Mother slams racist ad Aboriginal boys ‘troublemakers’

The mother of a young boy who was featured in a Teach Queensland advertisement has slammed the feature for depicting Indigenous children as trouble-makers. 

Dr Chelsea Bond realised her 11-year-old son was featured in the ad after she saw it on the Teach Queensland Facebook page.

The ad was captioned: ‘I have a soft spot for the trouble makers or the kid that everyone thought wouldn’t make it’ with a white teacher laughing surrounded by Indigenous children.

Dr Chelsea Bond only realised her 11-year-old son was featured in the ad after she saw it on the Teach Queensland Facebook page and slammed the feature on Twitter (pictured) 

She took to Twitter to hit out at the ad citing: ‘This is my actual child in this photo. He is not a trouble maker.’ 

The lecturer in Indigenous Studies at the University of Queensland said that her son is actually pretty smart, 7 News reported. 

‘He gets that from his mother,’ she wrote.  

She hash-tagged the advert with ‘#notyourprop’ and ‘#teachqld’.

She added a number of other statements which included that Indigenous children do not need help. 

‘Aboriginal children don’t need saving by white women. They are not your Jedda and nor are they your prop.’   

Teach Queensland has now taken down the post and issued an apology for any offence that was caused. 

Teach Queensland admitted that the advertisement was bad taste and issued an apology

‘The department is committed to supporting the education of every student in every state school across Queensland,’ the spokesperson said.

‘The department is contacting families of students in the image and responding to members of the public who raised concerns.

They said anyone involved in posting the ad would be counselled and have to take cultural awareness training. 

Dr Bond told the ABC however she wanted the government to make more effort to dismiss racist stereotyping. 

 ‘We’re imagined in a way that doesn’t reflect who we are and the only way we can be better is to be more like white people, or be saved by white people,’ she said.

A number of people also took issue with the ad slamming the implication of its content