Happy New Year?
A new year, a new start? It’s as if we’re reborn, given an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, to do or be different. We make resolutions to be better in the future, an idea which it turns out has a long history: one source suggests the Babylonians made promises to their gods at the start of each year that they would return borrowed objects and pay their debts! [i] For sure, making resolutions is popular at the beginning of the year, as is failing to sustain them shortly after!
Thinking about all of this reminded me of the film Bran Nue Dae [ii], which was based on an earlier musical by Jimmy Chi. [iii] The title was came from a catchy theme song: Bran Nue Dae. No Happy New Year here, the song was a punchy reminder of the forlorn future faced by most Aboriginal Australians, and the continuing attempts to encourage or make them assimilate:
On the way to our bran nue day
Everybody, everybody say
Nothing wrong, nothing new
Wants us all to be like you
Not much else, have no past
Hope the sun shine at last
On the way to our bran nue day
Everybody, everybody say
Written as a musical comedy, the film was mess: a boy’s ‘coming of age’ movie, a road trip movie, and somewhere underneath all that, a commentary on Aboriginal children being taken away from their parents. Australian stalwarts like Geoffrey Rush, Magda Szubanski, and Ernie Dingo worked hard to keep the laughs coming, wringing humour out of the experience of being forcibly removed to be brought up in a ‘white school’ environment. As an example of the approach, a rebellion in the school was a crazy (and funny) dance to the words of:
There’s nothing I would rather be
than to be an Aborigine
and watch you take my precious land away.
For nothing gives me greater joy
than to watch you fill each girl and boy
with superficial, existential shit.
Funny some of the time, sarcastic some of the time, misconceived a lot of the time. But this isn’t about the film, nor my attempt to become a film reviewer. It’s about that theme ‘Bran Nue Dae’, looking forward to an improved future when there is no better future to be had. The underlying source for the film was the experiences of the “stolen generation”, a hideous period of Australian Government policy (from 1906 to the late 1960’s), whereby Indigenous children were taken from their parents to be brought up ‘white’ and assimilated into the dominant Anglo society (which was said to be worried about risks to them from people who lacked the ‘right’ culture). It was one of the more extraordinarily racist acts in a country where racism against the Indigenous peoples (Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders) has continued to be firmly entrenched.
Bran Nue Dae appeared at roughly the same time as Archie Roach emerged on the music scene. Brought up as one of the stolen generation, years later he wrote ‘Took the Children Away’, first performed in 1988. Initially heard on community radio, in 1989, Paul Kelly, a successful singer and songwriter, invited him to sing it at one of his concerts. “His performance was met with stunned silence, followed by shattering applause.” [iv] Paul Kelly produced a recording of the song for Mushroom records.[v] The full lyrics are compelling [vi] , but the opening explains the theme:
This story’s right, this story’s true
I would not tell lies to you
Like the promises they did not keep
And how they fenced us in like sheep.
Said to us come take our hand
Sent us off to mission land.
Taught us to read, to write and pray
Then they took the children away,
Took the children away,
The children away.
…
The welfare and the policeman
Said you’ve got to understand
We’ll give them what you can’t give
Teach them how to really live.
Teach them how to live they said
Humiliated them instead
Taught them that and taught them this
And others taught them prejudice.
Thirty years later, this remains heart wrenching yet beautiful, sung with a quiet passion that makes me cry each time I hear it. The words make us confront the liberals’ credo: ‘we know best.’ You will immediately say “but we would never agree to taking children away from their parents, never”. To which I have to respond we carry out so many actions ‘for the benefit of others’ because we know what’s best. What gives us that right? Why can we decide how to ensure a ‘Happy New Year’ for others? What are the limits on what we can do?
Issues to do with children are among the most difficult. You might remember the story of Alfie Evans, the terminally ill British child who gained international attention over his removal from life support. Alfie Evans had a disease that had ravaged his brain and was in an intensive neonatal care unit in Liverpool Hospital. After a year the hospital decided there was no chance of his recovery and planned to take him off life support. His parents challenged the decision and wanted him flown to a Vatican hospital. Courts supported the decision to cease life support, and the hospital’s view he was too sick to be flown to Italy. Life support was turned off, and he died some days later. [vii] It was a highly publicised and personalised drama that deflected attention from the reality that life support is often withdrawn from terminal or severely damaged individuals, both very young and much older.
In many cases affecting an adult, the individual has already given the right to make such a decision to a child or a partner. In an earlier post, I explored Peter Singer’s views concerning the decision to have a child euthanised if he or she has such severe defects as an inability to think or feel. [viii] In the case of a child, Singer argues parents, especially the mother, have the right to decide this. Should a hospital be free to take the decision away from a mother? The hospital stated Alfie Evans had been deteriorating over the course of a year, that his brain had been largely ‘wiped out’ (making it extremely improbable he could ever have any kind of brain function, even if treatments appeared in the future): in his situation, the hospital saw palliative care as the most appropriate course to take, and his mother’s views were overruled.
Most liberal thinkers would consider Alfie Evan’s parents were ill-informed. A typical view was: “Sometimes the sad fact is that parents do not know what is best for their child. They are led by their grief and their sadness, their understandable desire to hold on to their child, to request treatment that will not and cannot help. In that circumstance, it is wrong to continue to provide those treatments, and doctors and the courts in this country have felt that they should not be provided, even if parents would wish them to be.” [ix] Not even a Bran Nue Dae for Alfie. [x]
Extreme cases concerning children born with serious and untreatable conditions preventing them from even being aware of their situation provide one area where grounds for decision-making have ended up being resolved in court. However, this has become even more complicated by an emphasis on the rights of the unborn fetus. Recent press coverage has revealed that in the US, a woman coping with the loss of her unborn child might also be charged with manslaughter if she was in a car accident in New York or gave birth to a stillborn child in Indiana. “In fact, a fetus need not die for the state to charge a pregnant woman with a crime. Women who fell downstairs, who ate a poppy seed bagel and failed a drug test or who took legal drugs during pregnancy, drugs prescribed by their doctor, all have been accused of endangering their children. Such cases … illuminate a deep shift in American society, towards accepting that a fetus has the same rights as a fully formed person.” [xi] Written into various areas of federal and state legislation, this has eroded many prior rights of women: “women who are pregnant have found themselves stripped of the right to consent to surgery, the right to receive treatment for a medical condition and even something as basic as the freedom to hold a baby in the moments after birth”. [xii]
Of course, politics is central to this. The Republican Party used to treat abortion as a personal, private matter, but this has changed with the creation of a legal basis for treating the fetus as a person, the result of the relentless work of the anti-abortion movement at both the national level and in every state. At least 38 states and the federal government have so-called ‘fetal homicide’ laws, which treat the fetus as a potential crime victim separate and apart from the woman who carries it. Do Republican extremists really care about the rights of the fetus? I don’t know, but we do know some happily tell their girlfriends or mistresses to have an abortion if an inconvenient pregnancy arises. But votes, that’s a different matter. Right wing Christian fanatics are against abortion, so let’s garner their support, and also divide voting preferences between liberal and less liberal thinking Democratic supporters. Votes trump ethics!
Another challenge for liberals removing children from their parents is over physical abuse. In the worst circumstances, the decision seems clear. For children living in a home where domestic violence is evident, there is ample evidence to suggest serious harm can be caused. One report researched the damaging consequences of domestic violence on children and noted:
Our report finds that children who have witnessed Domestic Violence between their parents display increased fear, inhibition, depression, as well as high levels of aggression and antisocial behaviour which can last not only into their teenage years, but into adulthood too. The effect on a child of witnessing domestic violence between parents is similar to that of experiencing physical abuse themselves. And with 25% of young people witnessing domestic violence and abuse before the age of 18, the problem is not confined to a small section of the population. [xiii]
Courts have established that where there is a violent or abusive partner and action cannot satisfactorily deal with the situation, children may be taken away, because the harm done to a child who has witnessed or listened to someone they love being abused can be extremely serious. The only problem with this is what constitutes ‘violence’, and that remains a highly contested territory. Are the children brought up in highly authoritarian religious households subject to psychological violence? Is that acceptable for children in protestant homes, even those who live in communities like the Scientologists or the Orgonites; but not in orthodox Islamic households where young women are treated as subservient? How do you decide where to draw the line?
Of course, none of this could have been a basis for the removal of children in the Australian stolen generation cases, as they were neither ill nor mistreated. That was then and it wouldn’t happen now, would it? As good liberals, we only step in when real harm to a child is likely. But what about the aftermath of the Trump family separation crisis in the US since July 2018?
After ceasing child separation in the middle of last year, reports indicate the Trump administration has “quietly resumed separating immigrant families at the border, in some cases using vague or unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing or minor violations against the parents, including charges of illegally re-entering the country, as justification … [an] official acknowledged that immigrant families are still being separated, but said the separations had “nothing to do with zero tolerance” and added that “this administration continues to comply with the law and separates adults and children when required for the safety and security of the child … in 14 of the 17 cases flagged … children were removed from their parents’ custody because authorities suspected the parents had some kind of criminal background that made them unfit – even dangerous. But the agency would not specify what crimes the parents were suspected of committing and what evidence authorities had to support these allegations.” [xiv]
Can we support this happening when parents are ‘suspected’ to have broken immigration law? Next the removal of children will be justified because the parents were caught smoking pot. It appears some immigrant children can only look forward to a ‘Bran Nue Dae’ in the USA, separated despite “Nothing wrong, nothing new”. Happy New Year? Steven Pinker argues the world is getting better, [xv] but so much work remains to ensure it’s true for everyone.
[i] According to that authoritative source ‘Now You Know Big Book of Answers’ by Doug Lennox (Dundurn, 2007), page 250
[ii] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1148165/?ref_=ttqt_qt_tt
[iii] First performed in Perth, 1990, as part of the Festival of Perth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran_Nue_Dae
[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Took_the_Children_Away#cite_note-4
[v] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aywDT6yHMmo
[vi] https://genius.com/Archie-roach-took-the-children-away-lyrics
[vii] https://abcnews.go.com/International/alfie-terminally-ill-british-boy-off-life-support/story?id=54798805
[viii] Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, Ambridge University Press, 1979, page 131
[ix] http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2018/04/press-release-alfie-evans-case/
[x] I know there is more to be said on this, including that Alfie’s care was paid for by taxpayers through the NHS.
[xi] For a fuller discussion from which this summary is taken see: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/28/opinion/pregnancy-women-pro-life-abortion.html
[xii] For a recent example, see https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/28/opinion/stillborn-murder-charge.html
[xiii] http://childprotectionresource.online/if-i-report-domestic-violence-social-services-will-take-my-children/
[xiv] For more details, see https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/11/27/donald-trump-zero-tolerance-policy-border-migrants-families-separated-immigration/2132426002/
[xv] Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now, Penguin: 2018
