The White Man's Burden and The Lost Generation Essay
The White Man’s Burden: Australia and the Stolen Generation.
”TAKE up the White Man’s burden - Send forth the best ye breed- Go bind your sons to exile, To serve your captives need;” Those are the words of Rudyard Kipling that are meant to describe the back then ubiquitous way of thinking that was called “The white man’s burden”.
It is an ideology that dictates that it is the moral obligation of the white man to better the lives of the “coloured“ people of the world whether they wanted it or not. It was an ideology that sprang up from the need of a moral justification for imperialism during the Victorian age but stayed in the minds of men for long after that age had ended. In many places in the world the so called civilized nations of the west sought to bring literacy and economic prosperity to the so called savages around the world. But in no place was this policy more extreme than in Australia for here the civilized people not only tried to forcefully remove children from their mothers, sometimes moments after the child had left the womb. No, for here they also tried to breed out the aboriginal blood through selectively marrying of half-castes to whites.
During the period of approximately from 1910 to 1970 the abduction of aboriginal children was a commonality. With the goal of bettering the lives of the aboriginal savages, up to 100.000 aboriginal children were abducted and put in either foster families or special aboriginal orphanages. But at the start of the 70’ies the program was abandoned was it because of the increased public awareness or because of the utter failure of the program I cannot say. But fact is that the practice has been abolished. Now 40 years later the debate is still raging as to the morality of this program. And while the government made a formal apology back in 2008, is it something that is actually pardonable? Is it possible to forgive the people behind the abduction of a so called Stole Generation (or two to be exact)? Can
”TAKE up the White Man’s burden - Send forth the best ye breed- Go bind your sons to exile, To serve your captives need;” Those are the words of Rudyard Kipling that are meant to describe the back then ubiquitous way of thinking that was called “The white man’s burden”.
It is an ideology that dictates that it is the moral obligation of the white man to better the lives of the “coloured“ people of the world whether they wanted it or not. It was an ideology that sprang up from the need of a moral justification for imperialism during the Victorian age but stayed in the minds of men for long after that age had ended. In many places in the world the so called civilized nations of the west sought to bring literacy and economic prosperity to the so called savages around the world. But in no place was this policy more extreme than in Australia for here the civilized people not only tried to forcefully remove children from their mothers, sometimes moments after the child had left the womb. No, for here they also tried to breed out the aboriginal blood through selectively marrying of half-castes to whites.
During the period of approximately from 1910 to 1970 the abduction of aboriginal children was a commonality. With the goal of bettering the lives of the aboriginal savages, up to 100.000 aboriginal children were abducted and put in either foster families or special aboriginal orphanages. But at the start of the 70’ies the program was abandoned was it because of the increased public awareness or because of the utter failure of the program I cannot say. But fact is that the practice has been abolished. Now 40 years later the debate is still raging as to the morality of this program. And while the government made a formal apology back in 2008, is it something that is actually pardonable? Is it possible to forgive the people behind the abduction of a so called Stole Generation (or two to be exact)? Can