My parents' house was broken into the other day. Well, technically not broken into, rather the offenders walked in through the unlocked door, took the car keys and a mobile phone and stole the car.
It was the middle of the night and it just happened to be the one time a year when my parents had forgotten to lock the door. Which is odd, considering they usually have the door locked even when they're home. Everyone's okay, the car was recovered and three juveniles between the ages of 14 and 16 were arrested.
Dad's first reaction was anger. I can kind of understand where he's coming from - he said he'd worked hard all his life to get to the stage where he had enough money to buy a nice car like that and that they had no right to take it off him.
But then he started going down the racism track. He made the assumption that they were Aboriginal kids without any evidence whatsoever that they were. To be fair, in all likelihood this was probably true but I argued the point with him.
Can you imagine the sort of upbringing and family life these kids would have to have had in order to think it was okay to walk into someone's house at 2am and steal their car? I mean, they're kids for god's sake. Can you imagine the sort of place they would most likely go home to after a night out on the town stealing cars? Maybe I'm making assumptions here but I've got a lot of compassion for these kids. They didn't hurt anyone, the car's not badly damaged and their lives must be pretty shitty.
My sister got mugged by a group of Aboriginal girls when she was about 18 on the train. It completely destroyed the years of school education she had received in which she learnt about the history of the Aboriginal people, assimilation and the Stolen Generations. All it took for her to completely discard her pragmatic, compassionate view on race issues was one incident.
I've never been in that situation, but I would like to think if I ever was, I wouldn't let a solitary experience cloud my view of an entire race. It's easy to hide behind racism. And at the end of the day, if I was mugged by a Caucasian guy, I certainly wouldn't think all white people were trash. Because that would be silly.
9 months ago
4 comments:
Good final par.
I'm paranoid about locking the back door these days since the time The Smoo watched three guys calmly jump a fence in broad daylight and attempt to rob the house opposite us. I kinda feel like putting a sign on the front door explaining we have nothing worth stealing.
Just the final par? :)
It's good to be paranoid about that sort of thing. But crap that you have to be.
Oh, the rest of the post too, the final par just drove the point home well.
PS I'm not in training to be a sub. Just so's you know.
I had a very similar experience to your sister and as a result my views of natives changed. But now I think people are fucked all over regardless of race. We are all beautifully flawed.
I'm just glad your parents are okay.
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