re: being taught aboriginal history for nine years - "and everybody concludes that they're sick of hearing about it because they are privileged enough to be so(including me until someone taught me better)nice sentiment though" - take note that you can be sick of being taught the exact same thing for nine years without it being based on privilege, not to mention that the shit we're taught is all from a white colonial perspective. I wanted to know more about pre-colonisation and the >>
'>>progression of indigenous culture throughout modern history. I wanted to learn about the Aboriginal soldiers in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, etc.. I wanted to learn about more than just the same old 'we stole some kids but KRudd said sorry' bullshit, so yeah, I did complain about being bored with the material. Not out of privilege or belief that it didn't matter, but because I knew that there was so much more that we, as young Australians, needed to be taught. Don't be so quick to condemn your peers.'
that's a similar sentiment to what I expressed in my previous rant and I agree with you totally that we do need to learn more and that there's more to Aboriginal history than watching Rabbit-proof Fence for the third or fourth time (although in my case that was mostly because I took studies of religion which had mandatory units on Aboriginal spirituality. I'm glad of that! It's an important thing! I just wish that it was coordinated with the history curriculum so that the same ground wasn't re-covered and that a wider variety of things could be taught).
The thing is that for white people racial oppression, particularly through colonialism, is nothing but an abstraction. The empathetic among us can imagine what it would be like, but never enough to properly grasp it. We simply don't have the experience. Part of white privilege is the ability to say 'I don't care about this anymore' and shut it out any knowledge of racial oppression. If I were so inclined not only could I ignore the existence of slavery and colonialism and the stolen generations and apartheid, but there are people who would agree with me if I wanted to argue that they were actually good things. A dwindling number, thank fuck, but still a significant one. For PoC however (and any kind of oppressed group for that matter), oppression is a lived experience that's intrinsic to their reality. You cannot escape it. White people don't get bored of hearing about Aboriginal oppression because of their privilege necessarily (I'm sure there are fucktons who do, but as you have said the lack of variety would certainly contribute), but because of their privilege they are able to shut it out, and that increases the likelihood that they will.
Perhaps I could have expressed that point better in my original tags, but hopefully this makes things clearer.
