Wow, kids these days do not know ANYTHING about history!
I'm in interested in bob's thoughts on the subject...
Why do they each have a different arm raised?
Because John Carlos forgot his and had to use the other one from Tommie Smith's pair, which was white guy Peter Norman's suggestion.
I even thought that that guy - who seemed to be just a simpering Englishman
...But then I found out - thank God! - that he wasn't a queer after all!
Stay classy.
I don't think simpering either denotes or connotes gay.
I initially read 4 as a joke because I interpolated the word "arm" rather than, as it obviously should have been, "glove". And indeed the athlete on the right does look as though he's only got one arm, presumably because he's detached his right arm and given it to the chap in the middle, who'd inexplicably left his own in the locker room.
I admit this joke only works if you get the two saluting athletes' names the wrong way round, as I did.
...and, oh look! An article about how much Australia(ns) suck! Quelle surprise!
11
Not really, except in a previous thread I was saying that Australia was one of the few countries where the country is great but the people weren't, mainly because they're underneath the jolly friendly laid back exterior they're mostly raging racist assholes (or should I say arseholes?). Having a post describing how most Australians were raging racist assholes supports my point.
2: "They would wear the famous black gloves, a symbol of the Black Panthers' cause."
Well, this article does connect the gesture to the Black Panthers and Black Power, which is what the original argument was all about. It was a very nice article.
10: I am also kinda with 10, and am a little suspicious of the comparison of 60s-70s Australia with South Africa.
In passing, Adolph Reed showed up at Jacobin this week. As a critic of TNC, I give him more credence than McWhorter.
AR:"The psychobabbling bromides that elevate recognition and celebration of black agency rest on an ideological perspective that in practical terms rejects effective black political action in favor of expressive display. It is the worldview of an element of the contemporary black professional stratum anchored in the academy, blogosphere, and the world of mass media chat whose standing in public life is bound up with establishing a professional authority in speaking for the race. This is the occupational niche of the so-called black public intellectuals.
Twenty years practically to the week before publication of Dyson's essay, I took stock of what was then the newly confected category of the Black Public Intellectual and noted that the notion's definitive irony was that its avatars were quite specifically not organically rooted in any dynamic political activity and in fact emerged only after opportunities for real connection to political movements had disappeared. Nor were the "public intellectuals" connected to any particular strain of scholarship or criticism.
Rather, their status was no more than a posture and a brand." ...AR
If you want fun, going to the Jacobin Facebook page will get you the comments that think they rip the article to shreds
They would receive their medals barefoot, representing the poverty facing people of color. They would wear the famous black gloves, a symbol of the Black Panthers' cause. "Take one eRachele", Norman suggested. Smith and Carlos took his advice.
I know the story, but I'm choosing to interpret this as Norman speaking like Homsar.
How can we dance when our earth is turning, Buttercup? How can we sleep while our beds are burning?
13:
Followed the link, approved of Reed's defense of Glory against the other movies he compares it with.
12: OTOH, I understand that the Australians have no word for "quisling".
That wasn't a fully developed thought. The three main contributions of Australia to world culture are this guy, Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" and AC/DC's Back in Black, so we know that Australia isn't a racist country.
17: Wikipedia's short history of how "Quisling" came to be a synonym for "collaborationist weasel" was interesting. It quotes a contemporary newspaper editor:
"To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor... they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Aurally it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous."
18: You left out Nicole Kidman, sexist.
I was at a wedding a few weeks ago where the bride's South African parents came in, went to their seats at the head table, and gave raised fist salutes as they were introduced. Her father, shortly afterwards, gave a wonderful toast about how he was so proud to see his daughter, born under apartheid, having achieved things he didn't even dare hope for her. It took me a sec (hm, I didn't know South Africa had Black Panthers . . . ooooooh) to clue in on the salute, but this photo was the first thing I thought of.
"Beds are Burning" is one of the most embarrassingly awful songs ever recorded.
Even so, we shouldn't be too hard on Australians. If it weren't for Australians, who would the salt water crocodiles eat?
Wow, I've seen this photo a million times but it was always in black and white. Now it looks more like something that happened in the 60s rather than the 30s.
The blog killed the OP link. I assume it explains how the dude just standing there cured cancer or something.
24
Actually, it was about how that white dude was a pretty decent human, but it was more about how everyone else in Australia totally sucked. By comparison, he looked like goddamn Gandhi crossed with MLK Jr.
Not everyone else, Buttercup. Angus and Malcolm Young were alive then, and they don't "suck."
Also, thought experiment: Paul Hogan is plausibly racist. I mean, that's not confirmed, I don't know him, and IIRC there was some sort of Aborigene-buddy, maybe just implied, in the Crocodile Dundee movies, but come on, dude walks around the Outback with a knife, so plausibly racist. But is he more racist than his gator-cowboy-hat wearing, swamp dwelling, reptile-fighting US equivalent? No way.
Clive James and Germaine Greer, even if both of them live in Cambridge or very close by
Also, surely, Dame Edna is a woman after Tigre's heart, and Les Patterson a cultural commentator for the ages.
Nellie Melba is clearly a world-historical villain for (however inadvertently) promoting the eating of toast.
I like those little toast circles. Try them with one of those nut-covered cheese balls.
Anyway, whenever I see Chex Mix, I take the Melba pieces and leave the rest.
IIRC there was some sort of Aborigene-buddy, maybe just implied, in the Crocodile Dundee movies Lone Ranger shows. FTFY
Google "White Australia policy"; then google "Stolen generation". White Americans can't teach White Australians much about racism.
I've seen an argument that the more democratic a society, the more racist it's likely to be, because if your primary identity isn't defined by class, then you need to find an other to identify against. And for democratic societies in the modern era, early 20th century Australia and 19th century America (up to about 1876) are exhibits 1 and 2. So.
Even the progessive and inclusive Australian film "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" has a racist caricature in the Asian wife of one of the small-town men the traveling drag queens encounter.
33.1: I think listening to Midnight Oil covers that.
The question I asked in 10 is something about de jure and de facto racism in say 60s America, South Africa, and Australia.
Point being, in America and I presume though don't know South Africa, a black serviceman off a Navy destroyer in (parts of) the US or South Africa could not be served or be in a "white hotel" by law and I was wondering if that was the case in 60s Australia.
The difference used to be considered important, more important that attitudes or private opinions or interpersonal but not officially sanctioned and institutionalized behavior.
After reading about the "White Australia Policy" on Wikpedia (immigration; ended in the 60s) I tend to doubt that Australia practice de jure segregation against say black American servicemen, making it different from Dixie and South Africa.
I also read several very recent articles on Asian in Australia (10% now)
I have no doubt that White Australians treated their aboriginals badly and still do, and certainly Australia is much too much like the US to hold any attraction to me. Animal Kingdom and The Boys sum up the place for me.
But racism ain't one universal monolithic thing
take one eRachele? huh? Please explain, someone, anyone?
Man, the wiki account of Peter Garrett's post-Midnight Oil political career has depressed me to no end. I think it's not that I'm "not cynical," but that I can't get to being cheerfully cynical from being gloomily cynical.
Are there really no Aussie lurkers here? I am in the process of killing a second Banksia in the mysterious front yard clay soil, which I would condemn as infertile except for all the plants that randomly have thrived in it, including a now-huge Leucadendron. What gives, Banksia? Is it so hard to live?
38: "take one each" with some horrible copy/paste error.
Lurid, I think the clay is your problem. Banksias thrive here in some of the crappiest soil on the planet, but I think they prefer sandy soil.
I guess I qualify as an Australian lurker, it's true, Australians are history's greatest monsters, now starting their turn as Hollywood villains of choice. Finding Nemo, Rio and The Dark Knight will clearly be the start of a trend encompassing a movie adaption of Ned Beauman's Glow and Ben Mendellsohn reprising his turn as Hitler in a HBO miniseries adaption of Der Untergang.
Plenty to find to dislike, defending it in a huff seems kind of a doomed endeavour, but the equivalence with South Africa and the US South of the period seems not right. Lynching and legal colour bars were never a feature of Australian life. Race riots not a 20th century thing. Colonial police forces that killed people and drove them off the land were but more in the 1800s ... A lot of policy changed in the 1960s, last state to give aborigines the vote was in 1965 three years before this event. First black senator 1971. From the same state, as it happens.
I guess ... because of the white Australia policy and the very different proportions of white to other races in Australia, in the 20th century it was more a case of shameful repression of very outnumbered minorities rather than a large but minority group kept as an underclass (like the US South) or an elite minority keeping a majority underclass (like South Africa). All are unjust but the dynamics are different, particularly after reform. Maybe less internal legal barriers needed to be erected because the purge and external walls were so horribly effective? There is less segregation because there was more homogeneity? Maybe it makes it easier to be openly racist afterwards?
And I almost qualify as an Australian lurker, having been here (in Australia) for 15 years now and here (lurking) for almost as long.
Definitely Australian aboriginal soldiers had the experiences Bob is talking about above. It wasn't universal, but some couldn't drink the Returned Servicemens' Clubs, and some came home from war to find their land has been confiscated by the state for the war effort. I went to this show a while ago, it was educational: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2014/jan/14/black-diggers-challenging-anzac-myths (It wasn't a very good play though.)
The last race riot was in 2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots but it was a riot against muslims so perhaps irrelevant to this discussion. It illustrates that there is still a lot of racism very close to the serface in Australia.
And the position on asylum seekers illustrates that bigotry is still alive and well on the very surface and celebrated in Australian public life as a great success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution
Over the weekend doctors at a hospital in Victoria have had to face jail terms of up to 2 years for refusing to release children from hospital because they feel it isn't safe for the to be returned to the detention centers.
There is a lot to love about this country, but there is a lot to change too, and we have to keep working every day to fix it.
Giving Tony Abbot the boot is a step in the right direction, no? My Australian boss thinks rather highly of the new guy. Is that justifiable, or is my boss a terrible person?
I shortchanged someone $30 once, when I was running a cash register in high school. Settling up at the end of the night, I was $30 high, and I had a $50 mixed in with my $20s that I'd never noticed come in. Felt terrible about it.
Re 44:
Yep, getting rid of Abbott is a good move in anyone's eyes, except about 1/3 of the Murdoch press. Which there is heaps of here because Murdoch was Australian.
Turnbull is much better on everything if you're a lefty but he's still in the rightwing coalition of Liberal party (yep, they're rightwing here) which is conservatives and neo-liberals and National which is farmers, very social conservative and give-us-all-the-water-for-farming types.
And lefties like Turnbull much more than pretty much anyone in his party so he's got a job to do. If he stays popular, they'll stay tame enough to win him a couple of elections. It'll be interesting.
Your boss could still be terrible though, best keep a close eye on him. If he supports Collingwood, get a new job.
Loosely related: Does anyone know what happens in Canada if the Conservatives win a plurality, but not a majority? Does Harper bully everybody into accepting another term of Conservatives, or is there a coalition?
48: Either a coalition of minority government depending on what the junior parties agree. Eg the minor parties may give conditional support to pass the budget only.