Sorry Day

[den]

May 26th was "Sorry Day." It used to be the policy of the Australian Government to remove Aboriginal children from their families and give them a limited education, teach them how to do menial tasks and then "assign" them to a white household to help in the running of that property. Quite often the parents never saw their children again. It was, effectively, the death of the child as far as the family was concerned.

"Sorry Day" is an attempt to get the general population to think about this, and to not necessarily apologise personally, but to feel sorry that it happened, and to acknowledge that it was a terrible thing to do.

Of course, there are bogans who think they have have nothing to say sorry about because they didn't do it. If you were to say to them "Jeez mate, I know you crashed your car but I'm not sorry because I didn't do it, and none of my family did it" they would think you're a bastard.

I'm sorry the government of the day took children away from their families. It should never have happened. I'm sorry Aborigines weren't even counted as citizens until 1960. But most of all, I'm sorry there are bogans who are not sorry.

Comments

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Interesting holiday y'all have down there.

In in the Deep South (of the United States). At one time we were a slave owning society. It just boggles my mind to see the practice of slavery mentioned specifically in my country's Constitution. Article IV, Section 2 states "No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." THat meant if a slave escaped, they had to be returned to their owner.

This was part of my country's founding, although we later amended the Constitution to abolish slavery, rending that little bit moot. My great ancestor was a ship captain and slave trader. I'm from the part of the US where slave ownership was practiced the most. Mine is the area of the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s.

Now, I'm the only white guy who does my job out of 5 shifts of 3 people each monitoring a telecom network for MCI. My supervisors as likely as not have been black women.

I don't know if I could get behind a similar holiday in the US (unless you consider Martin Luther King day as our own version of "Sorry Day"). At least, not for the descendants of slaves. They've been as free as I am for over 100 years; my own status as a white anglo saxon ex-protestant hasn't exactly done ME any favors. A well connected son or daughter of a black politician, business owner, or doctor/lawyer has more opportunities than I do. I'm not quite "white trash" but unless I was hired as a "token white guy" my skin color has never gotten me anything.

Our own aborigines, the Native Americans... now THERE might be a candidate for an American "Sorry Day." I wonder, who exterminated their aborigines more thoroughly, us or the Australians?

Loxley

(Just throwing this out there for comparison/contrast on how things have gone down in another place)

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

"Sorry Day" isn't a holiday, and has no official recognition. It's purely a community-driven thing.

(and there is a history of slavery in Australia as well; the aforementioned Aboriginal "domestic servants", the ubiquitous convict labour, and the Pacific Islanders pressed into service on the Queensland plantations...)