Away with the P.C.-ness. The plight of the Aboriginals.
April 30, 2008
For too long there has been a relentless drive towards a pure form of political correctness in Australia. Over the last few years such political correctness has threatened countless and abolished many more legislations put forth to our parliamentary system. Moving amongst many academics and professionals since this trend of political correctness begun I have found it difficult to ascertain the origins of P.C.-ness in Australia. Everyone with which I spoke had nothing but condemnation for the trend, however differing the degrees of negative sentiment may be.
It is unquestionably harmful situation for a democratic nation aspiring to be a collective of free thinkers when one cannot make an opinion based on distinction. When one cannot call a spade a spade so to speak.
The politicians had clearly lost touch with the people when in a absolutely classic move renamed ´Fairy´penguins as to not be politically incorrect and to offend the homosexual community. The gays were laughing. Simple.
So where did this bullshit come from. The answer is simple. The mainstream, conservative media which espouses its rhetoric through the limited media channels available to those in Australia with limited online access.
The problem arose because initially the Australian public did not mind trying to avoid hurt feelings. However, the issue snowballed out of control and before anyone could say ´boo´the media had give a voice to these very few political correctness advocates claiming to speak for the people.
Looking back to last year at the Howard government´s reform policies for the rural indigenous population it sickened me to see how much air time was given to those espousing their politically correct rhetoric. Essentially attempting to convince others that lives of the poor indigenous children at the centre of the controversy should not be singled out for the sake of politically correct policy.
Should we all simply be given a number and treated equally? I don´t hear the voices of those ever furious, politically correct few barking when the government hands out additional assistance to those of aboriginal decent when they achieve entry to medical school. However, when the government intervenes to fix a controversial problem, well, that´s a different story all together.
In the case of the so called ¨controvertial¨strategy to stop the child abuse in rural aboriginal communities the media gave a voice to the politically correct extremists and aboriginal leaders with a deeply ingrained hatred of our white government and portrayed the plan as highly contested. In my countless discussions on the topic I did not come across one individual who had anything but praise for the proposal.
However, thankfully, it seems that times are changing. In today’s article by TheAustralian.com.au, ¨Literacy plan works as read¨ http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23625835-601,00.html it is fantastic to see that the Western Australian state government has been able to single out a issue with the literacy rate of the indigenous children and implement a politically incorrect strategy to correct the matter.
Finally it seems that our nation may be back on track and pushing towards solving the politically incorrect issue of the plight of the Aboriginal people.
