Black Versus White

The Results of a Mutual Misunderstanding

Letter to the Editor.

ONE gathers from the letters of “Veri,” “Duk Duk,” and “Pioneer,” in recent issues of the P.1.M., that New Guinea planters are going through a stage familiar to those with knowledge of early colonisation problems.

There has always been friction between black and white in new countries. Two widely-separated stages of civilisation are difficult to co-ordinate; black misunderstands white and vice-versa, and many white settlers expect more intelligence— and more self-control —from natives than they them selves possess. Civilisation is supposed to foster intelligence. It is the white man’s part to educate raw natives to his requirements, he cannot reason ably expect skilled labourers and faithful service ready made.

Everybody who has had experience with native labour knows the extreme irritation of managing raw recruits, especially when finances are bad, and one has an attack of malaria. Because they find a new tool (native labour) • awkward in their hands many new settlers blame only the tool, for getting that it takes time to learn to use it.

Similarly, because they cannot make their wishes understood, they blame the stupidity of the natives, forgetting again that the natives’ difficulty is just as great.

Real superiority does not express itself in stupidity, intolerance and brutality, and the strong hand (as advocated by “Veri” and “Duk Duk”) is the counterpart of a weak personality. Oppres sion and the methods of the slave-trader have never been known to increase the value of a subject race.

Obviously, the settler, whose job is to make as good a living as he can, has little time and in clination to concern himself with the posterity of his native labourers. Before making up his mind to settle in New Guinea, he should realise that

the welfare of the native population is the prim ary object of the Administration. If such a policy does not appeal to him, he should choose some other country for his activities. If he decides to invest his money and labour in spite of it, he would be wise to mould his own policy in accordance with existing laws, and not feel aggrieved that the Gov ernment ideal is not modified to suit his peculiar requirements and his personal ambition.

Among Australian residents in New Guinea, a land that calls for the spirit of adventure, it is inevitable that those men should be most in evi dence whose desire for dominance is too often their only qualification for authoritative positions. Some of them have never before had a dog (or a wife) to order about in their own country, and their sudden acquisition of power and authority is too great a burden. They condemn loudly and without mercy the clumsiness and grotesque blunders of natives to whom their ways are as equally dis tressing.

It is not that they are inhuman; they do not or will not, understand the gap that separates them; or their imagination fails them. The whole question is one of common sense, and it has two sides, the white and native.

Evidently New Guinea is going through a stage that Papua passed through a generation ago. At that time administrative methods for protecting natives called forth much the same discontent and adverse criticism as expressed by “Veri.” “Duk Duk” and “Pioneer.” So very reasonably, these outbursts may be taken to be the natural and in evitable concomitants of early colonisation in a primitive country.

The wisdom of Papuan methods in those days is evident to-day in the satisfactory relationship be tween employers and labourers. Time will remedy the trouble in New Guinea —if they do not make a mess of it first!

I am, etc.,

Old Observer.

Samarai, Papua, June 20, 1935.

Father Kenny, of the Sacred Heart Mission Hostel, Kensington, N.S.W., left by the July Macdhui on a tour of the Catholic mission stations in Papua.