The ‘For Your Own Good’ Theory

The widely syndicated, conservative journalist Andrew Bolt has had a very public debate with yet another historian, Robert Manne, the first insisting the Stolen Generations is a myth; the latter insisting there is plenty of documentary evidence that children were removed because of their race rather than for their own good. 
Bolt challenged Manne to provide names and evidence that children were stolen, and stolen because of their race.

In a Melbourne newspaper, Bolt later challenged any Aboriginal who had been removed to come forward and say why they were taken. This seems a rather desperate call as:

• Not everyone, not even Aboriginals, is particularly interested in reading newspapers (especially past the sports section);
• There is a possibility that even those who read papers regularly can’t bring themselves to read Bolt’s columns;
• The idea that anyone taken as an infant could remember the details of when and why they were taken is preposterous – and there is something quite cruel about asking a person who has been through ‘the system’ to defend parents they might not even know the name of.

In another article, Bolt spoke of a young girl who should have been removed from her mother's care by welfare workers but was not. He believes case workers are frightened by the need to be politically correct, and that if the child were white she would have been taken from her mother.

While I agree the child's case is tragic, the article makes no mention of the enormous rate of burnout amongst child welfare workers, the difficulty in finding case workers to replace them, and the many whitefella children who are similarly left in horrible situations.

It is true that some Aboriginals believe the Stolen Generations has not ended, that it is just being continued with a different excuse. This, too, is unfair. 
It is UN policy that where children are taken from their families they should, so far as possible, be fostered by people of their own culture and ethnicity.

Unfortunately, it is precisely because there is a gap between Aboriginal and whitefella outcomes that a disproportionately large number of children cannot be placed with Aboriginal families, but should be removed from their current living situations just the same. 

There simply aren’t enough culturally appropriate foster homes available for Aboriginal children.

I don't doubt that Bolt is concerned for all children regardless of race, but do not believe this case is proof of his claim the stolen generations is a myth; it is simply proof that we still have a long way to go in addressing the nature and consequences of dispossession. 

It is certainly not proof that all Aboriginal people are inherently bad for their children.

The conditions on the Aboriginal settlements were appalling. Residents were treated in a way which sounds cruel by today’s standards. Most of this was the result of the policy of assimilation – not a physical but a cultural genocide. 

It was widely accepted the destruction of traditional thinking was necessary if the children of Aboriginals were ever to adapt to the white world. 

If, with the best intentions in the world just one carer told one child ‘you’ll be better off and happier if you forget your family and learn to live like a white person’, the damage would be incalculable. It's likely messages like this were sent in much stronger terms.

The excessive, Victorian era approach to discipline must have seemed cruel, bizarre and capricious to the Aboriginal inmates.