I am a white Australian and my partner is Mexican. We live in Australia and have a four-year-old daughter. Lately she has been asking questions that I don’t know how to answer.
Like 'why is the sky blue'..? Or 'where do we go when we die'..?
Initially childcare spoke with the kids about Capt Cook around Australia Day. Some of the things she came home repeating sounded very colonial, such as “Captain Cook first found Australia”. I tried to explain that, actually, Indigenous people were here before that and the British took the land from them. The conversation has moved on to her asking things like: “Mum, was Captain Cook bad?”; and “did Captain Cook learn to be better later?”
I feel ill-equipped to speak with such a young person about our colonial history and the racism and discrimination that exists, but I don’t want to avoid her questions.
Well, you palmed your child off on strangers in her formative years, and now you're going to have to do some parenting of your own. Is there any help and advice for you? Like maybe, there's nothing new under the sun and Cook is far from the only guilty party in the land-grabbing stakes, as Tim points out?
Are there any models or examples of how to do this in an age-appropriate way? I want my daughter to have a better understanding of our history and how racism affects the lives of others. I just don’t know what to say.Send up the Bat (Shit Crazy) Signal! This is a job for Sisonke Msimang!
Did you know that Capt James Cook was stabbed to death in Hawaii? He was indeed....some might say that history tells us James Cook was a bad man (bad being a word that describes someone who goes back on his word, breaches trust and disrespects others within the logics of what is acceptable in the time in which he was living) who got his just deserts.
Oh! Well. That was...unexpected! A bit too much reality for a four year old, Sisonke?
Your daughter probably isn’t ready for this story yet, but I remind you of these events, dear reader, because they speak to the fact that history holds the answers to many of the questions we ask today.
Yes, murder of the evil white man as a solution should wait until at least age seven, eh..?
...ultimately, the sooner you start talking to your daughter about history and race, the better. The world is already sending her all kinds of messages about what skin colour and socioeconomic status mean. Your task is to step into the powerful and wonderful role you have as her parent by showing her that we can talk about hard histories without falling apart; that difficult issues can make us more thoughtful and big-hearted...
It really doesn't appear to have done that with you though...
I know this can seem daunting, but take heart – four is a beautiful age. Four-year-olds are obsessed with moral rights and wrongs and with fair and unfair; and they are bursting with questions. I would ask you to follow her lead. Ask yourself the same questions she is asking you, and take the quest to understand them for yourself seriously.
It seems some people never advanced beyond that four year old stage.
8 comments:
"Four-year-olds are obsessed with [...] fair and unfair;"
I've always said, it's only children and socialists who expect life to be fair
‘Some of the things she came home repeating sounded very colonial, such as “Captain Cook first found Australia”’
It would be interesting to know what was actually said to the children rather than hearing it filtered through a four-year-old’s end-of-day recollection followed by and the mind of a (presumably somewhat biased) parent.
I spent a fair time in Aus. Went to museums of Indiginous artifacts. They had been on the continent for 30,000 years apparently.
Nearly every artefact was for killing. Crudely. Clubs or sharp sticks.
30,000 years, say 2000 generations. Not even booze of any description.For entertainment knock two sticks together or blow through a log that insects have hollowed out.
Suddenly honky arrives and all these tribes, warring since time immemorial are all bfsf.
And now any honky who can claim that their great times x grandparent shared a roll-up with an Indiginy can cash in. The real, 100%, indiginy can't be arsed and let the fakes use them.
“Captain Cook first found Australia”
Doesn't mean he found it first as they seem to think, it means he did it before he did anything else.
:-)
Odd isn't it, that the same people who divide everything up into right and wrong with no shades of grey, insist that gender is on a spectrum.
"James Cook was a bad man" reminds me of the book "1066 and all that" ... Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates.
Whilst she 'carefully' spouts her fashionable woke "interracial" credentials (forgetting of course that hubby is the descendant of Spanish conquistadors, is a member of an actual misogynous 'macho' culture, and probably a parasitic economic migrant/invader too), I can almost guarantee that despite her desperate anti-white self-hatred she'll ... avoid the "Abbo's" like the plague. (Like every idiotic feminist/leftist, she insists 'we', society' get to enjoy the benefits of dysfunctional ethnics, whilst 'she' gets to continue avoiding them - consequences are only for 'other' people).
Notice how, as always, it's yet another privileged, protected, rich white woman who is throwing herself at anything with more melanin in trousers? And, of course, hates and attacks the very people and system that gave her those undeserved benefits.
It's almost as if almost every woman is too stupid and easily manipulated to be trusted to make the most basic decisions about herself, yet we have handed entire societies over to their vapid, indoctrinated, self-loathing, fashion-obsessed hands. This wont end well.
"Women (will be) hardest hit", and never has a group deserved what is to come more.
Of these people had been on the continent for 30,000 years, where were the bridges, the towns, the roads, or the hospitals? Didn't any of their swampland memories push them towards this? Apparently, the fact that they were still in loincloths, eating witchety grubs, was wypo fault, racist bastards.
Every Aussie I've met is proud of their ancestors being deportees, - rapists, murderers, thieves, or whores which says a lot about their philosophies. No one mentioned being descended from the troopers, sailors, or soldiers, sent out with them, who all also ended up serving a form of sentence.I
Capt Cook was not a bad man. He was a man of his time, a brilliant navigator; a manager of a wide variety of men, bringing them to work as a team; in a strange, inhospitable landscape, trying to communicate to a mutual benefit.
Unfortunately, politics, both woke and unwoke, have intruded into history, leaving the actions of figures of the past judged by today's social and cultural standards, mainly to their detriment. Still, what do I know? I served in various theatres in the British Army as an engineer, building not killing or destroying. Perhaps, in years to come, I will be included in ex British military as murdering bastards, with my descendants forced to apologise and grovel for what I did.
Penseivat
"I've always said, it's only children and socialists who expect life to be fair"
Good point!
"It would be interesting to know what was actually said to the children rather than hearing it filtered through a four-year-old’s end-of-day recollection followed by and the mind of a (presumably somewhat biased) parent."
It would, yes, because I very much doubt (in an increasingly-woke school system) it was anything like what was described...
"Nearly every artefact was for killing. Crudely. Clubs or sharp sticks.
30,000 years, say 2000 generations. Not even booze of any description."
Truly, a primitive culture! 😁
"Doesn't mean he found it first as they seem to think, it means he did it before he did anything else."
LOL!
"Odd isn't it, that the same people who divide everything up into right and wrong with no shades of grey, insist that gender is on a spectrum."
"...I can almost guarantee that despite her desperate anti-white self-hatred she'll ... avoid the "Abbo's" like the plague. "
Oh, of course! Worshipped in the abstract, shunned in real life.
"Capt Cook was not a bad man. He was a man of his time, a brilliant navigator; a manager of a wide variety of men, bringing them to work as a team; in a strange, inhospitable landscape, trying to communicate to a mutual benefit."
That was the case for a lot of reviled historical figures, actually.
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