Craorach said:
Its an unfortunate fact of Australian society at the moment that people of Aboriginal blood are getting so many handouts in the shape of benefits, native title, free education and cheap rent that they are learning that they don't need to do any work for anything.
A friend of mine who works extensively in the education system, and is aboriginal himself, told me that many of the kids are being encouraged to leave school and have children asap to get more money from the government. The more kids, the more benefits, and the more people receive Native Title payments in the household.
Those that DO try to make it out of this cycle, live in fear because at any point their family members will turn up on their doorstep and expect to be allowed to stay for nothing, behave like scum and ruin their lives.
It has, quite honestly, gotten to the point in some areas that the Aboriginal people are getting away with everything and various organisations are completely unable to act against them. My immediate neighbour is a Homewest house that has been passed around the extended family of the registered occupant (against lease conditions) for the last few years, abandoned, had wild dogs running around it, been cleaned up, half rebuilt, and is still being leased to the same tenant.. how allows known criminals to live there instead of herself.... and nothing has been done about it for 4 years now.
The usual arguments are trotted out.. they're poor, they're disadvantaged, they have a different culture, they are victims of the system. I call bullshit.
They are a disgrace to themselves, their ancestors and the country they now live in. They are given more benefits than white australians in the same economic bracket yet somehow do less with it, and don't get jobs. They drunk and smoke and inject their benefits. It's time Australia started to demand they obey the same laws and rules as everyone else, either they are Australian or they are not.
The worst thing is that the people who are standing up, within their community, to try to fight what racism there is and make the place better for their people refuse to target this sort of behaviour. Sure, I'm willing to accept that terrible things were done once, but it is now time for them to take the advantages that are given them, clean their act up, encourage their children and pull themselves up out of the gutter.
The same thing could be said of the white poor right here in America. Just have a bunch of kids and stay under the poverty line and you can just live off the system. My mother deals with that kind of bullshit all the time in her line of work. She has to hear about people complaining about how the government does nothing for them when they've lived on the system most of their lives, refuse to comply with their health issues, then walk in with expensive beverages that they shouldn't
ever ingest for aforementioned health problems. She can't give specifics, of course, but its
not just the minorities who pull crap like this.
I'd bet money that if you took away all the benefits specific to Aboriginals, those dead-set on living on the system would continue doing so through what is offered to the general populace.
That being said, I still generally support affirmative action. for one, at least in my personal experience, discrimination against minorities is still a
very real thing. Not "Let's go lynch someone this Saturday" level of bad in the general public, (OK, so I know a few close-to-home acts of violence based in discrimination, but those people were especially nuts) but the "go away, icky 'X' people, I don't want you in my workplace, neighborhood or associating with my family" thing is disturbingly still palpable.
Such as a perfectly well-meaning person who felt they had to have a talk with their niece over dating a black man, but denied any accusations of racism because she "doesn't wish them ill."
At the very least, affirmative action can be a tangiable and quantifiable slap in the face to such people, making it clear that, yes, society views minorities as worth helping, and any differences that may be found between these groups is a beneficial element of diversity that can benefit workplaces, schools and the likes.
No, it isn't fair when someone as equally qualified as me (White, middle class) gets a leg up on an application because they belong to a minority, but if what people are saying about the people of aboriginal descent in Australia is true, there's also a much greater chance that they're not going to have the same resources and support that I have when facing applications and the like. Statistically speaking, I'm the one whose going to be able to get out there and travel to interviews, pay for applications and what have you.
Yes, sometimes Affirmative Action goes beyond what seems reasonable, but at the same time, I just don't trust people that well.
All applications are based with some subjective bias, and offsetting a bias to go for the guy whose more likely to need a leg up seems less wrong to me.
When the differences between races is about as tangible as the racism against Italians or the Irish is here in America, then I feel it would be appropriate to talk of getting rid of these policies.
Landshark1 said:
Affirmative Action is a good idea in theory, but there are some key problems with it, specifically the idea that a workplace or a college needs to have X amount of a minority to be diverse enough, and I don't think that it clearly helps end racism.
This totally applies, though. Because its a concrete attempt to attack the intangiable issue of social race disparitiy and racism in general, its going to be inherently flawed.
the Dept of Science said:
There will always be racists, but there are still flat-earthers and people that believe you can talk to the dead, so don't get too caught up on that.
Just because they can't talk back doesn't mean you can't talk at them!
