SO TALKING ABOUT FAKE ABORIGINES IS NOW ALLOWED?

Amazing. Now there's even a play about white people pretending to be black, and the woke Sydney Morning Herald praises it. What a change from the days when it joined the pack attack on me for writing about this astonishing race-shifting. Read on.

What’s the difference between a conservative and a  “progressive”? I’ve just found out: about 10 years.

Imagine my astonishment. The Sydney Morning Herald now raves about  a new play about what it calls “race shifters” – people who suddenly decide they are actually Aboriginal, without any obvious Aboriginal roots.

What? We can finally talk about this, without been smeared as a racist?  We can  talk about people like Professor Bruce Pascoe, our most famous example?

See,  I remember the same “progressive” SMH abusing me a decade ago when I first wrote about people “choosing” Aboriginal identity, and had two  articles gagged by the Federal Court.

I also remember  the  SMH later  closing  ranks behind Pascoe after I exposed his fake claims about his ancestry. As recently as last September, it still called  him a “Yuin man”. 

But now  the SMH hails “acclaimed playwright Nathan Maynard” for writing At What Cost, tackling   “people who were raised with a non-Indigenous identity but later assert, on questionable grounds, that they are Aboriginal”.

It adds: “More timid writers would shy away from such a provocative, and potentially incendiary, topic.” The SMH should know.

Maynard  has licence to speak, since he identifies as Aboriginal. So does his play’s star, Luke Carroll, who said: “I know of people here in Sydney who haven’t grown up Aboriginal and all of a sudden, their kids are identifying as Aboriginal.

“They are attending the schools, getting the jobs and taking away opportunities from people who have grown up Aboriginal ... It’s a growing problem.”

It sure is.  The  Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research  has said up to 42,000 people  “chose to identify” as Aboriginal in the 2016 census after not identifying  in 2011, partly because “white identities have lost appeal relative to Indigenous identities”.

Yes, it’s become  hip to be black. As Maynard put it:   “We’re trendier than smashed avocado on toast.”

The SMH even  dares note  the number of people self-identifying as Aboriginal in Tasmania soared from just 36 in 1966 to around  23,572 last year. Is it coincidence that  Tasmania’s  government in 2016 decided people no longer had to prove they were Aboriginal to claim  help from Aboriginal-only  services?

Similar “race shifting” is   happening in the US and Canada,   driven by various motives, not all healthy -  white shame,   career advantage, handouts, a spiritual connection to what people assume are Aboriginal values.

I thought this was too important to ignore. Ten years later, some  “progressives” finally agree.

Originally published as SO TALKING ABOUT FAKE ABORIGINES IS NOW ALLOWED?