I write while my children steal cars and rob houses: the awful human cost of racist stereotypes | Thomas Mayor

Contrary to claims of failed responsibility of Indigenous parents, we in fact are calling for greater responsibility. We want to change this country for the better

As I write this article, my children are stealing cars and robbing houses, I suppose. I am an Indigenous father – so, doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know about me as a parent, and about my children’s capacity to understand right from wrong?

I know you sense the sarcasm in this. Well, a great, great majority of Australians would. But there is a certain type of person I am implicating here. The type who have an ignorance so deeply ingrained, that it is a wonder they haven’t wandered off into the dark recesses of our colonial history and followed each other off the edge of a cliff. Shouldn’t they be extinct?

Proportionately, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future. These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.

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