When he reached the houses opposite, after the cafe, which are inhabited by students from Moore Theological College, he disappeared down the path of one of them, with what appeared to me malicious intent. As the Moore College students are my neighbours, I quickly adopted a kind of Neighbourhood Watch approach, crossed the road, and gingerly followed him down the path, where he had already commenced trying to make entry through a door with his iron bar. I yelled out to him: "Stop that mate!" until he stopped. Then I hastily retreated, as he groggily came back down the path and wandered further off down the street.
He then stopped, turned around and started throwing stones at me, one of which hit me hard, from quite a distance. He was a pretty good stone-thrower, that bloke. He then wandered off down King Street, towards his own patch, still grumbling to himself, still waving his iron bar. I felt a certain satisfaction that I'd protected the neighbours from robbery without too much fuss or any real danger to myself, and I hoped he wouldn't inflict too much harm on anybody else, or himself.
Other small robberies have been more threatening and less amusing, and I and other staff members have been several times threatened with knives or clubs. On these occasions I've had no compunction in calling the coppers. I only call the police if there's any physical threat to my staff or myself. If the poor bugger who has tried to hold us up, driven by his addiction, ends up inside, whether he's black or white, that can't be avoided.
This unfortunate choice is despite the fact that I know that the prison system doesn't solve anything, except that it gets the immediate threat off the street, if and when the bloke is caught and convicted. I try to handle these matters realistically, without contributing further to the race prejudice in our society. I know a number of other small business people in this area, for instance, the newsagent in Chippendale, the next suburb, who shares my non-racist views, but has nevertheless been held up on a number of occasions, and takes a similar matter-of-fact approach to these problems.
However, my experience in these matters has given me a bit of insight into all sides of these problems. The racist form of the response of victims to some of these urban problems is by no means the same thing as the belligerent, deliberate racist scape-goating of Pauline Hanson, and one of the real tasks in relation to Aboriginal-white relations is to address these kind of current problems in a very concrete way, without either pandering to racism, or lightly shrugging off the real concerns of the working class and middle class victims of urban crime.
One of the most dangerous but poignant incidents close to me happened several years ago. A planning meeting for the Campaign against the Third Runway was being held in the house of my daughter, who also lives in Newtown. At the end of the meeting, walking up to King Street, a bloke from the International Socialists who had been at the meeting, a bloke I know quite well, a serious-minded, quiet individual, also the trade union delegate for his fellow workers on a university campus, was assaulted from behind and robbed. He woke up a few days later in hospital, in intensive care, and he was three months off work. Eyewitnesses to the incident identified his assailant as brown or black, and the motive appears to have been robbery. (The assailant was actually picked up by the coppers a few hours later.) The bloke assaulted is back at work and once again engaged in his intense trade union, political and anti-racist activity, and more power to his elbow. He is, however, probably a bit careful about dark streets at night.
All of this leads me to my major conclusion. The problems of Aboriginal society in Australia are, historically speaking, products of the imperialist British conquest of this continent. The rights and interests of Aboriginal and other coloured Australians have to be vigorously defended by all other Australians, as well as Aboriginals. All attacks on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, the Wik and Mabo decisions, and on funding for Aboriginal welfare, and the repellant phenomenon of mandatory sentencing, which bears down so heavily on Aboriginal youth, should be vigorously opposed and defeated. Considerable funds and resources should be devoted to getting at the sources of the problems in Aboriginal society, as they should at the problems in Australian society as a whole, particularly youth unemployment. All racism should be defeated and condemned. However, real conflicts among ordinary people that derive from these historic oppressions, should be treated with realism, sensitivity and care, taking into account the real interests of all Australians, pink, yellow or black, working class and middle class.