Andrew Bolt: Astonishing absence of white males from Young Australians of the Year

How can white males – more than 40 per cent of our population – not crack even one spot on the list of Young Australians of the Year?

Spot what’s missing from this year’s list of state winners of Young Australian of the Year.

The NSW one is a white female environmentalist. That much isn’t surprising.

Then come the rest. The ACT winner is a Ghanaian Australian man, the Queenslander a Torres Strait Islander woman, the Tasmanian a Muslim woman, the South Australian a male refugee from Kenya, the Victorian a man who identifies as Aboriginal, and the Northern Territorian a Tiwi Islander

That leaves just Western Australia to produce a white male winner but … no. It’s athlete Peter Bol, born in Sudan.

We could celebrate this. After all, it shows people are wrong to despise Australia so much that Tennis Australia won’t even celebrate Australia Day, for shame at our supposedly racist past.

What a terrific rebuttal this is. Racist? Us? Just look – only one white person, a woman, among the eight winners, and no fewer than three Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

But I’m worried. How can white males – more than 40 per cent of our population – be so hopeless these days that not one can crack the list of Young Australians of the Year?

Is this evidence of some shocking decline in the brains and talents of males, but only males with white skins. Could global warming be to blame?

It’s so strange. After all, white men invented electricity, modern democracy, and penicillin. They founded the Red Cross and Amnesty International. They painted masterpieces like the Mona Lisa and the Night Watch, wrote classics like War and Peace, and provided every Australian Prime Minister bar one.

But now? Good for nothing.

Mind you, there could be another explanation. Could it be … racism? Sexism?

How else to explain the astonishing absence of white males from this list when we’re told these awards should “reflect our diversity”?

I’m talking about the kind of fashionable anti-white racism that had Channel 10 presenter Waleed Aly insult NT police commissioner Jamie Chalker on Tuesday for coming on to discuss the violence by Aborigines at Alice Springs.

“This is tricky,” Aly objected, because “we are asking you, a white Police Commissioner, his thoughts” and “some people might bristle at that”.

No, best put the white expert on mute. For a start, his race disqualifies him from comment on any other race – an absurd limitation that apparently doesn’t apply to the brown Aly, who freely comments on whites.

You see where we are. White men? Best ignored.