The Daily Telegraph is still going in hard for the history wars in 2016, with their new salvo in the form of a frontpage story claiming that the University of New South Wales is WHITEWASHING the undergraduate curriculum by suggesting that James Cook didn’t ‘discover’ Australia, but ‘invaded’ it.
Besides having a very, very loose understanding of what the term ‘whitewashing’ actually means in the context of history (hint: it’s the opposite of this), you’d be hard-pressed to find a serious historian today who would find the assertion that James Cook ‘invaded’ Australia categorically false. There were already people here – and the word ‘settlement’ doesn’t acknowledge that fact. It ‘whitewashes’ it, you could say, if you were feeling daring.
As the diversity document that the Tele hates so much states, “most Aboriginal people find the use of the word ‘discovery’ offensive.” This isn’t just some ‘offense’ that emerges under ‘P.C. culture’ – it’s a reminder of the massively unequal conditions that many Aboriginal people still live under today, right now.
The Tele says that that diversity guidelines have already “sparked outrage among some historians”, but the only one they could find is Keith Windschuttle, the historian known for his single-minded defence of British actions during Australia’s colonisation.
His book series The Fabrication Of Aboriginal History challenged the brutal mainstream accounts of invasion and suggests that it wasn’t really all that bad. He also thinks the White Australia policy is ‘misunderstood’, so there’s that too.
Basically, you don’t need a fresh article to get the gist of Windschuttle’s beliefs about invasion and settlement.
Anyway, it’s another salvo against basic decency by the Tele, so it must be a day ending in a ‘Y’.
Source: The Daily Telegraph.
Image: The Daily Telegraph.
