GIVING OXYGEN TO RACISM

The best way to kill a fire is to deprive it of oxygen, right?. Without air, a fire will fade away and die. So why do the most vocal opponents of racism in Australia keep giving oxygen to the fires of racist issues?

Today is the official Australia Day holiday and our new Australian of the Year, aboriginal footballer Adam Goodes, will highlight racism everywhere he goes. Instead of just getting on with living together as Australians, we’ll be talking about racism more and more.

Some aboriginal groups have provoked racism by publicly referring to 26th January as “Invasion Day”. Or “Survival Day”. Do they not understand that such rhetoric keeps the issue alive? Do they not see that they are stoking the fire?

Some incredibly ignorant vandals scrawled the words “26th Jan Australia’s shame” on the walls of Captain Cook’s cottage in Melbourne. Newsflash: the only thing that does is to add more oxygen to the fire!

Yes, there have been terrible instances of racist violence in our national history. A new book by Carl Weiland, of Creation Ministries International, documents the horrific results of Social Darwinism in the aftermath of Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution. Australian aboriginals were seen as unevolved throwbacks to primitive ape-like ancestors. Therefore, it was believed, they were scarcely human and could be killed with impunity.

When Adam Goodes pointed out a young girl in a football crowd and called her “ape” remark a racist slur, he was actually giving oxygen to this misguided theory that should have been snuffed out long ago.

The best antidote to racism is not stomping on the fire again, but acknowledging what the Bible has taught from the beginning: God created humans as humans.  We never were apes or ape-like creatures.  We are, as per the title of Carl Weiland’s book, “One Human Family”.  In God’s eyes, we are all the same.

The irony is that no-one is really black or white.  I know supposedly white people who are far darker in skin colour than, say, Adam Goodes.  The so-called differences are not all that great.  In fact, genetically, it’s been proven that there are more differences within so-called races than there are on average from one so-called race to another.

Nothing we do now can change the past.  We cannot atone for the ignorance of people who lived more than 200 years ago.  Our energies need to be directed towards love and understanding in the present, living together under the grace of God, and moving forward to a more harmonious future.

Let’s stop giving oxygen to the fires of racism!