[Linux-aus] Acknowledgement of country

[Russell Coker]

On Sun, 8 Nov 2015 03:22:51 PM Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 07, 2015 at 11:43:05AM -0500, James Turnbull wrote:
> > > I don't see why you should. Are you treating them any different to,
> > > say, members of an evangelical church who might have some interesting
> > > thoughts on community leadership to share?
> > 
> > Yes - because both groups have differing amounts of power. Evangelical
> > Christians wield enormous economic and political power in Australia.
> 
> In the Linux community, at least the parts of it I see, evangelical
> Christians are shunned and casually insulted with a fair degree of
> regularlity. They barely have any power, let alone a disproportionate
> amount.

In the general Australian community they have a lot of power.  The fact that 
we can tell them off when they get too homophobic or misogynistic on mailing 
lists doesn't mean that they lack power.  The fact that they feel comfortable 
in being homophobic and misogynistic and generally don't face any consequences 
other than people disagreeing with them is an indication of their general 
position in society.

> > Which is the usual statement from folks who either don't have empathy
> > for or don't understand that those statements are simply not true as
> > experienced by indigenous Australians.
> 
> Which is the usual statement from folks who don't care to debate with
> anyone who disagrees with them, and don't have to because they have
> sufficient political and cultural power to ignore them.

That's an interesting variation on the reverse-racism theme.  I'm sure that 
like me James knows lots of white Australians who are hostile to Aborigines.  
Like me I'm sure he has debated all these issues before on many occasions.

> Cheers,
> aj, at this point thinking maybe it's a good thing he missed earlybird
>     prices and can still choose to skip lca

Wow, so you're going to boycot LCA if there's recognition of Aborigines.  How 
do you think people will react when they read about this sort of thing in 
history books in 20 years?

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