Joel talks about reversing racism (2:08)

I mean I – I’ve come from a course just recently, a few weeks ago, and there was a young guy in there, probably 22, 23 years old, and he’s from New South Wales and he still had the drunken black guy under the tree image.  He still had that.  And he said it was – it was – and that’s still very big in his community in New South Wales.  And there’s, you know, he said there’s like two black families and like he said it’s just amazing to come here and how different it is.  He never had stepped out of the box.  And – and his story I thought was really interesting because he’s sort of the – the polar end of the scale from where we’re coming from.  Like he grew up in this white side of life, and never came outside without that square, and has no idea about our culture and our identities and things like that.  And when he stepped out he was just sort of blown away by the Indigenous like educated people that he had – it was just a blow – blown mind for him, he said. 

So he just had this stereotypical view?

Yeah. 

Of the drunken Aboriginal?

Yeah, and he said – he – he apologised for it, like, but that’s just how he was raised.  And it is changing, he said, but that’s how he was raised.  And I thought it was brave of him to – to – to speak of it, but it shows you that it still is a deep rooted issue and it also shows you that we are willing to change, that there are people willing to change, there just needs to be education.  If you have the knowledge you can make the changes.  And in that class he was gaining the knowledge and he was sitting there already thinking of the changes.  I thought that was amazing, and there’s so many – so many avenues that that can be taken and – and one of which being the education system.