BY KIM BULLIMORE
Well-known Aboriginal scholar and academic Marcia Langton made the headlines when she told the Australian Education Assembly that she was paying "protection money" by sending her daughter to a private school to ensure she escaped racism and prejudice.
Langton told the April 19 Australian that, although she supported public schools, "a private school education was the best way for an Aboriginal child to escape inequity and prejudice".
Langton, however, is wrong. While she, and her child, have every right to decide freely which school to attend, her advocacy of private school enrolment as a strategy is counterproductive.
The best way for Aboriginal children to escape inequity and prejudice is for that inequity and prejudice to be eliminated from society in general.
Racism in Australia is an institutionalised part of our government, media, legal and educational systems, and has been since 1788.
Racist attitudes to Aborigines are encouraged in order to justify past and present dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land, a dispossession continued through policies such as mandatory sentencing and the virtual extinguishment of native title.
Racism is also used to deflect blame onto Aboriginal people (as well as refugees and migrants) for attacks on working people.
The mainstream media does not explain that the reason for increasing cuts to social services, job insecurity, low wages, longer hours and bad working conditions is capitalists' decisions which put profits above the needs of people. Instead, indegenous people with their "welfare dependency" are blamed for draining the public purse.
So Langton's solution may avoid racism, but it will not overcome it. While her desire to protect her child is understandable, it is not a solution for the majority of the Aboriginal population.
An elite education will not ensure "a generational breakthough" that would turn the tide of racism in Australia, as Langton asserts. An elite education is not available to the vast majority of Aboriginal families (or indeed most families). Most of us simply cannot afford to send our children to schools with expensive fees.
There is also no evidence that private schools are free from racism. Many private schools aggressively reinforce the basic values of capitalism, values which regard Aboriginal people as second class citizens.
It is true that Aboriginal children attending private schools have much better academic performance than the majority of Aboriginal children. It is possible that at some schools individual Aboriginal children can be accepted into the "group".
But this is because, by attending these schools, it is possible for Aboriginal kids to be accepted into a different "club" — the "club" of the wealthy. And being wealthy, or belonging to the upper class, is an automatic ticket to power in capitalist society, whatever your skin colour.
But this "club" is composed of those who most directly benefit from racism and the dispossession of Aboriginal people. Avoiding racism by joining the racists will never change anything.
It certainly won't help the majority of Aboriginal students. According to federal government's own literacy survey released in 1997, the average literacy of Aboriginal children attending predominantly Aboriginal schools in year five is the same as that achieved by wealthy students in year three.
To argue that these students should just jump ship to the private system denies the need for a real battle to win funding and innovative programs for these schools. It also implies that indigenous students are better off studying away from other Aborigines.
Langton's comments in favour of private education will no doubt give John Howard's government more justification to dismantle the public school system, and an excuse not to implement real anti-racist policies.
Aboriginal Australians, like all Australians, deserve a good education in an environment free from harassment. But there are no shortcuts to achieving this. Rather, we must continue to fight against a system that puts the needs of rich pastoralists and mining companies ahead of Aboriginal people. And we need to support and develop campaigns for better schools, and anti-racist education programs.
While a better education may cushion some Aborigines from the worst of racist harrassment, it will not change the institutionalised racism in society. This will never be overcome until the social needs of the vast majority of people are prioritised over private profit and the capitalist system is replaced.
[Kim Bullimore is indigenous activist and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]