An email was sent to The Stringer that finished up with the line, “I would be utterly embarrassed to call myself an Aboriginal.” The Stringer will not identify the sender. The email was in response to an article about an incident on a Perth train, where a mother with four of her children and three companions were removed from the train by Railway Officers.
You can read the article – “Kicked off a train for being Black – but Midgegooroo watches” here:
The email:
Absolutely disgusted by your article regarding the aboriginals “kicked off a train for being black”. I was on that train on that particular day and those aboriginals behaviour was absolutely appalling. They were behaving like wild animals with nothing but complete lack of respect for those around them.
What’s even funnier is that your article will be proved to be full of shit because there were plenty of people recording their behaviour on their mobile phones. This WILL come out and your story will be revealed as just another typical “white person versus black person” propaganda. You claim to be award winning jouranlists but journalism by nature is about reporting truth. Your article is full of shit. I dare say you’ve only won awards because your aboriginals, and let’s be honest, you get what you want when you want because if you don’t you scream RACISM!!!!
What you poor people don’t seem to understand is that by playing the race card all the time, you’re actually lowering and marginalising yourselves. Do any of you actually stand back and look at how the “white fella” sees you??? I am definitely not a racist but I can say with complete certainty In this day and age I’d be totally and utterly embarrassed to call myself an aboriginal. All you’ve ever got is “racist!!” I challenge ANY of you to spend a day on public transport. Report your findings in VIDEO AND AUDIO. I know this challenge will never be accepted because the findings will damage your lame ass attempts of labelling white people racist.
Shame shame shame. I KNOW YOU FEEL IT!!!
When it comes to racism I respond to everyone, it’s my way.
I have deleted the sender’s name.
Below is my email response to his:
I have to call it straight for you, however first let me write I am happy to meet with you, though I am travelling for the rest of the month. You are indeed a racist. Racism has many veils and layers and you demonstrated with certainty your racism, some of it born of the wash of stereotypes and subsequent levels of intolerance to those presumptions that illuminate your racism.
You made any number of assertions, even the racist remark that these people “were acting like wild animals”. My friend, have a serious look at what you wrote me. If you can read no racism in what you wrote, you’d be sadly well placed for the One Nation Party. You’re awash in ignorance, and sadly maliciously so, though inadvertently, I grant you this.
Let me write that I do respect the fact that you wrote to us. I cannot regard this attribute on your part highly enough. I respect the act of your response to me. Bottling stuff up serves no good purpose.
Racism is born of how you view another. I know racism. I have lived it from the day I was born into this country and its racism. And in my travels across this country, the more west I go, the worse the racism.
Whatever you call “their behaviour” is none worse than your judgments and your responses.
If you wish to meet with me, I will meet with you. My way is a universal way, because not you or anyone was born racist, just that you were born into racism.
I do not need anyone to tell me that there is no racism and that this is not a nation deeply racist albeit with many veils. I do not need anyone to suggest that this nation’s policies do not marginalise on the basis of race. This nation indeed does my brother and deplorably so.
You know, I may not have been on that train, but in the ways that matter I was there. I know exactly what happened. You know why I know, because I know racism, I know it better than you will ever live to know it.
I never lie – that’s why I can be open to you. And racism doesn’t lie. Racism hurts the racist, and well this hurt gives rise to lies and you are lost in this ignorance.
What is it my brother, that Marianne Mackay did? Was it that she was “loud” and “demonstrative” about how far too many of her people are treated?
When you have butchered and traumatised any individual or a people do you think it’s just about “pick yourself up and move on?”
I feel for you. I feel for Marianne. I feel for everyone.
I’ve spent my life studying racism, and this was born out of the fact that I’ve lived it and know it. My way has been not to keep anyone hostage to racism but to unfold the ways forward. But please feel free to talk to me though don’t ever presume you can know racism as Marianne does, as I do.
If you have time please consider reading the following. By the way, I am serious, in that I would meet with you brother – my contact is 0430657309. Kindly, Gerry
Further, recommended reading:
That is utter bullshit. Ask that email recipient to show the recordings then. They will look like fools as if we were in the wrong we would have just accepted it. I don’t understand how our behaviour can be appalling when we gave a lecture in aboriginal history better than a university. They just didn’t like our truth. Typical redneck and I hope they take yr offer up and meet gerry. Get em to show u their recordings as someone else on the train rang and made a complaint defending us and horrif8ed at the guards. Typical. I stand by our actions and I don’t regret anything from that day
Dear Gerry,
There are so many issues in here that it is difficult for me to see racism as the only problem.
There is a problem of safety on public transport in Perth I know, and it is well documented. Perhaps together we can hold the public transport service providers accountable for ensuring safe passage for all travellers. Passengers themselves also need to be accountable for behaviour on public transport. It is also about mutual respect and that is something that each of us needs to consider.
I am well aware of the problems experienced by Aboriginal people and it saddens me that to date we do not appear to be reaching solutions. Racism grows also and takes hold, when unacceptable behaviour is apparent and when people become fearful for their own and their loved ones safety. I don’t know about this case, but it is certainly my experience having travelled by bus and train frequently that I have been concerned at unacceptable behaviour. Particularly this is so when groups of people are involved. Because people do not accept unacceptable behaviour, does not make them racist.
Clearly the email to you was rife with raw emotion and seemed racist to me, however I was not on that train and I don’t know what fuelled it.
I understand and recognise the limitations aboriginal people live under and it is unacceptable. I see the outcomes of unacceptable behaviour in public places by Aboriginals and neither is that acceptable. At some point it needs to be realised, there will be no solution outside of mutual respect and the space of safety among people – any people, any group of people with any other group of people.
If we cannot be safe within proximity of one another – then problems will continue to occur. Personally I believe we have much more that joins us than separates us, but how can we come together in safe space to work on interdependent solutions that benefit all, when anger and fear dictate our actions and create outcomes that increase the distance between Aboriginal and non Aboriginal?
We may not have the answers but we need to start being honest about the fact that racism does not occur in a vacuum and neither does unacceptable behaviour. And we need to start asking questions that reflect a desire to work in partnership and to recognise not one of us is without flaws. Not one of us is pure of heart. We are human. We make mistakes.
I’d we cannot do this in Australia ….then where???
Lee
(Statement deleted by The Stringer) The f work, the c word, the term redneck, which she has used again were all used, with no one else swearing back. You are not the only person to experience racism. But you can be the person to bring about a change. You say you experience it, but dear read your article and tell me you yourself are not racist?? Instead of rising above it and showing their children integrity, tolerance and love, those women are raising their children to fear, hate and live the same lives they have. I saw fear and tears in the eyes of one of those children. Fear and tears that that mother put in the eyes of her child by being soooooo horribly behaved, which inturn caused others to say ‘hey enough is enough’..
You Mr Gerry are racist. You breed racism with your untruth. The ladies on the train are racist and if you want to change that image and behaviour toward you, then change your behaviour. (Statement deleted by The Stringer)
http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/reverse-racism-doesnt-exist/
The discourse under this article is still relevant 6 years later. I don’t know how to deal with racist attitudes in WA because there’s so much of it. It’s improving but I still hear non-indigenous people cursing out Aboriginal people just for existing.
The cognitive dissonance older generations experience is such a big obstacle in any social change. Young people are being exposed to so many new ideas about racism and colonialism. I’m excited to see what happens in the next 30-50 years (assuming climate change and disease doesn’t kill us all first lol)