Tragedies which are hard to address

A pair of articles with slightly different messages but both reflecting the difficulty of cultural assimilation and respect. I spent a number of years in Australia and it was fascinating to see another nation of the Anglophone wrestling with similar challenges as the US in terms of how to create a respectful means of assimilating minority populations into a national culture, particularly those with deep cultural differences and almost impossibly different levels of productivity.

Because Australia is a smaller country by an order of magnitude and because the Australian culture is direct to the point of being blunt, the contrasts seemed dramatic. In reality, both countries (as well as many others) are trying to achieve similar goals with very little success.

In Australia, across a century, public policy has ranged from what might be characterized as institutionalized second-class citizenship (no right to vote until the sixties), apartheid (areas set aside for Aborigines only), benign neglect, forced assimilation (aboriginal children placed only with white families), and everything in between.

It all sounds kind of evil but almost always trying to achieve what was thought to be a good end. And we still aren't really making much progress as indicated by Billions spent on Australia's Aborigines yield 'dismal' results by Bonnie Malkin and Real solutions for Indigenous problems by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

The discussion can be cast in partisan political terms, in ideological terms, in manichaeistic terms, etc. and yet the underlying challenge remains, even among those of good faith. How do we respectfully help others, as equals, when the foundational assumptions are tragically different.

We don't know and most of the initiatives, beyond being wasteful and often destructive, can't help but look bad.