, the last few paragraphs may seem fanciful -- the sort of thing that couldn't really happen in modern Australia. But every generation's ideological blinkers come to look a bit bizarre in time.

Indeed. In much the same way Pearson's ideological blinkers look as bit bizarre, right here, and right now. Because suddenly we're back with the Tasmanians, and those privileges and a sudden cachet:

In the 80s, when Aboriginality enjoyed a sudden cachet and some privileges, Tasmanian people with claims to one part in 64 of indigenous descent were making the most of them and adopting a rhetoric in which the other 63 parts were dismissed as being of no consequence.

Who knows? Maybe Pearson will be tempted to do an Eddie Murphy and trade places to enjoy all that tremendous cachet and all those wonderful privileges.

Here's how Pearson copes with that particular issue:

At the same time, many of their siblings exercised the conscious choice not to identify as Aboriginal. In some cases, it was a matter of having struggled so hard to keep up within the lumpenproletariat that they couldn't bear the idea of falling what many would regard as one rung further down the ladder. While most people who now identify as Aboriginal are inclined to say they've always done so, at least in urban settings racial identity tends to be less of a fait accompli than a liminal zone, where individuals have options.

Yes, you get options, and you get the chance to call yourself black in urban zones, because living at the block in Redfern is a sure fire way to enjoy all the rich advantages of a liminal zone (complementary harassment by police and bonus riots available on request).

But wait, it gets even richer:

There have been other cases, where people with South Sea Islander backgrounds or fathers or grandfathers who had been black American servicemen stationed here in World War II ended up identifying as Aborigines. Sometimes it was self-deceiving, sometimes an orphan's honest mistake. Often it was the easiest way to turn life at the margins to advantage. But, along with the other elements of negotiability, it has left a legacy of suspicion that attaches to people claiming Aboriginality who don't conform to most people's expectations about what Aborigines look like.

Yep, the man who has ranted about the subjective notions of Aboriginality, and its negotiability, rounds it all up by suggesting when considering matters of Aboriginality, it helps if you conform to what most people's expectations are when it comes to what Aborigines look like ...

And what might these expectations be?

Well I once worked with a blonde woman with fair skin who claimed Aboriginality because she came from a family with extensive Aboriginal connections. She was recognised and respected within the community, and was in a leadership position, and funnily enough, even though she'd married a fair-skinned man claiming Aboriginality, it was their children who conformed more to what most people's expectations about what Aborigines look like.

And in the end what does that say about her Aboriginality? Nothing, except perhaps the ability of some Australians to be profoundly offensive about it, just as they can be profoundly offensive about gays, or single mothers who cause riots in London ... or whatever other prejudice is doing the rounds this week in the commentariat.

So where are we heading? Well inevitably to the matter of Bolt:

Herald Sun journalist and blogger Andrew Bolt has just lost a famous case. Two of his articles conveyed offensive messages about the complainants, saying they were not genuinely Aboriginal but were pretending to be "so they could access benefits that are available to Aboriginal people". Unusually, the case wasn't a defamation suit but was fought over some contentious provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Yep, Bolt conveyed offensive messages, but what's the difference to Pearson, who also suggests that people pretend to be aboriginal so they can access special benefits available to Aboriginal people?

Well Bolt named names and did so in a way that was snide and scurrilous and replete with factual errors ...

So what's Pearson's conclusion? A remonstration of Bolt for his errors? And his problematic googling ways?

No it's to demand - in the usual commentariat way - that the act's problematic provisions be repealed, if not overturned on appeal, and to quote Gary Johns berating the blacks:

... Australia is entering a world where Aboriginal people, especially those of light colour and claiming discrimination (or favours) based upon their race, become a laughing-stock. Is this what the activists wanted? Forget constitutional recognition, this decision has undercut goodwill."

Yep it isn't Bolt's fault, it's all the fault of those pesky blacks, especially the laughing stock of light coloured folk seeking favours or claiming discrimination, or getting agitated because Bolt insinuated sundry things about them.

And yet some people will assure you up hill and down dale that being black in the lucky country gives you special advantages ...

If you assume being examined, roasted, invaded, down-graded and abused on a daily basis is a special advantage with a special cachet.

(Below: now here's what an Aboriginal person should look like. Image courtesy of screen cap of an old ABC miniseries The Timeless Land, filmed back in 1980, a golden age for blacks in Australia, what with all the trendies and the hippies and the exotic tribal religions).