This is not directed at anyone posting here, but growing up in Echuca, you do lose respect for the aboriginal communities as a whole.
When my friends from Melbourne (I have been living in Melbourne for 5 years) start to talk and defend aboriginals as a whole, I just think that they are the ignorant one's as they have not seen what it is really like.
When people say it is generalising and it just a few bad apples etc., I turn around and say that it is the opposite. It's a few good apples that give people the impression that they are really trying to make good. The majority don't want job's, when they get them they come into work stoned, drunk or high, and we wouldn't let this pass with a white male would we?
There are a few aboriginal's that I am friends with who hold steady job's and are generally great people. These friends are treated badly from other aboriginal's for being friends with white people, and they hold the same views of the aboriginal community as I do.
Now I know the problem's they face, and don't sit there and say "damn redneck" etc, I work in an office where we rent an office to the Ministry of Housing, and single aboriginal's have been known to get housing over young families with kid's, so they are not seen as racist. To me this blows, this is the opposite of discrimination. And then to top it off they trash every house that they are given. My parent's old house was bought by the aboriginal co-op, and they turned it into a study house for 12-18 y/o's. Within weeks, this was just a party house for them to crash, with between 10-20 people crashing there when they were smashed so that they didn't have to go home, and this house has now been trashed and is woth jack. One of my aboriginal friends went there to study, and said it wasn't possible for the drinking etc.
I had three friends come down from Melbourne, and when five aboriginal's came up to us, demanding money and then trying to beat the sh@t out of us until, fortunately, the police came and intervened.
I have no grudges against anyone due to their race, and I always treat poeple the same no matter what their race or colour, but aboriginals need to earn respect the same as any other human being. They don't want to live in our society, and the government giving them extra money is not the answer. I don't pretend to know what is, but a little mutual respect and politeness would not go astray...
{sorry if a bit off topic, I just had to vent a little

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[ 12 December 2002: Message edited by: mossy ]
[ 12 December 2002: Message edited by: mossy ]