I am he as you are me… It doesn’t matter what colour you are when your heart is broken, your spirit is lost and your mind consumed with trauma you will seek any means for reprieve.
We would not be human if we did not exhibit some form of mental dysfunction when we have endured traumatic experiences.
Indigenous cultures all over the world have been suffering and enduring decades of cultural social PTS as a result of the oppression abuse exploitation discrimination cultural genocide perpetrated by western patriarchal colonialism and western social domination.
The symptoms are the mass social dysfunctions and inequalities that are evident today and difficulties to persist or prosper in white structured systems insensitive to the suffering which currently exists as a result of white patriarchal historical policies legislature and social conditioning.
The first time I remember experiencing the rascist attitude towards indigenous people in this country was when I was about 15 years old… it was with one of my first dates. I had met a young man at a pub on the central coast. He was gorgeous. Dark dark soft brown lingering eyes, a light dark stubble of beard growth, smooth brown skin and he smelt not of cheap toxic men sprays but sweet and savoury and comforting. So when he asked for my number and to see me again I said ‘yes’. I thought nothing when his friends called him ‘Blackie’… I didn’t understand why he laughed so much when I asked him if his surname was Black. ‘Well my surname is Brown and I get called ‘Brownie’.
I don’t have a preference for skin colour all I know is many of the people in my life who I have loved and who have loved me have been brown skinned. My grandmother is Spanish, my stepmother and her mother are Greek and my nan has Tasmanian aboriginal DNA./ancsestory.(which i didnt know at the time)
I didn’t know Blackie was an aboriginal until my stepfather told me. He told me he was no good like all the blacks. My stepfather was a cop. He said ‘I know Blackie alright,’ he said he had arrested him before. He said they’re all drunks and thieves. And I thought well at least they’re not peodofiles like you. So no matter what he said to demonise this beautiful brown man nothing he said was as bad as the man he was. He said Stay away from him, he’s trouble you know… You wont be seeing anymore of him.’
And I didn’t…
Because after only a couple of dates, blackie told me that he didn’t want to see me anymore because he said I was too good for him. He said he wasn’t good enough for me. He said ‘the bus driver is right’. He told me he was dark and I was light and we couldn’t mix because his darkness would only bring me down too. He said there were things about him that I didn’t know. In hindsight he passed out that night not from the can of jack daniels we were sharing but from a drug I was too naive to know even existed. He didn’t try and sleep with me either. He just wanted to hold me he said…and he kissed me, but he said I was so young and he knew he would be my first and he just kept telling me I was too pure for him and then he held me and blacked out. And I cried all night on his chest and he didn’t know. and I did not sleep.
His sister said that to me too. On our first date. She said ‘you are so beautiful, what are you doing with my brother? You’re too good for him. He’s trouble you know.’
I thought he was gorgeous and gentle and polite and respectful and ‘spunky’.
And the bus driver. The bus driver who would not let him on the bus when he wanted to take me to work so I didn’t have to ride alone. The bus driver who chastised him when he got on the bus anyway… This changed blackie, like …he snapped back. He was angry that the bus driver had humiliated him in front of me. He was deflated and his mood beyond rebound. He demanded the driver stop and he got off… he didn’t ride the whole way with me like he had planned. He said he couldn’t go any further now. ‘I have to get off (the bus), I’m sorry.’
And when the bus driver was alone with me, he told me I looked like a nice girl, a ‘good girl’ and that ‘that guy is a bad seed’ and that I shouldn’t be seeing someone ‘like that’.
And I thought why does nobody want me to love this man? Maybe my love would make him feel worthy again, but not even he feels he deserves this love. One thing doesn’t make a man but maybe one thing can change a man. The experience of Unconditional love may be the catalyst for change that every man needs. And every women. The change from ‘undeserving to deserving’ of self- worth, self-love and the love of others.