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Professor Marcia Langton deserves defending
by Jack Andrew Wilkie-Jans 19 March 2014
I
am a huge fan of Prof Marcia Langton AM; she’s a tough cookie and she has learnt to be over the years due to the fact she challenges people as a woman and an Aboriginal woman no less. Of course there’s a great deal I don’t agree with her on in regards to Alcohol Management Plans especially but also for the fact that, like Pearson, in my view she is part of the chronic problem of the governance of Aboriginal people stemming from far away urbanites and academics as opposed to the grass-roots leaders and the communities themselves. And we wonder why progress on Aboriginal affairs is so slow! Anyway, it’s no new news that mainstream Australia has code words for when talking about Aboriginal people in public i.e. “homeless”, “itinerants”, “young offenders”, “street-drinkers” and “dole bludgers” which allows for a free-for-all of thinly veiled racism because these terms could
Jack Wilkie-Jans says Marcia Langton is the iron rod of truth on racism.
be applied to anybody. That’s their scape-goat. We can have some white people in this country saying they’re native because they were born here (we’ve all heard that one) and that they deserve as much free stuff from Centrelink as the blacks get and so on and so on- but when one Aboriginal female counters this mainstream racism all hell breaks loose. I’ve had people up in my face before saying things like “I’m not racist but I think Aboriginal people don’t want to work and just want everything for free” but if you call them on it, all of a sudden you’re as extreme and hurtful to them as Andrew Bolt claimed Marcia was to him. It’s a double standard adopted by racists who can’t blatantly express their hatred and fear so instead attempt to subvert genuine debate around a topic or statement they themselves have made bylow- calling those who are able to read between the lines racists. It’s a psychological condition called projectionism.
White Australia love Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson for their leniency towards conservative thinking however when one of them, in this case being Marcia, goes head to head with another prominent although more holistically conservative public commentator they jump ship. All Professor Langton did was read between the lines and told us what she saw and she deserves to be in-directly or directly vilified as an “overly sensitive black” when in fact she is the iron rod of truth in this regard. In short, who’s afraid of Marcia Langton? Racists should be. Who’s afraid of Andrew Bolt? Andrew who? Jack Andrew Wilkie-Jans is an Aboriginal Affairs advocate and Traditional Owner from Far North Queensland, an artist and a board member of Cape York Sustainable Futures Inc. which is Cape York’s peak-body for advocacy and social, economic and community development.
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