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A NSW Council dares to suggest public spaces should unite Australians rather than divide them by race. The outrage is revealing.

A NSW council has voted to get rid of city signs that declare the area “Always Was Always Will Be” Aboriginal land.

And as always, the reaction is instructive.

Strathfield Council voted to remove Indigenous references from its gateway signs because they want ratepayers to be united rather than divided into groups.

And fair enough.

“Always was, always will be” is not a quaint cultural greeting.

It’s a political slogan that makes a political claim about sovereignty and ownership.

When that slogan was placed on public signs around Strathfield at a cost of $400,000, it didn’t simply acknowledge Aboriginal history.

It made a pointed political statement in a community where people of every background have to live together.

Strathfield Council Treating All Ethnicities Equal

Strathfield is hardly an enclave of white privilege.

Around 73 per cent of its 45,000 residents speak a language other than English.

Only about 200 residents identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

So when councillors say they want public spaces to celebrate all cultures equally, it is difficult to see the racism in that proposition.

Unless…

National Centre of Indigenous Excellence chief executive Grant Cameron told Nine Newspapers that the decision was…

“An appalling step in the wrong direction”.

Which begs the obvious question… what direction does he want to go?

Towards further division?

Grant Cameron asked…

“To take this away, then where does it stop?”

Well, presumably once they remove the divisive signage from public spaces, that’s where it stops.

For goodness sake, it’s a proposal to remove political signage, not to erase Aboriginal people from school textbooks.

But Cameron was also concerned about what he called the “negative impact”that removing the signs would have on the community’s 200 Aboriginal people.

Er, what negative impact does he image?

Will Aboriginal children suddenly stop performing at school because a sandstone sign has been changed?

Will Aboriginal families collapse?

Will Aboriginal men be unable to go to work because they can no longer read “Wangal Country” at the council boundary?

Is the boss of the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence seriously suggesting the psychological stability of an entire people rests upon municipal signage?

Then came University of Technology Sydney law professor Thalia Anthony, who told Nine Newspapers…

“White culture is the dominant culture… and increasingly so in this political atmosphere of the rise of One Nation.”

Wait. What?

The population of Strathfield is overwhelmingly non-white.

And what an extraordinary thing to say about One Nation.

One Nation supporters are not demanding racial privilege for white people. Quite the opposite.

Its appeal is largely based on the idea that Australians should stop being categorised and treated according to race.

The Law Professor describes the council decision as an expression of “white victimisation”.

Which is a terrible argument against the removal of the signs but a brilliant argument as to why I was right not to send my son to Sydney’s University of Technology.

Where exactly are the white victims in Strathfield?

The majority of residents don’t even speak English as their first language.

This isn’t “white culture” fighting back.

It is a multicultural council saying that multiculturalism should mean something rather more ambitious than endlessly dividing Australians into racial categories.

Council Decision a Step Forwards

Thalia Anthony blames the Strathfield Council’s decision and the rise of One Nation more broadly on the “politics of whiteness”.

There’s no such thing.

There IS a politics of Australians who are sick of being told that their skin colour determines their interests, their privilege, their guilt or their political opinions.

And that includes people who aren’t white.

Perhaps the most patronising thing of all is the suggestion that Aboriginal Australians are so marginalised that removing a few words from a council sign somehow “further marginalises” them.

How are Aboriginal Australians marginalised? Except by race hustlers who have an interest in marginalising them by keeping them on a permanent victim roster.

Aboriginal Australians have the same rights as everyone else in this country.

National Centre of Indigenous Excellence chief executive Grant Cameron told journalists we must stop using Aboriginals as a “political football” and instead “think about how we can live together rather than trying to wipe out one another”.

Wipe out one another?

It’s a Strathfield Council sign, not Stalingrad.

I’m just spitballing here, but if removing a political slogan from a sandstone gateway constitutes an existential assault, perhaps the problem isn’t the sign.

Perhaps the problem is that we’ve spent so long teaching Australians to see themselves primarily as members of racial tribes that some people have forgotten the rather revolutionary concept of simply being Australian.

Strathfield Council isn’t erasing Aboriginal history.

It’s making a small attempt to stop turning public spaces into a scoreboard for racial identity.

That isn’t a step backwards.

It might just be a step towards treating Australians equally.

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image via Strathfield Council.