Dirty deeds, words and permissive silence
By Brandon Astor Jones
"I have a very dear friend who is Burmese. She and her family have been here since she was two years old ... Paul and I were horrified when she told us ... that almost every day someone tells her to go home or calls her some vile name. It simply never occurred to us that she, who is just as Australian as we are, would have to put up with that." — Mrs Margaret Blakeney, Brunswick, Victoria.
Recently I asked my Australian readers to enlighten me regarding derogatory terms and phrases that racists in Australia use. I want to thank all of you who responded. Many of you clearly have re-examined memories that were hurtful to others or yourselves.
The world is, for the most part, dominated by forces that represent the self-serving interests of racist white men. They have deemed black, brown and other non-European people to be less than human. As recently as the 1960s a cow had as many — and often more — rights on Australian land as Aborigines.
Not all European men and women are racists, but the vast majority of those who are not are too permissive and silent about those who are.
What people do with words has a lot to do with what people do to people. "Black" has become the leading term for all things bad. I would like to thank Mrs Stephanie Wilkinson, of Seven Hills, NSW, for sending me a newspaper clipping in which the writer succinctly speaks to the misuse of the word "black":
"... my whinge is the use of the word 'black' used mostly in Australia and, to a lesser degree in other English speaking countries as the alternative for anything that is 'bad'. A black day, black intersection, black skies, black mood, black look, black humour and so on and so on. Whatever happened to a 'bad' day, 'accident-prone intersection', 'dark and grey' skies, 'bad' mood, 'ugly' look or 'sarcastic humour'?"
In Mrs Blakeney's letter she told me that terms such as "Bong/Abo" and "Wingnut/Ching chong Chinaman" are rife in Australia. Words and labels provoke intense emotions in people.
A classic example can be seen in the words and deeds of the young white mother of two little boys. She told the world that "a black man" at an intersection ordered her out of her automobile at gunpoint, then took the wheel and kidnapped her children. She was a covert racist; so too was everyone else who, so quickly, was willing to believe that yet another black man was the culprit.
Several days later, when it was announced that she had been arrested and charged with the murder of her sons, you could see people on the television screen let out audible sighs of disbelief — both surprise that she could be guilty of such a crime and regret that her phantom black man did not exist. We can only hope that there are no innocent men of colour lying in ditches or shallow South Carolina graves as the result of the racially violent emotions her lies produced in the hate-filled minds of good ol' boys drunk on bigotry and outrage.
Overt and covert racists work hand in glove, and while for the latter the harm done is inadvertent, it is no less severe. When most (fortunately not all) Australians stood by quietly while their government practised "Aboriginal assimilation" policies (such as the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families), that too was covert racism. The United Nations Convention on Genocide includes in its definition of genocide "forcibly transporting children of the group to another".
Some of the victims of that past genocide are now bringing civil action against the Australian government.
Far too often, many give unwitting aid and comfort to overt racists by standing mute in the face of their physical, verbal and emotional violence. A word is more often than not the first rung in the ladder of escalating racial violence.
United States Senator Conrad Burns (Republican, Montana) was recently asked by one of his constituents, "Conrad, how can you live back there [Washington, D.C.] with all those niggers?" The senator's permissive demeanour and response was, "... it is a challenge". When the senator was asked why he did not tell the man he did not like or support the use of racial slurs or ethnic insults, he said defensively, "I don't know, I never give it [racism] much thought. Those are not my words."
His having not given racism "much thought", in the USA, is irresponsible. Too many good people are content to act as if racism is not worthy of their thought. Not giving racism any thought is the best way to promote it.
Mrs Blakeney is not a racist. Yet, over the years, she could not imagine her Burmese friend having to endure daily acts of racism from European Australians. Now, Mrs Blakeney is much more aware of the racists and racism in her day to day life, and that is good, not only for her Burmese friend but for everyone on this Earth.
The good and well-intentioned people greatly outnumber the racists, but silence is literally killing equally good and well-intentioned people of colour. The time has long since passed to break that permissive and deadly silence.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]