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Is it just racism? I also don't get it.
No, it is not just racism. There would have been an element of that, but it's certainly far from the main reason. That idea is contradicted by the facts that a very significant portion of Indigenous people and Indigenous activists voted against it.
Linking to this useful post, explaining why various progressive groups were against it.
Significant proportion, but a minority still.
But yes it’s not racism alone, also confusion, selfishness, disinterest, spite, partisanship, a long list of reasons
I'd say apathy more than anything. So many people didn't bother to actually find out what was going to happen. Yes side messaged it poorly. No side preyed on low information, making it divisive and about non relevant semantics.
We have this same issue in Canada. It seems the average person finds it completely acceptable to dismiss our First Nations peoples as “drunks” and “bums” and less than citizens.
Don't forget the words of our leader of His Majesties Loyal Opposition, and possible future PM: "My view is that we need to engender the values of hard work and independence and self reliance. That's the solution in the long run -- more money will not solve it."
He's apologized since, but you as they say, you understand how someone truly feels the first time they say something, unfiltered.
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You've actually explained one of the reasons many Indigenous people rejected this: it is just feedback that could simply be ignored by the Senate. That's powerless, and we've seen from royal commissions into Aboriginal deaths in custody that the feedback does get ignored. Why accept such a bad deal, pretending it's a victory or progress?
The Black Peoples Union interview with ABC explains why they took the 'no' position.
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Yes the proposed change to the constitution lacked detail, but that is entirely in keeping with the constitution as a whole, it is a "high-level" document after all. The detail would have come in the legislation that enacted it, with plenty of public consultation and discussion in parliament, no different to any other legislation. In its final form it would have probably looked a lot like previous advisory bodies that we used to have, with the critical difference being that it could not be disbanded just because the government of the day didn't like it.
I'm not familiar with the Australian political terms, can you share what this means:
inner dialogue between their mobs and local governments
To me, that sounds like the Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islanders are free to think about what they want, and then form a potentially violent, roughly organized group of people to confront local officials... But I assume I'm missing something.
From google: 'Mob' is a term identifying a group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people associated with a particular place or Country. 'Mob' is an important term for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as it is used to describe who they are and where they are from.
In Australian slang a mob can just mean any grouping of people, not necessarily a criminal group or a group of rioters. It's not uncommon for people to refer to their own ethnic or political grouping as a mob; at least from what I've seen when reading Australian websites.
And by local government I think they are referring to the states and territories governments.
This is correct, mob in this context is a number of indigenous people belong to one particular community. There are various different mobs out there which is one of the reasons why a singular controlled voice was never going to work.
Yeah as someone outside Australia I've been surprised at how biased and simplified the reporting has been. A complex constitutional issue is being painted as a simple "good people, bad people".
When I read about the changes myself (after having to go hunting for some actual detail - the reporting is pretty poor on this) it honestly seems more like virtue signalling rather than useful or meaningful reform.
Its the eternal false dichotomy of "one side of a dispute must be the good guys, meaning the other side are therefore the bad guys."
Last time I looked at the count 40% of indigenous people voted against the voice, there's definitely no good/bad side in this regardless how some might choose to vilify others. We have compulsory voting as well.
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Relevant: the Black Peoples Union position on the referendum (interview on ABC).
An aggregation of written statements collected from socialist, anarchist and radical Indigenous groups, showing the diversity of thought on the matter: http://old.reddit.com/r/AustralianSocialism/comments/161r8r1/megathread_of_leftist_statements_on_the_voice/
(PS: don't just take all the 'yes' and 'no' summaries in that list at face value, a couple of them are misinterpretations or oversimplications)
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I mean... what else would you expect from a white supremacist colonial project?
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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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