I’m sure most of you have heard the expression that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I’m a strong believer in helping people. Helping people is good. It’s wholesome. And charity is one of the tenants of all religions.
But I draw the line when it comes to controlling people and telling them what to do “for their own good.”
There are countless examples of governments and communities forcing people to action or inaction “for their own benefit” that resulted in unintended consequences. These are the good intentions that pave the road to hell.
The most recent of these was of course the lockdowns around the world, forcing people to stay home, forcing business to close, forcing people to compromise their health, all for a good intention. It’s for your own good, said the governments of the world.
And the demonstrations about police brutality and racism… I don’t think anyone would disagree that the lockdowns to some extent exacerbated the demonstrations, built on pent up frustration, growing exasperation, and the humility of being driven into poverty.
These good intentions pave the road to hell.
I believe they are also the foundation for the road to racism.
Rather than talk about what’s happening in the US, I’d like to talk about my own introduction to racism.
When I was 7 years old, the Australian parliament passed legislation giving aborigines citizenship and almost equal rights to white people.
I asked my mother why we were giving equal rights to aborigines when they were clearly not as intelligent as us white people.
My mother, who unlike 99.9% of the population, had lived with an aboriginal family for several months in her youth. She told me that, “No, Peter, aborigines are just as smart as us. They just haven’t been treated as if they are.”
That shaped my view of the world, and my view of different races. I’m sure there were many other seven year olds who got a very different answer and are racist to this day.
So why are Australians so racist against aborigines?
Quite simply, because we were trying to help them.
The Australian government instituted a bunch of laws and policies to help the Aborigines. Help they didn’t want by the way. But it was for their own good.
We all know that uneducated people can’t handle money. So rather than educate the aborigines, the government decided to help them handle money by limiting the amount they earned.
In 1915, the Australian government instituted a maximum wage of 5 shillings a day (about 50c) for aboriginals. It was illegal to pay them more than 5 shillings a day in money and benefits from 1915 to 1967.
It’s wasn’t racist. There was a good intention behind it.
It’s for your own good the government told them.
It’s for your own good said the whites to the blacks.
And we all know that young aborigines are less able to handle money than older ones. So the government decided to help them some more by decreeing that employers pay over half of young aborigine’s salaries into savings accounts or to the government where it was inaccessible to the aborigines until they were older.
Sure, this led to massive abuses in the system many aborigines never saw any of their own money again. But there was a good intention behind it.
It’s for your own good said the government.
It’s for your own good said the righteous to the unrighteous.
Many young aboriginal women became domestic helpers in white households, and according to some studies, the majority of them returned to their communities pregnant with kids who would never meet their white fathers.
Society looked at these children and some said, “They are half black, ignore them.” But the enlightened ones said, “No, they are half white. We should help them.”
And so they did.
Rather than leave these half white kids with their mothers to grow up as blacks, the government took these kids from their mothers and put them in orphanages to be educated as white kids.
In Australia this is called the stolen generation. A generation of kids who lost their mothers, and mothers who lost their kids. But there was a good intention behind it.
It’s for your own good said the government.
It’s for your own good said the honorable whites to the weeping mothers and the bawling children.
I could go on with the injustices against aborigines. But the more I look, the more I see the good intentions behind these injustices.
White people didn’t become more racist in spite of this help. White people became racist because of it.
Each time I see the government make rules for one class of people, I see racism become institutionalized.
When you make laws that apply to all races and all creeds, and all sexes equally, then you create the beginnings of an equal playing field.
But when a government makes laws to help one race, then the unintended consequence will often turn out to be far worse than the problems they were trying to fix. Furthermore, any law that is designed to help one race or group reinforces the belief that that group, or that race isn’t the equal of everyone else.
As long as governments continue to institutionalize racism, no matter how good their intentions, then racism as an institution will continue to thrive.
But governments know better than us private citizens, so I’m sure we’ll continue to hear the same mantra:
It’s for your own good says the government.
There’s a good intention behind it.
Cool post, thanks for sharing! You seem to be overlooking or minimizing the centuries of genocide and repression that preceded modern times up until very recently. As a matter of government policy, we systematically murdered and enslaved people in the USA and I’m 100% confident you did the same in Australia when white men discovered it. How does this historical institutional racism figure into your analysis? Was that just white people trying to be helpful? Or is the “helpful” thing just a recent twist in the centuries old racist story? Since the government has been directly racist, does it make sense for the government to try to correct the problem it caused? Or would you leave this to Amazon and Microsoft?
This was about laws and policies that could possibly be considered “for the natives’ benefit” at the time. For the first 150 years (1788-1838) there weren’t any effective laws and no white men were punished for killing aborigines. Killing, abuse, and slavery were effectively legal. A parallel with the US is probably apt for this period.
Some laws were actually helpful for the aborigines, such as requiring them to be paid for their work (theoretically abolishing slavery, though enforcement was lax).
I focused on the period after federation when laws and policies began to be enforced which may have looked good on paper, but effectively reduced the rights of aborigines.
The removal of mixed race kids from their mothers was particularly racist as it aimed to improve their lives by breeding out the aborigine in them. Many have argued that it was a form of genocide.
Yes, it does make sense for governments to try to fix the problem. Most of this is by granting equal rights (fairly simple and done in the 1970s) and guaranteeing these rights (work in progress). There are also more complex issues about land rights and recognition that are ongoing.
Just in case you want to see exactly how people delude themselves, preserve their ”dignity” When I first read this I totally thought it was sarcasm because it was so ridiculous. Read and laugh… WHITE LIES!!!!
My favourite quote in this piece was…”It’s for your own good said the honorable whites to the weeping mothers and the bawling children”.
Right on. An interesting case of Asian institutionalised racism is Malaysia and Singapore next door. In Malaysia, they have the “Bumiputra” system which favors Malays over the Indian and Chinese who make up the other biggest ethnic groups. The result, Malays clog the governement posts and Indians and Chinese must work harder to get into universities, pay more for land, education and try to emigrate somewhere else, like Singapore.
In Singapore, they favor Chinese ethnicity, and their immigration policy aims to ensure approx. 60-70% of the island remains so. Some jobs like taxi driver appear protected for Chinese ethnicity too. All National ID cards state the race of the father. So if we’re a Indian father, Chinese mother, the kids lose preferential treatment, even in 2020 I believe… – – Aaron