Last month I spent a few weeks in remote and regional Australia talking non-stop with Aboriginal people. Meanwhile, a debate raged about statues. How many times do you think anyone mentioned statues to me during my trips? Exactly zero. No one talked to me about constitutional recognition either. Or about local councils who banned Australia Day, supposedly in their name.
In Kununurra, I addressed the Wunan Foundation’s East Kimberley Aboriginal Achievement Awards. I spoke about how the narrative of Australia today being a racist society holds Aboriginal people back. Many Aboriginal people thanked me for my comments, saying they’re sick of hearing racism is the cause of their communities’ problems. They were the only conversations I had about racism.
It's easy to get a collection of ill-educated, pre-diabetic university children over-excited about statues, it's a whole other thing to address real issues. In neo-Marxism, the abstract always outweighs the actual.