Multiracial people are often seen as “watered down versions” of their ethnicities, who do not quite fit into society’s images of each culture they represent. They are half this, half that, a quarter this; they are never labelled as “whole.” Frequently asked the question: ‘what are you?,’ by anyone who wants to know, multiracial human beings can have a difficult time figuring out and understanding their own identity. Does one ethnicity dominate the other, simply because the features are more prominent? The “one drop rule,” a term mainly used in the US, is the idea that even ‘one drop’ of blackness in your ancestry “precludes you from being truly white, and therefore ‘lower’ on the racial hierarchy (with whiteness being at the top of the scale)”(CARRODUS).
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The government thought this would be a good opportunity to start “breeding out” the black Aborigines by taking half or quarter caste Aboriginal children from their homes, and teaching them how to live in white society (CARRODUS). This is what happens in the true story of the film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, which follows three “half caste” Aboriginal children, (sisters), Molly, Gracie and Daisy, who were forcibly taken from their families in Jigalong, Western Australia in 1931. The girls escape from the training institution they are brought to, and walk hundreds of miles back to Jigalong. They deny the English life even though it is partly theirs; it is not their home. Rabbit-Proof Fence is a story that proves multiracial people cannot feel what is in their blood, they feel the culture they know. The girls walking hundreds of miles back to their culture is a physical embodiment of this, and debunks the idea that this was for the children’s “own good.” Although many Aboriginal children were complacent, the outcomes of this forced culture are negative: many of the Aboriginal people who today are alcoholics, drug addicts, psychologically damaged or imprisoned were “‘stolen’ children, and continue to suffer the effects of the destruction of their identity, family life and culture”
The government thought this would be a good opportunity to start “breeding out” the black Aborigines by taking half or quarter caste Aboriginal children from their homes, and teaching them how to live in white society (CARRODUS). This is what happens in the true story of the film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, which follows three “half caste” Aboriginal children, (sisters), Molly, Gracie and Daisy, who were forcibly taken from their families in Jigalong, Western Australia in 1931. The girls escape from the training institution they are brought to, and walk hundreds of miles back to Jigalong. They deny the English life even though it is partly theirs; it is not their home. Rabbit-Proof Fence is a story that proves multiracial people cannot feel what is in their blood, they feel the culture they know. The girls walking hundreds of miles back to their culture is a physical embodiment of this, and debunks the idea that this was for the children’s “own good.” Although many Aboriginal children were complacent, the outcomes of this forced culture are negative: many of the Aboriginal people who today are alcoholics, drug addicts, psychologically damaged or imprisoned were “‘stolen’ children, and continue to suffer the effects of the destruction of their identity, family life and culture”