"White. WHITE. white." *WARNING: offensive language & racist comment*

[@fulani]

It’s the 2015 Australia Day long weekend and the Aussie arm of the twitterverse has been discussing everything from patriotic cake decorations and barbeques through to invasion, colonial occupation and race-based discrimination.

All is as expected. Some tweets are happy, some sad. Others are hurt, angry or defensive. Many more are insightful, balanced and supportive of other people’s views.

At some time over the last two days I began to realise that my Twitter timeline was showing signs of a savage argument developing somewhere else and, that a number of people living in Australia were having their racial and/or cultural identity questioned in some manner.

I peeked at this ongoing argument. Big mistake. I fell into a sewer.

The main focus seemed to be the fact that a well-known young Aboriginal woman was erroneously having her identity questioned because the colour of her skin, hair and eyes were judged to be too light for her to be recognised as indigenous. Shades of journalist Andrew Bolt!

However, I was surprised at both the degree of vitriol spewed across the Internet and the places it originated.

Along the way, other Australians were gratuitously insulted as well.

In no particular order here are just some of the comments made by those seeking to denigrate the Australian indigenous experience (click on any of the images to enlarge):

And the vileness spread far and wide:

This attack went on and on and on. Leaving a bad taste in the mouth and a tarnished holiday weekend in its wake.

@ebswearspink, @upjulie and @StringStory didn’t deserve the hate sent their way.

UPDATE

In which two individuals (one with a doctorate) apparently decide to mistake an adjective describing an argument for a noun allegedly indicating a person(s) in an effort to justify their tweets:

To make matters clear to those doubters, deniers and downright abusive tweeters, this is a brief snapshot of Ebs background:

Descended from Kamilaroi and Dharug peoples of New South Wales;

Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) Australian Indigenous Law;

Graduate Diploma Legal Practice;

Admitted to the bar by the Legal Profession Admission Board (LPAB) of the Supreme Court of NSW;

Represented traditional owners in NSW Native Title applications;

National Congress of Australia’s First Peoplesinaugural delegate.

I am confident that Ebs achieved this because she was both embraced and accepted by the Aboriginal community and loved by her large extended family.