Joyce Surenne Penny writes: Most of the people who have an opinion on racism don’t live in the bush, or at least don’t have frequent contact with the original Australians (“History repeats itself as Australia’s dark past is given a whitewash”). And none of us whitefellas has any idea of all that was done in the name of the Crown to land grab and subjugate an entire race of people. It’s time we demanded and learnt the truth of the past.
Ann Urch writes: European settlement was truly a disaster for First Nations peoples, of that there is no doubt. However, the blunt force method used by some to encourage mainly guilt is not a productive way to achieve that end.
I have rarely listened to Stan Grant in the past few years because his lecturing and hectoring gets right up my nose. The ABC management set Grant up for a bloody nose by having him and like-minded guests present the lead-in to the coronation coverage. If I want to convince someone of the merits of my position, I try not to use boxing gloves to do so.
Richard Pendlebury writes: I do believe it is time our primary and secondary schools focus more on our pre-colonial history as well as our British colonial history. We also should teach the predominant regional native languages so that they too do not die.
Indigenous learning and knowledge needs to be better used. Aquaculture, for example, was an early Indigenous farming method with extensive stone channel systems in rural areas. Many are unaware of these advanced techniques because it is rarely taught or mentioned in our education system. Curriculum is generally determined by an Anglo-Saxon heritage-based group, and this adds to the whitewashing.
Roderick Tan writes: I totally agree that the real history of the Australian nation should be taught in schools. This will not only bury the demons of Australia’s colonial history but also be a soul redemption for white Australians. First Nations peoples deserve this moral right for the past atrocities committed by colonialists.
James Heasley writes: The real history of Australia should have been taught in schools decades ago but because politicians believe there’s nothing to teach it hasn’t happened. Everyone should learn what the First Nations peoples went through. Non-Indigenous people assume that they know and understand, but they truly don’t. How can we move on as a nation if our schools won’t teach the truth about this nation? How can we move on if this nation does not learn about the horrors that the First Nations peoples suffered at the hands of the British and other non-Indigenous people? Time to teach. Time to learn.
Irene Goldwasser writes: I’ve noted that often there are three ways in which many Australians deal with allegations of racism. There’s denial: it’s simply not happening, or it really isn’t that bad, or people are trying to make us feel guilty about the past. There’s defence: I’m not responsible. People in colonial times meant well. (Really??) And there’s silence, simply pretending it’s not happening.
For far too long, we have turned the spotlight onto the victim-survivor rather than the perpetrator. You hear statements such as “Oh, I was only joking” or “You’re too sensitive” or “Why can’t you simply move on?” We hear people say they feel uncomfortable talking about racism. Well discomfort is nothing compared with what people on the receiving end feel.
Racism is not new, but the fact that a political party could actually win votes based solely on racism — One Nation — is a sad indictment of our failures. Instead of confronting Pauline Hanson head on, the federal LNP decided to pander to her and to try to win more votes by moving even further to the right.
We need campaigns in which we tell the truth about our Indigenous Australians. Given the rise of right-wing/white supremacist individuals and groups, we should also be reminded that anyone of a non-Anglo-Saxon heritage might also be targeted.
Marilyn Murphy writes: It may be that Stan Grant received a lot of racial abuse on social media. Every public figure cops it. They’re the usual trolls and they should not be given oxygen. The discussion on Q+A was a discussion that needs to be had. The issue is not Grant’s ethnicity but the timing of that discussion and its bias.
Scheduling this discussion before the coronation was inappropriate and disrespectful. No matter what your opinion of the monarchy or British colonialism, this was a moment in history and should have been treated as such. The discussion was also extremely biased — nothing but a pile-on on the monarchy (this coming from a staunch Republican). If the ABC wants people to take these discussions seriously, it needs to stop loading the panels with people supporting its leftist views.
As for “whitewashing”, I disagree strongly with this allegation. Australia has done a lot — in the past 30 years in particular — to acknowledge our past and continues to work to address the issues and suffering arising from that past.
Martin Lawrence writes: I read Pragya Agarwal’s article and I think that it needs to be acknowledged that people can have varying views but discussions should be respectful. Having this discussion at a time when so many people were tuning in expecting to get a celebration and a sense of ceremony seems very disrespectful. Stan Grant has said he was a guest on the day and should have been protected. This seems ludicrous seeing that he has been the host of Q+A. Time and time again he has hosted while guests have come in and expressed wildly offensive comments and then have had to deal with the social media fall-out.
The producers made a mistake about timing for commentary such as his but Grant accepted the invitation and spoke his own words. No-one can defend the horrible racism that has followed but I don’t think it can be argued that inserting his opinions on this particular day was respectful.
Roger Llewellyn writes: After reading about Stan Grant’s resignation from Q+A, I am saddened that he felt he had to leave — another voice for Aboriginal rights has been silenced. I am originally from Melbourne and did my schooling there, leaving school and joining the army in 1972. Having grown up in Victoria, served in the Australian Army, and then worked in the mining industry in north-west Queensland where I am still employed, I would like to state that I knew nothing about Aboriginal history until I worked here in Mount Isa for the past 43 years.
Two of my children have mixed-race children (Aboriginal fathers), which doesn’t make me an expert but does give me an informed perspective of the plight of [Aboriginal people] currently in Australia. We all need to listen to Indigenous people — not the activists but the real people on the ground in country areas — and ask them what they want to make Australia a better country for everyone. I believe we should all be taught the accurate and sad history of colonial Australia, and embrace all cultures in this multicultural land.
Melissa McIntyre writes: Absolutely I believe it’s time Australia faced the truth.
I am third generation Aboriginal from my father’s mother and still have endured racism most of my life. Names like “little black fella” at school to hearing a relative by marriage say to his mate one day “She’s just a black.” I have seen racism in sport where kids know who are the best players but whites would be picked over Blacks despite the Black athletes being by far the better athletes. My own white mother would say to me: “Don’t you tell anyone you have black in you.”
I think the only way it will look like changing in any way will be to get an Aboriginal prime minister and more [Aboriginal people] in Parliament.
John Cooke writes: Let’s get this straight in the first instance. Put whatever woke spin you want to on this but Stan Grant stuffed up. People were tuning into the ABC coverage of the coronation because they wanted to observe a moment in history, and whether it’s an inconvenient truth for some, there really are people in Australia who are still monarchists. So if your job is to provide commentary for a once-in-a-lifetime royal event, it suddenly doesn’t become your soapbox to talk about colonialism.
And while there is a time and place for such a discussion, it is naive and clumsy writing by Pragya Agarwal to try to link Grant not doing his job properly and a colonialist past. If Agarwal wants to have a conversation with the Australian public about Australia’s colonial past then do it objectively and don’t lecture the reader. Essentially be a better journalist. Like Grant should have been.
Ann Kaczmarek writes: I am British by birth and Australian by choice. Britain was (and to some extent still is) a racist nation when I migrated here in 1965 and I was very surprised to see how the prejudice against non-white people was very evident in Australia at the time. While it is not as overt today, racism still exists, particularly again Indigenous Australians.
The only way to overcome this is to start teaching the truth in schools about the occupation of Australia by the British. Unfortunately our teaching system has its origins in Britain and it has never acknowledged the dreadful history of British colonialism.
Stan Grant was correct to discuss the royal family’s place in the history of racism and its obligation to accept this and do everything to stamp it out.
Susan Pamela Batho writes: I have to agree with Pragya Agarwal. I remember as a child in the 1960s not being told about the local people except in a vague way. I played with them after Sunday school but then they disappeared until the following Sunday — the white and Black communities were very separate. There was no acknowledgment that it was their land that we had taken and they had no access to community-run facilities. We would drive through their village but not acknowledge them with a hello or a thank you for being allowed access to the waters that we fished.
I had to look up the family that I should acknowledge, the Ngarigo people, for being caretakers of the land I enjoyed as a child. Such information should be accessible in schools, and it should show respect for the land as well as the people. And their stories should be told of how we got there and what we did when we came.
Mark Carter writes: I agree that it is time for Australians to face up to the true history of this country. When I was younger we learnt a version of Australian history that told of the exploits of Captain Cook and other pioneers of the colonisation of Australia. It told of brave explorers who went out all over the country and blazed a trail for settlers in newly discovered areas. In many ways the history was not unlike the tales of the American west and how settlers there expanded civilisation in a primitive country.
I wasn’t taught that Australia had been inhabited by native Australians for nearly 60,000 years before white people arrived. Nor was I taught about the havoc their arrival had on Indigenous Australians, by the displacement of them from their traditional lands and the introduction of diseases that killed them off in great numbers. There was no discussion, of course, about the idea that one man’s colonisation might be considered another man’s invasion.
I think there is a need for truth-telling. I could take the view that I wasn’t personally responsible for the maltreatment of Indigenous Australians. I didn’t steal any children and I’m not descended from early colonists anyway. But I think that would be to miss the point. I don’t see truth-telling as being a guilt trip. I see it as acknowledging our true history, warts and all. The debate about a Voice to Parliament, as well as other aspects of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, might provide a watershed moment in Australia’s history, one where reconciliation with native Australians can be progressed further than ever before.
Norelle Feehan writes: Yes, it is about time the truth was out there for all to see. As Paul Keating said: ‘We took the traditional lands and smashed their way of life; we committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers … We stole their wages; we poisoned their water; we refused them entry on trains and pubs and picture theatres and swimming pools.”
As a fifth-generation Australian from a settler family, I cringe when I think of “he took up land” and what that means. I don’t blame him, but I accept we have a shocking history and for many Australians that is still a big fat denial point.
In Berlin, I was struck by plaques acknowledging very dark moments in German. It sticks strongly in my mind. I mentioned it to our walking tour guide and she asked where I was from. When I told her she shared that when she queried our history with some Aussie walkers they were (or acted) ignorant to some of our truths. What a lost opportunity for us to progress.
James Morris writes: Time to grow as a nation and face the difficult truths of colonial history.
