LOOKING BEYOND RACISM FOR HIGH PRISON RATES

IN the recent protests, thousands expressed their anger over indigenous incarceration rates and deaths in custody. According to the protesters, this is somehow caused by systemic white racism.

But where is the truth?

Indigenous incarceration deaths are now lower than for the non-indigenous prison population, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. However indigenous incarceration rates are currently 30 per cent although they make up only about 3 per cent of the population. Why is the rate so high?

Alice Springs councillor Jacinta Price has an Aboriginal mother and a white father, she acknowledges both her heritages and is hated by the Left and many Aboriginal activists because she refuses to act out the racist stereotype demanded where Aborigines must act like repressed victims of white racism. She is frequently subjected to the foulest of abuse for her views.

Ms Price said that 70 per cent of Aboriginal men incarcerated are because of acts of violence against their loved ones, and “it’s not racism that is killing our people, it is the actions of our own people”.

Activists blame indigenous violence on colonialism but history shows otherwise.

In 1788, First Fleeter Watkin Tench noticed a young woman’s head “covered by contusions, and mangled by scars”.

He wrote about Aboriginal women: “They are in all respects treated with savage barbarity; condemned not only to carry the children, but all other burdens, they meet in return for submission only with blows, kicks and every other mark of brutality.”

Peter Rees, Bell Park