LAST week’s NAIDOC Week celebrations marked an important symbolic step forward for race relations in this city.
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The most diverse and successful Naidoc Week ever held in Tamworth, the celebration thrust into the spotlight the positive face of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
A rich mosaic of events, including our first-ever dedicated commemoration of Aboriginal ex-servicemen and women, culminated in a massive family fun day yesterday, attended by locals of all backgrounds.
We should never underestimate the importance of events like NAIDOC Week, especially in a city still pockmarked by racism.
We can only hope such positive celebrations force some in our community to peek outside the cloak of racism that shrouds their views.
Emotionally charged, intensely subjective and deeply personal, the race debate can be a thorny one to confront in predominantly white communities like ours.
The debate is often force-fed to us and couched in politically correct terms.
You’re either a vile racist or you’re a weeping heart who loves all God’s creatures equally.
It’s a ridiculously polarising approach and, like everything politically correct, simply forces people into pretending something publicly while privately maintaining the same views.
Most of us are racist to some degree, but very few of us would ever admit it.
The real trick to advancing the race debate is to make people comfortable talking about their differences and concerns.
Only when people feel they can air these views will we be able to confront and defeat our prejudices.
That’s why NAIDOC Week, a coming together of cultures in celebration, is such a critical circuit-breaker.
Through the eyes of Aboriginal people, through their voices, their experiences, their achievements, our focus moves from lazy, negative stereotypes to the reality – the vast majority of Aboriginal people, just like the rest of us, want to do the best for themselves and their families.
The race debate is an important one in this city for myriad reasons.
But unless we have the courage, confidence and self-awareness to actually engage in it, racism will forever remain behind closed doors and closed hearts.
