This Black Skin

Upon visiting Australia I realized that I have not seen a lot of black people here. My original explanation had to do with the fact that there may not be a lot of immigrants here. This was quickly disproven when I went out and talked to locals. Most of the people who had either immigrated here or were visiting were of Anglo Saxon or of Asian descent.  In fact, Australia is a whopping 92% White 7% Asian and 1% Aboriginal and other. When you take into consideration that Aboriginals used to be the only people inhabiting this land these numbers are incredible. THIS is when the power of knowledge became handy.

His name was Martin Crotty and he is an associate professor in the school of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland. Though he hails from New Zealand, he knew quite a lot about Australian history. He broke his lecture down into three categories: European “discovery”; “Settlement” and Nation Building and Australia Since 1901. His lecture opened my eyes to the world around me and really helped me get a historical reference point that helped the reasoning behind my earlier mentioned demographic breakdown unfold.

When Europeans got here in 1788 there grand, fanciful theories about what the continent would look like. Cartographers made it out to be a much larger landmass and there were grand notions of it either being a land full of gold or women. They were quickly disappointed to find none of that there. When they realized that they didn’t immediately find anything profitable, they decided to make solve their overcrowded prison population by sending prisoners there instead.  After these early inhabitants set up infrastructures to make this place more like home, the British decided to exploit the abundance of land and wool in the area.

Settlers knew that there were other people in Australia. In fact, early drawings of Aboriginals painted them as noble savages, almost Greek in nature. 

 Before Australia landed on their colonial radar, early "settlers" looked at the Aboriginal population as a classical, noble savage. This changed when they started getting comfortable and wanted to take over. Europeans couldn’t understand the hierarchal structure of Aboriginal tribes so they took it upon themselves to “tame” these people and civilize these dark skinned natives they now portrayed as wild beasts. There was quite a lot of resistance from the locals but they just couldn’t keep up with the guns, horses and dogs that Anglo Saxons were fighting with. They had pretty much lost the battle by 1901 when Australia was extremely settled and very rich in production and trade.

A depiction of Aboriginal Resistance. 

Propaganda for White Australia Movement.

And then came White Australia. Australia made it evident that foreigners, especially those of different skin colors, were not welcome. They set up complex dictation test and even militarized themselves when other over crowded countries began to complain. They received pressure from Japan, China, India and Germany to open their doors to diversity.  The country held out for a while but WWI took a lot out of the Australia. They had to fight with the British and lost a large amount of people. This forced the government to open up their definition of whiteness and they began to let Eastern Europeans into the mix. When WWII came around Australia, desperate to bring its economy up to speed, made an alliance with the U.S and decided that White Australia was a thing of the past in this progressive, war torn world. They switched to a model of multiculturalism but alas the damage seems to have already been done. Aboriginals have been forced out of a lot of the urban areas of Australia due to racism and historical injustice.  It is interesting because in America, black people were forced in, but here it seems that they were forced out. I’m not saying that I prefer either but it would be nice to see another beautiful, black familiar face.