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Sticks and stones... Racial slurs or free speech?

By Stephen Hagan - posted Tuesday, 1 March 2005


His contribution to State politics might be summed up as dismal self-promotion and his career at Federal level has been no more edifying. He has found notoriety by an ugly recourse to race-based remarks about Aboriginals in what he calls their native state.

If that wasn’t bad enough I read recently in a news brief where a group of prominent Adelaide leaders demanded the sacking of the Aboriginal affairs minister, Michael Armitage, over his use of the words “nigger in the wood pile” in Parliament on November 22, 2004. Premier Dean Brown met with 14 representatives of Aboriginal groups who all said that the minister should be replaced. Brown apologised for the comments and conceded that they were “insensitive” but rejected calls for Armitage's removal.

Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement director Sandra Saunders said, “It was not an off-the-cuff remark. He said it three times ... Sack the bastard - we don't want him ... We do not want him as Aboriginal affairs minister because he is a racist.”

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These are not isolated incidents - the nation is littered with reports of blatant racism being experienced by Indigenous Australians from all sections of society. Racist attitudes and actions are not the domain of a certain class of individual. Racism knows no boundaries.

As concerned parents we, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, shouldn’t throw our hands up into the air in a state of confusion or put discussion of racism with our children on the back burner. We must be proactive and raise awareness to what we know “nigger” to be (traditionally or otherwise): An evil cruel word along with the other sexist and religious words we refrain from public and personal use.

What we, as concerned parents, do have control over in today’s fast moving society is our children and perhaps to a lesser degree influence over our extended family members. As supporters of a fair and just society we need to teach our youth that it is OK to wear clothes of their popular American Hip Hop artists and imitate their mannerism. But please stress on them that under no circumstances can terms like “nigga” be seen as a sanitising version of “nigger” or that calling others boongs, gins, slops, dikes, googs etc be accepted as an expression of free speech.

The use of the word or its alternative does not lessen its hurt.

The author of the Love Thy Neighbours report should read and take note of the US religious and civil rights leader, Ralph Abernathy (1926-1990) when he says: "I’m sick and tired of black and white people of good intent giving aspirin to a society that is dying of a cancerous disease."

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About the Author

Stephen Hagan is Editor of the National Indigenous Times, award winning author, film maker and 2006 NAIDOC Person of the Year.

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