The Native Iowan

I have said before that August is my favourite month. So many good things about August… get a Blue Moon this month, the planet is in its preps to reverse it’s tilt, the night sky in August is always and all ways great… https://www.space.com/16149-night-sky.html

It is an overcast, drizzly morning. Had a good but short shower right on dawn. Things are drying up, for the first time in over 18months. After the once-inahundredyear floods of a year ago.

For the first time in 2years we’re running low on tank water.

I have a big tank down at the stock yards that is full, but is not connected to anything. A couple years ago I rigged a pump and over 200meters/ 600feet of poly pipe to move the water to the house tank. It was quite a chore noting the 200 meter run was covered by no less than half-a-dozen lengths of pipe coupled together. We spent most of that day turning the pump off and reconnecting blown fittings. It was a bear of a day.

This time I think I’ll use a 1000litre ICB to move the water as per need. One load at a a time.

Cant live without water, and I am very spoilt… I could buy a few thousand litersx10, but the water won’t be the nice, soft, clean rain water I am used to. Call me fussy, but the water in my tanks is very good, very clean, uncontaminated, and I’ll keep it that way as long as possible,

Funny thing about the valley I live in… even tho we’re in a bit of a dry-ish spell, there are places here on the property where I cant put my machines or they will get stuck. Ive been trying to clean up from the flood, remove the torn and strewn-about fence lines. Slash and mow the thick, tangled growths of grasses and weeds. The higher ground was dry enough for me to start this work this time last year. Through the past 12 months or so I have done what I think is a huge amount of work, but only gotten about 10acres out of 120 done, cleaned, tamed, under control…

10 acres of clearing per annum = I’ll be done in another 100years.

My topic of rumination this past week has been racism.

Racism is a simple concept. I believe all people of all walks of life have an idea, if not an experience, of what racism means to them.

I have no doubt in my entire being that at birth, a child has no concept of racism. Thus I deduce that racism is a learned trait. As opposed to an innate, or inherent trait, such as the need for comfort, warmth, security, love.

I firmly believe the development of the human, the “baby”, begins the instant the spark-of-life is ignited. At the moment of inception, the spark of life is ignited, and the being, the child, begins to emote. It responds to comforts, strife, stress, happiness, et al.

I contend that I can remember “the womb”. I have written about this before: https://nativeiowan.com/2009/04/26/a-meaningful-meeting/

I shan’t go into it here, as I wrote about it all rather ponderously in the above link, but I still can hear the woosh of the womb. Feel the comfort and warmth of my life, before my life.

I have no recollection of having any idea about race or racism for most of my youthful years. I distinctly recall my mother being viciously angered by anything that smelt or dealt of racist concepts. She was very strict in these regards. I recall her once stating that she’d seen enough “racist bullshit” in her life. She told me once that she and her family had grown up being the “greasy Greeks”, the lowest rung on their social ladder, AND she would not allow her family to be part “of that”.

I was often confused and maybe even a little frightened when I heard someone say something that was a racial slur. The old Western Movie idea that “there is no good Indian except a dead Indian” always confused and bothered me. As I grew and traveled I heard it more and realised that it was not the norm to be raised in a family like mine. A family that was raised to not really see the difference of race.

Noting well that my mother and father represented what was then an interracial marriage. A marriage opposed by all their families.

I recall an evening when I was maybe 3-4… My father was bringing a colleague home for supper. My mother explained to me that this guy “looked different”, and that I was NOT suppose to say a thing about any difference I perceived.

The guy arrived, we were in the living room and I, as a little kid can do, climbed up on his lap and made friends with him. He was a big man (in my memory’s vision) with fantastic white hair. I looked and studied and examined as I climbed on and around him. I deduced that it was the long white hair growing out of his ears my mother was warning me about. I could not mention or say anything about the hair growing out of his ears.

Of course, the gentleman I reference was coloured. I can still find an image of him in my memory. He was very handsome.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, in 1982 at Choisuel Bay PSS, I had a form1 student who was shit scared of me. It took me time to understand that I was the first white man she had ever seen. The reason she was frightened by me is simple… mothers in the islands often use “the white boogey man” to frighten children. Behave or I’ll give you to the “bosevaka” (white man). Stop screaming or the bosevaka will come take you… here comes the bosevaka… And then this poor 11 or 12 yearold girl was faced with an ugly white guy that was loud and big and hairy… her mother had been right!!!

So, with Racism on my mind, I went looking for a definition…

1) The International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1965, and entering into force in 1969. Article 1 defines racial discrimi- nation as:

“… any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

2) prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.”

3) the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.”theories of racism”

Tho very wordy, this alone is important… “… any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

So… Reparations, as discussed in the US, is by definition racist. It indeed is a distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race.

As well… The “VOICE” as discussed here in Australia is racist for the same reasons.

I find myself rather lost. Devoid of rudder or compass. These modern waters are very strange and confusing… I was a young, green, keen liberal that supported this simple idea: “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” MLK 1963.

I was 6yearsold when MLK first articulated this thought. I heard these words repeated over the next years, until his assassination, it was an important theme in the “movement” for civil rights.

1963 to 2023… Im 66 years old, have a multiracial (a very multiracial) family. My 18year old grandson claims, Greek, German, English, Irish, Chinese, Choisuel, and Shortland Island blood lines.

1963 to 2023… Much has changed, progressed. In 1963 my wife and I could not legally walk together in public. In my youth, interracial marriage was illegal, noting well that interracial marriage was not legalized in all U.S. states until Loving v. Virginia in 1967!!!

1963 to 2023… And much has digressed, fragmented, been lost… Black Lives Matter… Apologise for your white privilege… The oppressed become the oppressors?

I am confused… The liberal mindset of my youthful vigorous liberalism was a positive. We are all the same. I am colour blind. I see you as a person not a person of colour.

Not any more… safe spaces that exclude “whites”. Preferences in education, employment, advancement based on quotas of race, gender, religion… All of which are negatives.

Ive spent my life fighting against the idea that because you look different you are treated different.

Ive always looked different… long hair, beards, earring, tattoos, a not white family.

Ive encountered a lot of racism in my life. As a kid. And as I aged…I was a white guy in a black man’s country. Tho Solomon Islands is not terribly racist, it does exist. (mostly between rival tribal groups.)

Here in the land of Aus we are facing what I think is an epochal moment… divide that nation by race, or not.

It’s that simple.

I read something I really liked about this. Found here: https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Quadrant-202308-Aug-Online-PEindex-4-1.pdf

There is a lot within this link so I copy a small portion herein that which impressed me a lot.

More later

Peter Baldwin
The Progressive Case Against the Voice

Is the proposal for a constitutionally entrenched Voice to parliament and the executive government “progressive”? If so, in what sense?

This will seem to most people a no-brainer. After all, nowadays, in one of the great acts of linguistic appropriation of our time, “progressive” has come to be seen as virtually synonymous with left-wing.
And what could be more left-wing than the Voice, endorsed as it is by just about all the left- of-centre forces in Australian politics, including all factions in the Labor Party, right through to the most wild-eyed Trotskyist sect. After all, so goes the argument, it is just a modest step towards securing recognition, justice and recompense to the most oppressed part of the Australian population. Only a racist, or a member of the far Right could be against it, surely? We hear this claim repeatedly by people who call for a calm, civil “conversation”, sometimes as a precursor to launching into a vicious ad hominem attack on Voice opponents.

This near-unanimity is surprising, given that the Voice involves inserting a permanent, racially discriminatory provision in the Australian Constitution, that confers on one racially defined section of the community an additional means to influence legislation and decisions that affect every- body, not just Aboriginal people.