I don't like the Close the Gap campaign we have here in Australia. I know it is mostly about trying to help Aboriginal people live longer, but it the campaign feels to me massively presumptuous. If white people refuse to be happy until incomes and educations and life expectancy and teen pregnancy are the same for black and white people, what is that going to mean for black communities? There are going to be thousands of white people running around town camps telling people they need to change their lives. Telling kids to go to school. Telling them to brush their teeth. Telling them not to drink more than two standard drinks a day. Telling people to live better is not necessarily the end of the world in some contexts. But for the white community to be trying to make huge social changes to black communities, I think is a problem.
The "gap" is not mostly about resources. It is mostly about lifestyles. That's probably a big claim, but I think it is true. The life expectancy for professional football players in the US is maybe 22 years lower than average. If it was just about the amount of benefits or health care people got then it might be different. I suppose you can make the argument that Aboriginal people are living bad lifestyles because they are miserable because white people have been mean to them. Perhaps there's some truth in it, but I don't feel comfortable arguing it. Once again it is white people evaluating certain lifestyles as bad and feeling like we need to fix them.
From an outside perspective, I don't think the "problem" is life expectancy or education levels. I think it has more to do with creating meaning when your local community's value are so different to those of the broader community. Which is just another white theory about black people. But possibly the difference is that I have no idea how white people can help black people create meaning.
I end up coming back to the idea that we can't keep talking about a black problem that white people need to do their part in fixing. I'd rather we all just live together happily ever after and eat bread.
That was a slightly lunatic rant and I may have got a bit sidetracked, so I will try to sum up. I don't see the problem as the "gap" because that is a product of many things - partly a product of different cultures with different priorities. If there are simple things we could do that would lessen the gap without demanding dramatic social change, that would be good. And if we aren't doing those things because we're too blind or muddled that is a tragedy. But I don't think the gaps people are talking about can be eliminated without making people change their lives.
Once again you’ve opened my eyes on things I’ve never really considered before.
It does sound a bit rich to use terms like ‘gap’, because it kind of assumes a linear measure of everything about a person or group of people, where health, wealth, moral/spiritual fulfillment and happiness lie all on the same line. It’s “The Gap” not “a gap in such and such”.
Although I am concerned about the point you’ve made on dramatic social change. Hypothetically, if the way people are living and interacting causes them to be in a state they themselves don’t want to be in (or their children to be in), is there a problem with there being dramatic changes in the societies in which they live? This would lead to the need to ask these people if they want changes and if they feel these changes would improve things, which probably isn’t an accurate way to gauge whether change should happen, but probably the only socially responsible one.
Of course, that’s purely hypothetical, and in practice probably very expensive and time consuming, not to mention not immediately satisfying.
Laurence / 11:52pm / 7 April 2009
It’s not so much intervention that I have an issue with as much as it is this white imperative to “close the gap”. Obviously, disregarding people’s preferences can go both ways – you don’t want to dominate them or completely ignore them.
If I thought that “closing the gap” was a big issue within the black community and there were people willing to push it, then I would feel totally differently. But I suspect that dramatic social change rarely comes from within, and perhaps there is a good reason for that.
Part of the problem is with the decision-making process. It’s impossible to get consensus or even feel like you can get a good range of views. But instead of letting that be a stumbling block, I feel like the government just heads on with whatever it feels like. I also don’t think that people should be “consulted” about the dramatic social change we’re pulling them into. There needs to be way more involvement than that from the people that it is going to affect.
Ryan / 9:48am / 8 April 2009