So how many indigenous people do you know anyway?

Published: February 16, 2008, 7:33 am

If the last two weeks of blog discussion about the apology to indigenous people have served no other purpose, they have proved beyond argument that mainstream blog commenters commenters on mainstream blogs like those run by News Ltd are not representative of the whole Australian population. Why do I say this? Well because it seems that virtually everybody who comments on these blogs has either ‘worked with’ indigenous people (whatever that means) or lived in towns with substantial numbers of Aboriginal citizens or has a wide circle of Aboriginal acquaintances. And since this is self-evidently atypical of Australians generally, these blog commenters would seem to be a rather unusual group. Indeed many of the commenters go out of their way to draw attention to their unique expertise in indigenous matters. “I don’t know if any of youse guys has ever met a real live Aborigine,” go the typical comments, “but I lived in a NT township for 58 years/worked

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