Talk:Reconciliation in Australia

Australia: Politics / Indigenous peoples Mid‑importance

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Doubts about opening sentence

The opening sentence currently reads:

Reconciliation in Australia is a process which officially began in 1991, focused on the improvement of race relations between the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia and the rest of the population.

I have two doubts about this: (1) the emphasis put on the term "race relations"–I think most Australian presentations of Reconciliation don't put that term front and centre in this way. For example, while the Australian government National Indigenous Australians Agency does use the phrase in some of its publications, its primary web page explaining the concept of "Reconciliation" never does. (2) it links to the race relations article, whose opening sentence defines it as "a sociological concept that emerged in Chicago in connection with the work of sociologist Robert E. Park and the Chicago race riot of 1919" – and "Reconciliation in Australia" is not primarily about that (contested) sociological concept. In an Australian context, the term "race" is less commonly used than in some other English-speaking countries (such as the US), so it is not clear if Indigenous people are a different "race"–is Gordon Reid (an Indigenous MP) a different "race" from his party's leader, PM Anthony Albanese? Few Australians would ever think of asking that question, because sorting people into a small number of racial buckets (as Americans love to do) just isn't a big thing in Australia. So, my proposal is to remove the word "race" and the link, and just say "improvement of relations" SomethingForDeletion (talk) 01:14, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]