Jacinta Price slams Meghan Markle, BLM’s ‘false narrative’ and Indigenous oversights
While Prince Harry’s wife is telling people to get “a little bit uncomfortable” on tackling racism, the Black Lives Matter movement is ignoring the full picture of Indigenous violence, according to Alice Springs councillor Jacinta Price.
NSW
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Days after Meghan Markle spoke out for Black Lives Matter, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was visiting an Indigenous relative who had been bashed into a coma by her Indigenous partner.
“Black Lives Matter continues to push a false narrative,” Alice Springs councillor Ms Price said. “There are a lot of people with a lot of goodwill who think by jumping on the bandwagon they are supporting Aboriginal Australians but they are doing the exact opposite.”
Just after Ms Markle, the high-profile wife of Prince Harry, urged people from her $11 million Californian mansion to be a “little uncomfortable” in tackling racism, Ms Price was consoling her relative over the latest in a string of violent family confrontations.
“He was driving her around while she was unconscious when he was fortunately stopped by police for a vehicle inspection and they found her,” Ms Price said.
At the same time police in Alice Springs were searching for an Indigenous woman believed to have been abducted by her partner and arresting the partner of another who had bitten off her thumb.
But Ms Price said there was no outcry when the perpetrator is also black. “There is no interest in learning the truth. Aboriginal people are dying at a far greater rate at the hands of other Aboriginal people — that is something this movement is not interested in,” she said.
The latest Australian Institute of Criminology statistics show that 70 per cent of the 765 homicides in the 22 years to 2012 involving an Indigenous person were also committed by an Indigenous person.
“I have seen people in my family murdered,” Ms Price said. “(One) was stabbed to death in a town camp by her ex 10 years ago.
“(Another) was killed in a car crash. She was a passenger in the car when the driver was punched in the back of the head by her drunk husband.”
Ms Price’s lived experience, including an aunt missing — believed killed by a relative four decades ago — is in direct contrast to the experience of many Black Lives Matter supporters, including Ms Markle.
“She is a woman of great privilege who is completely removed from reality and circumstances on the ground,” Ms Price said. “Her lending her voice to the Black Lives Matter movement is silencing the voices of those people in the communities who are vulnerable to black on black gang violence.”
In America the vocal protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death after being pinned by the neck by a white police officer have led to calls to defund police forces. In New York a $1 billion police budget cut has seen shootings double. Most of the victims are black.
“It is ridiculous to think that you would defund the police when the most vulnerable members of society are the African American people. Who is going in to help them if not the police,” said Ms Price, who is director of Indigenous studies at The Centre for Independent Studies.
She said similar calls in Australia are “destroying our relationship with authority. It is Aboriginal women and children who are suffering the most in this nation because of sexual abuse and family violence – they need the support of the police and authorities. That relationship needs to be repaired, not torn down.”
Ms Price said progress already made was at risk.
“Black Lives Matter is creating a racial divide in our nation.
“I think we have come a hell of a long way to close that divide. Our entire nation has done everything we can to bring people together and this movement will undo that.”
She said the movement’s “Marxist cancel culture narrative is shutting down our voices.
“If a white person does not agree they are called a racist. When I bring these issues up I am called a race traitor.”