Andrew Bolt: Absurd insistence on hard racial definitions isn’t right

Today’s anti-white racism is nasty, and identifying instead as Aboriginal turns you from the guilty into an innocent victim.

Even Elle Macpherson seemed tempted for a minute to switch race. “My eyes are almost black, that’s the Aborigine in me,” the former supermodel said on a Vogue video.

“Being seven generations Australian they don’t reflect light the same way blue eyes do.”

Really? But when a Nine journalist rang for clarification, there was evidence of sudden back-pedalling. Macpherson’s comments were reportedly removed from the video, and her sister Mimi announced: “We are not Indigenous nor have we traced our ancestry.”

But why should that stop anyone? Victoria’s Andrews government should consider this, now that it’s discussing whether to give people identifying as Aboriginal extra voting rights.

Elle Macpherson.

Professor Bruce Pascoe, author of Dark Emu, hasn’t identified a single Aboriginal ancestor in his own genealogy, which appears to be of 100 per cent English descent, yet he’s promoted by the ABC as a member of no fewer than three Aboriginal tribes, even though two disown him.

Professor Kerrie Doyle, Associate Dean at Western Sydney University, claims to belong to the “Winninninni” tribe of which no record exists, not even in Norman Tindale’s magisterial Aboriginal Tribes of Australia.

Doyle may well be Aboriginal, but has refused my requests to explain why genealogical records don’t seem to show that.

In fact, a report by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research 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”.

No surprise. Today’s anti-white racism is nasty, and identifying instead as Aboriginal turns you from the guilty into an innocent victim. For some, there may be other incentives. The NSW government last week said it had doubled spending on Aboriginal-owned businesses under a plan to steer 3 per cent of goods and services contracts to them.

Now Victoria’s government is discussing proposals for reserved seats in parliament for Aborigines.

This is just apartheid, however well meant. It is divisive and ugly.

But the government has basic questions to answer. Who exactly is Aboriginal, deserving of special seats in parliament available to no other race? What proof should we demand? Does someone with even just one Aboriginal great-grandparent get a special seat? Why? Are the other seats then just for non-Aborigines?

And why this absurd insistence on hard racial definitions – you’re either black or white, not both – from a government that says even gender is fluid, and “non-binary” is good? Can’t Elle be Aboriginal?