Hm. I have to wonder where he learnt his bad behaviour…

There are better ways for this mother to stand up for her kids, starting from teaching them respect.

I get that it’s difficult for mainstream Australians to understand the context of what’s happening here. I’d like to try, with an open heart, to other open hearts, to try to put this incident into perspective.

Let me preface this by stating clearly: I do not know this family personally. I do not speak for them or on behalf of anyone but myself. I am quite a conservative mother, and an ex Primary School Teacher, and despite my nuanced perspective of this incident, I also cringed at this child’s language, but not at his attitude.

Many of us will have seen footage of young Palestinian children verbally abusing the Isreali soldiers who are (according to the Hague) illegally occupying and incrementally invading their country. No one can doubt that these children live in a war zone and that regardless of our personal views on the historical and political context of that occupation, young children can not be held responsible for the situation they find themselves in. These young Palestinian children stand and face these soldiers and their machine guns and swear and throw rocks at them despite knowing full well that other children who have done the same have been shot dead on the spot or taken into indefinite imprisonment. Why do they do this? It is a product of war. Some children cry all day and wet the bed and lose language development etc, and some find a perverse kind of inner strength, a refusal to cower to their oppressors, a refusal to submit willingly to their abuse. The sense of dignity that gives them helps them to survive the abhorrent conditions of their lives.

The behaviour seen by this young boy and its foundational attitude, also seen in his mother, are products of a similar, though less starkly obvious set of circumstances.

In some parts of this continent, overt oppressive racism is rife. Mount Druitt is one of those places. For non mainstream peoples living in such areas, non mainstream peoples lives are under constant scrutiny. Aboriginal children have grown up seeing others in their community being physically and verbally abused by police. They have watched as the decent role models in their communities have been bashed and had their children removed and have been treated as sub human alongside the actual criminals and abusive parents. They have seen that police enforce and perpetrate these abuses on a daily basis and they know, from before they can even articulate their knowing, that justice does not apply to them.

Some of those children are able to escape this horror and learn to, at least nominally, trust in the rule of law. Many are not. There is a reason that Aboriginal children under the age of 12 suicide at 500 times the national average, and this systemic oppression is at the core of that. There are multiple published studies supporting this fact, including those commissioned by successive governments.

The young boy in this video may or may not have committed the crime of throwing rocks at cars, but he knows to the very core of his being that it doesn’t matter. He’s going to jail for it anyway because that’s how the system is designed for Aboriginal people in these communities.

His only control over this situation is in expressing his refusal to cower to those he must see as enemy combatants in what must feel for him to be a war zone.

Like those Palestinian kids whose last act of independence is to abuse their oppressors, the strongest and most courageous of our young ones choose to defy the authority of their oppressors rather than succumb to the downward spiral of depression amd despair which so often leads to substance abuse, serious mental illnesses and suicide.

This is what was behind this mother’s pride. That her boy has chosen to go down fighting rather than to die quietly in a corner of his room.

just shaking my head. such a shame.

Parents fault! Nothing else to add

I saw this video on Facebook. It’s absolutely disgusting. Even one of the other kids was trying to block the policeman. The kids have no respect and neither does the mother. I’m glad he was charged. He could have killed someone

I find the video very shocking! If the police went for him, I guess they had evidence. And if the child was really throwing rocks, I find the mother’s behaviour really unacceptable.

She’s a useless piece of of shit of a mom. She should never have reproduced. She’s just added more assholes to our society!

The police would want to have evidence this child was responsible. Having said that I have seen mothers who have know their children dogs wrong and behaved just as this mother has. This video proves nothing, either way.

Lke jh

The mother needs to be arrested for “aiding and abetting” or poor parenting!

Him and his cousin supposedly like to collect rocks. Is it just a coincident that rocks were what he was accused of throwing.