Discussion » Questions » Life and Society » What actions can we do to demonstrate everyday that black and non-white lives matter just as much as white lives?

What actions can we do to demonstrate everyday that black and non-white lives matter just as much as white lives?

If you have a spare hour please what this program:

Foreign Correspondent - #BlackLivesMatter : ABC iview

iview.abc.net.au/programs/foreign-correspondent/NC1502H024S00
Foreign Correspondent - #BlackLivesMatter : In light of the events unfolding in the United States, ABC iview revisits this Foreign Correspondent special.
It first went to air in Australia in December, 2015, but due to recent events in the States, was broadcast again in Australia this evening.
I know we in Australia can do much much to help our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, especially where they live in difficult conditions - semi-rural open shanty towns mainly in the Northern Territory, but a few scattered about in the arid areas of other states mostly across the north. One of the best ways we can help, as they tell us, is to get out of the way, so that when they are creating self-determination and working on improving their lives, we don't interfere with do-good-from-top-down programs that endlessly backfire. 
We do have ghettos in Oz - but those who live there tend to be mostly of first generation immigrant backgrounds from countries all over the world - many with PTSD from traumas in their countries of origin. Most immigrants here do not live in ghettos but for those that do, the problems from poverty and social injustice in ghettos multiply with the density of people in stress living close together. There are far deaths, maimings and wounds because far fewer guns - but there are still gangs, violence, drug problems, organised crime, and the epidemic of ice is intensified.
 
I live 800 kilometers away from where the nearest of these problems are occurring. Please help give me ideas about what I can do. Can I do things with the internet and writing? How? What exactly?
What can each of us do from within the places where we live?

Posted - September 21, 2016

Responses


  • 34251

    From your question above: One of the best ways we can help, as they tell us, is to get out of the way, so that when they are creating self-determination and working on improving their lives, we don't interfere with do-good-from-top-down programs that endlessly backfire.

    Many times if you give people things without requiring work. You take the self respect from a person. Not that we should not help but it should be with responsiblity and which instills self respect.  We used to have a work requirement in the US but that have started not enforcing it.

      September 21, 2016 9:43 AM MDT
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  • So how about creating more jobs?

      September 21, 2016 9:49 AM MDT
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  • 34251

    Yes

      September 21, 2016 9:57 AM MDT
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  • When the state either creates or allows conditions of inequality and.poverty to foster the formation of disenfranchised groups, unavoidably, it will be faced with the inevitable effects of crime and illiteracy.
    To say, as your post do, and as the member said above me,
    .
    "One of the best ways we can help, as they tell us, is to get out of the way, so that when they are creating self-determination and working on improving their lives, we don't interfere with do-good-from-top-down programs that endlessly backfire."
    .
    That is the oldest and tiredest argument of a government intent on evading their responsibilities and blaming the dispossessed for their misfortune. It says that even thought they do not have the same opportunities as everybody else, it's their fault if they do not achieve as much.

    With this I mean the inner city blacks, Southern Poor Whites, and even the Natives in lands A thousand miles away.

      September 21, 2016 6:38 PM MDT
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  • 53503

    (every day)

      September 21, 2016 10:08 PM MDT
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  • 1113
    :(
      September 21, 2016 10:42 PM MDT
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  • The "they" in my quote comes not from the government but from Aboriginals in Australia - in their discussions about how to deal with their problems, it is one of the things they say most frequently. Some of the "do-good" policies of the past included things like forcibly stealing half-caste children from their families and putting them up for adoption by white families, or putting them into orphanages where they were raised to become domestic servants and labourers. This affected an entire generation on Aboriginals in devastating ways and the rercussions are still continuing even now.

    Despite that, there are some kinds of recent programs that have been very successful.

    A community bus that picks kids up from their homes and takes them to school early - provision of a large healthy breakfast and lunch at school - the increase in nutrition makes a huge difference to attention and learning in class - and makes the kids keen to go to school.

    Some communities have chosen to ban alcohol and drugs - and these are almost completely free of violence and abuse.

    Free health care and medicine.

    Arts, tourism, and ecology programs which provide jobs.

      September 23, 2016 11:17 AM MDT
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  • I checked first to see if I had used the word "everyday" incorrectly.

    I found that I had not used it at all, nor anyone else.

    So I'm guessing you mean that you find ways of helping to increase  and create equality every day. :)

    Would you share some examples?

      September 23, 2016 2:07 PM MDT
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  • Have cops shoot more white people.

      September 23, 2016 2:48 PM MDT
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  • How about having cops not shooting anyone?

    How about inventing superfine filament nets which contract like cocoons on contact to prevent violence? That way anyone captured by mistake can easily be let go unharmed with an apology.

    How about compulsory camera-recorders on all police uniforms which cannot be turned off. Live-feed back to station and designed so nothing can be erased.

      September 23, 2016 2:59 PM MDT
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