Thanks for this, Trudy - I had missed it in today's paper. This response is
spot on, capturing the insidious, hidden racism of the McGuinness piece.
Much better than anything I could've written, though I have decided to
approach him directly.
Actually, if people can stomach it, next month's Quadrant under the
editorship of Mr PP is reproducing papers from their recent conference on
matters Indigenous. I suspect it will be a hotbed of veiled racism and
slurring. For instance, it will include the piece that suggests that the
stolen generation should be called the 'rescued generation'. Kind of sets
the tone...
Thanks again,
Tim
>From the letters page of the SMH
>http://www.smh.com.au/news/9909/24/text/letters.html
>
>Racist card
>
>Don't you know, Mr McGuinness, that a straw argument is the weakest kind?
>
>Apparently neither you, nor any of the the others involved in the scenario
you
>describe (Herald, September 23), found the incident
>racist. Yet you suggest that "many people" would. Who exactly? The
politically
>correct? Feminazis?
>
>Well, by your yardstick, I am both of those but I believe that I, too,
would
>have found nothing sinister in the incident. It is you, Mr
>McGuinness, who plays the racist card here. You describe the scenario in
>extraordinary detail and then proceed to admonish those
>fictional people you suggest would find the incident discriminatory.
>
>You are a fine wordsmith, Mr McGuinness, and the imagery you convey is
burnt
>into my brain: drunk Aborigines, including a woman,
>clutching open cans of Jim Beam and Coke in a trendy Sydney street during
>business hours. You go on to say that any taxi driver who
>stopped for these people "would not have survived long".
>
>I am appalled by your insinuation here. There are many who scrutinise the
media
>and the Internet looking for stereotypes such as this to
>feed their prejudices, and I suggest that if you cannot resist the
temptation to
>give them what they seek, then your column space should
>be given over to someone else.
>A. Packman,
>Kurrajong.
>
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