Placing Race: Locating Whiteness

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Introduction to Placing Race and Localising Whiteness
Susanne Schech and Ben Wadham
The papers gathered together in this book of proceedings are a product of the Placing
Race and Localising Whiteness symposium that took place at the Flinders University of
South Australia from 1st to 3rd of October, 2003. The symposium provided a forum for
some forty presenters and eighty participants to explore new meanings of race and
whiteness, and to make innovative connections between theory, policy and practice. It
brought together researchers from a range of disciplines in Social Sciences, Arts,
Education, Law and Humanities pursuing critical research on race and whiteness, as well
as policy makers and practitioners working on race and whiteness in government and
non-government indigenous, multicultural, anti-racist and human rights organizations.
This symposium follows in the tracks of two other conferences on whiteness and race that
were recently held in Australia. The first entitled Unmasking Whiteness: Race Relations
and Reconciliation took place in Brisbane under the auspices of the Queensland Studies
Centre at Griffiths University in 1998 (McKay, 1999). The second, entitled Critical
Contexts and Crucial Conversations: Whiteness and Race, was organized in Coolangatta
in 2002 by the Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities, Griffith University, and the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (Moreton-Robinson, 2004). By 2003,
the interest in interdisciplinary research on race and whiteness in Australia had gathered
sufficient momentum to form the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies
Association (ACRAWSA).
The surge of academic interest in race and whiteness in Australia is in some ways a
response to renewed public debate about immigration and indigenous rights in the wake
of the return of a conservative coalition government under John Howard’s leadership. In
other ways, the issues of race and whiteness, while frequently swept under the carpet,
have never been resolved since Australia’s colonial days. The papers in this volume thus
cover a range of historical perspectives, from current preoccupations with racism and
white privilege in public culture (eg. Farquharson and Marjoribanks), to critical analyses
of colonial imaginations of white indigeneity (Foster and Nettlebeck). With few
exceptions (eg. Burrows), the majority of the papers are written from an Australian
vantage point, but some are more specifically concerned with what is specific to ways in
which race and whiteness operate in Australia (eg. Vassilacopoulos and Nicolacopoulos;
Garbutt). While recognizing the power of global discourses of race and whiteness (eg.
Winant 2001), this symposium sought to explore the constitution and transformation of
local terrains of race and whiteness which may at various times and in various places
conform to or contrast with global ones.
We grouped the diverse set of papers under three headings which encapsulate the current
research interests in this field in Australia. The first section on ‘Theorising Race and
Whiteness’ contains papers that grapple with the concepts of race and whiteness, their
role in shaping Australia, and the particular situation of white Australia. The second
section, ‘Politics of (In)(Ex)clusion’ houses six diverse papers which look at the

racialised boundaries drawn between white Australia and its others. The final section,
Placing whiteness in (popular) culture, gathers six papers that seek to make whiteness
visible in a variety of cultural spaces.
THEORISING RACE AND WHITENESS
Even though critical race research has a longer history in the international arena, the
matter of ‘whiteness’ has only emerged as a focus of interest in critical race research in
the 1990s. Within sociology, geography and other social science disciplines, the focus of
race research has largely been ‘structured around the implicit association of "races" and
ethnicities with non-White, or otherwise marginal and "minority", racialized categories’
(Bonnett, 1997, 194). Recent research on whiteness has challenged this tendency to
remove whiteness from debates about race by critically exploring the social construction
of white racial identities (eg. Brodkin, 1998; Frankenberg, 1993; Hartigan, 1999; Nayak,
1997; Moreton-Robinson, 2000) and the historical and global context of Europe’s
recasting of white identity as a natural racial category designating superiority and power
(Bonnett, 2000, 2004).
The concept of whiteness captures the terrain of dominance within which white people
occupy a location of structural advantage, a standpoint of race privilege, and assume their
own cultural practices as normative (Frankenberg, 1993). However, the concept is a
slippery one, which has at times excluded groups on the basis of ethnicity, class, gender
and sexuality (Bonnett, 2000; Brodkin, 1998). Its meaning also shifts in response to
migration flows and the transnationalisation of capitalism (Ignatiev, 1995; Roediger,
2002; Ang, 2001; Ong, 1999).
In this section, the papers by Sonia Tascon and Ben Wadham both explore the emergence
and transformation of race and whiteness in the social sciences, taking the European
Enlightenment as an important marker. Tascon argues that race and racism are anxiously
avoided in Australian public discourse because the very foundation of the nation is based
on a racist act. Wadham’s paper traces the growth of whiteness studies and the shift from
old to new racism. Vassilacopoulos and Nicolacopoulos discuss Australian subjecthood
and sovereignty from a Hegelian perspective, and argue that the failure to recognize
indigenous people’s rights as the owners of the land lies at the bottom of white
Australians’ identity crisis. Geoffrey Gray’s paper looks at the contemporary struggles
over native title which are framed by (white) anthropologists’ constructions of
Aboriginality and Aboriginal traditions.
Politics of (In)(Ex)clusion
White Australia was first created through British colonization, and subsequently shaped
through the White Australia policy, which operated between 1901 and 1966 to maintain
the over-riding British character of the society, and to actively prevent non-white
populations from migrating to the country. The 1945 influx of immigrants from many
parts of Europe paved the way for the White Australia policy to be replaced with ‘official
multiculturalism’, “designed to manage a variety of white cultures, all of which were

presumed to share the same moral assumptions” (Stratton 1998: 10). However, the
growth of non-European immigration from the Middle East and Asia over the last thirty
years or so, stretched the inclusive logic underwriting official multiculturalism. Non-
European immigrants remain marginally positioned within Australia’s culture and
politics, and are, at times, even precarious and vulnerable (eg. Viviani, 1996). Even
white ‘ethnic’ Australians, the oft vaunted successful products of official
multiculturalism, remain liable to accusations of not being fully part of the nation
(Jamrozik et al., 1995; Danforth (2001).
Over the past decade or so, multi-generational Anglo-Celtic Australians’ claims to the
status of ‘host’ (Anderson, 2000) or ‘guardian’ (Hage, 1998) of the nation have been
unsettled by the Mabo judgment’s recognition of indigenous occupancy prior to
colonization. Coming to terms with the history of indigenous dispossession, and for
ongoing institutionalized racism, has been recognized by many non-indigenous
Australians as a cornerstone to attaining a post-colonial national identity that permits a
true sense of belonging. However, migrants, particularly those of non-Anglo-Celtic
backgrounds, find themselves in a contradictory location: on the one hand, their own
migration has continued the colonization process, but on the other, they have themselves
been marginalized and subjected to racist practices. The call for them to share in a
collective sense of shame about the nation’s past, and to engage in reconciliation, it can
be argued, is based on an ‘unreconstructed colonial (…) ”we”’ (Hage, 2001, 345) that is
white and largely Anglo-Celtic.
This section of the collection explores the boundaries that have been drawn at various
times and in various circumstances between the white Australian and its Others. The
papers discuss this broad theme of how the white Australian citizen is constructed in the
contexts of Australian welfare policies (Young), Australian cricket (Farquharson and
Majoribanks), religions (Imtoual), and regional Australia (Garbutt), using diverse
methodologies such as media analysis, archival research and self-reflexive journal
writing. Two of the papers (James, and Vassilocopoulos and Nicolacopoulos) look at the
ways in which migrants have challenged and/or buttressed the privileged position of
white Australians as the hosts or owners of the nation.
Placing whiteness in (popular) culture
The final section in this volume comprises six authors who locate whiteness and race in a
range of Australian cultural settings. The first paper, by Damien Riggs, examines how
Indigeneity is constructed alongside white privilege within contemporary white
conceptualizations of place, using a recent art installation in the city of Adelaide as an
example. Two papers mine autobiographical literary writings to analyse the emergence of
white indigeneity in Australian settler colonial culture (Foster and Nettlebeck) and the
experience of white loss in post-abolition Jamaica (Burrows). Diana Sweeney draws on
her own experience as a fashion model to highlight the role of racism in determining the
ideals of race and beauty in Australian women’s magazines, while Melissa McEwen
examines the representation of non-white Australians in television soap operas. The paper
by Riordan-Johnson analyses two recent ‘Aboriginal films’, both made by white men,

which claim to narrate the history of white violent domination of Aboriginal people and
lands, but merely function as white redemption narratives.
Space and place comes into these papers in a number of ways. In a number of papers,
particular geographical places provide a focus to discussions of identity politics and
struggles. In others, a particular cultural space – that of the autobiography, the woman’s
magazine, the cricket press – is chosen to highlight particular ways of representing,
excluding or defining the self and the other. A third way in which space comes into
studies of race and whiteness is as a scale of analysis – the local, national, global scale –.
At the national level, the analytical space of the nation-state is important to understand
how white privilege is constructed, maintained and adapted, and how national policies on
immigration control, multiculturalism, and indigenous rights ‘are central to the process
by which differences (of ethnicity, locality, and race) are rendered sociopolitically
significant.' (Anderson, 2000, 385). The local level is the space where racial identities are
shaped, transformed and challenged. As Hartigan (1999, 3) and others have stressed, to
understand the persistent significance of race we must go beyond the abstract, static level
of national racial discourse and study the ‘complex encounters, exchanges, and
avoidances’ that sustain it in everyday interactions. The global level, which is less
discussed in these papers, comes into play as we consider the transnational flows which
underpin or undermine white national imagination, and the global connections between
discourses of race and whiteness.
In all, these sixteen papers constitute a marker in current race and whiteness studies in
Australia which we hope will be useful and inspiring to other researchers.

Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the committee which organised the symposium, the reviewers of the
papers submitted to this book of proceedings, and to Sally Brokensha, Fiona Johnston
and Monique Mulholland who have provided valuable assistance in editing this book.
The organizing committee:
o Jane Haggis (Sociology, Centre for Development Studies)
o Susanne Schech (Geography, Centre for Development Studies)
o Ben Wadham (School of Education)
o Barbara Kameniar (School of Education)
o Brian Marshall (Yunggorendi)
o Catherine Koerner (Centre for Development Studies, Yunggorendi)
o Suryono (Centre for Development Studies)
o Amy Hamilton (School of Education)
o Social Justice Research Collective (School of Education Flinders University)
References:
Anderson, K. 2000: Thinking 'postnationally', AAAG, v90, n2, pp. 381-391.
Ang, I. 2001: On not Speaking Chinese. Living between Asia and the West, London:
Routledge.
Bonnett, A. 2000: White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives, Harlow:
Prentice Hall.
Bonnett, A. 2004: The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History, Houndsmill:
Palgrave.
Brodkin, K. 1998: How Jews Became White Folks, New Brunswick Rutgers University
Press.
Danforth, L.M. 2001: Is the 'world game' an 'ethnic game' or an 'Aussie game'? Narrating
the nation in Australian soccer, American Ethnologist, v28, n2, 363-387.
Frankenberg, R. 1993: White Women, Race Matters. The Social Construction of
Whiteness Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Hage, G. 1998: White Nation, Annandale, Pluto Press Australia.
Hage, G. 2001: Polluting memories: migration and colonial responsibility in Australia, in
M. Morris and B. de Bary (eds) "Race" Panic and the Memory of Migration, Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Hartigan, J. 1999: Racial Situations, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ignatiev, N. 1995: How the Irish Became White, New York: Routledge.
Jamrozik, A. et al. 1995: Social Change and Cultural Transformation in Australia,
Cambridge: CUP.
McKay, B. (ed.) 1999: Unmasking whiteness: race relations and reconciliation. The
Queensland Studies Centre, Griffith University, Nathan.
Moreton-Robinson, A. 2000: Talkin' up to the White Woman, St Lucia: University of
Queensland Press.

Nayak A. 1997: ‘Tales from the darkside’, International Studies in Sociology of
Education v7, n1, pp. 57-79.
Moreton-Robinson, A. (ed.) 2004: Whitening Race: Critical Contexts and Crucial
Conversations. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Ong, A. 1999: Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality, Durham: Duke
University Press.
Roediger, D. 2002: Coloured White. Transcending the Racial Past, Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Stratton, J. 1998: Race Daze. Australia in Identity Crisis, Annandale: Pluto Press
Australia.
Viviani, N. 1996: The Indochinese in Australia, 1975-1995, Melbourne: OUP.
Winant, H. 2001: The World is a ghetto: Race and democracy since world war II. New
York: Basic Books.

INDIGENOUS AND WHITE AUSTRALIANS:
THE ONTOLOGICAL ENCOUNTERING AND THE BETRAYAL OF
THOUGHT
George Vassilacopoulos and Toula Nicolacopoulos
i
Let us begin by drawing readers’ attention to two of the recent public debates amongst
Australian historians. The first takes place around Keith Windschuttle (Manne 2003) and
the second follows the publication by Stuart MacIntyre and Anna Clark of The History
Wars (2003). For present purposes we are not concerned with the details of these debates
but with the fact that they are debates about Australian history and as such they implicate
us all. We will have something to say about the character of the public debates
surrounding white Australian history in the final section of our paper, but the important
point for us to note at the outset is that their main protagonists assume something that we
tend to take for granted when thinking about white Australian history. This is the idea
that we Australians cannot hope to have a future without having a past. Despite
dramatically different readings of events in the last two centuries of white Australian
occupation there is a common assumption that white Australia needs to come to terms
with its past as a pre-condition for moving forward in the twenty-first century.
The position we would like to elaborate in this paper is that the primary issue for white
Australians is neither the past nor the future. Our primary concern should be the present,
though not the present understood as ‘the now’. We want to suggest, instead, that we
should be concerned with the present understood as ‘being present’ or, in other words,
with being as presence. For, how can we create a vision, or future, without presence and
how can we create memory, or past, without presence? We would like to refocus our
attention on our presence in an ontological sense, one that addresses our being (as white
Australians) as a whole. Let us outline our position before explaining it in more detail and
pointing to some of its implications.
White Australians do not have a present in the abovementioned ontological sense of
presence. Our view is that at the moment it is distinctive of white Australians that we
have abandoned our potential to engage in the sort of encounter that makes presence
possible for us, a form of encounter that we have elsewhere termed the ‘emerging-
merging’ of selves (Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos 2003). This is a form of
interaction that produces and helps to maintain our integrity in so far as we are products
of modern Western European social processes. On the analysis that we will present in the
first section of our paper white Australians cannot emerge ontologically. We are, if you
like, the non-emerging. In the second section we will suggest that this occurs as an effect
of what we have called ‘the onto-pathology of white Australian subjectivity’
(Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos in press). In the final section we will argue that a
certain form of merging, in recognition of Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty rights, is the
pre-condition for white Australian being as presence, for becoming historical and
ultimately for creating a vision for the future.
Presence as the emerging-merging of beings and the non-emerging white Australia

We have suggested that, as white Australians, we might best be described as ‘the non-
emerging’, that is, as beings who lack presence. What do we mean by this? Let us begin
by noting that presence in the ontological sense is not some kind of natural given for us.
It is achieved through a certain form of social interaction, namely by presenting oneself
to someone else. It is in such presenting that one emerges as presenting.
Moreover, the context is all-important here. Note that such an emerging is at once
inescapably a merging. This is because the context must be one in which the other self is
also an emerging being. So, being present essentially involves a meeting of beings who
encounter one another’s presentation as the very pre-condition of their own possibility.
That is, the encounter is what gives rise to the possibility of presence. The encounter
between subjects who emerge by presenting themselves to each other constitutes an
affirmative act of mutual recognition.
In the form of encounter we are describing we need not interact with another bodily
presence here and now. Presence in the above sense of merging-emerging beings might
just as well take place through the experience of someone’s absence. What is important
for our analysis is that in so far as we engage with modern Western European social
processes, our integrity, in the sense of our being as a whole in the world, depends upon
our participation in such acts of mutual recognition. Such acts of mutual recognition
affirm our merging being and hence are fundamental to our emergence in the world.
If our analysis is correct, then in so far as white Australians fail to engage in this
fundamental form of mutual recognition, we cannot emerge ontologically. Indeed we are
non-emerging beings precisely because we have failed to live up to the demands of our
ontological integrity in our encounter with the Indigenous Other. Irrespective of how we
choose to read it, our racist history confirms the fact that we do not recognize the
Indigenous peoples in the reciprocal and affirmative terms of emerging-merging beings
that we have outlined above. This is particularly damaging for white Australia because
being as presence does not permit us to be selective about our encounters. Try as we may,
we cannot gain and retain our ontological integrity in the face of our encounter with the
Indigenous peoples because the very structure of the form of recognition we depend upon
does not allow for its enactment through conditional practices such as race-based
exclusions. We will go on next to explain why what we have characterized as white
Australians’ non-presence is an effect of our collective historical constitution as a nation.
The social institution of white Australia’s non-presence
White Australian national identity has been founded on the dispossession of Indigenous
peoples. This dispossession denies to Indigenous peoples the very identity on which the
collective being of white Australians has been socially instituted. How might we
characterize this identity? Summing up the argument of another paper (Nicolacopoulos
and Vassilacopoulos in press) we note that the primary aspect of the constitution as
modern Western subjects is our private property-owning identity. Precisely because it
informs every aspect of our being as social actors, our property-owning identity is also at
the heart of what it means to be a member of white Australian society. That is, because
we live in a society whose primary institutions are ordered along the lines of modern

Western liberal ideals, our ability to function effectively depends on this identity. Here,
we do not mean simply that one class of Australians owns property to the exclusion of
another. Instead the point is that the very operations of white Australian institutions,
whether legal, political or economic, encourage us to relate to everything in the world as
property-owning subjects, in the sense of realizing our potential to treat anything around
us as what Hegel calls ‘a thing’ (Hegel 1976). That is, quite apart from its own nature, we
are in a position to treat every aspect of our world as a will-less object in which we might
embody our own individual or collective will. For modern Western subjectivity nothing
is inherently immune to this power of embodiment of a will in a thing and, so, in a liberal
social order effective agency is inevitably linked to this form of subjectivity.
For the purposes of our present discussion, it is important to note not just that the denial
of Indigenous peoples’ property-owning subjectivity has effectively rendered Indigenous
peoples as non-Australian, but that this denial has profoundly impacted upon the
possibilities for white Australian ways of being as well. The reason for this has to do with
the role that institutionally reinforced processes of inter-subjective recognition play in
structuring modern Western social relations. Let us explain this briefly. We know that
Indigenous people’s continued dispossession makes possible the claim of white Australia
to ownership of the country as if Australian territory had not already belonged to other
sovereign peoples (Reynolds 1996). But, this question of rightful ownership is not just a
question about the legal or moral right of the white Australian nation-state to occupy and
control the territory. It creates a deep tension at the ontological level of our constitution
as a nation. This is because the modern European ideals of property and subjectivity that
inform white Australian society call upon property-owning subjects to enact certain
processes of mutual recognition. In particular, to exercise orderly possession and control
of our property we need to be recognized as rightful owners by subjects who are equally
positioned to give us this recognition. The Indigenous peoples who remain dispossessed
are not in a position to supply white Australians with this indispensable form of
recognition.
Moreover, our collective failure to give and receive this basic form of recognition gives
rise to an ‘ontological disturbance’ in the sense of a disturbance of the very conditions of
our being as agents in the world and as self-determining subjects. But this failure also
represents an onto-pathology in that we perpetuate our condition wilfully. In our earlier
paper (Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos in press) we have argued that white
Australian being essentially takes the form of a collective criminal will; we wilfully deny
the violence that is constitutive of our relationship to Indigenous peoples. This violence
refers both to the ongoing nature of our role in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples
and to the effects on our way of being as white Australians. Significantly, without the
mutual recognition that we have outlined above, the coherence of our own being as white
Australian is disturbed and we compromise our property-owning identity.
If property-owning subjectivity is part of the inescapable framing of our being as white
Australian, it affects our chances for any presence, our chances of being present as white
Australians. For the white Australian, the movement of emerging-merging being is linked
to the relationship between property-owning subjects. Indeed, in the case of modern

Western property-owning subjectivity, emerging coincides with merging with another
property-owning subject. Here we have the structure of emerging-merging selves of the
modern West but the white Australian onto-pathology denies us the opportunity to
engage in such processes. This is how the condition of our continued non-presence has
arisen.
THE IMPERATIVE OF THE INDIGENOUS-WHITE AUSTRALIAN
ENCOUNTER
What is the solution to this predicament? In order to realize our potential to become
emerging-merging selves we need to redress the self-imposed compromised nature of our
property-owning subjectivity. This calls for a double act of erasing and embracing. We
need at once to erase our claim to rightful ownership of Australian territory and to
embrace Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty rights and to recognize them as genuine
property owners.
The recognition of Indigenous peoples as property-owning subjects in their own right is
the only form of recognition available to us. Our onto-pathology requires a radical
reversal of the forms of engagement of property-owning subjects with their external
world. That is, it demands, not that we retain possession of our material world but that we
detach from it in order, ultimately, to regain the lost integrity of our subjectivity. The
circumstances of the onto-pathology of white Australian being call for this sort of radical
response in order for the white Australian to announce its being, to take responsibility for
it and through this process to gain presence. Consequently, our recognition of Indigenous
people’s sovereignty rights is indispensable to the creation of the conditions of being
present, of presence, for white Australians.
This double act of erasing-embracing is also the pre-condition for creating a vision and
relatedly for becoming historical. The creation of a vision of the future within the terms
we have been describing makes possible our return to our past with an opportunity for
establishing a reflective relationship to it. Today, the Indigenous – white Australian
encounter holds out the possibility of a movement for white Australians from the present
as presence to the future as vision, and from the future as vision to the past as living
memory rather than as the graveyard of facts. Here we note that the primary issue for
historiography should not be whether a statement of facts is true or false but whether we
are inspired by living memory. Only within such memories do facts acquire their genuine
truth-bearing force. Our onto-pathology denies us the opportunity to live out our being as
bearers of living memory. Consequently, our insular debates centre on maintaining what
we might call fact-worshiping practices. The terms of engagement that Keith
Windschuttle’s claims encourage are a case in point (Manne 2003).
Today, white Australians are entirely dependent upon the presence of Indigenous peoples
for some semblance of our association with living memory. Here we are referring not to
our own romanticized idealisations of Indigenous cultures but to Indigenous peoples’
presence before us as bearers of political struggles (Langton 1988; Moreton-Robinson
2000). This encounter, our exposure to the being of Indigenous peoples’ political
struggles against their dispossession, confirms our loss of living memory. That is, the

presence of Indigenous peoples generates the imperative for white Australians to become
historical.
On this analysis, in becoming historical it is not enough for us to remember and admit
that to be white Australian is to be implicated in the violent dispossession of Indigenous
peoples. It is not even enough for us to remember or admit to past injustices whose
effects are still being suffered today (Thompson 2000).
ii
We need to make a deeper more
reflective turn to our non-presence. Reflection without attentiveness to its ontology is
busy recruiting facts and arguing over their authenticity. The recent history debates
represent examples of the tendency to move away from what frames facts to the
observation of facts themselves.
In the absence of this reflective relationship there continues what we call ‘the betrayal of
thought’. This refers to the unwillingness of white Australians to reflect upon the
ontological conditions of our being that we mentioned at the outset – the wilful denial of
our violent relationship to Indigenous dispossession that constitutes the collective
criminal will of white Australia. To reflect upon our past does not just call for
recognition that historical injustices warrant remedies, whether symbolic or calling for
the return of lands, compensation for losses and other forms of redistribution of wealth;
in the circumstances it requires an unconditional surrender.
CONCLUSION
We have yet to write the history of white Australia as historical beings. This requires
coming to terms with the white Australian onto-pathology. We do not mean this as a
criticism of historians but pose it as a challenge to those of us who would relate to their
history reflectively. We would like to end with a metaphor that might help to convey a
sense of the enormity of the self-transformation that the condition of white Australian
being requires in order to make possible an adequate theorisation of Australian whiteness.
In his Cantos Ezra Pound (1975) writes:
I brought you this crystal ball.
Who can lift it?
If we imagine for a moment that the white-Australian – Indigenous encounter poses a
challenge of this magnitude then it becomes apparent that, for the white Australian who
accepts the challenge, a mere change in our understanding of the facts will not do, when a
radical transformation of our whole being is warranted. In order to have any hope at all of
lifting the crystal ball we would need to take on its shape.
Footnotes

References
Hegel, G.W.F. (1976) Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. (trans. T.M. Knox). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Langton, M. (1988) ‘The Getting of Power’, Australian Feminist Studies 6: 1-5.
Manne, R. (ed.) (2003) Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal
History. Melbourne: Back Inc. Agenda.
MacIntyre, S. and Clark A. (2003) The History Wars. Victoria: Melbourne University
Press.
Moreton-Robinson, A. (2000) Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and
Feminism. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Nicolacopoulos, T. and G. Vassilacopoulos (2003) ‘Inquiry Into Hope’, Critical and
Creative Thinking: The Australasian Journal of Philosophy in School 11 (2):1-7.
Nicolacopoulos, T. and G. Vassilacopoulos (in press) ‘Racism, Foreigner Communities
and the Onto-Pathology of White Australian Subjectivity’, Forthcoming in A. Moreton-
Robinson (ed.) Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism. Queensland:
Aboriginal Studies Press.
Pound, E. (1975) The Cantos. London: Faber and Faber.
Reynolds, H. (1996) Aboriginal Sovereignty. New South Wales: Allen and Unwin.
Thompson, J. (2000) ‘Historical Obligations’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (3):
334-345.

NATURALISING DISCOURSES: ANTHROPOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE,
NATIVE TITLE AND ABORIGINALITY IN SETTLED AUSTRALIA.
Geoffrey Gray
There is an over-riding view that only those Native Title claimants who can show
continuity of cultural practices, which are located in a fictional past which starts in 1788,
are considered by the Federal (and High) Court of Australia to be truly Aboriginal. Loss
of cultural practices, including transformation of these practices, leads to a diminution of
Aboriginality. Anthropological discourse has been critical in the acceptance of this view.
There have been several cases which have revealed this loss as sufficient to deny the
claimants, the most well-known being Yorta Yorta, and in a non-related juridical matter,
but nonetheless having bearing on the idea of cultural authenticity, the Hindmarsh Bridge
Affair (Chapman v Luminis Pty Ltd (No 5), includes summary, [2001] FCA 1106 (21
August 2001). Cf the De Rose case).
This paper is part of a wider historical project. It follows on from some of my previous
work on Native Title, historians and expert witnesses, as well as my work on Australian
race, anthropology and anthropologists (Paul and Gray 2002; Gray 2000). In this paper I
examine the racial and racialised discourse of anthropology which denies ‘true’
Aboriginality to Aboriginal people in the south east and south west of Australia, what
Charles Rowley called ‘settled’ Australia. This paper seeks to develop a critical analysis
of anthropological knowledge (epistemology) and the way it has influenced
understandings of Aboriginal cultural and social life and history by the Court in matters
to do with Heritage and Native Title in settled Australia. Aboriginal people in settled
Australia are considered to have lost their cultural practices and consequently their
Aboriginality. In one sense Native Title has led to this idea being challenged but it has
been brought about more by necessity than conviction (Gray 2000: 194-5). This
anthropological discourse is both racial in its beliefs and underlines the significance of
naturalised discourses about being white. Hence Aboriginal people living in settled
Australia, if not denied their Aboriginality, have their Aboriginality problematised, and
their place within the white (Australian) nation is restricted to that of a transgressive
people.
My research is an historical project tracing the constructions of ‘Native’ in the
ethnographic literature - both in the public and private domain - and the power of these
constructions within a legal framework which decides on Aboriginal rights and
entitlements. I argue that anthropological knowledge is not created within a vacuum as
many of its practitioners seem to infer, if not necessarily believe; rather, anthropological
knowledge is historical knowledge and was gathered within a social and political time
which influenced its making. This knowledge is presented to courts unproblematically, as
if anthropological knowledge was and is always premised on scientific ideas unchanging
over time (Thomas 1991; Rose 2002; Hemming 2002).
I do not have the space to lay out the arguments for the following assumptions which may
not be shared by some anthropologists and others working in Native Title and Heritage.

The first assumption is that the ethnographic discourse is dominating and exclusive. The
second assumption is that anthropological knowledge, if not anthropologists themselves,
dominate the construction of Indigenous identity for white people and institutions;
thirdly, anthropologists presume(d) to talk for and on behalf of Indigenous peoples - that
is to say, historically the ethnographer knew who the Native was, and was able to
describe the physical and mental characteristics of the Native, as well as describing how
the Native lives structurally within his/her society. The voices of colonised/Indigenous
peoples are subsumed and framed in this wider discourse. It is also a discourse about
men rather than women - the historical andocentricity of Australian Aboriginal
anthropology is well described (Bell 1983: passim; de Lepervanche 1993: 1-13; Goodale
2001: 40-41; Moreton Robinson 2000: passim).
Many anthropologists who work in matters to do with Native Title claim that they have
no real authority within the legal process as they are only providing evidence required by
the court. In fact, they argue, it is lawyers who control the process and ethnographic
knowledge is only marginal in this process. Yet, when the Yorta Yorta Native Title claim
or the Hindmarsh Bridge affair are introduced into the equation, the role of
anthropologists is problematised. In contrast to the views expressed in relation to the
importance of anthropological knowledge on Native Title, a case is advanced for the
authority of anthropological knowledge in the construction of a people’s identity and
whether a people’s cultural practices are authentic and continuous (Rose 2002: 35-48;
Gray 2000; Symons 2003). Both these cases were underpinned by anthropological
knowledge and its support for the authenticity of cultural practices and beliefs. So what is
the role of anthropologists; how is anthropological knowledge situated within a historical
context; and is feminist anthropology somehow different to ‘mainstream’ anthropology
(Kimber 1997)? It is difficult to get anthropologists to accept that much of their
knowledge is historically situated (rather than scientific per se). That is, anthropologists
‘never see more than a small part of what is possible, but [their] frequent mistake is
thinking the small part is all there is’ (Read 1986: xiv).
This paper also assumes the long life of ideas deeply embedded in the coloniser’s mind
about who Natives are, in this case who ‘real’ Aborigines are, and where such Aboriginal
people could and can be found, that is, Indigenous people who follow a ‘traditional’ life
style. Implicit in such a position is the idea that ‘tradition’, within certain strictures, is
static. That these ideas of traditionalism permeate legal thinking was underscored in the
High Court appeal over Olney’s decision in Yorta Yorta.
Anthropologists have been critical in constructing this understanding of Aboriginality
(McCorquodale 1987; Reeves 1998). In a recent article Barry Morris reiterates a view
that anthropology, by defining itself in terms of ‘traditional Aboriginal communities’ in
northern Australia, has ‘moored itself to Aboriginal “traditionalism” as a marker of the
disciplinary expertise, and as a source of research funding’ (Morris 2003: 138; Attwood
1992; Cowlishaw 1992; Gray 2000; Hemming 2002). Morris argues that both the Land
Rights Act (1976) and the Native Title Act (1994) and its later amendments (1998)
required forms of cultural and social life that emphasised traditionalism; without being
able to demonstrate that such forms existed, the progress of the Native Title claim is

seriously impeded. As a consequence, anthropology has become inextricably linked to
the Australian legal system. Under both these regimes Aboriginal (including Torres Strait
Islander) peoples have to meet criteria which are a direct consequence of the kind of
tradition and custom documented by anthropologists. ‘In effect, indigenous identity and
culture must put itself through a trial, and demonstrate its members’ authenticity by
proving that their existence has remained largely consistent and continuous with its
traditional past’ (Morris 2003: 140).
The Native Title Act is more onerous than the Northern Territory Land Rights Act,
although both require to some considerable degree, that people have a continuing
association with traditional lands and demonstrate that they have retained beliefs and
practices from 1788, in legal terms the year of the loss of Aboriginal sovereignty and the
moment of colonisation by the British Crown. The High Court and the Federal Parliament
created this fictional moment to mask several legal problems with granting Native Title
under common law.
Who was(is) a ‘Native’?
A professor of anthropology at Oxford University commented to a colleague that it was
unwise for governments to consult with Natives: ‘a native is not the best authority on
native customs …[In fact] [h]e is the worst for he knows nothing outside his tribe and
sees everything in the light of his own customs’ (Thomas 1991: 174). In fact, so dimmed
is the historical and geographical memory that it appears that Native peoples have
historical amnesia. The ‘memory of each dimmed as the validating events surrounding
them receded … it was tacitly assumed that the past had always been like this’ (Margaret
Mead quoted in Iamo 1992: 80). In many anthropological descriptions a native was
therefore without history, without a knowledge of their past, and without place. That is
they were unable to place themselves within a wider geography than their immediate
environment, and they had no knowledge of other people other than, possibly, their
immediate neighbours.
In the first decades of the twentieth century a Native, for the purposes of ethnographic
investigation, was male and usually over fifty years of age; such people, it was assumed,
could remember life before colonial invasion and occupation. In reality most Aboriginal
people were living away from their country, often in jail or on a mission station, a
government reserve or a cattle station. Women were rarely considered worthwhile
subjects, let alone objects of anthropological desire. For example the work done in north
west Western Australia by the anthropologist Phyllis Kaberry was largely with women
who were living on either a Durack pastoral station, a government station (reserve) such
as Moola Bulla or Violet Valley, or a mission station such as the Anglican Forest River.
It was a rare occasion when she left the boundaries of the station compound. When she
did have the opportunity to move away from the compound she found a different
environment:
One of the more intangible results … was that I gained some insight into their daily life and saw
them as human beings. The last remark needs some explanation. I don’t mean that I had
previously thought of them as children or as sub-human. But ‘interviewing’ for 5 hours every day
at the mission, there is the danger of regarding them solely as repositories of anthropological

information, particularly in the case of one, who like myself has never come into contact with
Blacks, or any natives before. The method, though unavoidable, has its artificial aspect in that one
hears about their life, but sees very little of it. (Kaberry to AP Elkin, 22 September 1934)
Australian fieldwork was considered ‘rather more difficult than work in many other
regions and particularly … for a woman by herself’. Outside of Australia environmental
factors were not brought into play but rather the danger of sexual attack (and racial
tension) was highlighted. Women on their own in savage country were under threat of
sexual attack - rape - or so the white men thought. Hence women were sent to places
which were considered safe, where the savage had been pacified, civilised and brought
under colonial control. The American anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker, working in
New Ireland (Territory of New Guinea) in the late 1920s, scoffed at the danger. She told
AR Radcliffe-Brown that
Most of the white people in the territory are quite confident that I will be raped by a black.
But somehow, I cannot get excited over the matter, or even alarmed. … Intellectually I
realize there are certain dangers and I am taking what I consider sensible precautions. I
work completely, as I mentioned above, through old and responsible old men and the
women. I have nothing to do with the young “bucks”. I don’t need them anyway - and I
consider working with them unwise. The chief and the older men and women have an
extremely friendly and what might be called a protective attitude towards me.
(Rosman and Rubel 1991: 381-2)
Of course her interest in the ‘young bucks’ was contrary to her anthropological project:
these ‘young bucks’ were working on plantations next to the village and were the
products of colonial disruption (Rosman and Rubel 1991: 381-2). She was interested in
only describing the traditional (past) life, as remembered and occasionally lived by
people.
We can see this type of ethnographic research was framed by a number of considerations
which most certainly effected and influenced the production of ethnographic knowledge.
The Australian anthropologist WEH Stanner was a reflexive man unlike many of his
contemporaries and successors. He wrote in 1969 (his Boyer lectures were presented in
1968), that he ‘had been taught to turn my back on the speculative reconstruction of the
origins and development of primitive institutions, and to have an interest only in their
living actuality … [but] an interest in “living actuality” scarcely extended to the actual
life-conditions of the aborigines’ (Stanner 1969: 14).
‘just trying to rescue an image of the world that was being destroyed’
A recent correspondence with an anthropologist in the United States provided me with an
interesting if passe observation about anthropologists and colonial disruption during the
period 1920 to the late 1960s. What I liked about it was its phrasing: ‘Earlier
anthropologists were hardly unaware of the damaging presence of colonialism. They
were just trying to rescue an image of the world that was being destroyed’. When I read
this I was reminded of a comment by AP Elkin, who in 1979, in an attempt to explain
away his political timidity when in northwest Western Australia in the late 1920s,
claimed he had no humanitarian motives, only scientific interests, to which task he stuck.
He, like his contemporaries, was recording and recovering - rather than witnessing - a

past social and cultural life which had been subjected to more than 50 years - at least two
generations - of colonial disruption, killings, forced removals and the destruction of
country. By the time Elkin was in the northwest, many Aboriginal people were living on
some type of reserve - government or mission - or in jail, and had been subjected to
immense disruption of their lives (Kinnane 2003: 30ff). So what type of society was
Elkin recording and recovering? What did Elkin write? How influential was this
construction of Aboriginal life in the public and legal domains? Part of the answer lies
with authenticity and the reification of the past. I agree with Nicholas Thomas, who has
addressed a similar problematic, when he argues in Entangled Objects:
anthropologists … have resisted the implications of colonial history and transcultural exchange for
the sorts of people typically studied. Most of the writing … conceives of tribal societies … as
authentic, meaningfully stable domains which differ fundamentally from Western social regimes
… Modern anthropology has been, in a fundamental sense, about “other cultures”. The fact of
difference is anterior to any contingent similarities between ourselves and other people. …
Anthropology is a discourse of alterity, a way of writing in which us/them distinctions are central,
and which necessarily distances the people studied from ourselves. … Such a perspective seems
also to depend upon a radical denial of history. (Thomas 1991: 36)
Colonial rule enabled white people, anthropologists in this instance, an authority (power)
that fused their gender and underlined their whiteness Moreton Robinson 2000: 73-93).
Phyllis Kaberry was able to witness secret rituals and ceremonies with men. She told
Elkin that the ‘Blacks are very friendly, and having overcome their preliminary shyness,
have no hesitation in discussing their customs with me’ (Kaberry to Elkin, 22 June 1935;
see also Kaberry to Mary Durack, 16 June 1935). She commented to her friend, Mary
Durack, that
[f]undamentally I am of course feminine … But I have the faculty of being able, as it were, to put
my sex into neutral gear and conduct relations on that basis in the majority of instances. Perhaps it
is a bit abnormal, but when I meet men its only occasionally I am aware of them physically. My
first reaction (as a rule) is to see them as individuals – persons – rather than as men, and the same
applies to women. I think the same is true of my relations with natives: I react to them first as
individuals; only secondarily as people of a different culture and environment. … Even if the
attitude did not come naturally to me, it would be essential, since so often in the field I am the
only European woman. I have it both ways: that is, I am treated as a woman but there are no
emotional entanglements to upset myself and, more importantly, my work. (Kaberry to Mary
Durack, 29 December 1945)
It is clear that anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century witnessed a world
under pressure and struggling to adapt to these often dramatic and terrifying changes. Of
course not all colonial peoples were so affected but in the northern parts of Australia,
pastoralism in particular wreaked great damage. So when anthropologists were in the
field they turned away from the living actuality and sought out an imagined past which
they then represented as the present, as if there was no colonial disruption and they were
floating unimpeded through this imagined ahistorical past where people could conduct
their ceremonial life, hunt and gather as they had from time immemorial. Yet the
impetus for this was the belief that this life was not only under threat but would never
return: it had to be recorded before it was too late.

Aboriginality
Legal and public ideas about ‘Aboriginality’ are mediated through the lens of
ethnographic knowledge obtained in the way described above. Added to this is a dose of
exotica. This ethnographic knowledge is accepted by the court as providing an
authenticity about Aboriginality and what it looks like. This is highlighted in cases such
as Yorta Yorta - or more generally what is referred to as the south - that is ‘settled‘
Australia (Gray 2002: 176-200).
So what is the accepted definition of Aboriginality? Gaynor Macdonald, an
anthropologist whose primary interest is in the southeast, makes the observation that the
question of who is or who is not an Aboriginal person has plagued policy makers for
decades, if not from 1788! Ideas about who is Aboriginal have altered over time and
attests to a pre-occupation with discovering palatable criteria at different historical
moments for the inclusion or exclusion of ‘Aboriginal people’ to or from a right to the
benefits of the day (sometimes defined as benefits Aborigines receive, sometimes which
non-Aborigines receive). This can range, for example, from eligibility to maternity
allowance in the early 1940s to ATSIC housing loans in 2003. (The form contains a
section where the applicant has to prove their Aboriginality.) Since 1972 the
Commonwealth government has recognised the right of self-definition in its requirement
that a person who claims to be of Aboriginal descent and recognised as such by an
Aboriginal community is Aboriginal, although in practice it is clear that there are still
different shades of Aboriginality. These are likely to be voiced more in terms of the
presence or absence of certain cultural attributes - which make people ‘real’ or ‘not real’
Aborigines than the previously popular ‘biological’ attributes – ‘full-blood’, ‘half caste’,
‘quarter caste’ and so on. While these categories may not have much currency today there
is still a distinction made between ‘blackfellas’, ‘yellerfellas’ and ‘whitefellas’ in the
north.
How influential are these debates in influencing the way the court understands and
recognises Aboriginality? Justice Olney, for example, appears to have accepted the idea
that Aboriginality was/is defined by a series of criteria about the presence or absence of
certain cultural practices. In a general sense such arbitrary criteria disempower
Aboriginal people. Many of these ideas are a direct consequence of Aboriginality,
accepted and promoted by the Court with the direct or indirect assistance from
anthropologists and the way anthropology produces and frames ethnographic knowledge.
Is this also a process which disempowers Aboriginal people from knowing themselves
within the white nation?
The Court appears to valorise ‘traditional’. People deemed ‘traditional’ are able to meet a
series of disparate categories which all serve to buttress and reinforce their Aboriginality.
In settled Australia people were, from the early stages of invasion and settlement, losing
their Aboriginality. This was hurried along by the survivors’ removal from country to
reserves and mission stations. Modern social anthropology supported this by ignoring
such people as Aboriginal - they were regarded as remnants who had lost all contact with
their traditions. The attempt to show that traditional is not static but subjected to

sometimes dynamic change was the basis of the failed appeal to the High Court by the
Yorta Yorta.
Conclusion
The actions of the courts and the beliefs of lawyers and judges are not only informed by a
public imagining of who Aboriginal people are. They are also intertwined with historical
and legal ideas about property and who owns the land. To suggest that Native Title is
restorative justice, as I think many people hoped it would be, is to be naïve. It certainly
was disabused of such ideals in 1997 with the amendments introduced by the Howard
government. Howard presented a popular understanding of the connection between
land/country and Aboriginal people while implicitly revealing who Aboriginal people
were. At Longreach in Northern Queensland, soon after the High Court’s Wik decision,
John Howard declared ‘we [the Coalition] were the people who opposed’ Native Title
because [we] were cognisant of the possible outcomes. He continued:
We knew [white] people would have bogus claims put on their properties. We knew the right to
negotiate was a licence for some people to come from nowhere and make a claim on your property
and then say until you pay me out, we’re not going to allow you to do anything with your
property. Well let me say I regard this as repugnant and I regard that as un-Australian and
unacceptable and that is going to be removed ... You won’t have to put up with that anymore. And
under the procedures we have in place ... bogus claims will not succeed. ... Under the procedure
that we have in place the capacity of people to come from nowhere and try and interfere with the
conduct of your pastoral business will be taken away completely. (Howard 1997)
So much for forced removal, dispossession, murder, and colonial disruption as factors in
Aboriginal people coming from nowhere. Aboriginal people, in Howard’s imaginings,
wander off leaving their country (he is uncertain where they wander to), but then they
return from ‘nowhere’ to make a bogus claim on our (white) history and our (white)
place. Ownership has shifted from the murdered and dispossessed, who in Howard’s view
of the world never had it, to the perpetrators, those who forced Aboriginal people off
their country often by murdering, starving, and destroying their ability to obtain food.
Aboriginal people, as Peter Sutton pointed out, never lose their attachment to country or
their attachment to kin, no matter where they are living (Peter Sutton personal
communication).
So while I have suggested that anthropological knowledge is a significant factor in
imagining who Aboriginal people are and where they live, and that this has influenced
the way in which courts (the law) understand Aboriginal people’s attachment to country,
it is a deep seated psychosis in white Australia that denies Aboriginal people any
opportunity to establish their identity and reclaim access to their country in settled
(occupied) Australia.
References
Attwood, Bain (1992) ‘Introduction’, pp. i-xvi in Bain Attwood and John Arnold (eds.)
Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, Special Edition of Journal of Australian Studies 35

Bell, Diane (1983) Daughters of the Dreaming. Melbourne: McPhee Gribble.
Cowlishaw, Gillian (1992) ‘Studying Aborigines: Changing Canons in Anthropology and
History’, pp. 20-31 in Bain Attwood and John Arnold (eds.) Power, Knowledge and
Aborigines, Special Edition of Journal of Australian Studies 35.
de Lepervanche, Marie (1993) ‘Women, Men and Anthropology’, pp. 1-13 in Julie
Marcus (ed.) First in Their Field: Women and Australian Anthropology. Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press.
Goodale, Jane (2001) ‘Nearly A Lifetime With The Tiwi’ in Geoffrey Gray (ed). Before
It’s Too Late. Sydney: Oceania Monographs.
Gray, Geoffrey (2000) ‘[The Sydney School] seem[s] to View the Aborigines as Forever
Unchanging: South Eastern Australia and Australian Anthropology’, Aboriginal History
24: 176-200.
Hemming, Steve (2002) ‘Taming the Colonial Archive: History, Native Title and
Colonialism’ in Paul, Mandy and Geoffrey Gray (eds.) Through A Smoky Mirror: History
and Native Title. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Howard, John (1997) Address to Participants at the Longreach Community to discuss the
Wik 10 point plan, 17 May 1997. Copy in author’s possession.
Iamo, Warilea (1992) ‘The Stigma of New Guinea: Reflections on Anthropology and
Anthropologists’, p. 80 in Angela Gilliam and Lenora Foerstel (eds.) Confronting the
Margaret Mead Legacy. Scholarship, Empire, and the South Pacific. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
Kimber, Dick (1997) ‘Review of Diane Bell’, Aboriginal History 21: 203-232.
Kinnane, Stephen (2003) Shadow Lines. Fremantle Arts Press.
McCorquodale, John (1987) Aborigines and the Law : a digest. Canberra: Aboriginal
Studies Press.
Morris, Barry (2003) ‘Anthropology and the State. The Ties that Bind’, Social Analysis
47(1).
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen (2000) Talkin’ up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women
and Feminism. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Paul, Mandy and Geoffrey Gray (eds.) (2002) Through A Smoky Mirror: History and
Native Title. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Read, Kenneth E. (1986) Return to the High Valley. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Reeves, John (1998) Building on Land Rights for the Next Generation : Report of the
Review of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. Canberra:
Government Printer.
Rose, Deborah Bird (2002) ‘Reflections on the Use of Historical Evidence in the Yorta
Yorta Case’, pp. 35-48 in Paul, Mandy and Geoffrey Gray (eds.) Through A Smoky
Mirror: History and Native Title. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Abraham Rosman and Paula G. Rubel (1991) ‘Powdermaker’s Lesu’ Journal of
Anthropological Research 47(4).
Stanner, W.E.H. (1969) After the Dreaming. Sydney: New Century Press.
Symons, Margaret (2003) The Meeting of the Waters. The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair.
Sydney: Hodder.
Thomas, Nicholas (1991) Entangled Objects: exchange, material culture and colonialism
in the Pacific. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

WHAT IS WHITENESS? RACE, NATION AND IDENTITY
Ben Wadham
There have been significant changes in global relations over the past three or so decades
that have inscribed race as a principal marker of difference in global relations. In the last
decade in Australia particularly, race has become a way of managing that difference,
whether that be immigration and refugees, the War on Terror, Gulf war II or the practices
and cultures of global transnational capitalism. Whiteness studies is a relatively new field
of endeavour emerging from critical studies of feminism, post colonialism and through
the work and voices of predominantly marginalised writers. Whiteness studies today
reflects a shift to ‘mainstream’ in a sense, taken up by the academy with new interest but
still articulated through the subordinated disciples such as sociology, cultural geography
or women’s studies.
In this paper I will discuss the growth of interest in whiteness as a concept to describe the
process and practices of racialisation. I also am attempting to develop cultural
sociological approaches to understanding race, nation and identity. Australia was
established upon a notion of white supremacy, and while this policy was concluded in the
1970s it is not difficult to see the way that whiteness has re-emerged over the past decade
as an instrument for managing Australian citizenship. The Howard conservative
government has taken Australians back to an ideological context of us and them, through
the appeal to sameness and unity. This is a unity established upon the valorisation of
white Australian culture and its relationships with other global white nations (ie England
and North America) and the subversion of difference, for example Aboriginal
Australians, refugees and other non-white immigrants. Critical whiteness studies, I argue,
is a culturally and historically relevant theoretical approach for illuminating the racial
terrain of Australian cultural relations. In this paper I begin by briefly charting the move
from studies of race and racism to the critical study of whiteness. I then discuss the
contribution of cultural studies to theories of identity. I draw upon Theodor Adorno’s
notion of identitarian thinking and logic of disintegration to outline the operation of
dominance and the racialisation of whiteness.
A sociology of race and the turn to whiteness
Questions of race and racism emerged strongly in Western sociology after the cultural
turn of the late 1960s. The social upheavals of this time represented a widespread
cynicism in the project of modernity as it manifested in the apparatus and ideal of the
nation-state. Feminism, student protest, gay liberation and struggles for Indigenous and
black rights were some of the new social movements that emerged in alliance to
challenge the hegemony of Western systems of governance. Sociological analysis of race
and racism emerged alongside to explain these cultural dynamics, focusing
predominantly on the disadvantage of the Other. Critical theory, encompassing feminist
and postcolonial critiques also grew in stature and influence.
The racism of these times, and before, in Britain, America and Australia, for example,
was seen as a raw form of racism that focused upon the physiological characteristics of
the Other. Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1992: 14) explain that it is problematic to presume

that contemporary racism is endemically tied to the notion of race. By this they mean that
racism today is not always based upon distinct racial typologies or stereotypes. Tucker
(1987) describes this as the ‘new racism’. Tucker (1987:18) explains the new racism in
Britain as appealing to ‘a homogenous society… [which] is seen as the essential
ingredient for social harmony.’ The new racism thus appeals to different meanings and
conditions than the old racism. The old racism being the belief and practice that
‘perceived groups possess distinctive characteristics which determine their capacities and
behaviour, traits graded as inferior or superior’ (Tucker 1987: 16). Stratton (1998: 13-14)
argues that this new racism, in the Australian context, is most voraciously deployed by
the One Nation leader Pauline Hanson as a form of culturalism where some cultures are
seen to be incompatible with the Australian national culture.
Gale (1999: 2-4) draws upon the British experience of the new racism in the 1980s under
the leadership of Margaret Thatcher to describe the link between racism and nationalism.
Gordon and Klug (1986) argue that the new racism seeks to generate a sense of the
nationalist as natural, as the rightful possessor of land and nation. Within this discourse
the nationalist is seen as losing their culture to the immigrant. Cultural sameness within
the nation is exhorted, and the white nationalist is seen as the victim of ‘reverse racism’
(Gale 1999: 2-3). Tucker argues that this form of racism has adopted a way of describing
difference in racial terms, but avoiding the vocabularies of biological racism that
immediately identify the subject as using racism to articulate their point.
Andrew Lattas describes this racialisation of Others based upon their relationship to the
‘same’ of White Australia as egalitarian racism (2001: 108). Slavoj Zizek, writing of
similar concern within Eastern Europe describes this desire for homogeneity and cultural
sameness as postmodern racism (1995: 226). Zizek argues that:
… what we must be particularly attentive to is the difference between this “postmodern
racism” which now rages around Europe and the traditional form of racism. The old racism
was direct and raw – ‘they’ (Jews, blacks, Arabs, Eastern Europeans…) are lazy, violent,
plotting, eroding our national substance, etc., whereas the new racism is ‘reflected,’ as it
were squared racism, which is why it can well assume the form of its opposite, of the fight
against racism. (Zizek 1995: 226)
Lattas (2001: 106) argues that this ‘squared racism’ is a principal theme in contemporary
Australian racism. This theme emerges in the voice of people who deny that they are
engaging in racism. Lattas (2001: 107) describes the new racism in Australia as
articulating hostility toward the Other while refusing to inferiorise the body of the Other.
In other words, previous forms of racism have explicitly inferiorised the Aboriginal body
in relation to the white body, however the new ‘disembodied’ racism refuses to draw
upon such discursive techniques. Hence, appeals to difference are made through appeals
to equality, that we are all the same. Indeed, the claim is made that those others who have
been constructed as the victims of racism are now racist, seeking special treatment when
we should all be seeking to live equally and to be treated equally.
The turn to whiteness follows this trajectory, also attempting to explain this shift in
racism and racialisation from a preoccupation with the inferiority of the Other to a
preoccupation with equality and sameness. The sociological concern with race that
emerged previous to, and during the 1970s and 1980s has thus become an anachronism.
New discussions of race and racism, and the development of critical approaches to race

and racism have developed alongside these cultural changes. Whiteness studies is one
contemporary attempt to makes sense of these changes.
Cultural sociology: nation, power, identity
The ideal of the nation is constantly shifting and changing (Bhabha 1990: 1). In Australia,
ideas of whiteness have pervaded ideas of the nation and the Australian. White Australian
cultural policy officially ended its term in 1972 when the White Australia Policy was
officially renounced. Writers like Ghassan Hage describe the racial context in Australia
as shaped by an intense national desire for a white nation (1998). Moreton-Robinson
(2001) talks of the Australian nation being established upon a possessive investment in
patriarchal whiteness. Schech and Haggis (2001) describe the contemporary turn to a
monocultural white national identity. Moreover, the phenomenon described variously as
postmodern, new or cultural racism scaffolds these accounts and reflects this cultural turn
to refocus the accommodation of Self within the national space.
Whiteness studies analyse these cultural practices in terms of a reversal of the focus on
the Other to a focus upon the Self as well. Mainstream sociology has been criticised for
the tendency to focus upon the victims of racism rather than the perpetrators. Richard
Dyer explains that ‘race’ is usually attributed to Others: to the oppressed, violated and
disadvantaged (1997: 4). Dyer (1997) suggests that race has become a label signifying
simply ‘difference’, in many contexts leaving the attributes of the commentator
unquestioned. The invisibility of whiteness, or the capacity of whiteness to contribute to a
representation of sameness, is thus a fortress of white race privilege (Frankenburg, 1993,
1997). Australian scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson notes that ‘as long as whiteness
remains invisible in analyses, “race” is the prison reserved for the “Other”’ (2000: xix).
Whiteness studies, with its practice of reversing the gaze from the ‘racial object to the
racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and imaginers; the
serving to the served’ (Morrison, 1992: 90) is employed to disrupt the integrated
character of whiteness: to defamiliarise its naturalisation and its rendering as invisible
and taken for granted.
However, there is little theoretical work that uncovers the construction and operation of
dominance. The literature on whiteness more often than not stops at this claim of
reversal. This focus upon the relations of dominance however is central to critical theory,
namely postcolonialism and global feminism, but also the work of the Frankfurt School,
in particular Theodor Adorno, and the work of Stuart Hall of British Cultural Studies.
Critical theory, identity and the construction of dominance
Concerns with identity and identification help to elaborate the concept of whiteness.
These questions have always preoccupied sociologists and social theorists. The notion of
Self and Other is a common distinction articulated by critical theorists like Spivak (1988),
Said (1995) and Adorno (1996). The distinction between Self and Other is understood as
the fundamental distinction that constitutes consciousness - a sense of Self and by
implication a sense of Other (Adorno and Horkheimer 1973). After the cultural turn this
distinction has become a basis for understanding how subjects are shaped by language,
and how subjects shape their environment and self through language (Torfing 1999).

Language for critical theorists is the primary medium of cultural production. Language is
organised through discourse.
Discourses construct the objects of which they speak, that is, language develops around
particular objects of concern, working to describe and actualise the object. Discourses are
central to the different ways that objects of concern are represented. Language is always
only an attempt to represent the object of concern, or the Self or the Other. In other
words, the concept (or the signified) never fully corresponds to the object; there is always
lack and over-determination (Hall 1996; Rose 1996).
These ideas have quite particular implications for cultural sociology. Firstly, the focus of
analysis has moved from the constitutive subject to language or discourse. The focus
upon language or discourse is a focus upon systems of representation or discursive
economies. This also means that cultural relations are always being produced and
reproduced, represented, regulated and consumed through language and practice. The
focus upon language effectively reorients our analysis of power as operating through
discursive regimes – patterns and relations of knowing and acting. The language and
cultural logics drawn upon by governments in the management of Aboriginal
Reconciliation, for example, are intimately connected with broader and more
generalisable discourses of race and national identity. It is important to describe the
cultural contexts in which particular discursive economies of race and nation emerge. It is
also important to describe the links between individual narrative and collective discourses
of race and nation.
There are two points of note here: firstly, that identity is considered relational and
hierarchical. There are multiple forms of cultural relations, for example gender is
differentiated (Connell 1995), as is race or class (Frankenberg 1993, 1997). Secondly, it
is also useful to consider the ‘logics of identity’, that is, the ways that particular identities
position themselves within cultural relations (Hall 1992). Adorno and Horkheimer (1973)
describe the hegemonic logic of identity within Western philosophy, and Western
cultures more generally, as a dialectic of Enlightenment. This dialectic refers to the way
that the Self valorises identity and the Other is marginalised as an assertion of difference.
This reification of Self and Other occludes incommensurability, that is, this subject can
only conceive others on his terms. In some way everything must be commensurable, able
to be rationalised on the terms of the hegemonic subject. In the context of Australian
racialisation whiteness has become that cocoon where an exclusive national identity has
developed.
This dialectic of Enlightenment, alternatively described as identitarian thinking, is where
the Self articulates the Other as a threat to cultural and individual security, where the
destabilisation of the hegemonic order is experienced as disorder, and where multiplicity
is dangerous and commensurability paramount (O’Neill 1999: 9). This striving for unity
and coherence marks the hegemonic subject and is, I argue, the hallmark of the white,
masculinist, bourgeois Self (Adorno 1996, 1973; Becker-Schmidt 1999). It can be
described as manifesting a closed subjectivity (Jameson 1990: 9). We can think about the
logic of identity as relational, that is, identitarian thinking presents the hegemonic logic
of identification while others’ logics of identity sit in relations of subordination,

complicity or radical alterity to this logic and its associated identities, discursive regimes
and cultural practices. In other words, there are different ways of thinking and identifying
and different logics of identity. Bhabha’s (1990a) work on the third space, Adorno’s
logic of disintegration (1973), or Derrida’s (1982) deconstruction are different ways of
talking about the potential for critical and reflexive thought. It is argued that a logic of
disintegration would generate open, radical and inclusive subjectivities.
Studies of whiteness focus upon the relations of dominance by articulating the authority
of the invisible. Richard Dyer explains that ‘there is no more powerful position than that
of being “just” human. The claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of
humanity’ (1997: 2). The ability to present oneself as a representation of the norm, as the
standard by which all Others should be determined, is an instrument of authority and
privilege. It is part of the tradition of critical theory to work at the denaturalisation of the
taken-for-granted. Although not articulated through the theoretical ideas of critical theory
and cultural studies, whiteness studies attempts to uncover identitarian thinking and to
think itself through non-identity.
There are criticisms of whiteness studies also. A common criticism levelled at whiteness
studies is that it articulates whiteness in unitary terms. To speak of whiteness as a
singular, unified, coherent notion without considering the way this idea operates in
practice as well as language, the way subjects are constructed through race relations, the
logics of identification within different empirical contexts is to reify them and reinforce
their claim to represent humanity (Bhabha, 1990a).
The question of differentiation within the relations of whiteness is important. Bhabha
argues that a preoccupation with singularity in race or gender analysis is a significant
caveat (1995). It is significant because to think of whiteness in unitary terms neglects the
reality that people are located differentially and hierarchically within the relations of race
and whiteness. It is important to consider whiteness as relational, which the focus upon
discourse and practice supports. Whiteness is hierarchical and multiple and there are
those who are white, not white-enough and not-white. A relational understanding of
whiteness contributes to the disruption of the ubiquitous naturalisation of whiteness.
Arguing for differentiated notions of whiteness is a key strategy in achieving an
awareness of the contingency of these discourses and relations.
Another significant reason for adopting the concept of whiteness is the effect that this
concept has upon the traditional notion of racism and anti-racism. To focus upon
whiteness is to acknowledge that ‘racial domination is a system that positions or
constructs everyone that falls within its orbit’ (Ware 1996: 143). Whiteness describes
different relations of identification and domination. Whiteness is a way of describing the
predominant and racialised axes of meaning and differentiation within the Australian
context. All Australian subjects are in some way positioned within, or represented by, the
relations of whiteness.
To speak of whiteness then is to recognise that all subjects are raced and gendered.
Concentrating on whiteness obstructs the potential for people to stand outside of racism
by placing it as a moral problem for whites and a political problem for blacks (Ware
1996: 143). Moreover, when one identifies another as racist one is also defining who or
what is anti-racist. This dichotomy obfuscates a relational understanding of race and
gender, adopting highly reified notions of the ‘racist’ and the ‘anti-racist’. The concept of

whiteness seeks to understand how the discourses of race and gender are instruments for
organising social reality, as opposed to categorisations of particular behaviours and
identities.
Conclusion
In this paper I have attempted to outline a brief trajectory of the development of critical
race and whiteness studies in Australia and the West more generally. I have argued that
the question of identity has returned to sociology as a principal concern. Studies of race
and gender have developed significantly over the past 30 years, changing to address the
different articulations of race and power that have emerged in this time. Whiteness, in
one sense, has always been the object of analysis for the marginalised writer however in
the past decade or so this preoccupation has filtered through to marginal element of the
mainstream academy. In this paper I have outlined a number of concerns with traditional
sociological theories of race and gender and have articulated the benefits of looking more
specifically at the relations of dominance within a given cultural context. I have used the
work of cultural studies and radical social theorists to bolster the recent turn within social
theory toward whiteness studies. Whiteness studies, supported and elaborated through the
ideas of cultural sociology provides an effective and historically relevant approach to
considering questions of nation, race and identity.
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UNCOVERING RACE, RETURNING TO ORIGINS
Sonia Magdalena Tascón
Some beginning comments of a personal nature
[I]n this thoroughly heterogeneous society (where the truth can never be told
because anything is possible)…
(Seshadri-Crooks 2000: 1)
During the course of 2002, I became engaged with the ‘issue’ of refugees at the academic
and activist levels, and spoke publicly at different events in relation to the responses by
the wider community, the media, and policy, to ‘boatpeople’. One of the things that
struck me as I came to terms with the responses I was watching was the obvious racial
dimension. It seemed that the excessive responses of many people in this nation were
certainly based on multi-faceted factors: Australia’s colonial history, its geographical
place, its national identity and so on. One of these factors had to be that most
‘boatpeople’ were from the Middle East; this seemed to be pushing the boundaries of
racial tolerance in Australia. I recall mentioning this aspect of my interpretation of
events surrounding refugees at a public meeting organised by a refugee lobby group, held
at a Perth university. The response of the audience was largely one of defensiveness;
almost disbelief that race was involved in the way asylum seekers were being treated. On
an earlier occasion, I had presented a paper at a conference and had raised the race factor;
I repeated the paper a couple of days later in a related forum, and received a similar
response. I remember the questions because they related to ‘race’ on both forums: both
times the questions related to whether the events could be defined and thereby subsumed
entirely under the dimension of power and not have a racial character. Later that year as I
taught in a unit that confronted students with their own white privilege, many of them for
the first time, I read this in one of the essays:
I found it difficult to comprehend that I could be unwittingly
contributing to the occurrence of racism due to the colour of my skin.
Although politically I agree that “white people’s parameters are set by
their position as perpetrators and beneficiaries of racist social relations,
whether or not they engage directly in racist behaviours” (Dominelli
1997: 15). Personally I find that it is a difficult task to concede a
privilege I was not aware of possessing. Therefore my passive
resistance may continue to bolster white privilege and power as I am
unaware of how to recognize and confront the issue of ‘white
privilege’.
More recently, I presented some of my doctoral work to a group of postgraduate students,
during which I explored the issues of whiteness and racialised origins of Australia. Aside
from the fact that whiteness theory was new to many of them, I received the most
astonishing responses of defensiveness, as I tried to bring the conversation down to the
privilege we enjoy as white people in relation to others.

All of these experiences made me wonder about the issue of race in Australia, and our
ability to engage in these discussions at the public level, not merely amongst a small
group of interested academics. It seemed to me that race had become (or had always
been?) a contentious issue and we had lost the ability to discuss it without a deeply felt
discomfort or anxiety. I wondered about whiteness and invisibility in Australia, the
invisible privilege that arises as the other side of the markedness of race. This same
markedness so evocatively represented by Franz Fanon (1967), also gives rise to a
forgetfulness, an invisibility of being, that allows practices to continue, as described by
Anna Haebich (2000). I began to wonder about the double act of invisibility, which
provides hidden privilege and hides the ‘awfulness of race’ and our complicity in it. It
allows whiteness its continued comfort; that side of whiteness which attempts to ‘do
good’ – to allow those who form a part of this core to feel noble – whilst simultaneously
harming, as Jennifer Rutherford (2000) has mentioned in relation to the white Australia
fantasy. Whiteness relies on a fantasy and a (hidden) reality; it is the latter because of the
former. It produces material effects that at times cannot be named in order to uphold the
fantasy; these are hidden from public view so that all appears well. Whiteness is like a
mirror with two faces that allows those of us who are a part of it to feel righteous and
noble whilst engaged in practices and systems that harm certain people. The fantasy, that
we are ‘good’ whilst practising harm, is the subject of this paper.
Race[ing] anxiety
[A]nxiety…is situated at the border of the imaginary and the real…
(Sheperdson 2001: 1x)
Conversations about race raise great anxiety in Australia. As I write this paper these
anxieties are now subsumed under a wider rubric: the fear of the loss of privilege through
‘political correctness’ in schools
1
. These anxieties display themselves at various times in
various ways, in everyday practices and in government policy, particularly immigration
policy, but most consistently in relation to Aboriginal ‘issues’. Andrew Markus (2001)
suggests that race gained political prominence from 1996 onwards through official
statements made by Pauline Hanson and the policies and statements of the John Howard
administration. He comments that public discourse on race has been re-invigorated as a
result. The back cover of his book lists the following as issues that raise the race profile:
The number of immigrants; the contest over Aboriginal land rights; the
‘Asianisation’ of Australia; the response to the Stolen Generations; the treatment
of asylum-seekers; the fate of Reconciliation; international scrutiny of our human
rights record: hardly a day passes without news stories prompted by current
policies on these and other issues with a racial dimension.
Whilst these are certainly issues that keep occurring in the media, are they what public
discourses recognise as having a racial dimension? Pauline Hanson, Markus (2001) notes
did not consider her comments on Asian immigration, or Aboriginal welfare, as racially
motivated. John Howard and his administration would not consider the dismantling of
the Aboriginal Council for Reconciliation or the insidious undermining of ATSIC as
having a racial dimension. The 1901 Immigration Restriction Act does not have the word

race included anywhere (Jupp 2002: 8), nor does the 1958 Migration Act, yet they were
both used to enact the most racially exclusive practices. The discrepancy between the
ideal and the practice is so wide that the latter Act was not amended to accommodate the
changes that multicultural policies introduced in the mid-1970s. Indeed, Australia has
supposedly had a non-discriminatory immigration policy since the 1970s, yet
immigration figures suggest that arrivals have been encouraged from some places in the
world and not others (Jupp 1998). The public discussion fuelled by the increased arrival
of people in boats seeking asylum; their mandatory detention and the provision of
Temporary Protection Visas to acknowledged refugees; and the subsequent ‘border
protection’ legislation, has been labelled as having a racial motivation by some, yet the
Howard administration regards this as being for the national good, justified because ‘no
one likes to hold people in detention, but … they can leave’ (Smith 2004). It is thus an
issue of national sovereignty, not of race, and the onus is on those who transgress it to
‘leave’.
There appears to be an enormous incongruity between ‘doing’ race and naming it, a wide
gap between the practice and the idea of race. Race as a subject of analysis does not exist
in the Australian national imaginary. There is in the issue of race in Australia an anxiety
that goes far deeper than the competing representations of particular events: there is an
added fear of naming it as ‘racial’ or racialised. This fear as it is currently expressed has
recent historical roots, much of it connected to events of the Second World War, and
Australia’s own tarnished history with its Indigenous peoples and with immigration. I
contend here that this anxiety goes even deeper than these events, however. The
hesitancy about naming events as having a racial dimension, while still engaging in
racially discriminatory practices, has to do with a necessary disjuncture in the national
imaginary between the imagined and the real that occurred at the moment race came to
have its modern configuration, and could be used henceforth for the most severe
exclusions and injury. This schism has occurred as a result of a deeply felt national
anxiety that has been directly related to the originary act of erasure when the land, and its
people, was named ‘terra nullius’ by the colonial invaders. This act was but a logical
extension of the new form race had taken after the Enlightenment, and its role in the
formation of modern identities and its political constructs. The land had not been
inhabited by people, but sub-humans: racially categorised so, using the new knowledges
of the Enlightenment. It could be taken, but more importantly, the people could be
erased. The singular event of this originary invisibilisation is explanatory and
representative of the anxiety that made the separation between the imagined and the real
necessary. The originary anxiety to which this has given rise is so deep that the nation as
a narrativised construct has buried the issue of race and its consequences, in order to
maintain an integral identity.
Race in the national imaginary
...neuroses based on the inscription of memories from the past – a
psychical conflict that has been repressed, or a trauma that has been
unconsciously fixed in the unconscious, where its effects are able to

operate without the subject’s conscious knowledge… (Sheperdson 2001:
xlii)
In order for the modern ‘narrativised fantasy’ (Bhabha 1990) of the imagined community
not to collapse into ambivalence, it must create ‘no-go areas’ (Bauman 1991: 8). The no-
go areas become the systematic invisibilisations, forgettings, the unspoken: residues of
memories that remain unrecognised by the conscious sphere. The imagined community,
in Arnold Benedict’s terms, is a collective belief of a large group, most of whose
members have never met, nor are they likely to (Benedict 1991). It is an ‘imagined’
solidarity between all of its members, not in the sense of having no basis in material
reality, but rather that it becomes a potent force for constructing real worlds because it
exists at that subterranean world of the unconscious which renders it unquestionable.
Benedict makes this point to highlight the force of the imaginary, in producing material
effects. The imaginary is so powerful because it lies in that region where we imagine our
very being, and ourselves in relation to others: the unconscious. The imaginary is hence
closely tied to who we are, to identity. Modern identity relies on unitary visions of
ourselves, and centrally also to ‘goodness’ as part of that identity. In psychoanalytic
terms, anxiety is raised when the integrity of that identity is shattered: ‘the “threat” that is
“signalled” by anxiety is therefore a threat, not to life itself, but to the unity of the ego,
which is first and foremost the imaginary unity of the body’ (Sheperdson 2001: lii).
Although this relates to the role of anxiety in the human subject, it is also strongly
suggestive of how collective anxiety can arise if national identity is ‘threatened’.
Identity is maintained through a complex network of remembrances and forgettings,
spokens and unspokens, visibilities and invisibilities, all of which provide the scaffolding
for the maintenance of a belief in the subject’s essential ‘goodness’. The essential
‘goodness’ of the modernist nation-state is a necessary component of its identity; it is part
of the Enlightenment project towards equality, liberty and fraternity. Race has played an
integral role in the formation of the modern nation-state; indeed this political construct
could not have formed without the development of the modern notions of race.
Modernist concepts of race have remained a central force for identity-formation, a central
force in the formation of the popular imaginary, but race has not gained conscious
acknowledgement in the Australian imaginary because of the practices that this
knowledge has enabled. A break between the two worlds was needed in order for
modernist identity to remain integral. The break then enabled the invisibilisation of race
in the conscious sphere, where ideas are openly analysed, discussed and debated, whilst
practising racialised harm.
Let me consider the invisibilisation of race in a little more detail. By invisibility I do not
mean that the racialisation, racialised categorisation and racialised treatment of peoples
have not occurred, nor that these events have not been named as having a racial
dimension at times. They have. And this is the point that Anna Haebich makes in her
book Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800-2000 (2000). She suggests
that to Henry Reynolds’ ‘Why weren’t we told?’ (1999) question in relation to Aboriginal
dispossession of land, culture, and kinship ties, the answer is ‘we were, but we chose not
to notice or remember’. She reminds us that collective memory is a fluid event, relying

on the ‘institutionalised forgetting’ of events that ‘belie the image of a moral community’
(Haebich 2000: 565). David Malouf makes a similar comment: ‘we remember the bits
that speak well of us… the dark bits we suppress’ (quoted in Haebich 2000: 565). What I
am suggesting, as a slight extension to these theses, is that the process of forgetting is
intimately connected to [self]-identity and power.
Race has come to be used to create identities, and categorise human beings, and distribute
the promise of enjoyment/privilege differentially. As a discourse of supremacy it has
also been used to exclude, reject and exterminate. In Australia this has occurred at the
same time as the popular imaginings tell us that the nation is egalitarian, democratic and
inclusive. The Enlightenment produced discourses of emancipation, freedom and
inclusiveness. Race was used to promise the enjoyment of this emancipation to some and
not others; that is, only to those who could be racially categorised as ‘human’. The rest
could be erased from memory readily without moral compunction. At this moment
however, a residue of a memory remained, a trace of events that involved the
unspeakable. It was a memory, in the case of Australia, of the original act of erasure that
led to all other acts of erasure. When the category of non-human could no longer be
sustained – when those who had been labelled this way were shown to be equally human,
and moreover, those who felt themselves to be superior had enacted sub-human practices,
then a border was blurred, and uncertainty was created and racial anxiety was born.
Racialised treatment needed to continue to maintain the systems of privilege-distribution
already in place.
Race and the Enlightenment
Race as a knowledge that had the power to organise people and social relations developed
in its modern form in the Enlightenment. Race in the Enlightenment became a
knowledge linked to distinct and severe systems of power, as the new rigid borders of
definition constructed ontological Being anew, and organised social relations equally
rigidly. New borders of definition created sharp distinctions between all forms of life,
‘the human’ included. Racial epistemologies classified human beings hierarchically and
precisely according to the new Rationality and Scientism. According to Robert Imre,
race in the pre-modern version was a fluid concept that allowed for inclusion of strangers
and others much more easily:
In modernity, this changes forever as we now get different classification systems.
These classification systems are transposed from biological classification systems
dealing with global flora and fauna, and most of them deal with how species vary
over a geographical dimension. Human beings have gained an extra category that
is now termed as race. This is meant to demonstrate differentiation within the
human species itself. The odd thing is that it almost always seems to correspond
to a power relationship whereas earlier understandings of the idea of race were not
necessarily the case. (Imre, Personal communication 2003)
Race shifted from a pre-modern fluid concept of differentiation that could adapt to
differing circumstances, to a rigid border of definition in the modern era. Ivan Hannaford
makes a similar observation about the modern rise of ‘race’ when a:

methodological change, triggered by René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes,
and John Locke during the seventeenth century, created a useful way
in which things could be divided into material classes, genera, and
species, thus enabling natural historians to divide and subdivide
material things into general order more systematically than had been
possible before. This new method was considered to be as applicable
to primates as to plants, and especially to humankind…
(Hannaford 1996: 188)
Race and power became inextricably tied in new and severe ways. This new knowledge,
coupled with power, radically altered subject positionings and social relations. It
naturalised the [racialised] domination of those who could be considered as ‘lesser
humans’ or ‘non-human’ and thereby made it invisible. Race as a discourse that enabled
certain severe forms of oppression was tied to power through ontological Being. They
became tied through an intricate system of identification and categorisation that invests
power/privilege differentially. It is a system of categorisation, a knowledge invested with
power – or discourse – that ‘establishes differential relations among the races in order to
constitute the logic of domination’ (Seshadri-Crooks 2000: 7). In this sense ‘race
organizes difference and elicits investment in its subjects because it promises access to
being itself. It offers the prestige of being better and superior; it is the promise of being
more human, more full, less lacking’ (Seshadri-Crooks 2000: 7). Yet these categories are
relational and hierarchical: being better requires someone to be worse, being privileged
relies on having disadvantage. Race is a relational category, a social signifier and
organiser of social relations. The privileging of some on the basis of their race relies on
the disadvantaging of others using the same category, because in the annihilation of
difference, ‘[t]he possibility of enjoyment held out by Whiteness...’ (Seshadri-Crooks
2000: 7) is extinguished. That is, the maintenance of difference is crucial to this system
of categorisation. In this way, in the playing out of this power relation, does one become
normative and another ‘excess’. Similar to the manner in which Zygmunt Bauman
(1989, 1991) declares that genocide is inherent in the order imposed by modernity – and
is the ‘excess’ of modernity’s search for certainty and order – so are rejection, aggression,
and violence inherent in the racial categorisation of modernity. Whiteness as the
normative position, and the ‘natural’ site for the receipt of the promise of
enjoyment/privilege became firmly embedded in the new system of categorisation.
This enabled the emergence of new forms of oppression that were more essentialised and
rigorous. If race was to have such a central role in identity-formation, it needed to
become a silent force because of the pernicious practices to which it gave permission. If
the Enlightenment (whiteness) project was to retain its core beliefs in truth, justice and
liberty, then race as a category for domination needed to be left under a veil of secrecy,
for whiteness to enjoy the comforts of those beliefs, particularly after those categorised as
‘non-human’ could no longer be sustainably so classified. The disjuncture was necessary
in order for the modernist nation-state to maintain its belief in its goodness, whilst
pragmatically enacting policies and practices that excluded.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Australia, whose birth as a modern nation-state
came relatively late in the colonising and development of race as a power/knowledge of
the Enlightenment.
The naturalness of racial domination in Australia
This illuminates one of the stranger features of Australian immigration
policy: the consistent denial by officials of something which everyone
knows to be true – from ‘There is no racial discrimination’ to
‘Detention centres are not prisons.
(Jupp 2002: 8)
“Our social order is…a system of power and it is those who occupy
the places of political, economic, media and other sites of power in
our society who are most important in shaping our discursively
based understanding of Australia. Within this system of power, then,
certain ideas, and the language that describes them, come to be taken
for granted, naturalised. In short, they appear to be unquestionable,
even ‘true’. (Stratton 1998: 20)
Australia was colonised in the midst of the creation of these new knowledges of the
Enlightenment. Race was already in a form that made racialised domination seamless.
That is, the systems of thinking that constructed the modern forms of ‘knowing’ others
through racialised categories had largely been formulated by the time the British arrived
in what came to be named Australia.
It is at this point – when a particular order becomes established and is relatively
uncontested – that a knowledge or system of knowledge becomes ‘natural’, accepted and
transparent. ‘It is only when the processes of constructing dominance are complete that
whiteness enters the realm of the apparently natural, of doxa’ (Frankenberg 1997: 16).
At this moment when knowledges that have acquired such power form the limits of our
world, they attain a legitimacy that cannot be further questioned. Discourses of ‘the
natural’, a reference to nature as the final arbiter of what is ‘normal’, formulate that
beyond which there are no possibilities, only acceptance. From such a self-referential
position whiteness gains the power of universality, and may speak for all:
There is no more powerful position than that of being ‘just’ human.
The claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of
humanity. Raced people can’t do that – they can only speak for their
race. But non-raced people can, for they do not represent the interests
of a race. (Dyer 1997: 2)
Whiteness gathers the power of an invisible force whose authority can no longer be
challenged. At this moment the split between the imagined and the practice is

naturalised; the hiding of the practice of race from the national imaginary is possible,
because whiteness as a privilege has the power to forget and remember at will.
Race in Australia has been an invisible force for discriminatory action because whiteness
has been so embedded from its inception as a nation-state. It is thus that W.E. H. Stanner
when giving the Boyer lectures in 1968 could reflect about his own experiences with the
‘poverty, neglect, ill-health, ill-use and exploitation’ of Aboriginal people.
Apparently what lay before my eyes seemed to be a natural and
inevitable part of the Australian scene, one that could possibly be
palliated, but not ever changed in any fundamental way. (Stanner
1969: 13)
In this sense whiteness as an embedded ‘natural’ force in Australia was able to be
deployed for the formation of the imagined community at a beginning point. In
Australia, race as a discourse has configured subject positionings in insidious ways
because it has already been underwritten by a privilege that was uncontested, was natural,
from its inception as a nation-state. Within the Australian setting it has enabled the
repression of certain events and peoples from the popular imagination, without the name
of race attached to it.
Race and racialised practices have been embedded in the Australian ‘story’. But, from
the originary racialised invisibility that has led the nation to deny various other racialised
practices, race has remained an invisible component of the imaginary. At the very
moment when the nation imagined itself as independent from its colonial beginnings,
after having denied the human existence of the Indigenous population, the explicit
naming of race was denied by its mother-land. And thus the 1901 Immigration
Restriction Act had to rely on a deception, on a playing with mirrors, to enact what the
Enlightenment knowledges ‘naturally’ led the new nation to. And in the enactment of
pluralistic practices, in multiculturalism from the mid-1970s, there is but the attempt to
control difference (Lopez 2000).
The use, or practice, of race in Australia has been hidden. The Enlightenment’s
emancipatory ideals were injected into the Australian imaginary simultaneously to race as
a knowledge that differentially catalogued human beings and unevenly distributed the
benefits of a group. Two simultaneous and potentially contradictory discourses sat
within the Australian imagined community. The contradiction needed to be resolved in
some way in order for the nation not to dissolve into moral disintegration. The nation-
state of Australia, as a child of the Enlightenment and modernity, was required to
maintain an integral, congruous and unitary identity (and modernity seeks congruence,
certainty, and the eradication of ambivalence). The denial of certain peoples, the
repression of certain memories, were essential components of this identity-formation. A
schism between the imagined and the real (or practice), what Ghassan Hage (1998) and
Jonathon Stratton (1998) have mentioned as the ‘everyday’ or ‘real’, and the ‘official’ in
relation to multiculturalism, has clearly occurred in the national psyche to prevent the
[nation]-self’s collapse into confusion and trauma.

This is the schism that Miriam Dixson is referring to when, in arguing for the
maintenance of a ‘core’ Australian identity, she mentions the distance between the ideal
and the everyday practices; the rupture between the imagined and the real.
Representative institutions, divisions of powers, free speech and
press, women’s rights, the egalitarian thrust in society and family
– these are all part of Australia’s Western and Enlightenment
heritage, even though their enactment in everyday life falls well
short of the ideals informing them. (Dixson 1999: 14)
Although this distance is all but a natural part of the social terrain for Dixson, and she
mounts an argument for the upholding of the core identity in the ideal, the reality
different. This schism provides for the enactment of practices that are never named and
can thereby continue. The moment these events are named as racialised, they would
produce a type of incongruity for the national psyche, and send it headlong into a moral
panic.
It is the recognition of the disintegrative effects on the psyche of a moral panic that has
prompted many people to give of their time to refugees in the Australian community. As
a volunteer in this area, I have had many conversations with other volunteers. The
strongest theme, and it was one of my own, in the motivations for volunteering, was a
sense that what they were seeing enacted before their very eyes, was incongruous with
what they believed this nation to be. There was a deep disjuncture between their belief
about the values this nation embodied, and what they were seeing practised before them
on the media. This disturbed them so much that it moved them to action. There had
clearly been for them a disjuncture that they rushed to correct, a disjuncture between who
they thought they were collectively, and the practices that were being enacted in ‘their’
space, in ‘their’ name; so undeniably so because of their visibility. It was the undeniable
aspect of these very visible events that brought these volunteers head-to-head with a
reality from which they had been able to hide until then; hidden behind a belief that all
was well in the race arena.
The Australian state has had a pivotal role in the maintenance of the belief that all is well
in the race arena, in the creation of the spaces for white comfort. The state, indeed, has
enabled the complacency by playing both roles: as constructor and maintainer of the
public imaginary, and enacting racialised practices in the name of the nation. Race has
been dealt with by the state through its various policies: the removal of Aboriginal
children from their families to ‘whiten’ them; the funding of ‘culturally-appropriate’
bodies tied to state agendas; the institution and modification of legislation as suits the
varying governmental ideologies (see for example the vagaries of the Native Title
legislation over time); the instigation of multicultural policies to manage difference. In
this way the popular imaginary is undisturbed; and white people may enjoy an
untrammelled and untroubled existence.
Terra nullius and moving beyond race: returning to the origin

The self is a cloister full of remembered sounds
And of sounds so far forgotten…
That they remain unrecognised
(Wallace Stevens)
Late in 2002 at a public lecture in Perth, Ghassan Hage expressed an idea I had toyed
with subconsciously. He said that there appeared to be an added layer of anxiety in
Australia’s response to asylum-seekers; that it had to do with colonially-derived anxiety
because we know this land can be stolen. I believe that this fear we now see expressed in
such fullness towards refugees has to do with the originary act of colonial possession.
But I would say that it is not because the nation acknowledges its original act of colonial
possession that this fear arises in the form it does, but because the arrival of asylum
seekers recalls the ‘forgotten’ memories of past traumatic events; events that were never
named as traumatic, in order to maintain a sense of ease and comfort for those who
enacted them. The necessary link of responsibility, that which connects us to each other,
has been denied. The non-acknowledgement of Race and racialised treatment in the
Australian popular imaginary has allowed the perpetuation of the same with many other
people since, onshore refugees but the latest in a long line. But with this group of people
the nation is forced to face its denied memories far more palpably. The nation is forced
to face earlier traumas, those arising from its origins as a modern nation-state; as a
colonial outpost of Britain amidst ‘black savages’ and ‘yellow strangers’. It is forced to
face the very practices that gave it birth – invasion of [an]other’s space. They are
however events that have never been named as traumatic: unassimilable events of
considerable violence, exclusion and cataclysmic changes that have been erased,
undermined, or relegated to the ‘twilight of knowing’ (Haebich 2002).
Moving beyond race means unsettling current deep-seated anxieties by returning to their
origins: that original erasure of a whole set of people and their trauma. It is that original
displacement of others, as racialised Others, that has remained as a symbolic residue on
the national imaginary, and needs to be brought to conscious acknowledgement, to be
expunged. This means creating a connection of responsibility to that trauma, and making
it our own. We are all a part of the original invisibility because we continue to benefit
from its traumatic effects. It is an original trauma that whiteness has refused to
acknowledge and encompass as its own. It is a trauma relegated to the twilight of
knowing because to attend to it would require action and change, as all of us who have
volunteered time to the refugee ‘issue’ have realised. We need to become unsettled
because the comfort of our privilege harms others, the complacency of our ease maintains
the pain and discomfort of others. Unsettlement of current complacencies is all that is
left: the recognition of race as an organiser of social relations with the power to distribute
hope and enjoyment or harm, and our place within that system.
References
Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman, Z. (1991) Modernity and Ambivalence. London: Polity Press.
Benedict, A. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism (Revised and extended edition). London: Verso.
Bhabha, H. K. (1990) 'Introduction: Narrating the Nation' in Bhabha, H. (ed.) Nation and
Narration. London: Routledge.
Dixson, M. (1999) The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity – 1788 to the
Present. NSW: UNSW Press.
Dominelli, P. (1997) ‘Race, Gender and Social Work’ in M. Davies (ed) The Sociology of
Social Work. London: Routledge.
Dyer, R. (1997) White London, New York: Routledge
Fanon, F. (1967) Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press.
Ferguson, H. (2000) Modernity and Subjectivity: Body, Soul, Spirit. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia.
Frankenberg, R. (1997) ‘Local Whiteness, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing
Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism. Durham: Duke University Press
Haebich, H. (2000) Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800-2000. WA:
Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
Haebich, A. (2002) ‘Twilight of Knowing’, public lecture given at The University of
Western Australia, August 28, 2002.
Hage, G. (1998) White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society.
Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press.
Hage, G. (2002) Public Lecture ‘Let’s Talk About Race’ in Perth, Australia on 12
September 2002.
Hannaford, I. (1996) Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Baltimore: The Woodrow
Wilson Center Press/ The John Hopkins University Press.
Imre, R. (2003) Personal Communication, unpublished.
Jupp, J. (1998) Immigration. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Jupp, J. (2002) From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration.
Cambridge University Press.

Lopez, M. (2000) The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945-1975.
Carlton, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Markus, A. (2001) Race: John Howard and the Remaking of Australia. NSW: Allen &
Unwin.
Reynolds, H. (1999) Why Weren’t We Told? Ringwood, Vic.: Viking.
Rutherford, J. (2000) The Gauche Intruder: Freud, Lacan, and the White Australian
Fantasy. Victoria: Melbourne University Press.
Seshadri-Crooks, K. (2000) Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race. London,
New York: Routledge:
Sheperdson, C. (2001) ‘Foreword’ in Roberto Harari (ed) Lacan’s Seminar on Anxiety:
An Introduction. New York: Other Press.
Smith, M. (2004) The Australian newspaper, January 21.
Stanner, W. E. H (1969) After the Dreaming: Black and White Australians: An
Anthropologist’s View. Sydney: A.B.C.
Stratton, S. (1998) Race Daze: Australia in Identity Crisis. NSW: Pluto Press.

41
THE PARADOXES OF EXCLUSION AND BLAME: WHITENESS, WELFARE
AND THE POLITICS OF DENIAL
iii
Susan Young
The construction of a welfare narrative
It is 10am on an August Monday morning during the school term. A stolen car driven at
high speed by an underage driver crashes, killing a passenger, a boy aged twelve, and
hurting other occupants. The media are quick to report it, seeking comment from
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal leaders, amongst them the Premier. Criticising
Aboriginal leaders for their failure to make ‘clear and unambiguous message(s) that there
is no future in that behaviour’ (Gauntlett and Wilson-Clark 2003), the Premier is
extensively and repeatedly interviewed about the event, angrily demanding to know why
the children were not in school. He later criticises Aboriginal leaders for engaging in a
‘culture of denial’ (Toohey and Schubert 2003) which blames history for ‘children’s bad
behaviour’. The family of the dead child is identified, and it is reported that they were
due to be evicted from their public housing the following day following complaints of
anti-social behaviour from neighbours. This was now delayed, but the family would still
eventually have to go. The house is occupied by a mother, several children of her own,
including a disabled daughter in a wheelchair, and other children for whom she is caring.
The grief of this family for their dead son, brother and cousin is caught in the public
interest news. This and other stories about the ‘issue’ keep Perth readers, radio talk-back
and television current affairs energised for two weeks. The ‘issue’ is an Aboriginal
problem, car theft, anti-social behaviour, solvent abuse
iv
. The driver, of course, is
Aboriginal. Premier Gallop is quoted, ‘This is not about race’ (Toohey 2003).
I use this story and title it a welfare narrative because it contains elements which assist
me to explore and understand how the welfare discourse has moved from the early
exclusionary practices of White Australia and protectionism, through a period of equal
opportunity in which non-white people were seemingly included, to a position in the
twenty-first century where it can be demonstrated that exclusion not only continues to
affect non-white people disproportionately, but they are also considered to be to blame
for their exclusion. I will demonstrate this through two further examples.
The Northbridge curfew
Since May 2003 a curfew has been imposed on under 16 year olds in the popular
nightspot, or ‘adult entertainment centre’, of Northbridge. Initially proposed by the
Deputy Lord Mayor of Perth (a publican), claiming the inappropriateness of the area for
young people, the idea was quickly embraced and enacted just over a year later. The
curfew catches proportionally many more Indigenous youth than their non-Indigenous
counterparts, emphasising effect over the disavowed intent. This leads to a complaint on
this basis invoking the provisions of equal opportunity legislation of indirect
discrimination. Whether or not Indigenous youth were the target, there was sufficient
evidence prior to the curfew that they comprised the majority of young people removed

42
from the streets, which raises an interesting question. If young people were being
removed from the area prior to the curfew, why was a special strategy necessary? Well
over 80 per cent of those removed were Indigenous (Russell 2003), figures which have
stayed high, reaching 90 per cent in the six months since the curfew began (Department
for Community Development 2003). The Premier, who has taken this as his particular
responsibility repeats, ‘This is not about race’.
Here welfare directions and decisions are articulated through law and order discourse,
which is a particular aspect of welfare. Until the late 1980s, juvenile criminality retained
its welfare or rehabilitative construction, underpinned by an acceptance of young
people’s non-adult status and the expectation that they would be able to overcome any
criminal tendencies with the correct treatment. At the beginning of the 1990s, the welfare
of juveniles was replaced by a justice discourse which reconstructed young people as
having to make reparation for their criminal acts. Since then, young people have become
increasingly viewed as young adults in the eyes of the law with demands that they meet
adult responsibility criteria.
The uneasy dynamic between youth safety and youth wrong-doing is demonstrated by
public representations of young people over the period from the curfew suggestion to its
enactment. Young people were originally publicly constructed as in need of protection
(Hewitt 2002), then anti-social (Wilson-Clark 2003) and eventually, criminal (Pennels
2003). It is evident that the young people of Northbridge, even those who are not ‘doing
anything wrong’ (Wilson-Clark 2003) in the words of a local restaurateur, are
criminalised on a belief that they might commit an offence and so must be curtailed by
the justice system. Although political statements repeat that the curfew is enacted in the
interests of the young people and to keep them safe, these young people are being
criminalised, with a disproportionate focus on Indigenous youth. A more recent policy,
Parental Responsibility Orders (Office of Crime Prevention 2004), announced over the
Christmas period targeting parents of young people involved in anti-social behaviour,
reinforces this suspicion.
The closure of the Swan Valley Nyoongar Community
A government inquiry was called in 2002 following the death of a 15 year old girl at the
Swan Valley Nyoongar Community, close by Perth. The circumstances of the death were
such that concerns were raised about the continuing safety of other women and children
there. The subsequent Gordon Inquiry reported on family violence more broadly among
Aboriginal communities in WA, and contributed to the Australia-wide debate about
violence in Aboriginal communities. This inquiry noted some dissatisfaction with the
way government agencies responded to reported and suspected incidents involving
violence perpetrated on women and children at the Swan Valley Nyoongar Community.
One year after the handing down of the report, concerns were still expressed about their
safety. In April 2003, legislation was introduced to close the Community, and in June the
remaining people were evicted. To date, no allegations of sexual abuse of children have
been substantiated in court.

43
Such was the opposition to the legislation that a Select Committee of Parliament was
called. Considering that powers already existed to allow authorities to enter the
Community, to take action to ensure investigations for sexual abuse were carried out, or
even to remove certain people from the Community, this committee sought to ascertain
how the government justified the legislation’s introduction and speedy passage through
parliament. The questioning in the inquiry centres on the necessity to enact special
legislation to ensure vulnerable people could be protected, which was purportedly not
possible without such power. No one involved considered that protective measures
should not be taken; they differed in the authority used to do so. The Chairman of this
committee summarised the issues during one of the public hearings:
I will summarise those four elements … The first is that it is an Act directed towards a
particular group of people. The second is that it deprives those people of rights that would
otherwise apply. The third is that it deprives them of the right to natural justice, and the
fourth is that it deprives them of recourse to the courts.
(Select Committee on Reserves, WA Parliament 2003: 14)
While the target of this inquiry was the government decision to legislate to enforce
compliance in relation to allowing access to women and children whose safety was of
concern, the Chairman clearly outlines the effect above – that this legislation affected one
group of people (Aboriginal) in ways that differentiated them from non-Aboriginal
people. As one respondent to the inquiry noted, ‘I saw it as a piece of legislation that had
a clear-cut empowerment to disempower’ (Chance 2003: 2).
The discourse in operation here is that of domestic or family violence within the welfare
framework – that is, mainstream social policy to ensure the protection of women and
children. The means used to protect women and children in this example, however, are
race-based, using legislation not applied in cases involving non-Indigenous people.
This series of events was played out, like the issue of the curfew and the death of the
young boy in the stolen car, in the full gaze of the public, mediated through print and
electronic news and talk-back outlets. Everyone had an opinion, and the subtleties and
intricacies became submerged by increasingly vociferous claims and counter claims.
While most reporting is careful to avoid labelling the problems associated with violence –
a feature in all these stories – as specifically Aboriginal problems, their juxtaposition in
the media and daily discussion inextricably connects them, such that they almost without
question become indivisible: Aboriginal car thefts, Aboriginal drug, alcohol and solvent
abuse, Aboriginal child abuse, Aboriginal violence. It is the adjective which becomes
prominent so that the term becomes the noun, inseparable from each other. Aboriginal
people become the problem, not people who are experiencing the problem. Supporting
statistics showing levels of substance abuse, violent deaths, offending and other social ills
only serve to reinforce the unstated belief that Aboriginal people are the problems.
The final example is almost benign by comparison.

44
A return to assimilation?
Since 1984 there has been a principle of Aboriginal child placement in WA designed to
ensure that Aboriginal families are first to be considered when finding suitable substitute
care for Aboriginal children. This has been supported by the establishment of funded
Aboriginal organisations. In the middle of 2003 a non-Aboriginal organisation was
awarded a tender to provide Aboriginal child placement through an Aboriginal
organisation which had, prior to that time, been providing this service itself. This change
was quiet, arriving with very little publicity. The tender was awarded by the state
department with responsibility for child welfare. It may well be that the smaller
organisation lacked the resources or skills to manage a large task and could do with the
supports available through an established and large organisation with many years of
experience and considerable resources, and that they can work together to great effect, so
I am not judging the efficacy of the move. But it does raise questions about how and on
what grounds such decisions are made and how the standards are set. Initial responses
from the Indigenous agency suggest that management priorities tend to favour programs
and practices that apply across services for all children. This has the effect of displacing
particular Indigenous requirements for Indigenous children.
Mainstream welfare discourse is again evident here. Welfare, or state provided services,
is constructed as a publicly funded commodity, subject to the rules of efficiency,
effectiveness and value for money. It is constructed as obeying laws of equality and
impartiality, where the ability to compete is considered to be unarguably equal.
Supporting constructions denounce separatism on the grounds that it merely serves to
continue the disadvantage. The voices calling for a return to the provision of mainstream
services have re-asserted themselves over the last few years, drawing on both anecdotal
and selective evidence as well as reframing failures in programs as the result of separatist
policies (Johns 2003). ‘All policy should be neutral on the question of identity’, says
Johns, providing a public voice to a view that is commonly held amongst much of the
population. This illustrates the assumptions implied by the neutrality of policy
implementation, that treating people the same is going to result in the same outcomes and
that ignoring difference is going to impose similarities. So the non-white person who
undergoes or experiences a program or service will gain the same benefit as the white
person, and will also become the same as a white person as if that were the pinnacle of
achievement.
It may or may not be coincidence that the organisation now responsible for managing the
child placement service offered through an Indigenous organisation is also responsible
for the management of the housing tenure of the family of the young man killed in the
high speed car chase mentioned in my opening story. The connection of this agency with
both of these situations is not to suggest that there is some greater conspiracy which
positions this agency as complicit somehow in how these specific events unfold,
especially the death of the young boy. But a related matter which goes to the heart of the
current administration of welfare and its overarching discourse is worthy of discussion
here. As a relatively large organisation with considerable resources, experience and
ability to withstand some financial outlay, this agency is better placed logistically and
financially at least to tender for the services it has incorporated into its functioning – of

45
relevance here, managing houses for the state housing corporation and running a child
placement service for the state department for child welfare. The fact that the housing
service and the child placement service are both for Aboriginal people, on the face of an
openly let and awarded tender, should be irrelevant according to this discourse. This is a
perfect example of the centrality and the invisibility of whiteness, where the very
conditions of transparency, open and accountable governance, impartial and objective
management mitigate against those organisations whose presence in the market place (the
location of and for tenders) has a relatively short history – organisations which contain
fewer people, with less experience and less ability to carry the time and financial costs of
preparing tenders which may not be successful, even though an essential criterion is
cultural or ethnic suitability.
The welfare discourses of exclusion and blame – transforming the welfare recipient
into the mutually obliged citizen
Australia’s history is widely acknowledged as being built on exclusionary practices based
on race, privileging white people and disadvantaging those who are not white
v
. The
formal removal of the White Australia Policy in the 1970s notwithstanding, continued
privilege accrues to those who can be called ‘white’
vi
.
Australia’s welfare practices were derived from and supported the nation’s foundational
exclusionary policies. Far from being consigned to the past, exclusionary practices
continue today, so that non-white people are being prevented from participating in
Australia’s body politic just as effectively as if there were an official White Australia
Policy (Davidson 2003). Apart from a brief and some (Delgado 1995) might say very
conservative reform period in the 1970s, exclusion has been central to Australia’s
protection of its national identity. These exclusionary principles have also applied to
welfare provision, concerning who could and should benefit from state attention and
support. So at the time when Australia was leading the world in benefits to workers in
need, it was also actively denying that non-white workers were legitimate applicants. I
maintain that though the discourse of welfare has changed, the nature of exclusion is still
raced.
In the three decades since the brief reforming period of the Whitlam era and the passing
of the Racial Discrimination Act, many of the reformist processes have been almost
entirely overturned by both sides of the political spectrum to be reconstructed into the
current public policy of welfare restraint. State responsibility has been reconfigured into
individual responsibility, with the mutually obliged participant or citizen being favoured
over the welfare recipient. The twin ideals of individual responsibility and reciprocity
underpin state support, evoking the image of a benevolent but firm state whose aims are
to encourage the development of an individual who works hard and whose effort will be
rewarded by full participation in society. People who fulfil these requirements can rise to
the highest office in the land. Citing his humble background (outback Australia, ‘dusty
Wiluna’), the newly appointed Governor-General confirmed the mythology of egalitarian
Australia by admonishing young people to work hard to achieve their aspirations,
‘especially those in Aboriginal, mining and outback communities’ (Ruse 2003).

46
Importantly, they will not need to be supported by welfare, is the unspoken sub-text.
People who have not had to expend effort because they have been supported by the state
(so becoming dependent) become lazy, they lose or do not develop the ability to
contribute (reciprocate) – they become non-active citizens. People must be encouraged.
Mutual obligation therefore becomes the state means to ensure people develop these
attributes and become productive and contributing workers. That this policy has the
worker at its centre is no surprise, given the way Australia’s welfare state was founded on
the image of the body of the working man (Castles 1985).
There is a great deal of public support for these ideas. They seem reasonable. They
appear fair. If people are being supported out of the public purse, the public should be
assured that the expenditure is wisely and appropriately spent. Moreover, it is argued, if
people do not have to do anything for the support, then there are worse effects than
dependency (Pearson 2000). Despair leads to more negative and socially damaging
behaviours. Violence results, communities are torn apart. People die and are killed.
Morality, reason and alarmist statistics become potent partners.
The move from the negative welfare recipient to the positive mutually obliged participant
or citizen has been so easily managed it has been able to gloss over the troubling and
problematic aspects and consequences for people who are at its heart. Farm subsidies,
drought relief, or working parent childcare places do not count as welfare. Location of
public facilities such as art galleries and libraries and their usage do not count. Grants,
tax relief and subsidies to private schools do not count. What is taken as mattering is the
infringement of the norms of those who are hard working, law abiding, non-violent,
moderate and socially acceptable in their habits. The public face of those who infringe
these norms is presented daily in our media, racially or ethnically unidentified at first,
except by subtle references to their legal representatives (Egan 2003), but then becoming
through association and continued media examination ‘the problem’. What is not
publicly discussed as part of this presentation is any acknowledgment or acceptance of a
state or social role in the categorisations which exist in social, political or economic life
which consign some groups of people as groups into marginal positions through
historical circumstances or political decisions made at different and present times. We
are encouraged to believe that we are all starting from the same point.
For non-white people who fall into the category of welfare recipient, there is an
additional burden. Despite the scientific denunciation of a biological foundation to racial
difference, social attitudes have proved much more persistently hardy, and racism, an
outcome of perceiving racial difference, is no less present for it having no scientific
support. Race is a powerful marker especially in the realm of welfare provision. The
nexus of the mutually obliged participant and the racially constructed being in social
policy illustrates this changing welfare discourse.
I next identify two paradoxes in this discourse, those of the characterisation of the
welfare recipient as an active-passive being who is located at the centre-periphery. The
way these paradoxes play themselves out shows how these taken-for-granted
understandings come to represent both the raced subject and whiteness. I will show that

47
whiteness itself is paradoxical – it too is active-passive and centring-peripheralising. No
longer only invisible norm (Hall 1992), but also acknowledged as active violator of the
non-white Other.
The active-passive paradox
It is here that I introduce one of the paradoxes inhering in the discourses: the active-
passive participant. Because non-white people proportionately comprise the most
frequent users of the various social services which are considered to be welfare related,
thus incurring material violation (Leonardo 2002), negative attitudes tend to accrue to
those people, who are variously described as welfare dependent, bludgers, no-hopers.
These discursive attributes raise the paradoxes. For raced beings (read non-white,
because white race is rarely applied in these circumstances) in particular, there is the
additional layer of attributed dysfunction and characterisation of criminality, violence and
anti-social behaviour as a group, thereby discursively violated (Leonardo 2002), which
does not necessarily accrue to white mutually obliged participants. They instead are
constructed as possibly lazy or work shy or uneducated, all passive positions. Non-white,
but raced beings are considered to be active in their drug and alcohol abuse, their use of
violence, their behaviour which is either criminal or anti-social. This is especially so of
Indigenous people but also applies to some Asian groups, particularly so-called gangs.
Paradoxically, this denial is articulated differentially as non-white people continue to be
over-represented in the negative socio-economic indicators, yet in the current political
and social climate this disadvantage is turned against them and they are constructed as
being to blame for their circumstances. There is thus a curious and paradoxical dynamic
enacted in representations of the non-white and raced being – at one and the same time
passive (welfare recipient) and active (at fault, to blame for his/her circumstances through
her/his own actions).
Whiteness is variously theorised as dominating. Tascón and Imre (2003) for example
argue that it is the complete invisible control of whiteness which allows events such as I
have described to remain unanalysed by the mainstream. I take this to mean that the
Australian social and political body accepts into its consciousness the normality of these
claims, instead of providing other explanations for continuing offences, infringements
against acceptable behaviour, excessive alcohol use and so on, and does not offer a white
or dominant racial analysis with which to examine them. The continuing invisibility of
race as an analytical tool or concept continues to allow our governing bodies to deny that
race has any salience in this condition. This is the politics of denial which was so deftly
and ironically used by Premier Gallop when refuting contextual claims which contribute
to disadvantage and dysfunction, in relation to the car theft and subsequent death of the
young boy mentioned earlier. The facts, according to this construction, are all that should
be considered, even though one of these facts was demonstrably wrong – the claim that
the boy ‘should have been at school’ (Toohey and Schubert 2003), when it was a pupil-
free day. It is this invisibility which permits the politics of denial.

48
The centre-periphery paradox
Whiteness as invisibility consigns non-white people to the margins. If we accept the idea
that whiteness is material and discursive violence (Leonardo 2002) then we are moving
beyond the passivity of whiteness as invisibility and whiteness as norm and unmarked
space into a more active agency. Whiteness as discursive and material violence
deliberatively condemns non-white people to live on the margins through materially
denying them, at the same time as creating what Foucault (1972: 33) has referred to as a
certain ‘manner of statement’ or ‘style’, as ways of imposing knowledge. Discursive
violence determines people’s way of being through allocating self-responsibility for their
material want and extends to culpability in the more destructive behaviours of law
breaking and other attributed anti-social behaviour. There is an elegant dynamic at work
here. Instead of bearing some responsibility for marginalising Indigenous people, non-
Indigenous people can now claim Indigenous people solely bear that responsibility as a
result of their own actions. While Indigenous people are on the margins, they are also
fair game to be brought into the centre to be viewed because they are responsible. The
second paradox, of centre-periphery, which has elsewhere been used to allude to the
positioning of minority women as ‘normalised absence/pathological presence’ (Phoenix
cited in Pettman 1992: vii), at once invisibilises and illuminates.
Whiteness, exclusion and blame
The examples have common elements. They all concern Indigenous people whose
behaviour has been named or implied as being problematic, whether as inability to
parent, or being violent, criminal or anti-social. Even the child placement agency has
negative connotations, why else would it fail in securing the tender to continue to provide
services? These examples, with the exception of the last, concerning the child placement
agency, were highly publicised and attracted considerable public debate on talk back and
other public affairs media programs. In all of these examples the race of the people
concerned was identified, even though we know scientifically that biological race is a
nonsense. Irrespective of this, people are raced. So I might summarise that non-white
raced beings are identified and considered to be public property, justifying public
denunciation of criminal, violent or other unacceptable behaviour. It is also a very short
step from naming problem behaviour to identifying the people and their race whose
behaviour is suspect as the problem, particularly in public discourse. So repeatedly in
public representations of these events we hear of Aboriginal violence, Aboriginal car
thieves, Aboriginal anti-social behaviour and so people, again raced beings, become the
problem (Dominelli 1997).
The white corollary almost never happens. We rarely identify as raced white car thieves
or white substance abusers or domestic violence perpetrators. At the same time as these
problems become raced problems, these problems also become public property, and fair
game for scrutiny and judgement by all in the public interest. Greater surveillance
becomes demanded and accepted so that those whose behaviour is not directly to be
legislatively sanctioned because they are not precisely breaking a law, are caught in a net
of condemnation and public pillorying. So all young people on the streets of Northbridge

49
after dark and all members of a community attract an authoritative gaze, in case they
offend.
Many of these families have additional troubles, material disadvantage and need, such as
those mentioned in the first story. Here the mother could quite possibly have welcomed
‘family support’ or other services to relieve her material want. She, however, remained
on the material margins living in relative poverty, as primary carer for all her dependents
with very little support, until neighbours complained about the ‘anti-social’ behaviour of
the younger children and eviction notices were issued. This family then became
discursively as well as materially visible. The death of one of the children moved this
family further into the centre of attention. Active-passive/centre-periphery intersects
here. A welfare dependent family (passive) who chooses to commit anti-social
behaviours (active) is designated to the margins (poverty and disability) at the same time
as their circumstances and it will be admitted some actions (car theft), reposition them to
centre-stage. They then become the focus of all and the ‘rightful’ target for public
condemnation, occupying several pages of newsprint over a relatively (in media terms)
lengthy period, and leading to other related stories of similar ilk. It is no surprise that this
family is Indigenous and identified as such. The public examination in both electronic
and print media involving the Premier ensured maximum exposure. Condemnatory
comments accusing Aboriginal people of using the past as excuse allowed further
denunciation from a public which has been encouraged to disavow a black armband view
of history. The final denial, that this outrage at the behaviour of families and children has
nothing to do with race, cements the responsibility and thus the censure on the bodies of
the non-white actors. A politics of denial, that accuses the Other of its own denial (of
responsibility) reaffirms the supremacy of the rightness of its position and of the right to
so conduct itself. Marginalisation here is an active choice, the intersections of centre-
periphery and active-passive meld into one another to become the truth.
People so caught are, for these public censures, centre stage, fixed in unrelenting
spotlights, unable to move out of the gaze until public attention moves on, when they
move again to the margins, to manage their material disadvantage which now has
discursive constructions of blame. There is the additional burden for such people of
always being aware that at any time the public desires they will be brought back into the
centre, at times not of their choosing, to be once more at least looked at if not again
denounced. These positionings do not allow for the fluidity of chosen identities, but are
rather determined by the ‘watchers’ in whose power their Others are involuntarily subject
to such ebbs and flows. The resistances of the freely acting agent which occur tend only
to reinforce the perception of the rightfully blamed and consequently excluded citizen.
Over all these dynamics is set the raced construction, so these people are not allowed to
be anything other than raced. It is one thing to incorporate into one’s identity a race or
ethnicity, but it is entirely another to have one attributed by others as deficient and
blameworthy.

50
Conclusion
Invisibility has been considered to be the centrepiece of whiteness, even though some
theorists have questioned this orthodoxy (Frankenberg 1997). In applying the lens of
whiteness to the practice of social policy through the concept of material and discursive
violence, I have shown that invisibility is only one aspect of what is an intersecting
matrix of opposing dimensions. Non-white people are subject to an imposed dynamic
which at one time maintains invisibility through the mechanisms of whiteness and in the
next moment renders them highly visible. The centre-periphery alignment describes this
dynamic whereby the non-white subject is transfixed by material and discursive violence
at the bidding of the white determinant. This is intersected by the already existing active-
passive dynamic which has recently become the heart of contemporary welfare policy. In
construing the welfare participant as a passive actor in receipt of state benefits, the state
has provided itself with a justification for enforced activity – in the form of mandated
mutual obligation. While for the (white) participant race is invisible and the citizen
remains passive, albeit encouraged through coercion to participate, the non-white citizen
becomes a raced mutually obliged participant because s/he is constructed as being an
active contributor to his/her need for welfare support. It is the step between passive to
active that becomes raced in this dynamic. Even when individuals who are white are also
active in their culpability, their race remains invisible. The complexities of individual
agency and a general rejection of absolute determinism notwithstanding, for the welfare
being who is designated as raced, being framed in the cross hairs of active-passive
constructions at the centre-periphery allows the state to perpetuate a white purpose
through its social policy by illuminating race, while at the same time vehemently denying
it.
REPRESENTING AUSTRALIA:
RACE, GENDER AND NATION IN AUSTRALIAN CRICKET
Karen Farquharson and Timothy Marjoribanks
vii
In January 2003, Australian test cricketer Darren Lehmann was overheard by Sri Lankan
officials shouting the words ‘black cunts’ at the Sri Lankan cricket team while entering
the dressing rooms at the Gabba, a cricket stadium in Brisbane, after his dismissal in a
one-day cricket match between Australia and Sri Lanka. The officials who overheard
Lehmann reported his conduct to the match referee, and, as a result, Lehmann was
reprimanded, counselled by the Australian Cricket Board (ACB), and apologised to the
Sri Lankan cricket team. In addition, he was reported to the International Cricket Council
(ICC 2004) and found guilty of racial vilification, the first cricketer anywhere in the
world to be found guilty of such a charge. As a result, Lehmann was suspended from
playing cricket for five one-day international matches. Shortly after this incident, in
February 2003, Rashid Latif, a Pakistani cricketer, was also reported for racial
vilification. Latif was accused by Adam Gilchrist, an Australian cricketer, of using the
words ‘white cunt’ in reference to Gilchrist, during another one-day international, this
time being played at the Wanderers in Johannesburg, South Africa. Unlike Lehmann,

51
whose statement and actions were witnessed by several people and who admitted to
making the statement, Latif denied the charge and was found not guilty.
This paper analyses media discourses in 18 Australian newspapers, comparing and
contrasting these two cases. We place our case studies within a postcolonial sports
context, examining the relationships between nation, race, gender and sport as
represented in the media. We conclude that the discourses that emerged around the
Lehmann and Latif cases represent the mobilisation of whiteness as a symbol, both of
inclusion and exclusion within Australian and international cricket. Placing the
contrasting cases in the postcolonial context, we note that the racial vilification of the Sri
Lankan team is part of a larger discourse of white colonialism and supremacy, and of
possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz 1998), where the black bodies of the
colonised are considered inferior to the white bodies of the colonisers.
Race and cricket
The interaction of sport, race and nation is highly contested. As Carrington and McDonald
(2001: 2) have argued:
Analyses of race and sport tend to fall into one of two categories. The more popular of the
two is the naïve belief that sport improves race relations, simply through inter-racial contact. The
second, more pessimistically, argues that sport simply perpetuates biological racial ideologies and
inequalities: it increases racism.
They also argue that there is a need to move beyond this dichotomy, and to explore the
ways in which the interaction of sport and race exists as a contested issue in national
contexts (Carrington and McDonald 2001). Here they identify an important paradox.
On the one hand, sport has been an arena where cultural forms of racism, in particular,
have been successfully challenged, at least in the UK context, but at the same time,
sport also provides an arena in which racist sentiments continue to be clearly expressed
(Carrington and McDonald 2001: 2).
Researchers including Scraton (2001) and Maynard (1994), building on the work of
Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1992) and Collins (1990), have argued that research on race,
nation and sport, must also consider the gendered dimensions of these interactions.
Scraton (2001: 182) states, for example, that ‘[a]nalysing the gendered whiteness of
sport would identify the structural advantages that are historically located in the
institution of sport’. Pararaphrasing Maynard, she suggests that ‘we need to focus on
the “taken-for-granted everydayness of white privilege” as well as the situations in
sport where it is more directly expressed. It involves problematising the term “white”’
(Scraton 2001: 182).
In postcolonial societies around the world, white privilege structures our social, political
and economic relations so that whites are at the top of the social hierarchy (Wetherell
and Potter 1992; Lipsitz 1998; Farquharson 1999). According to Lipsitz, ‘possessive
investment in whiteness’ benefits whites at the expense of non-whites (Lipsitz 1998:
vii). All aspects of society, including sport, are structured so that whites have an

52
advantage over nonwhites, and whiteness as an identity is protected and maintained so
that its associated privileges are also protected and maintained (Frankenberg 1993;
Lipsitz 1998). In particular, social and cultural forces operate to ‘encourage white
people to expend time and energy on the creation and recreation of whiteness’ (Lipsitz
1998: 5). As we will show in this paper, in certain circumstances, the intersection of
the social and cultural forces of sport and media can operate in this way.
Australia has, until quite recently, been openly structured as a white society. Through the
White Australia Policy, legislative and administrative processes, and everyday social
and cultural practices, whiteness was openly constructed as better than blackness. In
Australia, as in other colonial societies, sport played a significant role in this social
construction of race (Booth and Tatz 2000; Bale and Cronin 2003).
For British colonists more generally, sport was seen as a way of improving the colonised.
For example:
‘A game of football in the afternoon’ wrote one British missionary in Kenya, ‘was played for moral
benefits as much as recreational relief, … to stiffen the backbone of these boys by teaching them
manliness, good temper and unselfishness - qualities amongst others that have done much to make
them a Britisher’ (Bale and Sang 1996: 77). It is clear that sport was part of the ‘civilising’ mission
of imperialism, and thus an essential part of the colonial experiment. (Bale and Cronin 2003: 5)
This conception of the civilising role of sport was also evident in Australia. At the same
time as the Indigenous population faced massacres and legal and physical segregation
in the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, cricket was at times promoted by the
colonisers as a means of promising ‘a degree of freedom and social relationships with
mainstream society’ (Booth and Tatz 2000: 44). Notable here was the 1868 Aboriginal
cricket tour to England, when the team was highly successful as the first team to
represent Australia overseas. This was, however, ‘to be a short episode, occurring in
the gap between major massacres in Victoria and the establishment of the Aborigines
Protection Board in 1869’ (Booth and Tatz 2000: 42).
From the mid-nineteeth century, sport was also adopted by the white, middle-class
colonisers as a means of self-improvement. A physical form of Christian morality,
known as ‘muscular Christianity’ promoted athleticism as a means by which young,
white, middle-class men could learn the values of ‘cooperation, loyalty, courage,
obedience to the rules, dedication and persistence’ (Booth and Tatz 2000: 49). Through
such processes, sport became central to both the racial and gendered dimensions of
colonialism in Australia.
In the case of cricket, a colonial sport has become a postcolonial one. Indeed, for
postcolonial nations such as India, success on the world stage is a way of ‘... expressing
[their] independence both to the former coloniser and to the wider world’ (Mills and
Dimeo 2003: 113). Likewise, Bale and Cronin note, ‘In recent decades, postcolonial
sport has been seen as a form of resistance - by colonies or post/neo colonies’ (Bale and
Cronin 2003: 5). Winning against the former coloniser is the best sort of win.

53
At cricket's most elite level, the test level, cricket is only played by England and its
former colonies. Of those former colonies, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and,
until recently, Zimbabwe select predominantly white teams.
viii
Teams with a majority of
black players include Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and the West Indies. The
British view towards its sports, including cricket, has been ‘… that England gave the
sports to the world, and that therefore England should naturally be able to beat other
countries’ (Brookes 2002: 97). That England has not often been able to do so in recent
times has been a source of national shame, but also a source of pride for its former
colonies.
Williams argues that the belief in the superiority of the English cricket team is evident in
English players’ attitudes towards touring Pakistan. Tours to Pakistan are seen as
difficult, with strange food, hot weather, and the lack of alcohol (Williams 2003). We
suggest that the Australian attitude towards touring the Indian subcontinent is similar,
with a famous incident a few years ago where the players imported their own baked
beans so that they wouldn't have to eat the local food. Tours to Africa are also
undertaken with some trepidation - the African countries are viewed as somewhat
dangerous places to tour.
Although it is widely accepted among social scientists that race is an imaginary category,
with no biological validity as a way of organizing humanity, ‘possessive investment in
whiteness’ (Lipsitz 1998) suggests that sport, too, is organized so that whites are
viewed as better than blacks. This is evident in the white teams’ reluctance to tour
many black countries, and in the ways in which non-whites’ teams are characterised as
naturally talented (Williams 2001), rather than hard-working. The cricket teams of
former colonies which are predominantly white, including Australia, are not
characterised in this way. A more specific example, discussed by Williams (2003), is
the characterisation of the Pakistani cricket team by the English press as cheats.
Williams notes that all the elite cricket teams have done things that could be
characterised as cheating. When the English do these sorts of things, however, the
cheating activities are characterised as aberrations, whereas when the Pakistani team
do, they are fundamentally characterised as cheats (Williams 2003).
Among the test playing nations, the Australian cricket team has been one of the slowest
to embrace multiculturalism and desegregate itself. Even the English team, which has
recently had a captain of Asian descent, is more racially integrated than the Australian
team. This, then, is the backdrop for our two case studies of racial vilification and
international cricket. The Lehman and Latif cases are also notable because, while the
media focused on race, the gender aspects of the vilification that occurred were not
analysed.
Whannel argues that sport is constructed as a masculine domain, and that while ‘Sport
confers and confirms masculinity; an interest in sport problematizes femininity’
(Whannel 2002: 10). As a masculine domain, sport excludes women; femininity is not
desirable, and calling someone a woman is an insult. Calling someone a cunt, then, is
an even stronger insult. However, since sport is a masculine domain, the vilification of

54
women within this domain occurs without question or comment. As we will show in
our analysis of our case studies, there was very little concern about the use of the word
‘cunt’. The cases only came to light because of their racial aspects.
In this paper, we seek to take up the challenges discussed above of exploring the ways in
which sport, race and gender intersect, with a particular focus on representations of
whiteness. As identifed by Carrington and McDonald (2001), it is important in this
process to uncover both the positive and the negative ways in which these social
relations interact and are potentially transformed in the context of sport.
Representations of nation-building, sport, race and gender in the media
When race and gender operate as bases for nation building, they may do so directly
through government policy as evidenced by the White Australia Policy, but they may also
operate indirectly through social or cultural activities and symbols. In this context, sport
has been a significant marker of race, gender and nation both in Australia and globally
(Jarvie 1985; Hobsbawm 1990; Jarvie 1991; Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992; Pope 1993;
Jarvie and Walker 1994; Farquharson and Marjoribanks 2003). Research on the
relationships between sport, race, gender and nation suggest further that the symbolic and
institutional manifestations of these relationship are context specific (Jarvie and Walker
1994). Central to this context is the media. Crucially for our purposes, there is an
increasingly close relationship between the media, the nation and sport, with the media
playing a key role in ‘producing, reproducing and amplifying’ discourses around sport
and the nation (Blain et al. 1993). Indeed, for many people, sport is consumed through
the media rather than through direct participation or attendance at games. As a result, the
media is a potentially powerful site for the framing of discourses around the relationship
between sport, race and gender.
The notion of framing is used here to suggest that through decisions about which issues
to report, and about how to report those issues, the media presents particular versions of
‘social reality’ (Schudson 1995; Street 2001). While these frames are not the only
versions of ‘reality’ available, the wide circulation of media forms gives the views
presented in the media a significant potential to ‘reflect and influence the formation and
expression of cultural, political and social life’ (Van Dijk 1997; Garrett and Bell 1998: 4).
This potential is heightened further in the case of high profile sporting ‘media events’
which ‘spotlight some central value or some aspect of collective memory’ (Dyan and
Katz 1992, quoted in Steenveld and Strelitz 1998: 616).
The World Series Cricket one-day tournaments held every summer in Australia, and the
tournament in which the Lehmann case arose, are major sporting events. They are also
an opportunity for the Australian nation to present a mediated image of itself to a global
audience. Similarly, the Cricket World Cup, the tournament in which the Latif case
arose, is the major international one-day tournament held every four years, and as such is
also an elite media-sport event.

55
Media discourses of race in Australia
Sport, and representations of sport in the media, are key sites for political and social
struggles around everyday practices of race, including whiteness, gender and nation
building. The globalisation of cricket, in particular through the media, has heightened its
already significant place as a site in which such practices are contested and transformed.
We undertook an analysis of Australian newspaper coverage of the Lehmann and Latif
cases, to explore the significance of these cases for understandings of whiteness, and of
interactions between race, gender and nation, locating such coverage within the broader
context of race and gender in international cricket.
Our research suggests the following. Firstly, media representations maintain and
reinforce a white vs black divide in world cricket. Australia is identified as a ‘white
nation’ with racially based national interests in common with other ‘white’ cricketing
nations. Secondly, some media commentators claim that Lehmann was singled out
inappropriately by cricketing authorities because he is white. Thirdly, the overwhelming
focus of media coverage was on the racial dimensions of these cases, with the gendered
dimensions downplayed or even ridiculed. We conclude that the discourses that emerged
around the Lehmann and Latif cases represent a moblisation of whiteness as a potent
symbol of inclusion and exclusion within Australian and international cricket.
Method
This paper is based on an analysis of 33 newspaper articles on the Lehmann case and 21
newspaper articles on the Latif case that appeared in 18 Australian newspapers between
January 17 and February 17, 2003. The articles, editorials and opinion pieces were
analysed thematically (Esterberg 2002), with each one treated as a separate piece of data.
In the following sections we describe our sample of items, and report our results. Firstly,
we describe the newspapers and the numbers of articles. Secondly, we describe the
themes that emerged. Finally, we discuss the implications of the cases for theorising race
and cricket more broadly.
Data
Articles were found by a LEXIS-NEXIS search of Australian newspapers using the
keywords: ‘cricket’ and ‘black’ and ‘Lehmann’ for the Lehmann articles, and ‘cricket’
and ‘Latif’ for the Latif articles. All articles that mentioned Latif were counted as Latif
articles. Table 1. lists the articles by newspaper and copyright holder. It clearly shows
that the vast majority of stories published on both incidents (85 per cent for the Lehmann
case and 81 per cent for the Latif case) appeared in News Ltd. papers. Of these News Ltd
stories, many were duplicates (written by the same author, with the same title and words,
but in some cases varying by word length, indicating different editing processes),
appearing in more than one News Ltd newspaper on the same day. The impact and
significance of these duplications will be discussed later.
Table 1: Articles by Newspaper and Owner
Owner
Newspaper
Lehmann articles
Latif articles
Fairfax
The Age
1
2

56
Sunday Age
2
Sydney Morning Herald
1
2
Sun Herald
1
Subtotal
5
4
News Ltd.
Advertiser
4
3
The Australian
1
1
Courier Mail
5
4
Daily Telegraph
4
1
Gold Coast Bulletin
1
Herald Sun
2
5
Hobart Mercury
3
2
MX
1
Sunday Herald Sun
2
Sunday Mail (SA)
1
Sunday Mail (QLD)
2
Sunday Tasmanian
1
Sunday Telegraph
2
Sunday Times
1
Subtotal
28
17
TOTAL
33
21
The Lehmann case
In January 2003, Australian cricketer Darren Lehmann was overheard calling the Sri
Lankan cricket team ‘black cunts’ while going into the dressing rooms after he had been
dismissed by the Sri Lankans. Early media coverage focused on uncovering the details of
the incident. Lehmann did not deny that he had vilified the Sri Lankans, but sought to
explain that he had made the comment, ‘“… in the dressing room, the heat of the
moment and out of frustration”’ (Brown 2003: 29). Nevertheless, Sri Lankan officials
complained about the incident to the match referee, but declined to lay charges against
Lehmann.
Despite a long history of racism in cricket (Williams 2001), as in sport more generally,
racial vilification is no longer considered acceptable in cricketing circles, and there are
regulations in place to prevent racial vilification from occurring during matches. Under
the International Cricket Council (ICC) Code of Conduct for Players and Team Officials,
racial vilification is considered a Level 3 offence: ‘using any language or gesture that
offends, insults, humiliates, intimidates, threatens, disparages or vilifies another person
on the basis of that person's race, religion, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin’
(International Cricket Council: 8). After the Lehmann incident, the Chief Eexecutive of
the Australian Cricket Board, James Sutherland, was quoted in the Advertiser as saying,
‘“It is clear that [Lehmann] has acted in an undesirable manner and steps will be taken to
see that behaviour such as this is not repeated. Cricket's distinct place in Australian
society brings with it a necessity for players and officials to exhibit high standards of
behaviour on and off the field”’ (Hurrell 2003). Lehmann was ultimately charged with
the Code of Conduct offence by the ICC Chief Executive Malcolm Speed. This

57
background to the case provides a strong example of the means by which cricket, at an
official level at least, has sought to engage with the corrosive effects of racism.
After the charges were laid, the newspaper coverage shifted from focusing on the incident
itself to focusing on Lehmann as a possible scapegoat. This focus emphasised a
supposed black/white divide in world cricket, and used it to explain why Lehmann was
charged. For example, an article in the Herald Sun stated, ‘Former top bowler Geoff
Lawson accused international cricket officials of making Lehmann a scapegoat to soothe
back-white tension in the international game’ (Hurrell et al. 2003). Although several
articles did note that many former players thought Lehmann should be suspended, these
players were often quoted along the lines of, ‘It is very out of character for Darren
Lehmann’ (Hurrell et al. 2003), suggesting that although Lehmann racially vilified the Sri
Lankan team, he himself is not a racist. In addition, in the newspaper coverage of the
Lehmann case, no one wanted to call his action racist. For example, a Sri Lankan official
said that Lehmann's words ‘border[ed] on racism’ (Brown 2003), and at least one reporter
said that the case gave a ‘misleading impression’ of Lehmann (Craddock 2003a).
Just two days after the incident, Lehmann was found guilty and suspended for five one-
day international cricket matches by the ICC. At this point the ‘Lehmann as scapegoat’
discourse became the dominant one, with articles prominently reporting defenders of
Lehmann to the effect that Lehmann ‘…was a “great bloke” and not a racist’ (Jeloscek et
al. 2003).
Lehmann was the first player in world cricket to have been found guilty of racial
vilification, and some newspaper coverage focused on this aspect, suggesting that
Lehmann's five-match suspension should put the rest of the world on notice. While there
was a consensus that racial vilification must be condemned, as represented in the ICC
rules, as we shall show below, debate did emerge over the contexts in which the racial
vilification rules were being used, and in particular over the racial and national
dimensions of those contexts. In this way, we see notions of whiteness, and of blackness,
being mobilised to contest what constitutes racial vilification.
The coverage of the Lehmann case centred around three themes: firstly, the nonracial
myth of cricket; secondly, Lehmann as the victim; and thirdly, that the incident was just
another example of bad behaviour by the Australian team. We discuss each in turn.
The nonracial myth of cricket
Media representations of cricket emphasise that there is a black/white divide among
cricketing nations. As News Ltd journalist Robert Craddock notes, ‘… there is an
enormous black versus white tension among major [cricketing] nations which is so great
that India and Pakistan, who both loathe each other, vote as one at ICC meetings because
they hate the white nations even more’ (Craddock 2003b). That this divide exists is
constantly stated, and provided a framework for the media representations of both the
Lehmann and Latif cases.

58
In the discourses surrounding these two cases, there is an understanding that despite this
divide, racial abuse is not widespread in cricket, but also that the racial issue is ‘ultra-
sensitive’ (Craddock 2003c). For example, an article in Brisbane’s Courier Mail quotes
ICC Chief Executive Malcolm Speed as saying:
Too many sports have struggled with this issue, and while cricket has benefited
from being a sport that is essentially free from any racial issues, it is important
cricket ensures that this continues to be the case by dealing with any issue quickly
and effectively. (Craddock 2003d, italics added)
It is unclear whether cricket in fact has been ‘essentially free from any racial issues,’ or
whether they have been so much a part of the game's fabric that they have not been an
issue before. As an article in the Hobart Mercury pointed out, ‘Lehmann is not an 18
year old rookie learning the ropes. He is a 32 year old veteran who should know better’
(Craddock 2003e). Not only that, Lehmann is captain of the South Australian cricket
team, and has also been captain of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club in England. From
the newspaper coverage of the case, it appears possible that many commentators,
including former elite cricketers, were not expecting Lehmann to be censured for his
actions. This suggests that racial vilification of this sort is perhaps more common than
Malcolm Speed would admit.
Lehmann as the victim
Once it was clear that Lehmann was going to be charged with racial vilification, several
of the articles included comments representing Lehmann, and not the Sri Lankans, as the
victim. Reports even went so far as to call Lehmann a scapegoat, saying that he had to be
punished to provide an example for other cricketers, by showing what would happen to
them if they vilified someone. At times, media reports appeared to go further and to
suggest that Lehmann was being singled out because he was white. For example, ‘That's
always been a racial divide as far as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are concerned. They
are using Darren Lehmann as a scapegoat’ (former Australian cricketer Geoff Lawson
quoted in Hurrell et al. 2003). The implication being that Lehmann was unfairly being
singled out on the basis of his whiteness.
Other articles argue that, ‘Lehmann should not be branded a racist’ (Pierik 2003),
suggesting that this charge would damage Lehmann's reputation as a good person.
Obviously, being labelled a racist is a bad thing. Lehmann himself said, ‘I am definitely
not one of those’ (Craddock 2003f).
Several items noted that at the same time that the ICC was coming down hard on
Lehmann, it was also planning the Cricket World Cup to take place in Zimbabwe and
South Africa. At the time, Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe was continuing his
racial targeting of white Zimbabweans. Journalists and letter writers asked why it was
that the ICC was making such a big deal over Lehmann, while essentially condoning
racism by having the World Cup in Zimbabwe. Given the media framing of world
cricket into a white and black divide, these discussions clearly brought ‘whiteness’ to the
centre of the debate. In particular, the ICC was portrayed as unfairly pursuing a white

59
player, while downplaying the reputedly more severe race-based vilification on the part
of Zimbabwe, taken to represent black cricket nations.
Another example of bad behaviour
The Australian cricket team had been involved in a number of less then flattering
incidents in the year prior to the Lehmann incident. They were portrayed as sledgers, that
is, as players who say nasty things to their opponents in order to put them off their game,
and as out of control. Some of the coverage of the Lehmann incident put it in the context
of the ‘bad behaviour’ of the Australian cricket team in general:
ICB chief executive James Sutherland said yesterday he would ask the duo [one-day captain Ricky
Ponting and vice-captain Adam Gilchrist] to work with the board's cricket operations manager
Michael Brown on ways of upgrading the side's behaviour in the wake of Darren Lehmann's
"black …" racial slur and other recent indiscretions. (Craddock 2003g)
Another article noted that this was the third time that an Australian player had had
official action brought against them ‘… for displays of bad temper and bad
sportsmanship since January 1’ (The Age 2003), which was a period of just three weeks at
the time of the article. This contextualising of the Lehmann racial incident minimised it,
making it the equivalent of an incident where his Australian team mate Matthew Hayden
abused his cricket bat. By comparing Lehmann's racism to someone abusing their
equipment, racism becomes just another example of bad behaviour. Clearly, the two are
different.
The Latif case
Less than a month after the Lehmann incident, during the Cricket World Cup, the
Pakistani wicketkeeper, Rashid Latif, was accused by Australian wicketkeeper Adam
Gilchrist of calling Gilchrist a ‘white cunt’ while he (Latif) was batting in a one-day
match. Newspaper coverage of this incident drew instant comparisons with the recent
Lehmann case. Unlike Lehmann, however, Latif did not admit to the charges, and
because Gilchrist was the only witness, Latif was not punished for the allegations.
Nevertheless, the Latif case was the topic of 21 newspaper articles, mainly over two days.
Almost all of these articles compared the Latif and Lehmann cases directly, in particular
focusing on the ways in which cricket officials handled them.
The Latif articles centred around two themes: firstly, that Lehmann had been treated
unfairly, and relatedly, that Adam Gilchrist was very trustworthy and wouldn't accuse
somebody unjustly; and secondly, that Latif felt he had been unjustly accused, even
threatening a lawsuit against Gilchrist over the accusations. The theme of reverse racism
also appeared in one article printed in three different newspapers. Journalist Robert
Craddock asks, ‘Would Latif have used the same language (in reverse) as Lehmann if
those words had never been uttered a few weeks ago? Would Gilchrist have immediately
reported the matter to the umpire if Lehmann had simply been warned for his outburst?’
(Craddock 2003h). The article continues on to insinuate that if Lehmann had been black
and the Lehmann case had been reversed, then there would have been no charges laid,
just as there were none laid against Latif.

60
Underlying these discourses of reverse discrimination is the idea that Lehmann, and
along with him other white people, are not getting a fair go in debates over race. In these
discourses, minorities have the upper hand and majority white people are disadvantaged.
While it is clear that people of colour are disadvantaged in Australia, the mediated
creation of the perception that white people have a disadvantage in areas of race can
serve to legitimate white domination of Australian society by putting into question any
claims that non-whites put forth about racism.
REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER
Although both the Lehmann and Latif cases centred around the word ‘cunt’, it was not
until Tasmanian anti-discrimination minister Jocelynne Scutt wrote an opinion piece for
the national newspaper The Australian, on January 20, that gender became part of the
newspaper discourse (Scutt 2003). In her piece, Scutt argues that Darren Lehmann
should have been punished for being sexist as well as for being racist. She notes that the
word ‘cunt’ is so abhorrent that newspapers won't print it, yet the issue for the cricket
world is not with misogyny; it is only because black is in front of it that it is even
newsworthy at all. It is the racial adjective that makes the phrase offensive. From media
representations of the incidents, it is acceptable for sportsmen to call each other cunts, but
not black or white cunts.
With the exception of Scutt's op-ed piece and one article by Piers Akerman, the issue of
gender is not raised at all. Akerman's article, although noting that Lehmann's remark was
racist and sexist, actually solidifies Scutt's point. In her piece, Scutt noted that women
who protest misogyny are invariably accused of hating men (Scutt 2003) . In his article,
Akerman describes Scutt as being ‘sorely exercised’ about the issue (Akerman 2003). He
also argues that ‘“c...” can be a term of affection and endearment as an expression such as
“poor dumb c...” or “he's not such a bad old c...”, which have absolutely nothing to do
with the vilification of women" (Akerman 2003).
How a word that so clearly denigrates women can become a commonly used expression
that is essentially divorced from its meaning, if you agree with Akerman, is an issue
addressed by journalist Greg Baum. In an opinion piece on the Latif and Lehmann cases,
Baum argues that when words are overused people become desensitised to them. He
asserts:
The more the word racist is flung about the Cricket World, the greater is the risk that cricket will
become desensitised to its import. The word itself becomes the insult rather than the attitude it
represents, in the same way the words "f…", "c…" and "bastard" are freely used as expressions of
contempt. (Baum 2003)
Although not an article about gender, Baum's argument that certain words are just insults,
devoid of their actual meaning, helps to explain why Lehmann's calling the Sri Lankan
team ‘cunts’ was not news until he added the racial signifier. Nevertheless, we agree
with Scutt's analysis that cunt is a derogatory term aimed at degrading women. By
calling a man a cunt, you emasculate him and help maintain a patriarchal system where
men dominate and it is acceptable for them to do so.

61
DISCUSSION
This study of the Lehmann and Latif cases provides important insights into racial and
sexual vilification in the context of elite sport. At the same time, as media discussion of
the cases illustrates, they also provide insights into the use of racist and sexist language in
everyday contexts. For example, it is taken as given that Lehmann's calling the Sri
Lankan team ‘black cunts’ is a bad thing, and that if Latif did call Gilchrist a ‘white
cunt’, then that is bad too. What the newspapers focused on in both cases was the
implications of being called a racist had for the individual players involved, and on the
contexts in which it was appropriate to bring racial vilification claims. In particular, they
did this by setting up a white/black divide in world cricket as a frame for the discussion
and analysis that followed. It is at this point that we begin to see the ways in which
understandings of race and racism are contested, and the ways in which whiteness begins
to emerge as a symbol of inclusion and of exclusion. At the same time that players are
criticised, and punished, for using racist language, there is significant debate over
whether or not the use of racist language by a white player makes a person a racist.
There is also an attempt to compare racial vilification on the part of a white player with
other examples of ‘bad behaviour’ by cricketers, or the Mugabe government, with the
apparent goal of minimising the significance of the racist incident. Similarly, when a
white player claims that he has been racially vilified, as in the Latif case, the white player
is represented as trustworthy.
Media representations of the racial vilification of the Sri Lankan team are part of a larger
discourse of white colonialism and supremacy, where the black bodies of the colonised
are considered inferior to the white bodies of the colonisers. In this way, the media
representations analysed here are an example of the possessive investment in whiteness,
in that they preserve and promote the value of whiteness. For example, while there is
condemnation of racial vilification, the newspaper reporting in these cases explores the
influence of such vilification by mobilising a construction of a white-black divide in
world cricket, and by suggesting that white cricketers are the victims of reverse
discrimination. In the context of these cases, this has the effect of reasserting the
dominance of whiteness as a means of including and excluding people, and even nations.
It is the white players who come to be represented as victims and as trustworthy, while
the ICC comes to be seen as inappropriately representing the interests of a supposed
unified block of black nations. Further, while race clearly emerges as the central issue in
these cases, it does so by almost completely silencing discussion around gender. In sum,
what emerges is the mobilisation of whiteness in media discourse as a means of asserting
both inclusion in, and exclusion from, a white male Australian nation.
Footnotes

62
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York: Berg.

64
DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SOUTHERN EUROPEAN
FOREIGNER
Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos
ix
‘Perpetual foreigners-within’ is a phrase we have coined to draw attention to the
distinctive inside-outsider position that the dominant white Australian discourses
periodically assign to particular migrant groups. The perpetual foreigner is a socially
reinforced subject position. It is ascribed to different (im)migrant groups at different
historical moments. Still, its enduring feature is that it places the foreigner within the
control of white Australian authorities at the same time as retaining him or her as a social
outsider. As this kind of foreigner-within, the (im)migrant is at once like dominant white
Australians in aspiring to the benefits of Australian citizenship, and unlike us in that he or
she can claim no right to such benefits. Historically, this notion of the foreigner-within
cuts across and informs official and popular understandings of the legal, political,
economic and social status of various (im)migrant groups irrespective of their origins,
method of arrival or length of stay in Australia.
Whether or not particular migrant groups are positioned as perpetual foreigners has to do
with a number of historical contingencies. For example, in another paper, we have argued
that the inhabitants of Australia’s refugee detention centres are currently designated as
white Australia’s perpetual-foreigners within. We have argued that today’s ‘boat people’
share many of the characteristics that white Australian immigrant discourses had assigned
to the members of Southern European migrant communities of earlier times
(Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos 2002a). On our analysis the refugee detention
centres have taken the place of earlier Southern European migrant communities because
the adoption of official multiculturalism required a historical redesignation of the latter
from foreigner communities to ethnic communities (Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos
2003a).
These days it is commonplace to hear that those from Southern European origins are
more socially accepted because we are more integrated with the wider white Australian
society by comparison with other ethnic communities. Greeks and Italians in particular
are often complicit in popular representations of Southern Europeans in the terms of a
post-war migrant success story (Davies and Dal Bosco 2001). But our research into the
history of Greek-Australian communities suggests that we are still positioned as perpetual
foreigners-within. The assignment of this subject position has only become more subtle
since the adoption of official multiculturalism.
In our larger research project we try to make sense of the long-standing and deep-seated
need that is evident amongst white Australians – whether as individuals in conversation
and public debates, in official discourses or institutional formations – to keep re-
inventing and maintaining the visibility of the perpetual foreigners-within. As we
suggested in another paper (Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos 2003b), our view is that
white Australia – dominant or otherwise – suffers from what we call an onto-pathology, a
self-generated disturbance of the fundamental conditions of being as property-owning

65
subjects within a modern Western world. Because we crave recognition as the legitimate
beneficiaries of the country’s goods we must position a suitable other to legitimate white
Australian authority. The foreigner-within is indispensable for this reason and particular
migrant groups need to be readied to play their role.
Elsewhere we have tried to explain how Southern European migrants to Australia come
to be doubly implicated in this ongoing social process (Nicolacopoulos and
Vassilacopoulos 2003c). We maintain that although the dominant Anglophone
discourses identify Southern European migrants as white Australian and grant us the
benefits of white race privilege, we are never white enough to share fully in such
benefits. In this paper we want to provide evidence for this claim by demonstrating how
the dual positioning of the Southern European foreigner gave distinctive shape to the
image of the foreigner-within up until Australia’s adoption of official multiculturalism.
From the early 1900s until the early 1970s the discourses that addressed foreigners’
potential to threaten national security represented the clearest assignment of a perpetual
foreigner position to Southern European migrants, but this tendency was much more
widespread. It implicated not just official agencies but also the wider Anglophone
society and institutions. Indeed had Marx and Engels visited Australia in the period in
question they might have rephrased the opening passage of the Communist Manifesto to
read as follows:
A spectre is haunting Australia – the spectre of the Foreigner. All the powers of Federated
Australia have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: the parliament and the
intelligence services, the press and the common citizen, the unions and the bosses.
LIKE COMMUNISM FOR THE EUROPE OF MARX’ AND ENGELS’
TIME, THE PRESENCE OF THE FOREIGNER-WITHIN SEEMS TO
HAVE UNIFIED WHITE AUSTRALIANS WITH OTHERWISE
OPPOSED INTERESTS AND VERY DIVERSE UNDERSTANDINGS OF
WHAT IT MIGHT MEAN TO BE AN AUSTRALIAN. WE TURN NOW
TO THE ANGLOPHONE DISCOURSES.
ANGLOPHONE DISCOURSES OF BRITISH SUBJECTIVITY AND
EUROPEAN IMMIGRANT NATIONALS
The official discourses provide ample evidence for the view that the Southern European
immigrant was positioned as a formal subject, albeit one for whom British subjectivity
remained substantially inaccessible, quite apart from his or her actual legal status. Unlike
immigrants who were designated ‘aboriginal natives’ of various parts of the world, the
Southern European fell within the legal class of immigrants who could become
naturalised. From 1903 to 1920 Commonwealth naturalisation legislation expressly
denied naturalisation to the former and this practice continued even after the legislation
was repealed (Chesterman and Galligan 1999: 54-55). Even though the Southern
European’s formal status was not determined by this particular practice of exclusion, the
actual extension of the privilege of naturalisation to particular individuals was not
governed by formal eligibility criteria alone. It was also subject to the political exigencies
of the historical moment.

66
For example, as part of its wartime handling of affairs in October 1915, Federal Cabinet
decided to hold over naturalisation applications by Greek immigrants (Gilchrist 1997:
14). After Greece joined the Allies, the Department of External Affairs returned to its
earlier practice of deciding individual cases. Even so, meeting the naturalisation
application procedures was no mere formality. Considerations such as whether one was
‘dark in colour’ or looked and spoke ‘like a Greek’ were taken seriously (Gilchrist 1997:
14-15). The Commonwealth Investigation Branch (CIB) was charged with collecting
such ‘relevant’ information. So the processing of naturalisaton applications routinely
involved police reports on the character and physical appearance of applicants.
Applicants of Greek origin faced so many obstacles in this period that naturalisations ‘fell
from 112 in 1914 … to three in 1916, five in 1917 and 13 in 1918’ (Gilchrist 1997: 14).
Hugh Gilchrist reminds us that this was a time when Australian officials were well aware
that the arrival of 97 Maltese immigrants could evoke ‘a bitter protest from the Australian
Workers’ Union’ which had dubbed the Maltese as ‘the black menace’ (Gilchrist 1997:
235).
The possibility of acquiring the legal status of British subject until 1949, and Australian
citizen thereafter, manifested the formal recognition of Southern Europeans as property-
owning subjects in the sense we mentioned at the outset. But, whilst Southern Europeans
could be white enough to count as a property owning subjectivity, they were never white
enough to receive the very same privileges of white citizenship that were afforded to
British nationals. This difference in treatment was made possible by the conflation of the
universal category of Australian citizenship with one particular attribute of subjectivity,
namely British nationality (Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos 2002b). The conflation
rendered allegiance to the Australian state as co-extensive with loyalty to the British
nation.
The conceptual association of Australian citizenship and British nationality had a
corresponding effect on the operative constructions of the non-citizen or the ‘alien’, to
use the technical term. Anglophone discourses of the alien constructed two images of the
foreigner that defined the subject position assigned to the Southern European immigrant.
One was an image of the foreigner as subversive and the other represented the foreigner
as potentially compliant. Each had a role to play in constructing the migrant as the
perpetual foreigner-within.
THE SUBVERSIVE FOREIGNER
The image of the subversive foreigner dominated across the official Anglophone
discourses until the early 1940s when the Curtin Labor Government began preparations
for the mass migration program. Its key element was the view that migrants’ political
allegiance was dictated by their national origins. This meant that an enemy alien was
identifiable simply in virtue of having been born within the boundaries of an enemy state.
But it also meant that all evidence of immigrants’ apparent allegiance to the Australian
state, whether by those classified as friendly or enemy aliens, could be read in one of two
ways. Such evidence demonstrated either subversion against the Australian state and its
people or treason against the immigrants’ original nation-state. Thus, speaking in the
House of Representatives during the Second World War, Archie Cameron declared:

67
I have heard of talk of ‘friendly aliens’. I do not know what a friendly alien is. I know that when my
country is engaged in a life and death struggle with Germany and Italy any man of German or Italian
birth is an enemy alien. If he is friendly to this country, then he must be a traitor to his own, and I do not
think it is our part to encourage treason. (cited in Dutton 1998: p.103)
This reading of the position of non-British nationals also made it possible for the
legislators of the time to profess in Parliament that the legal status of naturalised
European immigrants meant nothing. Speaking in the House of Representatives in 1942
H.L. Anthony confessed, ‘To me an enemy alien remains an enemy alien whether he has,
or has not, been naturalised, and, as such, he is a potential danger to the country …’ He
added further that to insist that naturalised immigrants were not aliens was to point to ‘a
legal distinction which does not mean anything to me. I do not consider that
naturalisation alters a man’s outlook or his fundamental beliefs’ (cited in Dutton 1998:
103-104).
Within the subversive foreigner discourse, the term ‘alien’ did not merely signify the
Australian state’s assignment of a formal-legal status to the non-British immigrant who
had not officially declared allegiance to Australia. It registered a positioning of the
foreigner as at once an insider in the light of having become naturalised and an outsider
as a result of a residual racialised difference that took the form of a designated
irrevocable allegiance to one’s original nation-state.
The subversive foreigner discourse thus supplied the rationale for an all-pervasive state
surveillance and control of immigrant lives that took the forms of compulsory
registration, restrictions on movement, internment and deportation (Dutton 2002). But
there is a more important insight to be identified here. The imposition of such control
measures on naturalised British subjects suggests that the image of the subversive
foreigner also negated the state recognition of migrants’ formal property owning
subjectivities. CIB control of the foreign language print media is a case in point (Gilchrist
1997: 341). Not only was every aspect of media content strictly scrutinised but the
control measures afforded officials with the opportunity to invade every aspect of the
lives of immigrants working in media production, without any effective protection
against the level of such intrusions.
The experience of Alexander Grivas, who was to become a prominent Greek community
leader (Kanarakis 1997: 111-137), illustrates our point well, particularly since his
designated ‘subversive’ and disruptive activities were in no way connected to leftist
ideas. In late 1933 Grivas was acting as the newly appointed editor and co-owner of
Panellinios Kiryx (The Hellenic Herald) that was in circulation in Sydney from
November 1926. CIB investigators accused him of publishing subversive and disruptive
material. On one occasion Grivas’ criticisms of British authority in Cyprus triggered the
CIB charge, but for the most part the contentious material addressed a longstanding
dispute within the Greek communities about the role of the Greek Church and Greek
Consul in community affairs. Grivas challenged the absolute authority of these
institutions on the grounds that community affairs should be managed within the
communities’ democratically run associations. So, it was in this very limited sense that
the published material was ‘disruptive’ or posed any challenge to ‘established authority in

68
Australia’. Yet the subversive foreigner discourse made no allowance whatsoever for the
possibility that Greek migrants, like Anglophone Australians, might expect to associate
freely and democratically when living within a liberal democracy.
Moreover, the practice of denying Southern Europeans’ formal rights as property-owning
subjects was a much wider affair as the anti-Greek riots of the early 1900s demonstrate.
Violent attacks on Greek shops were typically initiated by soldiers on leave from training
camps, but the angry mob violence was supported by local crowds in a number of towns
and cities and the justice system seems to have done little to punish offenders or
compensate victims (Gilchrist 1997). Irrespective of their actual conduct, years of
residency in Australia or legal status, Southern European immigrants could not escape
their assigned foreigner position. Anglophone discourses also attributed to all non-British
immigrants ‘an assumed predisposition for leftist political ideas and a lack of sympathy
for British Australian society’ (Dutton 1998: 99). Accordingly, for the Southern
European immigrant, the category of the subversive foreigner ensured that he or she
could be identified as a subversive no matter how he or she behaved.
This assignment had an important effect on the constitution of the relationship between
the white Australian and the Southern European foreigner. The foreigner-within could
always be rendered fully visible to white Australian society. For the large majority of
Southern European immigrants the peculiar logic of the subversive foreigner discourse
effectively rendered their social assimilation a practical and physical impossibility.
Southern European immigrants were by definition non-assimilable. The discursive effect
of this construction was the creation of a space for the establishment of perpetual
foreigner communities. Through the operation of the subversive foreigner discourse the
Greek-Australian communities were ultimately constituted as the sites of non-assimilable
racialised difference.
THE COMPLIANT FOREIGNER
A second image, that of the compliant foreigner, was also assigned to the Southern
European immigrant. This image was generated as an effect of a disassociation of
allegiance from national origins. The compliant foreigner image began to gain
prominence in governmental discourse after the Curtin Labor Government took office in
October of 1941. By 1944 policy changes effectively abandoned the idea that
immigrants’ allegiance was strictly derivable from their nation-state of origin (Dutton
1998). So it became possible for migrants to demonstrate allegiance to the Australian
state. That is, individuals’ conduct could demonstrate their compliance with state
demands on foreigners. Importantly for our analysis, this change re-instituted state
recognition of the foreigner’s property-owning subjectivity that the image of the
subversive foreigner had effectively negated, through the state’s denial of protections to
naturalised Southern Europeans.
In the post-war period the image of the compliant foreigner became increasingly more
popular with the aid of the notion of the ‘new Australian’ that signified the beneficiaries
of white Australia’s mass migration program. Whilst remaining a foreigner, the Southern
European could become a new Australian by working hard and showing a willingness to

69
adapt to the Australian way of life (Murphy 2000:149-167). This, in turn, created a
conceptual opening for Greek migrants who adopted the foreigner discourses to voice
complaints to the Anglophone authorities about their mistreatment (Nicolacopoulos and
Vassilacopoulos 2003d). More importantly, the compliant foreigner image also re-
instated the very subject position that qualified the Southern European to legitimate white
Australian authority.
An opening was thus also created for the dominant authorities to receive Southern
European migrants as beneficial members of white society. This moment of mutual
recognition has two related effects. It is the basis upon which Southern Europeans
simultaneously come to compare favourably with other designated foreigner groups –
from Asia or the Middle East. It is also the basis upon which many Southern Europeans
now identify with dominant white Australia and thereby become complicit in the on-
going dispossession of Indigenous peoples.
Footnotes

70
‘WHITENESS’ STUDIES, CHRISTIANITY AND RELIGIOUS RACISM IN
‘SECULAR’ AUSTRALIA
Alia Imtoual
Since what has been euphemistically called ‘recent world events’, by which is meant
‘September 11, 2001’, the ‘War on Terror’ (both the Afghan and the Iraq versions),
and the ‘Bali Bombings’, I would argue that there has been a perception in some
quarters that these events, and the resultant media public interest, have assisted in
fuelling a ‘dread and dislike’ of Islam and Muslims, particularly in white Western
countries like Australia (Saniotis 2002; Crittenden 2003; Nasser-Eddine 2002;
Mansouri 2003). As a Muslim woman in a white Western country, I strongly assert
that this ‘dread and dislike’ has had a very real and powerful impact on the lives of
Muslim Australians. However it would be wrong to operate under the delusion that
all the troubles started early on that awful morning back in September 2001.
Rather, I would argue, that they had in fact existed in Western countries and
cultures for several centuries (The Runnymede Trust 1997; Nasser-Eddine 2002;
Mansouri 2003).
In Orientalism Edward Said argues that Europe first began experiencing this dread and
dislike of Islam during the Middle Ages. Christian Europe began to respond with ‘fear
and a kind of awe’ (Said 1995: 59) to Islam which was rapidly spreading across the
globe. In order to retain or regain control over ‘what [seemed] to be a threat to some
established view of things’ (1995: 59) Islam was ‘judged to be a fraudulent new version
of some previous experience, in this case Christianity’ (1995: 59). As Said argues, from
this point forward Christian Europe largely defined itself in opposition to the Muslim
world. Islam came to be seen as the ‘great complementary opposite’ (1995: 58) of
Christianity.
From the Middle Ages until the Enlightenment, Christianity overtly dominated European
thought and operated as the ‘framing tradition’ (Sharp 1998: 160) through which Islam
was interpreted. However, the so-called Enlightenment period brought with it new,
‘secular’ interpretations of Islam. These interpretations drew upon a number of discourses
that constructed Islam as culturally, morally and socially deficient, and intellectually and
spiritually inferior.
Although Western, that is, European, interpretations of Islam changed over time, they
maintained their basic character (Said 1995). This was because during the Enlightenment
and post-Enlightenment periods many European writers and thinkers ‘undertook to save
the overview of human history and destiny, the existential paradigms, and the cardinal
values of their religious heritage (Abrams 1971: 66 as cited in Said 1995: 115). Said
argues that they did this by ‘reconstituting, redeploying and redistributing [Christianity]
in secular frameworks’ (Said 1995: 121) and thus the secular post-Enlightenment ideas
existed with ‘outlines [that] were unmistakably Christian’ (1995: 115).

71
I would argue that contemporary notions of white Western identity, as well as the West’s
relationship to Islam (and other non-Western peoples), are heavily informed by the
historical relationship between Western ‘secularism’ and Christian modes of thought.
That is, the secularism that is proclaimed by white Australia today can directly trace its
roots to Enlightenment concepts which were, in reality, not an erasure of religion from
society, but a re-packaging of Christianity in the guise of secularism. As Richard Dyer
(1997) argues, whiteness is a complex amalgam of European Christianity, in particular
the Christian theological understandings of the body, the spirit, and incarnation, as well
as notions relating to ‘race’ and European imperialism (1997: 14-40). He also argues that
despite the rhetoric of secularism that is popular today, Christianity is inseparable from,
and therefore inherent in, concepts of whiteness. As he states:
If Christianity as observance and belief has been in decline in Europe over the past
half-century, its ways of thinking and feeling are none the less still constitutive of
both European culture and consciousness and the colonies and ex-colonies (notably
the USA) that it has spawned. (Dyer 1997: 15)
In the current Australian context, Anglo-European Christianity remains the religion
to which the majority of Australians claim some affiliation, with over 67 per cent of
respondents in the 2001 census identifying as Christian (Australian Bureau of
Statistics 2001: Table B10). However, despite common claims that the nation is a
secular state, Christianity continues to have a much deeper societal influence.
This influence is most clearly apparent in political decisions and discussions that
relate to matters involving ‘the family’ and ‘morality’ (Earle and Fopp 1999: 241-
254; Sharp 1998). Often, if we unpack terms such as ‘values’, ‘rights’ and
‘ethics’ that are deployed in these discussions, we will also be unpacking the
centrality of unnamed Christianity in public discourse. Christianity does inform
all aspects of a white Australian world view (Rutledge 2003).
The religious nature and character of Australia and the colonies that preceded the
Commonwealth have been well documented. Douglas Pike (1957) in his influential
history of South Australia, Paradise of Dissent, outlines the clearly religious foundation
of the colony which belies claims that South Australia (like the rest of the nation) was,
and is, a secular colony/state uninfluenced by any religious tradition. In Britain when
plans were being made for the colony of South Australia to be created, it was agreed that
it would be based on ‘civil liberty, social opportunity and equality for all religions’ (Pike
1957: 3). At the time, ‘all religions’ was clearly understood to mean ‘all Christian
religions’ (Pike 1957: 12-28). Once the colony was created and in operation there was a
belief commonly expressed that although the state was ‘secular’ it should always ‘remain
Christian in its influence’ (Pike 1957: 249). In effect, the colony was created in such a
manner as to be neutral (or treat with equality) different Christianities in order that
sectarianism would not occur as it had done in Europe. The colony was not designed to
treat all religions and spiritualities equally.
The influence of Christianity was evident in the social structures set up in the colony such
as the public education system which, under the 1851 Education Act, provided ‘good
secular instruction based on the Christian religion’ (Almond and Woolcock 1978: 5).

72
Once a parliament was established each parliamentary sitting day began, as they still do,
with the recitation of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ (South Australian House of Assembly Standing
Orders No 39). While Pike’s work is primarily concerned with the historical period of
1829-1857 it can be argued that South Australia is still heavily influenced by the vision
of the colonial planners – a vision that saw South Australia as a secular colony being built
upon a Christian foundation. While ‘renovators’ have worked on aspects of the façade
over the years, the foundations of this state have largely remained untouched.
While the Christian foundations of South Australia have been documented by Pike,
Walter Phillips (1981) has written a similar history of New South Wales. He notes that
the colonists of New South Wales described Australia primarily as a ‘Christian country’
(Phillips 1981: 171). Differences in religious belief or unbelief were ‘tolerated’ as long as
individuals or religious groups did not try to ‘interfere’ with the operation of the colony
along Christian guidelines. Phillips quotes Sir Henry Parkes, the so-called ‘Father of
Federation’, as expressing the wish that this nation could be ‘a great, free, independent
nation based upon the broad principles of our common Christian religion’ (Phillips 1981:
171). Pike and Phillips both make it clear that Christianity had enormous influence on the
way social structures were created in Australia after the European invasion, despite the
rhetoric of ‘secularism’ and ‘separation of Church and State’.
Writing about contemporary Australia, Ghassan Hage argues that Christianity can be, and
is used as a form of ‘cultural capital’ which allows individuals access to ‘governmental’
forms of national belonging (Hage 1998: 70). Those seeking to deploy Christianity as a
mechanism of belonging are often those ‘lacking’ the two main characteristics of the
imagined ‘Australian’ identity – being white and being proficient in spoken English (see
also Pettman 1986, 1992; Kelly 2001). Hage further argues that this strategic deployment
of Christianity is perceived to have the power to ‘[offset] other negatively valued traits in
the field of national belonging’ (Hage 1998: 61). Those most likely to deploy Christianity
in this way are, as Hage calls them, ‘third world looking migrants’. However, I would
argue that taking up this particular strategy of belonging, these individuals are
inadvertently further jeopardizing their already precarious position within the nation.
While they have correctly identified the Christianity present in Australian society, they
have misjudged the extent to which active religiosity plays a role. Consequently, their
attempts to ‘belong’ or ‘assimilate’ in fact mark them as ‘outsiders’ in a nation where
active religiosity is perceived to be a private affair rather than a public display. Thus,
these migrants are able to identify the fallacy of secularism but do not have the ‘cultural
capital’ to engage with this public discourse in ways that do not mark them as ‘other’.
Thus religion and nation, and religion and race, are inextricably linked even when that
link is not immediately apparent or visible, or when the rhetoric of the nation claims that
it is secular and that that secularism has expunged religion. I am arguing that there is no
secularism without a religion that informs it.
At present the situation in Australia is that on the one hand it is a white European-derived
Christian nation, remembering that that version of Christianity is also a European version
which comes from a long tradition of viewing Islam as a threat, something to be wary of
and controlled where possible. And, on the other hand we have an Australia in which 1.5

73
per cent of the population is Muslim (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001: Table B10).
We also have a nation that thinks of itself as secular, or a-religious, without a religion.
The end result is that we have a nation that is inherently Christian trying desperately to
‘control’ the ‘threat’ of the Islam within – that is, its Muslim citizens (Hage 2003). At the
same time it is trying desperately to convince everyone that it has no religion and
therefore cannot possibly be inherently against Islam. This, therefore, leads me to my
final argument – and that is, until you white Anglo-European Christian Australians
recognise the Christianity embedded within our nation, there cannot be any real
engagement with the concept of religious racism as an issue affecting, particularly, but of
course not solely, Muslims.
As many academics have come to understand, ‘white’ and ‘whiteness’ do not refer simply
to skin pigmentation, but are used in a political sense in referring to the location of
institutional privilege and power as conferred through, and by, the ideologies surrounding
race, social class, gender, sexuality, ability and cultural practices. Whiteness studies over
the past decade have enabled ‘white’ people and ‘white’ societies to critique and reflect
upon the privileges and injustices related to these markers of whiteness, and yet there has
been almost complete silence on the way religion is tied up in notions of whiteness in
Australia. This continuing silence marginalises those people of ‘minority’ religions in
white societies from talking about their experiences of racism. Imagine if there had been
no recognition (or developing recognition) that middle-classness is closely tied to power
and privilege in Australia – that would mean that there could be no real recognition that
people of working-class backgrounds often experience injustice and marginalisation;
ditto for ability; ditto for ‘race’; and ditto for both gender and sexuality. I would argue
that it is time to start the same process in regard to religion in Australia.
In recent years in Britain, as in other European countries (Nonneman, Niblock and
Szajkowski 1996) this discussion has begun. Britain is a society with well established,
overt and well recognised institutionalised Christianity where certain ‘minority’ religions,
particularly Muslims and Jews, have recently been calling for the dissolution of the links
between the Church of England and the state, particularly as represented by the monarchy
and the Houses of Parliament (James 1996: 2). Their argument is that under the current
system, ‘minority’ religions experience heightened levels of religious racism. If the
monarch were to be seen as ‘Defender of Faiths’ rather than ‘Defender of the Faith’ (that
is Defender of the Church of England), if Bishops were removed from the House of
Lords and a more multi-faith approach to religious education existed, this would ease the
situation dramatically (James 1996: 2). They view these adjustments as being the start of
redressing the impact of racism into the future.
However, Professor Tariq Modood and Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks disagree with this
approach (James 1996: 2). They argue that under the present circumstances, ‘minority’
religions at least ‘know where they stand’ whereas if disestablishment were to occur, the
influences, underlying values, and structural frameworks would remain (Christian) but
under the cloak of what Modood calls ‘triumphal secularism’ (James 1996: 2). That is,
notions of plurality and neutrality can mask the process and effect of religious racism

74
and, therefore, can be seen as more harmful that beneficial. What this example
demonstrates is that some minority religions in Britain, while searching for an alternative,
are actually choosing an alternative that Muslims (and others) in Australia can assuredly
say, does not reduce religious racism – an alternative in fact which institutes a discursive
framework which allows and encourages a lack of self-reflexivity and critique of the
privileges associated with the religious influences in whiteness. I would argue that until
we begin to put religion under the same scrutiny as other aspects of whiteness, the
experiences of religious racism by ‘minority’ religions will continue to be marginalised
and ignored.
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge and thank Barbara Kameniar (Flinders University) for her invaluable
contributions to this paper – some sections of this paper have been drawn from our
collaboration on an article which is yet to be published. I also thank colleagues who
provided feedback on this paper in the Gender Studies Department whiteness forum on
September 5, 2003.
References
Almond, P. C. and P. G. Woolcock (eds.) (1978). Dissent in Paradise: Religious
Education Controversies in South Australia. Adelaide: Murray Park College of Advanced
Education.
Crittenden, S. (2002) A roundup of major stories from the past year - and some recent
news. The Religion Report, Radio National.
Dyer, R. (1997) White. London and New York: Routledge.
Earle, L. and R. Fopp (1999) 'What is Australian Society?' in D. Edgar, L. Earle and R.
Fopp (eds) Introduction to Australian Society: A Sociological Overview. Sydney:
Prentice Hall.
Hage, G. (1998) White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society.
Annadale, NSW: Pluto Press.
Hage, G. (2003) Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching For Hope in a Shrinking
Society. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press
James, J. (1996) When the liberal conscience fails,
www.debate.org.uk/topics/politics/jenny3.htm Accessed July 24, 2003.
Kelly, P. (2001). Pride of Race. The Australian: 11
Mansouri, F. (2003) 'Muslim Diaspora in Australia post 9/11: citizenship, identity and
belonging', pp 1 - 14, Unpublished, Conference entitled 'Islam and the West: the impact
of September 11': 1-14.

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Nasser-Eddine, M. (2002) '"The raging beast within us all"? Civil liberties and the "War
on Terror"', Borderlands e-journal 1(1): 1-18.
Nonneman, G., T. Niblock, and B. Szajkowski (eds.) (1996) Muslim communities in the
New Europe. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press.
Pettman, J. (1986) Race and ethnicity in contemporary Australia; and, Multiculturalism
and anti-racism in Australian education. London: Centre for Multicultural Education
[and] Australian Studies Centre.
Pettman, J. (1992) Living in the margins: racism, sexism and feminism in Australia.
Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Phillips, W. (1981) Defending "A Christian Country": Churchmen and Society in New
South Wales in the 1880s and after. Queensland: University of Queensland Press.
Pike, D. (1957) Paradise of Dissent: South Australia 1829-1857. London, Melbourne and
New York, Longmans, Green and Co.
Rutledge, D. (2003) Islam in the Modern World. The Religion Report, Radio National.
Said, E. W. (1995) Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin.
Saniotis, A. (2002) Australian Muslims: The New 'Others', Online Opinion,
www.onlineopinion.com.au/2002/Nov02/Saniotis.htm Accessed April 16, 2003.
Sharp, G. (1998) 'After the Poor: A Future with a Past.' Arena Journal 10: 159-173.
The Runnymede Trust (1997) Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All, pp. 1 - 69, Sussex:
The Runnymede Trust Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia.

76
THE ANGLO-INDIANS: TRANSCOLONIAL MIGRANTS WITH ASPIRATIONS
FOR WHITENESS AND THE DILEMMA OF IDENTITY
Sheila James
INTRODUCTION
Since the early days of colonial rule, it has been difficult for the Anglo-Indians to answer
with certainty the question, ‘Who am I?’. In her acclaimed book Cartographies of
Diaspora Avtar Brah (1996) writes about her experiences as a migrant and comments:
Yet I know now and knew then that ‘looks’ mattered a great deal within the
colonial regimes of power. Looks mattered because of the history of the
racialisation of ‘looks’; they mattered because discourses about the body were
crucial to the constitution of racism. (Brah 1996: 3)
This paper echoes Brah’s emphasis on the body as a site of racialisation. It firstly seeks
an understanding of the theoretical concepts that form an intrinsic part of the Anglo-
Indian community and secondly, explores how these concepts exist within structures of
power and national identity in a prevalent multicultural Australian society governed by a
dominant white, ‘Anglo- Celtic’ culture. More specifically, this paper examines the
relevance of the concept of whiteness in explaining the patterns of identity and identity
dilemmas among this diasporic, mixed-race, transnational community here in
multicultural Australia. It also explores white locations and the sense of belonging, and
questions whether Australia is ‘home’ for these Anglo-Indians, who by joining forces
with the dominant ‘Anglo-Celtic’ tradition in Australian society thus reinforce their
desire to an ‘Anglo’ heritage. Finally, the revelation of how their ‘Indian’ heritage fits
into this maze of identity dilemmas is in fact an indication of the depth of Anglo-Indians’
aspirations for whiteness and their quest for identity in Australia.
Origin of the Anglo-Indian community
Roy Dean Wright (1998) points out that India, the country of origin of the Anglo-Indians,
has a history of multiculturalism, foreign invasions and colonialism, making it one of the
most heterogeneous societies in the world. Wright emphasises that wherever there was
colonialism, the dominance of the military administration was usually achieved and
perpetuated by males of the dominating nation. It is from the sexual liaisons of these men
with the local women (the natives) that mixed race children eventuated. The existing
caste system in India at the time was rigid and would not accept these offspring, and over
time they tended to come together and become known as the Anglo-Indians of India
(Wright 1998: 2).
The Anglo-Indian was the product of the confident European expansion of the sixteenth
century. Varma states that the Anglo-Indians were ‘The legacy of Europeans’ commercial
and political enterprise in India, resulting in the inevitable co-mingling, many a time
illegitimate, between European men and Indian women. (1979: 1)

77
Younger writes that in 1687, a family allowance of one pagola or gold mohur (a guinea
coin) was paid for the birth of a child from a marriage between a native woman and a
soldier of Fort St. George, Madras. These children were ‘country-born’ and amalgamated
into the Anglo-Indian community, forming a bulwark for the British Raj (rule), a buffer
but also a bridge between the rulers and their subjects. Younger notes that the
encouragement and ready employment given to the Anglo-Indians by the East India
Company, as well as the fact that they were treated no differently from the British
ensured the growth of a mixed community. Also, until the middle of the eighteenth
century Anglo-Indian children were often sent to England to receive further education.
They did so without the attachment of any stigma as to their origins from either marital or
extramarital relations with Indian women. Schools aimed at organising education to make
Anglo-Indians fit for public service departments were established in Madras, Bangalore,
Lucknow and other British settlements (Younger 1984: 2-3).
As Frank Anthony (1969: 3) has pointed out, after 1911 the term Anglo-Indian was,
‘taken to signify persons who were of European descent in the male line but of mixed
European and Indian blood’. This definition clearly specified who could be called an
Anglo-Indian for inclusion into the Anglo-Indian community and will suffice for the
present discourse. It was later legalised by the Government of India Act of 1935, Article
366 (2), and was repeated in the 1950 Constitution of India.
Aspirations for whiteness
This paper uses the term ‘white’ in relation to the constructions of Anglo-Indian identity
resulting from an ‘Anglo’ (white British) ancestry. Ruth Frankenberg (1993) points out
that whiteness is a category that is related to a range of other racial, social, class and
gender categories. She writes, ‘[t]his co-construction is however, asymmetrical for the
term ‘whiteness’ signals the production and reproduction of dominance rather than
subordination, normativity rather than marginality, and privilege rather than
disadvantage’ (Frankenberg 1993: 236-237).
Further, Nakayama and Martin’s (1999: vii) point that ‘[as] a social construction,
whiteness gains meaning from its encounters with non-whiteness’ (1999: vii) is
emphasised here. The two concepts ‘whiteness’ and ‘non-whiteness’ form part of a social
construction and can be understood in reference to each other. In this connection, the
term ‘white’ extends to the construction of Anglo-Indian identity resulting from an
‘Indian’ (non-white, non-British) ancestry and encounters with other non-whites. This
opens channels for an understanding of the identity dilemmas among Anglo-Indians and
the identity choices they make vis-à-vis the skin colour of others in the pursuit of
everyday life situations.
The Anglo-Indian, as a distinct ethnic category, was also the product of the racialised
social hierarchies of British India. Erik Vellinga (1994) has devoted his thesis to the
subject of Anglo-Indians and racial attitudes in India. He notes that the assertion of
British superiority in assuming the ‘White Man’s burden’ to promote the development of
England, as well as capitalism in the uncivilized parts of the world, ignited race

78
consciousness among the Indian elite, feelings of pride in their own racial origin, and a
claim of Hindu superiority. Indians felt superior towards Europeans but also towards the
Anglo-Indians. Vellinga draws attention to the British lifestyle, which resulted in a class-
based hierarchy of European society with the poor Europeans and the Anglo-Indians at
the bottom of the hierarchy. Hence, the Anglo-Indians occupied the lower echelons of
British society (Vellinga 1994).
As noted earlier, in the years of British colonial expansion, intermarriage between British
men and native women was encouraged. However, soon after British power was
established in India, this trend was reversed. By the beginning of the nineteenth century it
was taboo (Younger1994: 45) for all but British men of low status to associate with
Anglo-Indians or Indians. Adrian Gilbert (1996: 22-25) notes that the British became
mindful of maintaining ‘purity of race’ and there was growing sectarianism. Moreover, it
was feared that a mixed community might threaten British rule as it had done in Haiti. In
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Anglo-Indians were discharged
from all ranks of the army and were barred from the Company’s civil, military and
marine services. The imposed restrictions closed a large area of employment for Anglo-
Indians who saw these actions as discriminatory, as they had previously been treated as
British and felt themselves to be British both by culture and inclination. Accounts of the
situation at this time suggest that these measures reduced the Anglo-Indians to political
impotence and social degradation. Now they were no longer with the ruling elite.
Gaikwad asserts that the Anglo-Indians were mid-way between two cultural worlds; on
the one hand aspiring to belong to the West, and on the other having emotional ties with
India (Gaikwad 1967; Younger 1984).
By the nineteenth century, the British separated themselves from coloured people but
accepted fairer (and often wealthier) people of dual heritage as ‘Anglo-Indian’. Darker
(and usually poorer) people were called ‘Eurasian’. Anglo-Indians were of British
descent and were British subjects; some even claimed to be British to escape prejudice.
The British did not however accept such identification as they did not see Anglo-Indians
as kinsmen and regarded them as ‘half-castes’ who were socially, morally and
intellectually inferior to the sons and daughters of Britain. The Anglo-Indians attempted
to counter this by trying to be more like the British, and Varma writes that their campaign
to be called ‘Anglo-Indians’ in contrast to the general term ‘Eurasian was aimed at
establishing a closer link with the British Raj (rule)’ (Varma 1979; Bose 1979).
It was within this milieu that Anglo-Indian families had to survive, but even this set-up
was continuously changing. From the 1920s and in the decades following India’s
Independence in 1947, a series of factors such as communalism, Anglo-Indian
unwillingness to accept low-level jobs, poor educational qualifications of Anglo-Indians,
and Anglo-Indian resistance to learning an Indian language contributed to the chronic
unemployment situation in the community (Schermerhorn 1973; Cottrell 1979; Younger
1984).
Identity

79
In his influential essay, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, Charles Taylor emphasises that the
need for recognition is linked with identity in relation to a person’s understanding of who
they are and what their defining characteristics are as human beings. Taylor writes that
the effect of recognition or its absence, often the misrecognition by others, can be
detrimental to a person or group of people who may suffer real damage as a result. He
points out that there is a close, dialectical relationship between the notion of ‘inwardly
derived, personal, original identity’ and the ‘vital human need’ for public recognition of
that identity within a given society. According to Taylor, ‘identity is who we are and
where we’re coming from’ (1994: 33).
On this subject, Varma among others, points out that one of the important causes of race
consciousness is that ‘people identify’ (Varma 1979; see also Taylor 1994; Fisher and
Sonn 1999; Docker and Fischer 2000). One of the problems the Anglo-Indian community
has always faced is the question of identity. They were unable to answer categorically the
question ‘Who am I?’. Nor was it easy for Anglo-Indians to develop a clear concept of
their own identity. Europeans tended to think of them as Indians with some European
blood; Indians thought of them as Europeans with some Indian blood. The Anglo-Indians
adopted many of the prejudices held by the British towards Indian people of dark
complexion, resulting in their rejection by both the British and the Indian communities.
They found they were caught between the European attitude of superiority towards
Indians and Anglo-Indians and the Indian mistrust of them due to their aloofness and
Western-oriented culture. On a cultural and social level they were alienated from many
other Indians, but they were kin to Indians biologically. The prejudices the Anglo-Indians
experienced, both real and imagined, and the prejudices that they themselves had against
other Indians were an obstacle to both group and individual identity (Gist 1972; Gist and
Wright 1973).
Gist and Wright (1973) write about an Anglo-Indian school principal in Calcutta who
related the dilemma of her own identity as having her heart in England but her
responsibilities in India. Her heart won out when she migrated to Great Britain after
India’s Independence. Gist and Wright claim that the fact Anglo-Indians were Indian
nationals by birth but culturally oriented to Britain often made their status confusing to
themselves and to others. D’Cruz is specific about the reasons for this. Their mother
tongue, their religion, their family organization and general style of life distinguished
them from the Indians (D’Cruz 1997: 15). Varma claims that most of the Anglo-Indians’
problems were the product of the colonial British Raj whose leaders served the interests
of their own class. According to Varma, ‘people of different shades of worth and
capacity, good and bad in various degrees are, produced by all races. This evident fact
notwithstanding, unfortunately, many people believe that there is something good about
being pure and something bad about being hybrid’ (Varma 1979: 2). In Varma’s
opinion, Anglo-Indians were the victims of dilemma and indiscretion throughout their
existence. He states that the ‘Anglo-Indians, disowned by the English and alienated from
the Indians, drifted for centuries with no moorings…’ (Varma 1979: 4).
When the British left India, the leaders of the Anglo-Indian community, like Frank
Anthony, President of the (Delhi-based) All-India Anglo-Indian Association in the post-

80
World War II period, looked for opportunities to resolve this conflict of identity. Anthony
called upon his community to be Indians by nationality and Anglo-Indians by
community. However, many Anglo-Indians were unable to resolve the issue of identity
and, as declared in the title of Anthony’s (1969) book, Britain’s Betrayal in India, they
felt betrayed and insecure and opted to leave India to migrate to countries like England,
Canada, New Zealand and Australia. For those Anglo-Indians who stayed behind, the
Constitution of India provided more security than they dreamt of. The official definition
of the term ‘Anglo-Indian’ accepted by the Government of India in the new Constitution
of Independent India read:
An Anglo-Indian means a person whose father or any of whose other male
progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is domiciled
within the territory of India and is or was born within such territory of parents
habitually resident therein and not established there for temporary purposes
only… (The Constitution of India, paragraph 366)
Thus, India’s Independence had diverse effects on the Anglo-Indian community. In this
regard, Bose (1979) writes that some of the Anglo-Indians who stayed in India integrated
well into upper class Indian Hindu society. This phenomenon was summarised in Erica
Lewin’s writings as the concept of ‘passing’ (2002: 5), which was a covert way of
assimilation. On the other hand, there were many poorer Anglo-Indians who were left
with their memories of past glories and a fondly created illusion of England as their
‘home’ (Bose 1979).
Whiteness and skin colour
The study of whiteness in Australia has attracted interdisciplinary interest in a society
where reconciliation, multiculturalism and mixed race are prominent discourses in
everyday life. Any interest in whiteness would still constitute an area that researchers
explore with care and sensitivity. What is the point of all these endeavours? According to
Mike Hill (1997: 3) ‘the basis of race studies is a matter of skin’. It is this ‘matter of skin’
and aspirations for whiteness which are at the core of Anglo-Indian identity,
representation and belonging. This point is further explained by Esther Lyons, who writes
that skin colour was another factor preventing the Anglo-Indians from being accepted by
the British due to a concern with maintaining ‘purity of race’. Lyons (1998: 3) explains
this concept as follows:
…meant a white Britisher with real English looks. If they [Anglo-Indians]
are white with blue eyes and fair hair, they find it easier to blend in with
the others but if they are dark like the Indians they find it harder to be
accepted as anyone but an Indian. Amongst the Anglo-Indians themselves
there is this colour prejudice. The fairer ones consider themselves superior
and the real Anglo-Indians. In India the higher castes are usually the
lighter skin ones whereas the darker Indians are supposedly the lower
castes. According to them it was the lower castes that were converted in
numbers by the missionaries during the British Raj. The Indians therefore,
consider the Indian Christians as well as the darker Anglo-Indians as
belonging to the lower castes.

81
Thus, whether the Anglo-Indians were included or excluded socially was predicted by
skin colour. Lewin points out that ethnocentric patterns prevailing in India maintained a
specific boundary between the Indian and Anglo-Indian communities. Her study focuses
on the identity of Anglo-Indian women in Western Australia. Some participants in the
study were conscious of Anglo-Saxon racist attitudes toward the Indian ethnic
communities in India that had emerged due to ignorance of Indian culture, disregard for
the ethnic groups that surrounded them in India, and belittling of the Indian ancestry that
was a part of the Anglo-Indian identity. While many of her interviewees worked against
this notion, Lewin found that the problem was not totally overcome, as the preoccupation
with skin colour led dark-skinned relatives to be identified more readily as Anglo-Indian
than the fair-skinned ones (2002: 3-4).
The discourse on whiteness as a theoretical notion that attempts to uncover the authority
of the invisible is very promising. Studying whiteness means delving into the silence
about whiteness or its invisibility, which allows prejudice and misconception to manifest
(Frankenberg 1993; Dyer 1997; Bonnett 2000). In Bonnett’s opinion, most people think
they already know all about whiteness. Bonnett’s suspicion is that ‘people actually like
the idea that there is nothing much to say about whiteness; that to discuss the subject is
either impossible or an entirely rhetorical exercise…’ (Bonnett 2000:1).
The topic of whiteness is a sensitive one and Bonnett’s suspicion may be justified in the
case of the Anglo-Indians. The European white identity was manifested in the British
colonial Raj (rule) in India. Also, in creating a mixed race community, or if we may use
the term ‘hybrid’ Anglo-Indians, whiteness became a ‘talisman of the natural’ (2000: 20-
21). This is evident in Anglo-Indian aspirations to identify with the ‘whites’ (British)
and their efforts to gain recognition as a community whose mother tongue was English.
Similarly, in identifying with ‘white’ Australian culture, are these Anglo-Indians who
have migrated to Australia ‘acquiring’ whiteness? And having fulfilled their aspirations
for whiteness and being assured of their place within the Australian structures of power
and prestige, are they feeling at ‘home’ in Australia?
Immigration to Australia
Among the numerous accounts of Australia’s immigration and multicultural history,
Mark Lopez’s book, The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics, is an
important reference for the Anglo-Indian migrants in Australia. Lopez draws our
attention to Foster and Stockley’s (2000: 20-22) claim that many policy-makers were
motivated by grandiose visions of Australia becoming a major component of the British
Empire, joining the ranks of the great populous nations like the United States. According
to Lopez, the original goal of the immigration policy was the assimilation of migrants
into Australia’s predominantly Anglo-Celtic population as permanent settlers. Migrant
selection was carefully managed to preserve the nation’s ethnic and cultural
homogeneity. Categories of potential migrants were ranked according to their racial and
cultural affinity with British-Australians. The most preferred were Britons, followed by
Northern Europeans. Southern Europeans, considered to be far less assimilable, were less

82
desirable. The least desired were Asians and other non-whites. The government offered
financial inducements to migrants from the preferred categories while the least desired
were virtually excluded according to the tenets of the White Australia Policy (Lopez
2000: 43).
Gilbert (1996) noted that large numbers of Anglo-Indians began migrating to Australia in
the early 1960s and were in fact among the first Asian immigrants in the 1960s and
1970s, with the relaxation of the White Australia Policy. In Gilbert’s opinion, the issue of
skin colour is of particular relevance to the Australian Anglo-Indians. He writes that in
colonial society it was the white-skinned Anglo-Indians who would have been able to
pass themselves off as British and who had, or could expect, better job opportunities and
class privileges. Gilbert points out that while many Anglo-Indians were physically
indistinguishable from Anglo-Celtic Australians, many others were not and consequently
became victims of discrimination and prejudice. He cites occasions when differently
coloured members of the same family could not enter Australia even after the White
Australia policy had changed during the 1960s (Gilbert 1996: 35-42).
In this regard, Alison Blunt (2000: 4-5) points out that:
[a]ssimilation in Australia was only thought possible if Anglo-Indians
could prove a line of predominantly European descent and if they were
seen to be white in both photographs and at interview. But in practice both
of these requirements revealed internal contradictions at the heart of White
Australia policies. While most Anglo-Indians could not produce
documentary evidence to prove their European origin, their claims could
equally not be disproved [...] Anglo-Indians could migrate to Australia
from the late 1960s because they were seen as culturally European, but
when they arrived they were often perceived as Indian.
Thus, skin colour was an important criterion determining whether or not Anglo-Indians
could pass as ‘white’ and be granted entry into Australia, or on the other hand be denied
entry if they looked ‘coloured’. On this same topic, Lyons (1998: 3) emphasises that:
This colour prejudice has continued wherever the Anglo-Indians have immigrated… The
Anglo-Indian has always been the second class citizen in any country because of their
background, distinct Anglo-Indian culture, accent and skin colour…Some even started
regretting the change of residence, and have kept their links with India by visiting the
country as often as they can. They soon realised that the discrimination and prejudices
against them are also present in the new country. This time it was not so much for
religion or being casteless, but because of skin colour, accent, lifestyle and their being
born in India.
The Anglo-Indians have been studied in terms of race, and concerns have
been raised about whether theirs is a dying race or whether its survival is
an ethnic myth (Mills 1998; Williams 2002). In Australia, Anglo-Indians have
been studied for the ways they have assimilated and gained economically
(Gilbert 1996; Colquohoun 1997). Studies such as Lewin’s (2002) noted
above, of Anglo-Indian women in Western Australia vis-à-vis skin colour,
need to be extended, namely, to explore skin colour in relation to
constructions of Anglo-Indian identity and identity dilemmas in Australia.

83
This is crucial for the Anglo-Indians, many of whom migrated to Australia
during the White Australia policy era, but also in the context of Australia’s
contemporary multicultural policy as these Anglo-Indians make Australia
their ‘home’.
In studies of people of colour, in this case Anglo-Indians of varying skin colour, the key
issue of whiteness as a significant cultural category and indicator of prevailing colour
racisms requires examination and interpretation to challenge the idea that a ‘race’ study
can exclude whiteness issues.
White locations, ‘home’ and the dilemma of identity
Although a numerically small component of Australia’s post-war migrant population, the
Anglo-Indians are sociologically unique and interesting because of their origins as an
early transnational community formed across boundaries of race, colonialism and
globalisation. Lionel Caplan (1998) stresses that the process of moving across cultures is
not new and that the Anglo-Indians were one of the early results of the globalisation
process. According to Caplan:
They can be seen as transnationals not by virtue of migration across political boundaries,
but through experiencing profound displacement in terms of belonging: by residing in
one location but adjudging themselves only at home in another. It is what Gupta and
Ferguson presumably mean by ‘an imagined state of being or moral location’. (1998: 1)
Hence, it is not only the withdrawal of Britain from India (returning ‘home’) that sparked
Anglo-Indian migration, but even before they migrated they lived in this liminal space.
Brah (1996) comments on the concept of ‘home’ in relation to migrants who cling to
memories of the life they were accustomed to, and bring these memories into their ‘new’
life in their country of migration. She explains this sense of ‘feeling at home’ that the
Anglo-Indians had for England in the context of migrant communities (1996: 4).
England, however, was not any of these things to the Anglo-Indians- their everyday
interactions were with India! Their ‘home’ was spatially distant, and England was
imagined as being their ‘home’ while their mundane and daily routines were in a space
that was India. Their networks of family, kin, friends, and ‘significant others’ were
situated in a geographical space that was not ‘England’ but ‘Anglo-India’. The Anglo-
Indians were a particular kind of transnational subject wherever they were. They did not
feel that they belonged in India and were a diasporic community.
Diasporas are usually defined as ethnic groups that lack a territorial base within a given
polity. According to Glen Bowman, Darwish in his ‘Country of Words’ expresses the
plight of the Palestinians who identify themselves as Palestinians but are living in a world
in which Palestine no longer exists. These diasporic people construct and maintain a
sense of national identity when the territorial base to which that identity refers is
occupied by another national movement, itself constituted through the denial of the
legitimacy of any Palestinian national aspiration. Bowman argues that the 1948 loss of
their homeland has resulted in the construction of a number of different ‘Palestines’

84
corresponding to the different experiences of Palestinians in their places of exile (1994:
138).
Is this reflective of the 300,000 Anglo-Indians living either under Indian Home Rule
since 1947, identifying themselves as Anglo-Indian in a world in which there no longer
exists the British Raj or in ‘exile’ in their places of migration? The Anglo-Indians can be
seen as a diasporic people who constructed and maintained a sense of identity when the
territorial base (British India) to which that identity refers was taken over by the Indian
Government. This led to their migration to the numerous places to which they have been
scattered by the loss of their birthland, and where they might discursively construct
images of themselves and of India. These concepts are linked with the Anglo-Indian
community in their search for a new identity in Australia.
Jamrozik, Boland and Urquhart (1995a: 207-208) writing about the Australian search for
identity point out that core institutions in Australia carry a monocultural inheritance as
‘colonial baggage’ or ‘colonial ballast’, which makes the search for identity a laborious
process. They stress that the dilemma for the original Anglo-Australians is how to
develop an Australian identity without weakening the Anglo-British inheritance and
without contamination by non-English cultures. In contemporary multicultural Australia
there is more than one cultural inheritance; and hence the cultural inheritance of
Australian society can no longer be described as solely British or Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-
Celtic. In reality, they conclude that England is no longer the only ‘home’ because
Australians now have many ancestral homes and the society is much richer for it
(Jamrozik et al. 1995b: 215).
Colquohoun (1997) conducted a series of studies which focussed on the
adaptation and well being of Anglo-Indians in Australia. His findings
suggest that for the Anglo-Indians, adaptation to life in Australia overall has
been achieved fairly easily. However, it is interesting that the Anglo-Indians
saw themselves as different from other ethnic minorities in terms of being
Western and having English as a first language. The participants also
reported that attitudes in Australia were different to India. Unlike India, they
felt Australia placed less emphasis on a person’s status, religion or social
function. It is interesting that they saw the differences between Australia and
India in terms of those same indicators which defined them as a community.
Without those indicators, it would be difficult to distinguish them from
many Australians today (Colquohoun 1997: 1-2).
Vellinga (1994) found that the Anglo-Indians are a tiny ethnic group in modern-day
Australia, which is a highly diverse and poly-ethnic society. Similarly, these diasporic
Anglo-Indians have maintained links with their country of birth, and as Lyons notes:
[t]he older Anglo-Indians therefore prefer to stay within their own
community and cling to their own distinctive lifestyle, a mixture of the

85
British and the Indian […] They prefer to organise for themselves a little
India in their own homes and the social get togethers, ‘the way it was in
India itself.’ They prefer the Indian spicy food and the association with
only Anglo-Indians. (Lyons 1998: 3)
Blunt (2000: 5) writes that, ‘many Anglo-Indian migrants saw it as neither possible nor
desirable to assimilate in independent India [...] In contrast, Anglo-Indian assimilation in
Australia meant identifying with the dominant white, western culture and feeling more at
home’. In Blunt’s view, even as transnationals Anglo-Indians have to identify with their
‘Anglo’ heritage’, resulting in a possible identity dilemma in multicultural Australia.
Blunt refers to these dilemmas as ‘tensions of what Ghassan Hage calls ‘fantasies of
white supremacy in a multicultural society’ where ideas of whiteness remain dominant in
both cultural and racial terms’ (2000: 5).
Thus, even as transnationals Anglo-Indians have aspirations of white identity, aspirations
of identifying with their ‘Anglo’ counterparts in the Western world, resulting in possible
identity dilemmas in multicultural Australia. As noted by Lyons above, the dilemmas
faced by these diasporic Anglo-Indians, who maintain links with their country of birth
(India) are not necessarily resolved in Australia. Moreover, in contemporary multicultural
Australia the identity constructing process is compounded by the different notions of
what it means to be an Anglo-Indian, engendered by more than fifty years of dislocation
and dispersion.
As Eade and Allen (1999) emphasise, when there is global movement of people,
information, images and capital across ethnic boundaries and beyond nation-state
frontiers, the world becomes more complex and heterogenous and the local and global
interweave. They point out that, ‘[g]lobal migration also creates “new patriotisms”
through puzzling new forms of linkage between diasporic nationalisms, delocalised
political communities and revitalised political commitments at both ends of the diasporic
process” (Eade and Allen 1999: 153).
This is evident in the case of the Australian Anglo-Indians as Blunt (2000: 5-6) states:
Since the late 1980s, ideas about Anglo-Indian assimilation have coexisted
with an increasingly visible community identity. The Australian Anglo-
Indian Association was founded in Perth in 1988, hosted an international
reunion for Anglo-Indians in 1995, and opened the only Anglo-Indian
cultural centre in the world in 1998; there is a weekly Anglo-Indian
programme on multicultural radio in Perth; there is a residential home for
elderly Anglo-Indians in Melbourne; and there are regular social events to
raise funds for Anglo-Indians in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

86
Government funding for multicultural projects has helped to create and
shape a distinctive Anglo-Indian identity in Australia: an identity that is
distinctive in its hybridity.
Thus, as Anglo-Indians assimilate into a multicultural Australia, the survival of this
community, along with their ‘accumulation of whiteness’ in Hage’s (1998) terminology,
may depend on the construction of new identities. Hence, the aspirations for whiteness
among these diasporic Anglo-Indians may have resulted in the construction of a number
of different ‘Anglo-Indias’, or ‘little Indias’, as was noted earlier by Lyons, within
Australian society that correspond to the different experiences of Anglo-Indians in the
places of their exile (migration). Is this then reflective of the fact that some Anglo-
Indians have made Australia their ‘home’ and feel they belong here in Anglo-Australian
(white/multicultural) society? Or do they now nostalgically regard India (their birth land)
rather than England as their ‘home’?
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Bombay: Allied Publishers.
Blunt, A. (2000) ‘Postcolonial Migrations: Anglo-Indians in ‘White Australia’, The International
Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies. 5. 2. [Online, Accessed10 May 2004]
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Bonnett, A. (2000) White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives. England: Prentice
Hall.
Bose, M. (1979) ‘One Corner of an Indian Slum that is Forever England’, New Society 47. 848:
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Bowman, G. (1994) ‘‘A Country of Words’: Conceiving the Palestinian Nation from the position
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Brah, A. (1996) Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge.
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Cottrell, A-B. (1979) ‘Today’s Asian-Western Couples are Not Anglo-Indians’, Pylon 40(4):
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Docker, J. and G. Fisher (2000) (eds.) Race, Colour & Identity in Australia and New Zealand.
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Dyer, R. (1997) White. London: Routledge.
Eade, J. and T. Allen. (1999) ‘Ethnicity’, pp.145-155 in T.Skelton and T. Allen (eds.) Culture
and Global Change. London: Routledge.
Frankenberg, R. (1993) White Women/Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness.
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Fisher, A. T. and C.C. Sonn (1999) ‘Aspiration to Community: Community Responses to
Rejection’, Journal of Community Psychology 27(6): 715-725.
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Gilbert, A. (1996) ‘Anglo-Indians in Australia, From Unsuccessful Caste Members to Attaining
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Lopez, M. (2000) The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics. Victoria: Melbourne
University Press.
Lyons, E. (1998) ‘Anglo-Indians at the end of the 20th Century’, International Journal of Anglo-
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Mills, M. S. (1998) ‘Ethnic Myth and Ethnic Survival: The Case of India’s Anglo-Indian
(Eurasian) Minority’, Dissertation Abstracts International, A: The Humanities and Social
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Nakayama, T. K. and J. N. Martin (1999) (eds.) Whiteness: The Communication of Social
Identity. Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: SAGE.
Schermerhorn, R. (1973) ‘Sex Roles among the Anglo-Indians’, Australian and New Zealand
Journal of Sociology 9: 75-76.
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Princeton University Press
Varma, L. B. (1979) Anglo-Indians: A Historical Study of Anglo-Indian Community in 19th
Century in India. New Delhi: Reena Roy, Bhasha Prakashan.
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1920’in 114344 Department of History and Arts Erasmus University Rotterdam. M.A.
Thesis dealing with Anglo-Indians.The Anglo-Indian HomePage. [Online, Accessed10
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Williams, B. R. (2002) Anglo-America Indians - Vanishing Remnants of a Bygone Era: Anglo-
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Younger, C. (1984) Anglo-Indians from 1919-1983: Images of a Community in Transition, M.A.
Thesis, University of Sydney.

89
WHITE ON WHITE: SURVEYING THE BOUNDARIES OF LOCAL
WHITENESS
Robert Garbutt
The place in which I write and study is Lismore, a town on the land of the Widjabul
people, in the Bundjalung nation, on the far north coast of New South Wales. I am white
and think of myself as a local of Lismore. Lismore is the town in which I grew up, left to
go to university, and to which I returned twenty years later. Now with a university of its
own, it is the town where I recently commenced a project that began as an exploration of
local belonging. It was a white project and still is, but it has changed somewhat as I came
to understand that my notion of belonging in this land, this land in which I have been
planted, was predicated upon clearing the land around me of Aborigines.
x
This is not a unique or startling revelation. What interests me, however, was that in 2000
when I commenced thinking about this project on local belonging, I resisted notions that
my worldview was linked in any way to white advantage or Aboriginal disadvantage. My
project was ‘just about being local’: this local belonging was grounded in unmarked and
unnamed whiteness (Frankenburg 1993: 196 – 7).
In this paper, I wish to commence marking and naming local Lismore whiteness through
an exploration of the idea of whiteness in Lismore. I don’t intend to prove or disprove
that there is a particular or distinctive Lismore whiteness. I am more interested in the
aspects of whiteness that emerge by bringing the words local and whiteness together in
Lismore, particularly in white middle-class East Lismore of my youth in the 1960s and
1970s. My purpose in undertaking this exploration is to see whether the notion of
whiteness aids my understanding of how it is that I came to regard myself, quite
unproblematically, as a local - an original of Lismore - and how ‘unproblematic
whiteness’ might be critically rearticulated.
I have approached this task from two strongly place-based perspectives. The first is self-
critical, self-reflective journal writing. Journal writing, as an accompaniment to reading
theoretical texts, allows a space for protracted engagement between the theory on
whiteness I read and my experience of unmarked whiteness. Writing thus becomes a
research methodology in itself (Richardson 2000: 928-9)
xi
, a methodology in which I am
able to place myself as a local researcher with a commitment to researching as a
transparent and reflexive practice.
xii
My second place-based perspective is to use
narratives and texts that relate to whiteness in Lismore. These I gather through archival
research and through interviews with non-Indigenous Indigenous rights activists who
work, or have worked, in Lismore. These narratives and texts provide a broader range of
perceptions of place and time than would be the case if I relied solely on the journal
writings produced by a middle-aged male researcher reflecting on the personal
experiences of emerging as a white, male adult.
Theory, of course, provides perspectives from an even wider set of local contexts. While
I might know whiteness like I know the back of my hand, and experience whiteness as
the back of my hand, I have not experienced the back of my white male hand as an

90
instrument of oppression: whether through an act of violence or a dismissive flick of the
wrist. For this ‘other’ experience, Whiteness Studies, especially feminist writing on
whiteness (Aileen Moreton-Robinson 2000a,b; Ruth Frankenburg 1993,1997; Marilyn
Frye 1983,1992) has provided a point of departure for an uncomfortable and incomplete
exploration - an exploration that threads together a voice from recent interviews, some
documents from the archive, and the voice of my journal.
Journal Entry: July 10, 2003 – Whiteness Paper … possible beginning
Before last November [2002] I did not think of my whiteness. A launch of
a new online journal changed that, not because of the journal’s subject
matter, but because of a chat with another prospective doctoral candidate
over a glass of bubbly.
‘So what’s your thesis about?’ I asked Diana.
‘I want to study whiteness in women’s magazines,’ she replied. Women’s
magazines I had some knowledge of, but whiteness?
‘What is that?’ I asked.
We had one of those staccato discussions that take place at noisy raise-
your-glass style occasions, so I didn’t leave the journal launch with a new
theoretical construct, but I did leave with a new word - ‘a fresh seed sewn
on the ground of [our] discussion’(Wittgenstein 1980: 2e).
Despite that lack of theoretical understanding I had about whiteness, the
term resonated in an uncanny way. Like a desert bloom, this seed sewn on
the ground of discussion germinated, grew and flowered quickly and the
bloom drew to it experiences and feelings like a steady stream of bees
hungry for its nectar. This word, ‘whiteness,’ drew to it experiences and
feelings associated with being raised and living in a country town: the
town I write in, Lismore. It is as if I had been waiting for that word to
appear.
I want to stay with that initial moment a while, in the realm of experience
and informal theory. I want to reflect on those initial thoughts about
whiteness, to remember what it is that excited me.
I am transported to 1978 or thereabouts. I am in East Lismore walking
home with three mates from high school on a mild sub-tropical afternoon
at about 3:30pm. As happens nearly every afternoon on this way home, we
stop at the bottom of the Melody Street
xiii
hill under the shade of a large
spreading jacaranda, to sit, talk, and for no reason I can explain, the others
throw their left over lunches, all packed in plastic bags high into the tree
until they stay there, caught amongst the branches.

91
I am not a part of this ritual. I never have a lunch to throw up there and am
feeling extremely uncomfortable. We are sitting under the Golden’s
jacaranda. Up the hill from the Goldens are the Hockeys, then the Sparks.
Across the road from the Sparks is my house, and at the top of the hill,
above our house, are the Tutts. This is my street. I know it and it knows
me. As we sit beneath the lunch-festooned jacaranda, Mrs Tutt makes a
chink with her finger in the white venetian blind in their dining room and I
can sense a beam of judgement sweeping across the land. The data
gathered in each sweep is encoded and collated for transmission to
relevant interested parties at an opportune time.
My first reaction to whiteness, East Lismore whiteness, is to feel a gaze.
This gaze judges to a standard and the standard dwells on what can be
seen: on appearance, on behaviour, an appearance of being good, and of
associating with apparently good people. My discomfort from the gaze
eventually overcomes peer group bonds. ‘I’ll see yuz later,’ I say, and with
smartarse comments trailing after me I walk the 50 metres or so uphill,
until I’m out of sight in the safe enclosure of home.
By high school, I need no longer see the white venetian open and close to
experience the gaze. I had an internalised white venetian of my own at the
top of the hill, and my own Mrs Tutt judging each movement, each action,
each thought, each situation, each person, each place: all surfaces and
appearances arranged against a set of criteria that approximate the essence
of whiteness, an essence submerged and barely discernible, lurking in my
unconscious like the great white whale.
As I contemplate this form beneath the surface I find myself wandering
the streets of East Lismore of my teenage years. I am looking for
representations, or approximations, of the essence of my East Lismore
whiteness. It is just past midday. There is no cloud in the near-purple
summer sky. The sunlight is hard and dazzling and clears the streets of
people. The streets are eerily vacant of people on this hot sunny Sunday
afternoon. Along with radiated heat, silence rises from the asphalt road. As
I wander this neat and tidy part of town here is the quiet whiteness I find.
Whiteness is smooth and hard like well-laid concrete. It has neat edges,
sharp corners and an even height like a well-mown lawn. It is
weatherboard with a tasteful paint-job that does not stand out. It is a
garden without weeds. The hose is neatly rolled up. This whiteness prefers
trees that don’t drop their leaves. Each surface it presents to the world is
an object of discipline. It doesn’t make trouble. It is obedient and quiet. It
is prosperous through restraint. It is all for the best. It is heterosexual but
not sexual. It is white sheets on the line without stains. It is ‘too clean for
dandruff’. It has clear lines of separation into yours and mine. It is
neighbourhood; people like us; self-same-Others; safe and secure. It bows
to the trinity: clean, neat and tidy. It is patriarchal mastery over the chaos

92
of nature; a Phallus-like symbol of omnipotence. Each white house here is
under control.
xiv
Emerging in the white zone
In this narrative East Lismore emerges as a place that privileges an uncritical pedagogy of
whiteness. In this place lessons are learnt regarding how to observe whiteness and how to
be successfully observed as white. Thus, the pedagogy of whiteness includes processes of
embodiment infused within a regime of seeing. This regime of seeing is organised by
whiteness itself.
xv
This interpretation and my journal reflection are influenced by Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks’
(2000: 25) notion that whiteness, in Lacanian terms, is the master signifier of race. As a
master signifier, whiteness organises race - ‘the inaugural term of difference, … the
primary signifier of the symbolic order of race’ - and all who encounter whiteness are
personally and socially positioned by it. Seshadri-Crooks notes that the field in which
whiteness organises its subjects is that of the visible: ‘Racial practice is ultimately an
aesthetic practice, and must be understood as a regime of looking’. The subject and object
of the look is the body and its features, with ‘“race” … appear[ing] as a fundamental and
normative factor of human embodiment’(Seshadri-Crooks 2000: 19 – 20). Inhabited
place as a site and effect of embodiment is equally subject to the racial look. Without
embodying skills of observing and being observed, race as a practice, collapses.
My memories of East Lismore in the 1960s and 1970s do not include observed racial
difference. This is primarily because racial difference did not exist there, or so I saw.
xvi
In
a place where non Anglo-Celtic appearing bodies were not seen, whiteness went
unnamed and unmarked. That is not to say however, that the marking of difference did
not occur. Without racial reference, marking of difference was conducted in the East
Lismore of my youth by deploying other signifiers and indexes of whiteness that had
finely graduated scales. These signifiers could include public behaviour, social affiliation
and housekeeping - all observed and observable. That which attaches itself to whiteness,
that has been produced by whiteness in my journal entry, include those very indexes by
which whiteness is observed, graded, and which are so often explained by race - how one
behaves, the company one keeps and how one’s house is kept.
Without specific reference to race, then, East Lismore was still able to function as a
pedagogical site for the embodiment of racialised practices. These practices mark
observable differences in very fine detail - observable differences that subject a white
community to a range of positionings, even within communally acknowledged sameness.
By describing East Lismore as a place of ‘Anglo-Celtic appearing’ bodies, I imply that
strategies of exclusion are deployed by these ‘Anglo-Celtic appearing’ bodies. One
strategy of exclusion is to encourage sameness through practices of observing and being
observed - ‘minuscule ruses of discipline’ (Foucault cited in de Certeau 1984: 96) - such
as those I mention above and depict in my journal. Co-produced within a place of
sameness, is a void of otherness - a place that displaces others, spaces others. As a place

93
of potential belonging, non Anglo-Celtic appearing bodies could be expected to feel
discomfort and ‘unhomeliness’. There is a sense then in which a place of sameness is
both product and its (partial) cause.
xvii
This place of sameness, this enclave of whiteness,
exists in place and in body. In body the physical form of difference is observed and
observer. In body and in mind a place and a subject are co-produced.
This self-regulatory, panoptic strategy of exclusion does not function on its own
(Foucault 1977). Whiteness as a place - localised whiteness - requires other strategies that
maintain the boundaries of sameness and exclusion. It is to these boundaries that I would
now like to turn; in the first instance to physical boundaries and then to temporal
boundaries.
Defending the physical boundaries of the white enclave
The physical space of East Lismore was created by white settlement and has demanded
maintenance of its geographical boundaries. Parts of the boundary of East Lismore
coincide with the boundary of Lismore itself and so have been susceptible to possible
‘incursion’ from Bundjalung people who may choose to reside in or near the town. Far
from being met with ‘minuscule ruses’ of power, such challenges to exclusion have
brought forth open and vocal hostility.
Until the early 1900s Bundjalung people preserved their independence from white settlers
in Lismore by avoiding being brought under the oversight of the Aborigines Protection
Board. Access to schooling, however, necessitated interaction, though this proved
difficult through repeated efforts of townspeople to keep schools segregated (Goodall
1996: 143–4). By 1928 the Bundjalung people had negotiated a reserve and school
without managerial oversight that was to become known as Cubawee. In the late 1950s
and into the 1960s, however, concern at the conditions of Cubawee coincided with the
Aborigines Welfare Board’s implementation of a policy of assimilation. Plans, agreed to
by the majority of the Cubawee community, though with significant dissension, were
made to resettle Cubawee residents in or closer to Lismore itself (Brill 2003).
An attempt by the Aborigines Welfare Board (AWB) in 1957 to create a new settlement
in the ‘Leechy Scrub’ on the edge of East Lismore was resisted by Lismore City Council
(LCC).
xviii
A second attempt was made by the AWB in 1961. In a recent interview Tess
Brill, a non-Indigenous Indigenous rights activist who worked in Lismore from the late
1950s to the late 1970s, recalled the time when sites were being sought. She says, with an
ironic chuckle:
What happened was it got that way that the [Aborigines Welfare Board]
Area Officer had a blue Holden, and if that blue Holden came into any
street in Lismore all the alarms bells went up. He was looking for a house
or a site (Brill 2003).
Eventually a two-acre site was identified by the AWB. The site, owned at the time by
Lismore City Council, is on the edge of East Lismore on Wyrallah Road, opposite
Lismore’s sewerage treatment works. On 25 January 1962, a meeting to protest against
the proposed settlement at this site was called.
xix
Tess remembers the strength of feeling:

94
When [the proposed settlement] was mooted … you had all the residents
out along Wyrallah Road [in East Lismore] up in arms. Well,
there’s…quite a big hall there… so a public meeting was called … The
hall was packed. You couldn’t fit - there were groups of people outside
and they had the windows open … and someone relaying [proceedings].
They opened the meeting… well if only it could have been recorded… A
number of residents were getting up and speaking and one man was in
tears because … he wouldn’t be able to go to work because of fear of
leaving his wife and children while [Aboriginal children] walked [from the
proposed site] to school. Another argument was that it would lower the
value of their property – oh, that was a very common one. And of course
the ‘lazy dirty’ one came up and they all gave examples….
[T]hese arguments went on and then [the chairman] ruled that the
arguments that had been put were not valid on the grounds that [a]ll [the
white residents] were expressing were their fears (Brill 2003).
While the intent of the meeting was to voice protest, there was no absence of voices at the
meeting speaking for the Cubawee residents. Of 11 major speakers at the meeting seven
spoke in favour of the AWB’s proposal and a ‘motion which included a statement that
Wyrallah Road was an unsuitable site for housing Aborigines was rejected’ by the
majority of 140 people attending.
xx
Instead, a less divisive proposal was put to the
meeting and it was resolved ‘that a committee be appointed and Lismore City Council be
asked to call a public meeting to discuss the matter of housing at Cubawee.’
xxi
This move to involve Lismore City Council played into the hands of powerful interests
and an apparently racially prejudiced majority on Council
xxii
. A group calling themselves
‘Ratepayers’, co-authors of a letter to the editor of The Northern Star put the view that:
‘[t]he benefits of setting aside certain areas as first class residential areas,
and subsequent large expenditure in these areas in an effort to keep these
areas on a high standard, will be to a large extent wasted if an aboriginal
settlement is so placed that its main thoroughfare will be through the
centre of this residential area.’
xxiii
‘Ratepayers’ preferred that an area for assimilation be identified ‘where public sympathy
for them [the Cubawee people] can develop’ and that this area be ‘somewhere on the
north-eastern side of Lismore, where their thoroughfare into town causes the population
the least inconvenience and assures them no hostility’
xxiv
.
The thinking here: that Aborigines are other than the ‘public’ and ‘the population’; that
certain ‘first class residential areas’ such as East Lismore are not places where ‘public
sympathy can develop’; and that first class residential areas are ‘unrealistic’ sites for
assimilation, won the ear of the Council. Real estate values and racial prejudice were
powerful persuaders of the powerful. One Alderman put it thus, ‘Council must face up to
the fact, and soon, that aborigines [sic] are outcasts and no-one wants them.’
xxv
Another
stated that ‘[i]t’s nice to be a Christian, but the only way to look at this is to view it as

95
though we lived next door to the aborigines.’
xxvi
When it became clear that opposition to
the Wyrallah Road site was far from monolithic, the white patriarchal elders were forced
into tactical inaction.
xxvii
The Lismore City Council resolved the issue by evading making
a decision. They reasoned that because Cubawee was sited outside the Lismore City
Council area in Gundurimba Shire, the Lismore City Council could not hold a public
meeting on Cubawee housing. In a Mayoral Minute, Alderman Campbell stated, ‘Council
can only be concerned with matters of this nature within its own area and it would not be
proper of council to initiate any move…’.
xxviii
Eventually a site for a settlement was found on the other side of Lismore, outside the
Lismore City Council boundary, on the road where the tip was located at that time. The
new settlement was ready in time for the visit to Lismore by the Sydney University
‘Freedom Ride’ three years later in 1965. The Freedom Ride was a student bus tour of
northern NSW organised by the Chairman of Sydney University’s Student Action for
Aborigines, Charles Perkins. One purpose of the tour was ‘a comprehensive survey of
Aboriginal life in the main towns visited’(Perkins 1999 [1965] 215-216). Following their
survey of Lismore residents, a spokesperson for the Freedom Ride was able to state that,
‘Apart from one or two individuals, I wouldn’t say there has been any sign of
discrimination on purely racial grounds …’.
xxix
The Freedom Ride visit was an enormous success for the Lismore City Council. This
came as a relief following violent scenes when the students visited Moree two weeks
earlier. The new housing for Cubawee families made a big impression, with The
Northern Star writing, ‘The immediate image of the city’s aborigines has been strikingly
changed by the transfer of families to South Gundurimba from the long-tolerated horror
at Cubawee.’
xxx
The students departed following a free lunch at the Lismore Workers’
Club at which Mayor Campbell accepted membership of Student Action for Aborigines.
The Sydney Morning Herald further reported that in Lismore the Freedom Ride had ‘the
warmest and most sympathetic reception of their journey’.
xxxi
Not only had the physical boundaries of the white enclave of East Lismore been defended
from Aboriginal presence in 1962 but also to all appearances Lismore’s whiteness
showed no blemish. This maintenance of unblemished appearance is a product of the
pedagogy of whiteness, enabled through an intimate embodied understanding of how to
be successfully observed as white, pure white.
The boundary of time
The production of a protected physical space in which whiteness might reside is aided by
another practice that distances white local being from the Aboriginal other: the definition
of historical time. To explore this further I return to my journal and a second beginning I
wrote for this paper.
Journal Entry: August 14, 2003 – Whiteness Paper …another beginning
I’ve been writing recently about whiteness and being local… My idea is to
discover and describe the local whiteness of Lismore… I am without a
map like the great explorers before me. I am Captain Rous in 1828

96
entering the Richmond River in my 28-gun frigate The Rainbow, past ‘the
dense forest … teeming with life’, ‘peer[ing] out at the fairylike scene
noting every detail of the river which no white man had found before…’
(Daley 1966: 5,12).
How easily the image of Captain Rous is conjured in my white imagination, and how
easily I imagine myself into his skin. As a child I walked the paddocks at the bottom of
the Melody Street hill, with a close friend and our dogs in just the same way: the way of
the explorer, the discoverer, the namer, the mapper. There wasn’t anything of public
significance in our wanderings of course, but through our schooling we understood the
importance of ‘first times’ - of seeing for the first time, of being the first, of how
important it is to white experience to claim originality. The time most open to regulation
by white power, and that which gives me a white historical experience of ‘originality’ is
that colonial moment when the local landscape is seen by white eyes for the first time. By
placing time zero at such a point, colonial time begins. Before whiteness is timelessness -
an ontological absence - a time before being; and an epistemological absence - before
white knowing.
Time zero has particular relevance for local history, memory and imagination. In
Lismore, historical time is measured from 1828 - the year when Captain Rous became the
first white man to see the mouth of Richmond River, the river into which Lismore’s
Wilson River flows. The keeper of local history in Lismore, the authority on local time
keeping in the city and throughout the district, is the Richmond River Historical Society
(RRHS). The Society’s emblem, featuring a woodcut depiction of The Rainbow above the
date 1828, is a commemoration of time zero, marking time
into forgotten and remembered, pre-historic and historic.
The design won Denis Towner of Leigh College, Sydney,
ten pounds as the winning entry in a competition run by the
RRHS in 1968. Denis’s design features Rous’s frigate in full
sail, leaning forward with a good breeze behind her, pennant
unfurled. It is a celebration of a moment and an image of
‘progress’ and the origins of progress. As the RRHS put it,
Denis’s design ‘was in keeping with the requirements of the
Society and quite distinctive and appropriate. It will be used
on the Society’s future publications, sympathy cards and
stationery’.
xxxii
The Richmond River Historical Society emblem is a
manifestation of the white settler practice of defining the
beginning of historical time. This boundary in time supports
the façade of white originality, of the coming of the light into the darkness, of a ‘lost’ BC
and a ‘redemptive’ AD.
xxxiii
This construction of time yet again places Aborigines outside
the white enclave of Lismore, this time in a temporal sense. In four dimensions the
exclusion is complete. In this context, East Lismore during the 1960s and 1970s is a place
for production of white comfort with conceptions of time playing a critical part.

97
This history of memorialising time zero, the coming of The Rainbow, continues into the
present, though in a context of Reconciliation. In 1996, in an effort at targeted tourism
marketing, Lismore City Council placed Lismore at the centre of the newly named
‘Rainbow Region’. The region is based on the Council’s local government boundary.
According to the Council, the name ‘Rainbow Region’:
has been selected for tourism promotions … due to the astonishing coincidence of links
with rainbows in the area. [These are:]
1. Aboriginal legend of the Bundjalung tribe names the “Rainbow Serpent” as the creator
of the caldera area.
2. The “HMS Rainbow” was the first boat to discover the mouth of the Richmond River.
3. The Aquarius Festival of 1973 … used rainbows as its theme, forging a colourful
image on the town of Nimbin.
4. … The high humidity of the area produces large numbers of rainbows in the region.
With all these incidents, Lismore can proudly claim its history of “rainbows” as unique
and successfully market itself as the “Rainbow Region” of Australia.
xxxiv
Despite the prime placement of Bundjalung presence in this explanation, the 24 page
promotional brochure experience Lismore’s rainbow region (2003) is dominated by
settler imagery. There is one reference to the Bundjalung people. This occurs in the Arts
and Culture section under the Richmond River Historical Society entry regarding a
display of ‘aboriginal history’.
xxxv
It would appear that the attempt to pluralise racial
referents to the ‘rainbow’ in Visitor Information Centre information is hollow - that the
people of the region of the rainbow serpent were being paid lip service by the people of
the region of The Rainbow. This reading is given credence through local Widjabul
stories. In Widjabul culture, Lismore is the region of the Goanna.
xxxvi
The Rainbow
Region’s legitimacy sails on a sea of white constructs and founders on a white
fiction.
xxxvii
One might wonder whether a need to make a link to local Indigenous custom
was required to authenticate the name ‘Rainbow Region’ during a time when
Reconciliation was high on the national agenda. Further investigation of this need to
authenticate, to link back to the Indigenous is required.
Whiteness and the tyranny of distance
One purpose of this paper has been to uncover how it might be that in 2000 when I
started thinking about a project exploring the idea of ‘being local’, I positioned myself
quite unproblematically as a local - an original of Lismore, NSW, Australia. The frame of
whiteness presents one way of approaching this dilemma. Whiteness allows questions to
be posed, which, without name or mark, might otherwise go unasked: What were some
specific processes for the production of my unmarked and unnamed whiteness? What
characterises the conditions for this production?
From these questions a number of strategies, practices and products emerged:
• a ‘pedagogy of whiteness’ in East Lismore during the 1960s and 1970s based on a
regime of visibility that teaches how to observe and grade whiteness as well as how to
be observed and graded as (a successful) white;

98
• the production of a cognitive space of whiteness through this pedagogical process. In
this space whiteness is ‘a norm for authority, orderliness, rationality and control’
(Giroux 1977: 299);
• the creation and maintenance of a geographical space of whiteness. In the case of East
Lismore, middle-class whiteness during the 1960s and 1970s was physically
unchallenged by the active exclusion of Aborigines; and
• the creation and maintenance of a historical space of whiteness through definition of
orderly time by means of a colonial marker.
By means of the pedagogical process, spaces are produced, which are themselves the
‘ground’ for the pedagogy of whiteness. Emerging from this milieu (be)comes a white
man who regards himself as a true local - comfortably situated in a normative enclosure,
fortified, regulated and patrolled to keep Aboriginality at a safe distance. This distance
enables comfort in unproblematic local white belonging, and also distances its subject
from the history of injustices inherent in Australian society that many Aborigines and
Torres Strait Islanders experience daily. It would seem this safe white distance ‘shape[s]
Australian destiny’, to use Geoffrey Blainey’s words (Blainey 1966:37), and in seeking
safety in distance, a tyranny of distance
xxxviii
has been brought into being - a tyranny
where Aborigines have become ‘objects of [white] fear’ and ‘subjects in need of
discipline and control’ (Giroux 1997: 298).
Developing strategies for the overthrow of this tyranny, in mind, time and place is I
believe, part of the white work in Reconciliation. Such strategies provide whiteness with
a critical pedagogical purpose, moving beyond description, taxonomy, or white apologia.
Following Giroux, to overcome the tyranny of white distance, the pedagogy of whiteness
requires a deconstruction, an overturning and a transformation into a critical pedagogy,
‘moving beyond the view of whiteness as simply a trope of domination’ (Giroux 1997:
295 – 296). For this to occur, critical and self-reflexive spaces are required. These spaces
may be opened in a classroom, in a discussion forum or as I hope to have demonstrated, a
personal journal. In whatever form, a critical pedagogy of whiteness requires a self-
reflexive space in which to explore, name, and then rearticulate whiteness.
Henry Giroux joins this rearticulated whiteness with Stuart Hall’s notion of ‘new
ethnicity’ (Giroux 1997: 311). A ‘new ethnicity’ of Australian settler whiteness, using
Hall’s lead, would attempt to be transparent about origins, rather than obscuring them
through ruses of power and (self-)deception. This is a ‘being local’ which acknowledges
‘the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity’
and speaks from a ‘particular place, out of a particular history, out of a particular
experience, a particular culture without being constrained by [such] positions’ (Hall cited
in Giroux 1997: 311). This being local, this whiteness, this being white, might then allow
a challenge to, and transformation of, ‘the dominant relationship between racial identity
and citizenship, one informed by oppositional politics’. This being local, rather than
being exclusive and exclusionary, might contribute to ‘expand[ing] the possibilities of
democratic life’ (Giroux 1997: 312)

99
Journal entry: 10 September 2003
Genealogy and origins and possibilities neatened - an East Lismore paper,
neatness itself. Neatness and distance. Whiteness, writing, rightness:
theorising and knowing, claiming truth and agency, The Actor, not an
actor. Quietened words expressed in neat flows. This too is my male East
Lismore whiteness. I start local yet I want to generalise, explain things.
Say how it is. Put it right. Leave no stone unreferenced, no jar half-empty.
Be powerful when I am one actor amongst many. A paper so whole and
self-contained. In my teenage years I might get drunk and smash one
smooth white surface after another and puke into the cracks.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to the many people who significantly shaped my thinking and writing for this
paper: my supervisor Dr. Baden Offord for modelling critical pedagogy, my co-
supervisor Assoc. Prof. Elisabeth Porter for encouraging a position and argument; my
research support group (Annie Bolitho, Emma Kearney, Diana Sweeney) for their
thoughtful listening, ideas and suggestions; Tess Brill for generously sharing her stories
of local human rights activism and her newspaper archives; my partner Shauna McIntyre
for her care, encouragement and feedback with my project; ‘Blue Tongues’ Robert
Kostevc and Meredith Kayess; those people at the ‘Placing Race and Localising
Whiteness’ symposium who so generously provided criticism, feedback and
encouragement; and Southern Cross University for supporting my project.

100
Footnotes

101
WHITE ON WHITE: SURVEYING THE BOUNDARIES OF LOCAL
WHITENESS
Robert Garbutt
The place in which I write and study is Lismore, a town on the land of the Widjabul
people, in the Bundjalung nation, on the far north coast of New South Wales. I am white
and think of myself as a local of Lismore. Lismore is the town in which I grew up, left to
go to university, and to which I returned twenty years later. Now with a university of its
own, it is the town where I recently commenced a project that began as an exploration of
local belonging. It was a white project and still is, but it has changed somewhat as I came
to understand that my notion of belonging in this land, this land in which I have been
planted, was predicated upon clearing the land around me of Aborigines.
xxxix
This is not a unique or startling revelation. What interests me, however, was that in 2000
when I commenced thinking about this project on local belonging, I resisted notions that
my worldview was linked in any way to white advantage or Aboriginal disadvantage. My
project was ‘just about being local’: this local belonging was grounded in unmarked and
unnamed whiteness (Frankenburg 1993: 196 – 7).
In this paper, I wish to commence marking and naming local Lismore whiteness through
an exploration of the idea of whiteness in Lismore. I don’t intend to prove or disprove
that there is a particular or distinctive Lismore whiteness. I am more interested in the
aspects of whiteness that emerge by bringing the words local and whiteness together in
Lismore, particularly in white middle-class East Lismore of my youth in the 1960s and
1970s. My purpose in undertaking this exploration is to see whether the notion of
whiteness aids my understanding of how it is that I came to regard myself, quite
unproblematically, as a local - an original of Lismore - and how ‘unproblematic
whiteness’ might be critically rearticulated.
I have approached this task from two strongly place-based perspectives. The first is self-
critical, self-reflective journal writing. Journal writing, as an accompaniment to reading
theoretical texts, allows a space for protracted engagement between the theory on
whiteness I read and my experience of unmarked whiteness. Writing thus becomes a
research methodology in itself (Richardson 2000: 928-9)
xl
, a methodology in which I am
able to place myself as a local researcher with a commitment to researching as a
transparent and reflexive practice.
xli
My second place-based perspective is to use
narratives and texts that relate to whiteness in Lismore. These I gather through archival
research and through interviews with non-Indigenous Indigenous rights activists who
work, or have worked, in Lismore. These narratives and texts provide a broader range of
perceptions of place and time than would be the case if I relied solely on the journal
writings produced by a middle-aged male researcher reflecting on the personal
experiences of emerging as a white, male adult.
Theory, of course, provides perspectives from an even wider set of local contexts. While
I might know whiteness like I know the back of my hand, and experience whiteness as
the back of my hand, I have not experienced the back of my white male hand as an

102
instrument of oppression: whether through an act of violence or a dismissive flick of the
wrist. For this ‘other’ experience, Whiteness Studies, especially feminist writing on
whiteness (Aileen Moreton-Robinson 2000a,b; Ruth Frankenburg 1993,1997; Marilyn
Frye 1983,1992) has provided a point of departure for an uncomfortable and incomplete
exploration - an exploration that threads together a voice from recent interviews, some
documents from the archive, and the voice of my journal.
Journal Entry: July 10, 2003 – Whiteness Paper … possible beginning
Before last November [2002] I did not think of my whiteness. A launch of
a new online journal changed that, not because of the journal’s subject
matter, but because of a chat with another prospective doctoral candidate
over a glass of bubbly.
‘So what’s your thesis about?’ I asked Diana.
‘I want to study whiteness in women’s magazines,’ she replied. Women’s
magazines I had some knowledge of, but whiteness?
‘What is that?’ I asked.
We had one of those staccato discussions that take place at noisy raise-
your-glass style occasions, so I didn’t leave the journal launch with a new
theoretical construct, but I did leave with a new word - ‘a fresh seed sewn
on the ground of [our] discussion’(Wittgenstein 1980: 2e).
Despite that lack of theoretical understanding I had about whiteness, the
term resonated in an uncanny way. Like a desert bloom, this seed sewn on
the ground of discussion germinated, grew and flowered quickly and the
bloom drew to it experiences and feelings like a steady stream of bees
hungry for its nectar. This word, ‘whiteness,’ drew to it experiences and
feelings associated with being raised and living in a country town: the
town I write in, Lismore. It is as if I had been waiting for that word to
appear.
I want to stay with that initial moment a while, in the realm of experience
and informal theory. I want to reflect on those initial thoughts about
whiteness, to remember what it is that excited me.
I am transported to 1978 or thereabouts. I am in East Lismore walking
home with three mates from high school on a mild sub-tropical afternoon
at about 3:30pm. As happens nearly every afternoon on this way home, we
stop at the bottom of the Melody Street
xlii
hill under the shade of a large
spreading jacaranda, to sit, talk, and for no reason I can explain, the others
throw their left over lunches, all packed in plastic bags high into the tree
until they stay there, caught amongst the branches.

103
I am not a part of this ritual. I never have a lunch to throw up there and am
feeling extremely uncomfortable. We are sitting under the Golden’s
jacaranda. Up the hill from the Goldens are the Hockeys, then the Sparks.
Across the road from the Sparks is my house, and at the top of the hill,
above our house, are the Tutts. This is my street. I know it and it knows
me. As we sit beneath the lunch-festooned jacaranda, Mrs Tutt makes a
chink with her finger in the white venetian blind in their dining room and I
can sense a beam of judgement sweeping across the land. The data
gathered in each sweep is encoded and collated for transmission to
relevant interested parties at an opportune time.
My first reaction to whiteness, East Lismore whiteness, is to feel a gaze.
This gaze judges to a standard and the standard dwells on what can be
seen: on appearance, on behaviour, an appearance of being good, and of
associating with apparently good people. My discomfort from the gaze
eventually overcomes peer group bonds. ‘I’ll see yuz later,’ I say, and with
smartarse comments trailing after me I walk the 50 metres or so uphill,
until I’m out of sight in the safe enclosure of home.
By high school, I need no longer see the white venetian open and close to
experience the gaze. I had an internalised white venetian of my own at the
top of the hill, and my own Mrs Tutt judging each movement, each action,
each thought, each situation, each person, each place: all surfaces and
appearances arranged against a set of criteria that approximate the essence
of whiteness, an essence submerged and barely discernible, lurking in my
unconscious like the great white whale.
As I contemplate this form beneath the surface I find myself wandering
the streets of East Lismore of my teenage years. I am looking for
representations, or approximations, of the essence of my East Lismore
whiteness. It is just past midday. There is no cloud in the near-purple
summer sky. The sunlight is hard and dazzling and clears the streets of
people. The streets are eerily vacant of people on this hot sunny Sunday
afternoon. Along with radiated heat, silence rises from the asphalt road. As
I wander this neat and tidy part of town here is the quiet whiteness I find.
Whiteness is smooth and hard like well-laid concrete. It has neat edges,
sharp corners and an even height like a well-mown lawn. It is
weatherboard with a tasteful paint-job that does not stand out. It is a
garden without weeds. The hose is neatly rolled up. This whiteness prefers
trees that don’t drop their leaves. Each surface it presents to the world is
an object of discipline. It doesn’t make trouble. It is obedient and quiet. It
is prosperous through restraint. It is all for the best. It is heterosexual but
not sexual. It is white sheets on the line without stains. It is ‘too clean for
dandruff’. It has clear lines of separation into yours and mine. It is
neighbourhood; people like us; self-same-Others; safe and secure. It bows
to the trinity: clean, neat and tidy. It is patriarchal mastery over the chaos

104
of nature; a Phallus-like symbol of omnipotence. Each white house here is
under control.
xliii
Emerging in the white zone
In this narrative East Lismore emerges as a place that privileges an uncritical pedagogy of
whiteness. In this place lessons are learnt regarding how to observe whiteness and how to
be successfully observed as white. Thus, the pedagogy of whiteness includes processes of
embodiment infused within a regime of seeing. This regime of seeing is organised by
whiteness itself.
xliv
This interpretation and my journal reflection are influenced by Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks’
(2000: 25) notion that whiteness, in Lacanian terms, is the master signifier of race. As a
master signifier, whiteness organises race - ‘the inaugural term of difference, … the
primary signifier of the symbolic order of race’ - and all who encounter whiteness are
personally and socially positioned by it. Seshadri-Crooks notes that the field in which
whiteness organises its subjects is that of the visible: ‘Racial practice is ultimately an
aesthetic practice, and must be understood as a regime of looking’. The subject and object
of the look is the body and its features, with ‘“race” … appear[ing] as a fundamental and
normative factor of human embodiment’(Seshadri-Crooks 2000: 19 – 20). Inhabited
place as a site and effect of embodiment is equally subject to the racial look. Without
embodying skills of observing and being observed, race as a practice, collapses.
My memories of East Lismore in the 1960s and 1970s do not include observed racial
difference. This is primarily because racial difference did not exist there, or so I saw.
xlv
In
a place where non Anglo-Celtic appearing bodies were not seen, whiteness went
unnamed and unmarked. That is not to say however, that the marking of difference did
not occur. Without racial reference, marking of difference was conducted in the East
Lismore of my youth by deploying other signifiers and indexes of whiteness that had
finely graduated scales. These signifiers could include public behaviour, social affiliation
and housekeeping - all observed and observable. That which attaches itself to whiteness,
that has been produced by whiteness in my journal entry, include those very indexes by
which whiteness is observed, graded, and which are so often explained by race - how one
behaves, the company one keeps and how one’s house is kept.
Without specific reference to race, then, East Lismore was still able to function as a
pedagogical site for the embodiment of racialised practices. These practices mark
observable differences in very fine detail - observable differences that subject a white
community to a range of positionings, even within communally acknowledged sameness.
By describing East Lismore as a place of ‘Anglo-Celtic appearing’ bodies, I imply that
strategies of exclusion are deployed by these ‘Anglo-Celtic appearing’ bodies. One
strategy of exclusion is to encourage sameness through practices of observing and being
observed - ‘minuscule ruses of discipline’ (Foucault cited in de Certeau 1984: 96) - such
as those I mention above and depict in my journal. Co-produced within a place of
sameness, is a void of otherness - a place that displaces others, spaces others. As a place

105
of potential belonging, non Anglo-Celtic appearing bodies could be expected to feel
discomfort and ‘unhomeliness’. There is a sense then in which a place of sameness is
both product and its (partial) cause.
xlvi
This place of sameness, this enclave of whiteness,
exists in place and in body. In body the physical form of difference is observed and
observer. In body and in mind a place and a subject are co-produced.
This self-regulatory, panoptic strategy of exclusion does not function on its own
(Foucault 1977). Whiteness as a place - localised whiteness - requires other strategies that
maintain the boundaries of sameness and exclusion. It is to these boundaries that I would
now like to turn; in the first instance to physical boundaries and then to temporal
boundaries.
Defending the physical boundaries of the white enclave
The physical space of East Lismore was created by white settlement and has demanded
maintenance of its geographical boundaries. Parts of the boundary of East Lismore
coincide with the boundary of Lismore itself and so have been susceptible to possible
‘incursion’ from Bundjalung people who may choose to reside in or near the town. Far
from being met with ‘minuscule ruses’ of power, such challenges to exclusion have
brought forth open and vocal hostility.
Until the early 1900s Bundjalung people preserved their independence from white settlers
in Lismore by avoiding being brought under the oversight of the Aborigines Protection
Board. Access to schooling, however, necessitated interaction, though this proved
difficult through repeated efforts of townspeople to keep schools segregated (Goodall
1996: 143–4). By 1928 the Bundjalung people had negotiated a reserve and school
without managerial oversight that was to become known as Cubawee. In the late 1950s
and into the 1960s, however, concern at the conditions of Cubawee coincided with the
Aborigines Welfare Board’s implementation of a policy of assimilation. Plans, agreed to
by the majority of the Cubawee community, though with significant dissension, were
made to resettle Cubawee residents in or closer to Lismore itself (Brill 2003).
An attempt by the Aborigines Welfare Board (AWB) in 1957 to create a new settlement
in the ‘Leechy Scrub’ on the edge of East Lismore was resisted by Lismore City Council
(LCC).
xlvii
A second attempt was made by the AWB in 1961. In a recent interview Tess
Brill, a non-Indigenous Indigenous rights activist who worked in Lismore from the late
1950s to the late 1970s, recalled the time when sites were being sought. She says, with an
ironic chuckle:
What happened was it got that way that the [Aborigines Welfare Board]
Area Officer had a blue Holden, and if that blue Holden came into any
street in Lismore all the alarms bells went up. He was looking for a house
or a site (Brill 2003).
Eventually a two-acre site was identified by the AWB. The site, owned at the time by
Lismore City Council, is on the edge of East Lismore on Wyrallah Road, opposite
Lismore’s sewerage treatment works. On 25 January 1962, a meeting to protest against

106
the proposed settlement at this site was called.
xlviii
Tess remembers the strength of
feeling:
When [the proposed settlement] was mooted … you had all the residents
out along Wyrallah Road [in East Lismore] up in arms. Well,
there’s…quite a big hall there… so a public meeting was called … The
hall was packed. You couldn’t fit - there were groups of people outside
and they had the windows open … and someone relaying [proceedings].
They opened the meeting… well if only it could have been recorded… A
number of residents were getting up and speaking and one man was in
tears because … he wouldn’t be able to go to work because of fear of
leaving his wife and children while [Aboriginal children] walked [from the
proposed site] to school. Another argument was that it would lower the
value of their property – oh, that was a very common one. And of course
the ‘lazy dirty’ one came up and they all gave examples….
[T]hese arguments went on and then [the chairman] ruled that the
arguments that had been put were not valid on the grounds that [a]ll [the
white residents] were expressing were their fears (Brill 2003).
While the intent of the meeting was to voice protest, there was no absence of voices at the
meeting speaking for the Cubawee residents. Of 11 major speakers at the meeting seven
spoke in favour of the AWB’s proposal and a ‘motion which included a statement that
Wyrallah Road was an unsuitable site for housing Aborigines was rejected’ by the
majority of 140 people attending.
xlix
Instead, a less divisive proposal was put to the
meeting and it was resolved ‘that a committee be appointed and Lismore City Council be
asked to call a public meeting to discuss the matter of housing at Cubawee.’
l
This move to involve Lismore City Council played into the hands of powerful interests
and an apparently racially prejudiced majority on Council
li
. A group calling themselves
‘Ratepayers’, co-authors of a letter to the editor of The Northern Star put the view that:
‘[t]he benefits of setting aside certain areas as first class residential areas,
and subsequent large expenditure in these areas in an effort to keep these
areas on a high standard, will be to a large extent wasted if an aboriginal
settlement is so placed that its main thoroughfare will be through the
centre of this residential area.’
lii
‘Ratepayers’ preferred that an area for assimilation be identified ‘where public sympathy
for them [the Cubawee people] can develop’ and that this area be ‘somewhere on the
north-eastern side of Lismore, where their thoroughfare into town causes the population
the least inconvenience and assures them no hostility’
liii
.
The thinking here: that Aborigines are other than the ‘public’ and ‘the population’; that
certain ‘first class residential areas’ such as East Lismore are not places where ‘public
sympathy can develop’; and that first class residential areas are ‘unrealistic’ sites for
assimilation, won the ear of the Council. Real estate values and racial prejudice were

107
powerful persuaders of the powerful. One Alderman put it thus, ‘Council must face up to
the fact, and soon, that aborigines [sic] are outcasts and no-one wants them.’
liv
Another
stated that ‘[i]t’s nice to be a Christian, but the only way to look at this is to view it as
though we lived next door to the aborigines.’
lv
When it became clear that opposition to
the Wyrallah Road site was far from monolithic, the white patriarchal elders were forced
into tactical inaction.
lvi
The Lismore City Council resolved the issue by evading making a
decision. They reasoned that because Cubawee was sited outside the Lismore City
Council area in Gundurimba Shire, the Lismore City Council could not hold a public
meeting on Cubawee housing. In a Mayoral Minute, Alderman Campbell stated, ‘Council
can only be concerned with matters of this nature within its own area and it would not be
proper of council to initiate any move…’.
lvii
Eventually a site for a settlement was found on the other side of Lismore, outside the
Lismore City Council boundary, on the road where the tip was located at that time. The
new settlement was ready in time for the visit to Lismore by the Sydney University
‘Freedom Ride’ three years later in 1965. The Freedom Ride was a student bus tour of
northern NSW organised by the Chairman of Sydney University’s Student Action for
Aborigines, Charles Perkins. One purpose of the tour was ‘a comprehensive survey of
Aboriginal life in the main towns visited’(Perkins 1999 [1965] 215-216). Following their
survey of Lismore residents, a spokesperson for the Freedom Ride was able to state that,
‘Apart from one or two individuals, I wouldn’t say there has been any sign of
discrimination on purely racial grounds …’.
lviii
The Freedom Ride visit was an enormous success for the Lismore City Council. This
came as a relief following violent scenes when the students visited Moree two weeks
earlier. The new housing for Cubawee families made a big impression, with The
Northern Star writing, ‘The immediate image of the city’s aborigines has been strikingly
changed by the transfer of families to South Gundurimba from the long-tolerated horror
at Cubawee.’
lix
The students departed following a free lunch at the Lismore Workers’
Club at which Mayor Campbell accepted membership of Student Action for Aborigines.
The Sydney Morning Herald further reported that in Lismore the Freedom Ride had ‘the
warmest and most sympathetic reception of their journey’.
lx
Not only had the physical boundaries of the white enclave of East Lismore been defended
from Aboriginal presence in 1962 but also to all appearances Lismore’s whiteness
showed no blemish. This maintenance of unblemished appearance is a product of the
pedagogy of whiteness, enabled through an intimate embodied understanding of how to
be successfully observed as white, pure white.
The boundary of time
The production of a protected physical space in which whiteness might reside is aided by
another practice that distances white local being from the Aboriginal other: the definition
of historical time. To explore this further I return to my journal and a second beginning I
wrote for this paper.

108
Journal Entry: August 14, 2003 – Whiteness Paper …another beginning
I’ve been writing recently about whiteness and being local… My idea is to
discover and describe the local whiteness of Lismore… I am without a
map like the great explorers before me. I am Captain Rous in 1828
entering the Richmond River in my 28-gun frigate The Rainbow, past ‘the
dense forest … teeming with life’, ‘peer[ing] out at the fairylike scene
noting every detail of the river which no white man had found before…’
(Daley 1966: 5,12).
How easily the image of Captain Rous is conjured in my white imagination, and how
easily I imagine myself into his skin. As a child I walked the paddocks at the bottom of
the Melody Street hill, with a close friend and our dogs in just the same way: the way of
the explorer, the discoverer, the namer, the mapper. There wasn’t anything of public
significance in our wanderings of course, but through our schooling we understood the
importance of ‘first times’ - of seeing for the first time, of being the first, of how
important it is to white experience to claim originality. The time most open to regulation
by white power, and that which gives me a white historical experience of ‘originality’ is
that colonial moment when the local landscape is seen by white eyes for the first time. By
placing time zero at such a point, colonial time begins. Before whiteness is timelessness -
an ontological absence - a time before being; and an epistemological absence - before
white knowing.
Time zero has particular relevance for local history, memory and imagination. In
Lismore, historical time is measured from 1828 - the year when Captain Rous became the
first white man to see the mouth of Richmond River, the river into which Lismore’s
Wilson River flows. The keeper of local history in Lismore, the authority on local time
keeping in the city and throughout the district, is the Richmond River Historical Society
(RRHS). The Society’s emblem, featuring a woodcut depiction of The Rainbow above the
date 1828, is a commemoration of time zero, marking time
into forgotten and remembered, pre-historic and historic.
The design won Denis Towner of Leigh College, Sydney,
ten pounds as the winning entry in a competition run by the
RRHS in 1968. Denis’s design features Rous’s frigate in full
sail, leaning forward with a good breeze behind her, pennant
unfurled. It is a celebration of a moment and an image of
‘progress’ and the origins of progress. As the RRHS put it,
Denis’s design ‘was in keeping with the requirements of the
Society and quite distinctive and appropriate. It will be used
on the Society’s future publications, sympathy cards and
stationery’.
lxi
The Richmond River Historical Society emblem is a
manifestation of the white settler practice of defining the
beginning of historical time. This boundary in time supports

109
the façade of white originality, of the coming of the light into the darkness, of a ‘lost’ BC
and a ‘redemptive’ AD.
lxii
This construction of time yet again places Aborigines outside
the white enclave of Lismore, this time in a temporal sense. In four dimensions the
exclusion is complete. In this context, East Lismore during the 1960s and 1970s is a place
for production of white comfort with conceptions of time playing a critical part.
This history of memorialising time zero, the coming of The Rainbow, continues into the
present, though in a context of Reconciliation. In 1996, in an effort at targeted tourism
marketing, Lismore City Council placed Lismore at the centre of the newly named
‘Rainbow Region’. The region is based on the Council’s local government boundary.
According to the Council, the name ‘Rainbow Region’:
has been selected for tourism promotions … due to the astonishing coincidence of links
with rainbows in the area. [These are:]
1. Aboriginal legend of the Bundjalung tribe names the “Rainbow Serpent” as the creator
of the caldera area.
2. The “HMS Rainbow” was the first boat to discover the mouth of the Richmond River.
3. The Aquarius Festival of 1973 … used rainbows as its theme, forging a colourful
image on the town of Nimbin.
4. … The high humidity of the area produces large numbers of rainbows in the region.
With all these incidents, Lismore can proudly claim its history of “rainbows” as unique
and successfully market itself as the “Rainbow Region” of Australia.
lxiii
Despite the prime placement of Bundjalung presence in this explanation, the 24 page
promotional brochure experience Lismore’s rainbow region (2003) is dominated by
settler imagery. There is one reference to the Bundjalung people. This occurs in the Arts
and Culture section under the Richmond River Historical Society entry regarding a
display of ‘aboriginal history’.
lxiv
It would appear that the attempt to pluralise racial
referents to the ‘rainbow’ in Visitor Information Centre information is hollow - that the
people of the region of the rainbow serpent were being paid lip service by the people of
the region of The Rainbow. This reading is given credence through local Widjabul
stories. In Widjabul culture, Lismore is the region of the Goanna.
lxv
The Rainbow
Region’s legitimacy sails on a sea of white constructs and founders on a white fiction.
lxvi
One might wonder whether a need to make a link to local Indigenous custom was
required to authenticate the name ‘Rainbow Region’ during a time when Reconciliation
was high on the national agenda. Further investigation of this need to authenticate, to link
back to the Indigenous is required.
Whiteness and the tyranny of distance
One purpose of this paper has been to uncover how it might be that in 2000 when I
started thinking about a project exploring the idea of ‘being local’, I positioned myself
quite unproblematically as a local - an original of Lismore, NSW, Australia. The frame of
whiteness presents one way of approaching this dilemma. Whiteness allows questions to
be posed, which, without name or mark, might otherwise go unasked: What were some
specific processes for the production of my unmarked and unnamed whiteness? What
characterises the conditions for this production?

110
From these questions a number of strategies, practices and products emerged:
• a ‘pedagogy of whiteness’ in East Lismore during the 1960s and 1970s based on a
regime of visibility that teaches how to observe and grade whiteness as well as how to
be observed and graded as (a successful) white;
• the production of a cognitive space of whiteness through this pedagogical process. In
this space whiteness is ‘a norm for authority, orderliness, rationality and control’
(Giroux 1977: 299);
• the creation and maintenance of a geographical space of whiteness. In the case of East
Lismore, middle-class whiteness during the 1960s and 1970s was physically
unchallenged by the active exclusion of Aborigines; and
• the creation and maintenance of a historical space of whiteness through definition of
orderly time by means of a colonial marker.
By means of the pedagogical process, spaces are produced, which are themselves the
‘ground’ for the pedagogy of whiteness. Emerging from this milieu (be)comes a white
man who regards himself as a true local - comfortably situated in a normative enclosure,
fortified, regulated and patrolled to keep Aboriginality at a safe distance. This distance
enables comfort in unproblematic local white belonging, and also distances its subject
from the history of injustices inherent in Australian society that many Aborigines and
Torres Strait Islanders experience daily. It would seem this safe white distance ‘shape[s]
Australian destiny’, to use Geoffrey Blainey’s words (Blainey 1966:37), and in seeking
safety in distance, a tyranny of distance
lxvii
has been brought into being - a tyranny where
Aborigines have become ‘objects of [white] fear’ and ‘subjects in need of discipline and
control’ (Giroux 1997: 298).
Developing strategies for the overthrow of this tyranny, in mind, time and place is I
believe, part of the white work in Reconciliation. Such strategies provide whiteness with
a critical pedagogical purpose, moving beyond description, taxonomy, or white apologia.
Following Giroux, to overcome the tyranny of white distance, the pedagogy of whiteness
requires a deconstruction, an overturning and a transformation into a critical pedagogy,
‘moving beyond the view of whiteness as simply a trope of domination’ (Giroux 1997:
295 – 296). For this to occur, critical and self-reflexive spaces are required. These spaces
may be opened in a classroom, in a discussion forum or as I hope to have demonstrated, a
personal journal. In whatever form, a critical pedagogy of whiteness requires a self-
reflexive space in which to explore, name, and then rearticulate whiteness.
Henry Giroux joins this rearticulated whiteness with Stuart Hall’s notion of ‘new
ethnicity’ (Giroux 1997: 311). A ‘new ethnicity’ of Australian settler whiteness, using
Hall’s lead, would attempt to be transparent about origins, rather than obscuring them
through ruses of power and (self-)deception. This is a ‘being local’ which acknowledges
‘the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity’
and speaks from a ‘particular place, out of a particular history, out of a particular
experience, a particular culture without being constrained by [such] positions’ (Hall cited
in Giroux 1997: 311). This being local, this whiteness, this being white, might then allow

111
a challenge to, and transformation of, ‘the dominant relationship between racial identity
and citizenship, one informed by oppositional politics’. This being local, rather than
being exclusive and exclusionary, might contribute to ‘expand[ing] the possibilities of
democratic life’ (Giroux 1997: 312)
Journal entry: 10 September 2003
Genealogy and origins and possibilities neatened - an East Lismore paper,
neatness itself. Neatness and distance. Whiteness, writing, rightness:
theorising and knowing, claiming truth and agency, The Actor, not an
actor. Quietened words expressed in neat flows. This too is my male East
Lismore whiteness. I start local yet I want to generalise, explain things.
Say how it is. Put it right. Leave no stone unreferenced, no jar half-empty.
Be powerful when I am one actor amongst many. A paper so whole and
self-contained. In my teenage years I might get drunk and smash one
smooth white surface after another and puke into the cracks.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to the many people who significantly shaped my thinking and writing for this
paper: my supervisor Dr. Baden Offord for modelling critical pedagogy, my co-
supervisor Assoc. Prof. Elisabeth Porter for encouraging a position and argument; my
research support group (Annie Bolitho, Emma Kearney, Diana Sweeney) for their
thoughtful listening, ideas and suggestions; Tess Brill for generously sharing her stories
of local human rights activism and her newspaper archives; my partner Shauna McIntyre
for her care, encouragement and feedback with my project; ‘Blue Tongues’ Robert
Kostevc and Meredith Kayess; those people at the ‘Placing Race and Localising
Whiteness’ symposium who so generously provided criticism, feedback and
encouragement; and Southern Cross University for supporting my project.

112
Footnotes

113
‘WHITE INDIGENEITY’
IN THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MOUNTED CONSTABLE WILLIAM
WILLSHIRE
Robert Foster and Amanda Nettelbeck
When William Henry Willshire enlisted in the South Australian Police Force in 1878, the
Northern Territory had been under the administration of South Australia for 13 years. The
Overland Telegraph Line had been completed in 1872 and now, later in the decade, had
become a valuable departure point for excursions into the interior in search of pastoral
land. Several large-scale pastoral stations were, by 1878, already established and stocked
in the vast region around Alice Springs. With the rapid expansion of the pastoral industry
into Arrertne lands, and upswing in attacks on European settlers, their stocks and
property, pastoralists petitioned the South Australian government for a Native Police
Force to be established in the Centre, the objective of which would be Aboriginal
‘pacification’. When in late 1884 such a force was authorised, William Willshire became
its Officer in Charge. For the next seven years he patrolled the Centre’s pastoral frontiers
from Barrow Creek in the north to the Peake in the south, in the process generating a
reputation for Aboriginal ‘dispersal’ that the historian Richard Kimber has described as
genocidal (Kimber 1997). Willshire also wrote about his frontier policing experiences in
three pamphlets, written in response to calls from bodies like the Royal Geographical
Society to document the culture of what was perceived to be a ‘dying race’. While
ostensibly ethnographic, these rambling, semi-autobiographical narratives are primarily
meditations on the nature of an imagined white Australian ‘nativeness’. Willshire’s
history is important, not only for what he did and what he wrote, but also for his place
within a late nineteenth century culture that worked, knowingly and systematically,
towards the service of white nationhood. What his story illuminates is the paradoxical
logic of a late settler colonial culture, a logic that simultaneously combined an emulation
and a supplanting of indigeneity (Thomas 1997: 24-28).
In the Preface to his first book The Aborigines of Central Australia (1888; rpt. 1891),
Willshire opens by identifying himself as ‘an Australian native’ who is trying ‘to do
something for his countrymen’ by recording the language of the ‘natives’ (Willshire
1891: Preface). Here Willshire, the region’s representative of colonial law, and
Aboriginal people, the primary targets of his often violent policing practices, are both
identified as ‘native’. This slippage in the nomenclature hints at a longer history of
ambiguity in the popular use of the terms ‘Australian’ and ‘native’ over the course of the
nineteenth century. Ken Inglis has pointed out that early in the nineteenth century the
term ‘Australian’ was used interchangeably with the term ‘native’ to refer to Aboriginal
people (Inglis 1988: 55). In the same period, according to John Molony, indeed as early
as 1806, the term ‘native’ appeared in print with reference to Australian-born descendants
of British emigrants (Molony 2000: 23). By the mid colonial period, the phrase ‘native
Australian’ was in popular usage for marking out locally-born ‘whites’ from British
emigrants (Inglis 1988: 55). Indeed the term ‘native’ became extended to the idea of a
white ‘native race’, ‘that is to say’, as Sidney’s Emigrant Journal put it in the 1840s,
‘Australians born in the country, of European origins’ (Molony 2000: 23), thus attributing

114
a specifically eugenic distinction to locally-born ‘whites’. By the late colonial period,
then, ‘native’ had become a most ambiguous category, with differently perceived eugenic
connotations: it was in usage both with reference to an imagined category of a flourishing
white Australian race, and with reference to an imagined category of a dying black race.
Yet only one of those categories, of course, was considered to have a future. The census
in the year of Federation, 1901, marked out more than three-quarters of the Australian
population as being Australian-born and the bulk of the remainder as British-born. Such
figures applied to the non-Aboriginal population; the Aboriginal population was not
counted (White 1981: 112).
The assertion of Australian nativeness is made throughout Willshire’s writings,
and it is in his capacity as an Australian conscious of his patriotic duty that he
justifies the brutality of his policing activities on the pastoral frontier. He belongs,
he clarifies for his readership, to the Australian Natives Association - membership
of which was limited to white people born in Australia. He displays his familiarity
with the writings of explorers, with the pages of the Bulletin, and with the
Federation debate. Throughout his works he knowingly draws on emerging
national symbols: the southern cross, the flowering wattle. More than in the
deployment of such generic symbols, though, Willshire’s articulation of ‘white
nativeness’ is expressed through his repeated appeal to the figure of the
‘bushman’. In his 1858 book The Australian Legend Russell Ward traces the
origins of the popular mystique attached to the bushman of last century. The
bushman was a member of what Ward called the ‘nomad tribe’ of pastoral
workers. What characterised them is they ‘knew’ the bush: they were not only
comfortable in that environment but were master of it. In this sense, writes Ward,
many bushmen felt themselves to be, in some sense, the heirs to important parts of
Aboriginal culture. After all, no white man has ever been the equal of the Aborigines in
essential bush skills, in tracking, finding water, living on bush food, and so on … If, as
has been argued, the bushman’s esprit de corps sprang largely from his adaption to, and
mastery of, the outback environment, then the Aborigine was his master and mentor.
(Ward 1958)
Certainly, in late colonial writings by and about bushmen there is a repeatedly expressed
admiration for Aboriginal skills and Aboriginal knowledge of the environment. Yet
running parallel to this admiration was a deep racism, a bitter contempt for imagined
Aboriginal characteristics: savagery, treachery, immorality, ingratitude. The pastoral
workers and their associates, such as policemen like William Willshire, were the front
line of settlement. It is they who were responsible for the greatest violence against
Aboriginal people - intimidation, murder, sexual violence and exploitation. In this sense
it seems unlikely that the nineteenth century pastoral workers who identified as bushmen
would regard themselves as ‘heirs to’ or protégés of Aboriginal culture. Aboriginal skills
and knowledge might be attributes to which the bushman aspired – they were the very
attributes that marked him out as a bushman - but Aboriginal people themselves were to
be controlled, pacified and, when necessary, eliminated.

115
Perhaps encouraged by the reasonable success of The Aborigines of Central Australia,
Willshire published in 1895 his second work, A Thrilling Tale of Real Life in the Wilds of
Australia. In its Preface, Willshire modestly offers his ‘little book’, as he had The
Aborigines of Central Australia, as a work of ethnographic interest. ‘I would like the
critic to be a countryman of my own – a South Australian – and then judge it on its
merits, not as an aspiring literary effort, but as a work giving some information regarding
the aborigines of an almost unknown and unexplored portion of Central Australia’
(Willshire 1895: 7). From the first, however, the work’s proposed status as a factual
record of ‘the natives and their habits’- a document ‘of true aboriginal life, recorded as a
result of actual observation by the author’ (Willshire 1895: 8) - slides almost seamlessly
into a eulogy to the bushman, here manifest as himself, the Mounted Constable. As a
work of literary aspiration, A Thrilling Tale is not memorable. As a professed
contribution to first-hand ethnographic information, it is written for sensationalist or
romanticised effect. What is of most interest about this work, however, is the way in
which it articulates the nationalist sentiment that was being strongly expressed in the
literature of the century’s last decade. This was a nationalist vision that relied heavily
upon both the appropriation and the displacement of Aboriginality. In this book, in an
unusual reversal of panoptical colonial vision, Willshire’s first introduction to the ‘wild
aborigine’ presents him as the observer, the surveyor of the country that includes himself,
the ‘weary white-fellow’. Yet the perspective of that ‘dusky figure’ is enlisted only in so
far as it can imaginatively refract back, for the reader’s benefit, the image of the
narrative’s real subject: the white hero, the natural inheritor of the environment. In this
sense, in a play of double vision, Willshire presents himself both as the neutral author of
facts ‘recorded as a result of actual observation’, and as the heroic central character of
adventure romance.
I liked the life, enraptured by scenes of desolate wildness; of picturesque beauty, gorge and glen
where the wild holly and oranges wafted their perfume over the camp of the weary white-fellow.
From many a craggy eminence I have seen the wild aborigine keenly observing my movements,
and while meditating on these wild scenes I have fallen asleep, whilst my blackboys have prepared
the usual repast of tea, kangaroo, iguano, &c.
Savage life, stripped of all its fictitious ornaments has its natural and entrancing beauties, but the
darker shadows of its vices dim the lustre of its virtues. (Willshire 1895: 8)
In Writing the Colonial Adventure, Robert Dixon outlines the features of the late colonial
adventure romance novel, and its influential place in Australian popular culture in the
decades approaching Federation. Although its plots might vary, its structural features are
repetitive: an explicitly masculinist genre, it relates adventures in which a group of
explorer-heroes journeys into unexplored regions; they encounter a lost race, often a
hybrid or degenerate society, or natives ‘warring among themselves’; the erotic
attractions of the barbaric race are manifest when one of the white heroes is enraptured
by a native woman; they establish the order that their natural superiority requires; and,
with any luck uncovering a treasure in the wilds of the now-explored interior, they return
to civilisation. As Dixon argues, such colonial adventure narratives reveal ‘anxieties
about race, nation and empire,’ or more specifically, the anxieties about ‘racial and
cultural decline’ that mark the late colonial period (Dixon 1997: 4-7). They reflect an
imperative to civilise – an intrinsically imperialist imperative - at the same time that they
articulate an anti-Empire, pro-nationalist sentiment. In this sense, the formation of a

116
distinctly Australian nationalism was conceived in this literary genre in terms of both a
rejection of ‘external’ Britishness and a rejection of local ‘barbarity’.
A Thrilling Tale follows many of the conventions identified by Dixon. The white hero –
Willshire, sometimes identified here as Oleara, a name apparently adopted from ‘the
native language’ – journeys into the western reaches of Central Australia. In this journey
his guide and Muse is the ‘dusky maiden’ Chillberta, to whom the book is dedicated.
Chillberta is a tantalising reminder of the natural treasures of the country over which the
white hero is master; a comely virgin of sixteen, she is just ‘budding into womanhood’.
And like Chillberta, the land itself is ripe for plucking. It is ‘a beautiful land, where very
few white men have been, and where, in all its luxuriant lusciousness, flourish the ever-
welcome quandong and wild orange’ (Willshire 1895: 9-12). Chillberta becomes
Willshire/Oleara’s girl Friday, his ‘cicerone’ on his journey, warning him when danger is
near and, as his protégé, moving inexorably herself towards an appreciation of and
yearning for ‘civilised’ femininity. Indeed Willshire’s black Chillberta is perilously
similar to the idealised white Australian Girl, eulogised in Ethel Castilla’s famous poem,
who captured the popular imagination in late nineteenth century verse. Born of the
country and ‘chaste as the morning dew’, Chillberta is the ‘light-hearted girl who loved
the free air of the ranges’ and whose stoic heart always ‘dispelled adversity’ (Willshire
1895: Dedication). Loyal to the hero, and ultimately rewarded with entry into
‘civilisation’, Chillberta is the narrative point of entry through which Willshire/Oleara,
the exemplary bushman hero, is granted possession of the landscape.
In an exploration of sexual licentiousness as a feature of racial regressiveness, Willshire
borrows loosely from other adventure romance novels of the day, and also from other
pan-colonial stereotypes that circulated in nineteenth century popular culture. Under the
guidance of the friendly native ‘Pin-pan’, Willshire/Oleara arrives at an isolated mountain
which houses a ‘harem’ of women. Guided through a maze of ‘cavernous hollows’ and
‘subterranean passages’ and finally stooping through an archway of ‘fresh mistletoes and
beautiful creepers’, he gains access to the harem and its denizens (Willshire 1895: 27-28).
A Thrilling Tale proceeds through other conventional narrative features of colonial
adventure romance. There is Willshire/Oleara’s own heroic journey through an
unexplored territory, which is nonetheless his familiar domain, replete with encounters
with either hostile savages or friendly Aboriginal guides and companions. Along with
Chillberta, always at hand is his Colt revolver, which, when required, he is quick to draw
from his belt ‘with a smile ironical’ (Willshire 1895: 21). In so far as the potential
violence of these encounters spills into each chapter, its sole narrative function is to
dramatise the thrilling adventures of Willshire/Oleara, the white frontiersman. In his
apparently first-hand observations of Aboriginal cultural life, there are multiple
descriptions of cannibalism, lawlessness and wantonness. Interspersed with these
sensationalist descriptions of savagery are details which pertain to the work’s professed
intention to offer ethnographic information, passages of which are sometimes transcribed
from The Aborigines of Central Australia: vocabularies, the function of domestic tools,
food gathering practices. Of overarching importance, though, is the moral and physical
character of the ‘white native’, the man ‘born under the Southern Cross’ (Willshire 1895:
19). It is he who is the central subject of A Thrilling Tale, whose presence supplants that

117
of the more shadowy Aboriginal figures in the text; and ‘there are plenty more like him in
the bush (Willshire 1895: 19).
In the following year, 1896, Willshire published his third and last book. It was called The
Land of the Dawning: Facts Gleaned from Cannibals in the Australian Stone Age. Its
cover photograph of Aboriginal people from Gordon Creek, the ‘Pilie-nurra Tribe’,
indicates, as in Willshire’s earlier work, an ethnographic intention, this time focusing
upon the people of the region around the Victoria River. Yet almost from the opening
page, the reader is back in the legend of the bushman, adapted to the Officer of the
frontier. As part of the expression of this legend in The Land of the Dawning, Aboriginal
people are the abstracted subjects of Willshire’s extravagant idealisation of the land, and
simultaneously the lived subjects of his vitriolic contempt. In this work, as in his earlier
writings, Aboriginal people are represented in contradictory terms. The ‘natives [who
are] uncontaminated, and still in their pristine vigour’ are worthy of the bushman’s
qualified respect; as a depersonalised idea, they represent an indispensable part of the
landscape of his affiliation. Also importantly, perhaps, they are unobjectionable because,
according to the principles of social Darwinism, ‘they are gradually going to extinction’
(Willshire 1896: 35). At the same time, as a potential threat to be encountered by the
white bushman, they are ‘a blood-thirsty lot of fierce savages, who throw the spear with
unerring aim, and watch their opportunities to kill unfortunate men who are off their
guard (Willshire 1896: 7). But whereas, in his earlier works, Willshire had focused on
Aboriginal people primarily in so far as their presence propped up the centrality of the
white bushman, The Land of the Dawning becomes the vehicle for Willshire’s entry into
late-colonial eugenic debates about a white Australia and its attendant fixation on racial
purity.
For most of the nineteenth century, the theme of ‘racial purity’ had not significantly been
at issue. From the very earliest days of settlement, children were being born of Aboriginal
mothers and European fathers and objections to such inter-racial relations, when heard,
tended to be expressed on the grounds of ‘immorality’ rather than those of racial purity.
In the South Australia in which Willshire had been raised, a policy had been practised
since the mid-1840s that granted land to the white husband of an Aboriginal woman, a
policy that was motivated by the assimilationist gaols of early administrators (GRG
52/7/1848). By the last decade of the nineteenth century, however, the sentiment of a
wholesome, morally and socially ‘pure’ nation was increasingly articulated through the
category of race. By the 1890s, most Australian colonies – including South Australia –
had passed legislation that restricted the immigration of Chinese (Bulletin and Lantern
1881-1887). During the same period there was a strong campaign to stop the importation
of South Sea Islanders as plantation labour, and to eventually repatriate them. There was
a growing fear also of Japan, which was emerging as a significant power in the region,
and the image of the 'yellow peril' flooding into Australia from the north began to acquire
iconographic status (Yarwood and Knowling 1982: 206-212; 225-235). Such national
anxieties rebounded on the Aboriginal population in the form of the ‘half caste’ question.

118
In the year of Federation the Adelaide Observer stated:
The half-caste children are greatly to be pitied, for the blacks will not fraternise with
them, and the whites will not receive them on equal terms. Is it any wonder that the
unfortunate creatures so often become scourges to the very society that has permitted
unchecked the state of morality which has called them into existence.
(Adelaide Observer 31 August 1901)
By the turn of the century, the orthodoxy that Aboriginal people represented the ‘dying
race’ had become modified by a public anxiety that the ‘half-caste’ population was
becoming a deeply tricky problem for Australia’s anticipated nation of ‘racial purity’;
what, asked an Adelaide Observer columnist in 1910, was the State going to do with
these ‘nomadic half-caste mendicants?’ (Adelaide Observer 9 July 1910).
The sentiments of biological determinism that defined late-colonial popular culture and
would direct Aboriginal policy in the twentieth century are given full breath in
Willshire’s last work. ‘Half-castes’ are the target of his most virulent dislike; for an
ardent white ‘native’ like Willshire, the ‘half-caste’ is ‘the bastard gift of shameless
Nature, conjecturally condemned.’ The ‘mongrel half-caste’, he writes with more
virulence, ‘is born for the gallows or to be shot … to make the beast your own equal is a
hope wild in its improbability and degrading in its possibility’ (Willshire 1896: 35). As
becomes apparent, the only worthy companion in the potential contact zone of the
frontier is the fellow white bushman. The Land of the Dawning carries a Dedication to
‘my dear friend James Logan Ledgerwood’, and it is here that the book signals its
strongest link to the 1890s literature of the bushman, as well as its role as a justification
and commemoration of Mounted Constable Willshire himself. As well as eulogising
Ledgerwood as an exemplary fellow bushman, the Dedication memorialises the hardships
the author has endured in the execution of his duty as a frontier policeman.
As in Willshire’s previous books, The Land of the Dawning moves between a professed
contribution to anthropological knowledge on ‘the customs, religions, and superstitions of
an uncivilised people’ and a private memoir/adventure fiction that contributes to the
literary expansion of the bushman myth. The bushman/frontier officer is also the
explorer, taking in with his panoptical vision the spread of his country. In this vision
'Half-castes' discussed in the South Australian Press
Total number of items, on the subject of 'half-castes', in the Register, Observer and
Advertiser, 1850-1920.
0
5
10
15
20
25
1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920

119
Aboriginal presence, when not threatening, appears as a picturesque component of the
whole. ‘What a sense of freedom one experiences,’ he writes, ‘standing on high ground,
with nothing above but the pure, glorious sky, and a far-spreading view of the country
below, with here and there a gleam of water where the river winds, till the whole melts
away in the distance against the far western sky; but nearer still, among the pandanus
palms, the light blue smoke from the aborigines’ camp curls up through the deep foliage
(Willshire 1896: 13). In the tradition of the ‘lost explorer’ literature of the nineteenth
century, the soul of the country is depicted as springing not so much from the Indigenous
people who live in it but from the white pioneers and explorers whose bones ‘lay
bleaching in scenes of wildest desolation, and in scenes of picturesque beauty, at various
waterholes on the overland telegraph line, at dozens of places in the northern Territory’
(Willshire 1896: 26).
As in A Thrilling Tale, white ‘belonging’ in the land of the dawning is expressed not only
through the grandeur of that land’s potential for white exploration, but also through its
erotic offerings to the white man. Throngs of ‘dusky maidens’ fill almost every chapter.
That they are sexually available to the white pioneers and explorers who have the stamina
to penetrate the land is affirmed, in Willshire’s mind, not only by their own guileless
promiscuity but also by the rights of Providence. ‘Men would not remain so many years
in a country like this,’ Willshire asserts, ‘if there were no women, and perhaps the
Almighty meant them for us as He has placed them wherever the pioneers go ... what I
am speaking about is only natural, especially for men who are isolated away in the bush
at outstations where women of all ages and sizes are running at large (Willshire 1896:
18). Sometimes the chaste innocents of Nature and sometimes the promiscuous whores
who lure the white man, the ‘black Venus’ and her temptations seem to be rarely absent
from the narrative. Willshire could, he boasts, ‘guarantee to track and round up now and
again for the edification of my party a bevy of smockless black girls, as sweet in heart as
the morning dew … Just fancy my travelling companions environed by a phalanx of
dusky maidens waiting for attentive consideration’ (Willshire 1896: 78-79). Women are
the temptresses; and who can blame a bushman for the warmth of his blood? ‘I believe it
to be a fact,’ he admits more directly, ‘that there are some white men who remain
sensually infatuated with what they intellectually despise’ (Willshire 1896: 48). This is
the country of the bushman: a country that yields up its women as fully as it does its other
riches; a country, at the same time, where the Colt revolver or the Henry-Martini carbine
must always be at hand, for ‘nothing but lead from a rifle can steady the cannibals’
(Willshire 1896: 34). The bushmen ‘are the brave pioneers who push out to the frontier,
and are exposed to the full force of the naked barbarians. Yes, they are the brave men
who discover and open out beautiful pastoral land’ (Willshire 1896: 52-53).
In her book Hidden Histories, Deborah Bird Rose notes the constant shifting between
contradictions in Willshire’s writings about Aboriginal people: that in one moment he
will write of the ‘treacherous cannibal’ and in the next of the ‘natural innocent’. This was
the perspective, she writes, of ‘a man who was trying to accommodate within himself the
unresolvable contradictions of his situation.’ He was engaged in the very violent
activities he was, at least in principle, authorised to prevent; yet as an Australian son
under the ‘southern cross’ he claimed intimate familiarity with the very people he was

120
‘killing, capturing and controlling’ (Rose 1991: 30). What Rose writes about Willshire
might be applied more generally to the way Aboriginality became constructed in the
bushman legend in the last years of the nineteenth century. The ambivalence of that
construction – an ambivalence, as Rose has argued elsewhere, ‘in which both death and
continuity are required’ (Rose 2001: 49) - relies in the unresolvable contradictions
inherent in late colonial yearnings to white indigeneity.
References
Aborigines Department, Protector's Letter Book, State Records GRG 52/7, 13
February 1848.
Adelaide Bulletin and Lantern, 25 June 1881, 9 July 1881, 5 June 1886; The Lantern,
15 October 1887.
Adelaide Observer, 31 August 1901; 9 July 1910.
Dixon, Robert (1997). Writing the Colonial Adventure. Melbourne: Cambridge
University Press.
Inglis, Ken (1988) ‘The Term ‘Australian’’ in James Jupp (ed) The Australian People: An
Encyclopaedia of the Nation, its People and their Origins. North Ryde NSW:
Angus and Robertson.
Kimber, Richard (1997) ‘Genocide or Not? The Situation in Central Australia 1860-
1895’ in Colin Tatz (ed.) Genocide Perspectives I: Essays in Comparative
Genocide. Sydney: Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies.
Molony, John (2000) The Native-Born: The First White Australians. Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press.
Rose, Deborah Bird (1991) Hidden Histories. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Rose, Deborah Bird (2001) ‘Aboriginal Life and Death in Australian Settler Nationhood’,
Aboriginal History 25.
Thomas, Nicolas (1997) ‘Home Décor and Dance: The Abstraction of Aboriginality’ in
R.Coates and H. Morphy (eds.) In Place (Out of Time): Contemporary Art in
Australia. Oxford: Museum of Modern Art.
Ward, Russell (1958) The Australian Legend. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
White, Richard (1981) Inventing Australia. North Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Willshire, William Henry (1891) The Aborigines of Central Australia. Adelaide: C.E.
Bristow.
Willshire, William Henry (1895) A Thrilling Tale of Real Life in the Wilds of Australia.
Adelaide: Freason & Brother, Printers.
Willshire, William Henry (1896) The Land of the Dawning: Facts Gleaned from
Cannibals in the Australian Stone Age. Adelaide: W.K. Thomas and Co.
Yarwood, A.T. and Knowling, M.J. (1982) Race Relations in Australia: A History. North
Ryde: Methuen.

121
WHITENESS AND TRAUMA:
A READING OF JEAN RHYS'S Wide Sargasso Sea
Victoria Burrows
In Western societies, when we talk about ‘race’ it is generally taken to mean we are
discussing anybody who is not white. This unspoken assumption is an intrinsic part of
the ideology of whiteness, and it is an ideology that is never benign. Racial discourses
are always implicated in the unwritten law of unquestioned superiority of whiteness and
it is this invisible omnipresence that give whiteness a rarely acknowledged position of
privilege, dominance and power. Whiteness is the all-pervasive norm and white
experience is about occupying an unmarked, normative status of privilege. Moreover, it
is a structure of invisible white power against which all ‘others’ have to define
themselves. The aim of whiteness studies, then, is to expose the multifarious racial
injustices that emanate from this unacknowledged white privilege which underpins all
forms of institutionalised power in Western culture, and this includes many fields of
academic study.
As I see it, the most effective way for white feminists such as myself to assist in the work
of disassembling racial prejudice in academia is to deconstruct inwards - to keep
exposing whiteness in its many protean forms in order to dismantle it. As a literary critic,
my focus has been to critically engage with the continuing domination of whiteness in
feminist theory and literary criticism, and in particular, with historically specific readings
of trauma (Burrows 2004). In this paper I will unravel one strand of such a reading which
I will illustrate by using examples from Jean Rhys's acclaimed novel, Wide Sargassso
Sea. Published in 1966, when Rhys was 76, this text is an imaginative reconstruction of
the unknown life of Bertha Mason - the madwoman in the attic of Charlotte Brontë's Jane
Eyre - to whom Rhys accords a history and a speaking voice in the character of her
protagonist, Antoinette Cosway Mason Rochester. I will argue that while Rhys’s focus
on the tortured relationship between a white creole mother and daughter provides a
poignant analysis of the ambivalent complexities of class hierarchies within the
structuring of whiteness in the colonial period, her mobilization of a trauma narrative to
explain the construction of Bertha’s madness conceals the far greater traumatic historical
conditions of enslaved African-Caribbeans. In particular, I want to expose the
unacknowledged focus on whiteness in the burgeoning area of trauma theory.
Analogous to the rise of whiteness studies is an almost unprecedented rise in trauma
theory, not only in the humanities and especially in literary criticism, but as a genre that
is widespread throughout Western societies. As a recently published academic journal
outlines in its opening paragraph, 'The desire to testify now pervades contemporary
culture. The imperative to speak out and tell one's story operates across the traditional
boundaries of public and private spaces, and is mobilised by disenfranchised subjects and
celebrities alike' (Ahmed and Stacey 2001: 1).
lxviii
However, it is my contention that
trauma theory continues the disciplining of knowledge within the constrictive paradigm
of normative whiteness. The twentieth century is frequently invoked as the century of
trauma: it also became, as Du Bois mournfully predicted in 1903 ([1903] 1989: 1), a

122
period in which the 'problem of the color-line' would hold devastating sway in the
divisive social policies of Western nations because of the white hegemony's refusal to
come to terms and work through the entangled legacies of imperialism and industrial
capitalism. Thus, when Ruth Leys prefaced her much anticipated Foucauldian-based
exposition, Trauma: A Genealogy, with two examples of contemporary trauma that were
positioned within the racial paradigm, it seemed (at least initially) as if the much needed
critical amalgamation of issues of trauma and race had finally begun to have an impact on
this academic discipline (Leys: 2000). Leys's first example refers to an article in the New
Yorker which describes in extraordinarily harrowing and brutal detail a tendentious
example of black on black violence in Uganda (2000: 1). Her second example concerns
the sexual harassment case Paula Jones brought against President Clinton, in which her
lawyers claim that as a result of Clinton's actions, 'Jones now suffers from post-traumatic
stress with long term symptoms of anxiety, intrusive thoughts and memories, and sexual
aversion' (Leys 2000: 2). Leys uses these examples, both of which were reported in the
American media in 1998, to illustrate the extreme diversification of issues raised by the
concept of psychic trauma. At one extreme lies the indispensability of trauma theory and
its practices to deal with genocidal horrors of the twentieth century, the other suggests
how such theory and its praxis can become a superficial and 'debased currency' (Leys
2000: 2).
Leys's monograph is, as the title suggests, a genealogical reading of trauma theory that
begins with Sigmund Freud and ends with the work of contemporary literary and trauma
theorist, Cathy Caruth. However, it is a text that is premised entirely upon a Eurocentric
reading solely indentured to a middle-class whiteness built on concepts of Western
individualism. The notion of a genealogy sets up a claim for a breadth of vision and a
comprehensive analysis of trauma history in which it would be expected that there should
be a substantial exploration of racism, one of the major traumas of the twentieth century.
However, the interrelation of race and trauma - the subject of the opening paragraph - is
never again referred to except in a gestural nod to Freud's own naming of his 'race' (Leys
2000: 289).
lxix
Surely - and especially now we have entered the twenty first century
which is shaping up to be one of almost unimaginable racial tension and acts of repeated
trauma - we need a comprehensive re-mapping of trauma theory that is not white-centric
and gender blind.
In an article delineating a feminist perspective on psychic trauma, Laura Brown observes
how narrow definitions of trauma have been constructed from the experiences of
dominant groups in Western culture, which means 'white, young, able-bodied, educated,
middle-class, Christian, men' (1991: 121). Brown admits to being protected by her white
skin, her upper-middle class status, her education and her access to language and
resources, but as a Jew and a lesbian she also deals with the small violences of the spirit
that can so often accompany these subject positions in her everyday life (1991: 130). In
this essay, she builds on Maria Root's concept of 'insidious trauma' that refers to the
'traumatogenic effects of oppression that are not necessarily overtly violent or threatening
to bodily well-being at any given moment, but which do violence to the soul and the
spirit' (Brown 1991: 128). Such a reading applies to the experiences of any non-
dominant group of society, such as racial others; in other words, anyone who is non-white

123
in Western culture. Their psychic traumata, most often outside the definitions of what is
deemed traumatic to mainstream (white) society, are therefore ignored. This is despite the
fact that according to Nobel Prize winning author, Toni Morrison, almost every black
text, fiction or theory, testifies to what she terms the 'trauma of racism' as the continuing
and ever present factor in the lives of people of colour (1989: 16).
If one side of the problem within trauma studies is the erasure of race, the other is what
trauma historian, Dominick LaCapra terms 'vicarious victimhood', whereby the
oppressors take over the position of the oppressed by shifting the focus of empathetic
identification back onto themselves (1999: 699). Empathy in the arena of trauma theory
means being responsive to the traumatic experiences of others, and crucially, it involves
affectivity as a central aspect of attempting to understand the others' pain. However,
empathetic understanding must not become conflated, as LaCapra emphatically stresses,
'with unchecked identification, vicarious experience, and surrogate victimage' (2001: 40).
Such an action not only constitutes an appropriation of the distress of others who are
often in the victim position, but also obscures vital historical distinctions between
aggressors and victims which more often than not are related to the power differentials
that structure racial hierarchies. This is one of the problems, as I see it, that occurs in
Jean Rhys's novel, Wide Sargasso Sea.
Interestingly, however, LaCapra problematises the blurring of the crucial
aggressor/victim distinction by raising the issue of what he sees as the necessary
differentiation between structural and historical trauma. Structural trauma concerns
transhistorical absence and appears in different ways in all societies and in all lives. On
the other hand, historical trauma is specific in that it relates to an event or events that are
locatable in historical time.
lxx
This may include a 'founding trauma - the trauma that
paradoxically becomes the basis for collective and/or personal identity' (LaCapra 1999:
724). One such trauma LaCapra names as the historical experience of slavery.
lxxi
My
understanding of LaCapra's concept of structural trauma is that its problematic
transhistoricism on one hand arises out of readings that apply no sense of importance to
the historical specificity of the traumatic experiences that are being interpreted. This is
certainly often the case. However, he frequently refers to this 'transhistorical notion of
trauma which is structural or in some sense originary' (LaCapra 2001: xiii). In what
sense can trauma ever be originary? Does this mean that historical and structural trauma
can be divided - like the characterisation of clinical depression which is so often
associated with post-traumatic experiences - into 'reactive' trauma which occurs in
response to a specific environmental and therefore historically specific loss, or,
'endogenous' trauma which occurs in the absence of such environmental/historical stress
and is reputed to be the result of purely internal causes?
lxxii
Two problems lead on from such a reading. In the first place it is impossible to
differentiate between structural and historical trauma - they are inevitably knotted
together to a greater or lesser degree. Again, this is something that becomes clear in a
whiteness reading of Wide Sargasso Sea. The second problem is that there is no
factoring in of race in LaCapra's trauma theory beyond his reference to slavery as a
foundational trauma. If structural trauma contains aspects of the originary, would this not

124
result in a reading that could not escape from a discriminatory (race-biased) essentialism?
Moreover, if structural trauma is to be separated out from historical trauma, all causal
factors that are the result of insitutionalised racism would be excised. I do not mean here
to discredit LaCapra's important and extensive work on the relations between trauma and
history which is fundamental in reminding us that trauma theory has a tendency to blur
the categories of who are the aggressors and victims of history. Yet, until the daily
occurence of racial trauma becomes an important part of trauma theory, it will not be
addressing either the structural or the historical traumas of the twentieth century, nor will
it provide a viable theoretical paradigm for the twenty-first. It seems to me that his
abstract working through of existential dilemmas relating to historicist readings of trauma
become difficult to translate into a particularised socio-historical context.
Wide Sargaso Sea itself has a strangely doubled history, and one that frequently blurs
LaCapra's distinction between structural and historical trauma.
lxxiii
As stated earlier, this
novel is an imaginative reconstruction of the unknown life of Brontë’s Bertha Mason, and
as such it would seem to exemplify a re-visionary postcolonial de-scribing a text of
empire. The novel is a mother-daughter trauma narrative encrypted within the outer
framework of the white creole historical trauma that had resulted from the abolition of
slavery in the sugar plantations of the West Indies toward the middle of the nineteenth
century. It is a mother-daughter story of personal and historical fragmentation and
dispossession, a narrative infused with loss, abandonment, racial hatred and a lingering
melancholia and one that is very tied up with Rhys's own positioning as a fourth
generation white creole, brought up in the West Indian island of Dominica in a period
when classic colonialism was being dismantled.
lxxiv
Rhys is, as Helen Carr states, 'a
colonial in terms of her history, even though she could be considered a postcolonialist in
her attitude to the Empire and in her employment of many postcolonialist strategies'
(1996: 18). She is in the ambiguous position of being part of colonialism and of the
resistance to it. Indeed, her representation of the problematic and fluctuating
positionalities of Antoinette as ambivalently caught between the ideologies of coloniser
and colonised, oppressor and oppressed, and the menacing anxiety of being neither white
nor black bears some similarities to elements of Rhys's own upbringing. Like Judith
Raiskin, I want to underscore Rhys's theoretical and imaginative contribution to
contemporary postcolonial theory and culture in this novel in which she depicts the social
and psychological fracturing that accompanied the dismantling of the British Empire in
the Caribbean island of Jamaica, as this is lost in such a simplified short reading (Raiskin
1996: 98).
The setting of Wide Sargasso Sea is Jamaica, the time-frame approximately 1834 to
1845. This was a period of great political and social instability, and a time in which the
local meaning of ‘white’ was in great flux as power relations shifted in England's colonial
domains as a result of the passing of the British Emancipation Act of 1833 and its
ratification in 1834. With the abolition of slavery, West Indian plantations fell into a
temporary state of ruin. It was a point in imperial history when colonial whites
discovered to their dismay that there were different levels within the power structure of
whiteness, and that their place within this system was largely dependent on their position
within the capitalist/imperialist enterprise. The looming ruin of the plantocracy meant

125
erosion of their white-based power. Disowned by England, those that remain of the once
powerful and rich plantation owners, such as the widowed Annette Cosway and her
daughter Antoinette, around whom the narrative revolves, are overcome by poverty, and
now the island whites are derided, openly jeered at and despised by the newly freed
slaves. However, it is the act of abandonment by their own race that adds the extra edge
of bitterness and despair.
Rhys constructs this white-on-white desertion as a historical trauma enacted upon a group
of whites who are literally left stranded when they no longer fulfil the function allocated
to them by the imperial centre. The ambivalent ideological underpinning of their
abandonment is infused with resentment of the English and their wealth that the white
creole Jamaicans no longer share, as well as the English attitudes of superiority towards
them. Yet these feelings of acrimony exist alongside a simultaneous longing to be
English. It is to imperial whiteness that white creole ideological loyalty lies: but they are,
in Homi Bhabha's famous terminology, ‘white but not quite’.
lxxv
However, in her attempt
to construct Antoinette Cosway as driven mad by trauma - as opposed to inheriting the
presupposed white female creole traits of sexual depravity and manic drunkenness of the
Brontë narrative - Rhys gets caught up in the thematics that such a reading implies. Her
narrative of historical trauma reconfigured as individualised trauma actually participates
in side-stepping the history of the more traumatised other, or examining the ways in
which white and black histories of the West Indies overlap and interconnect. There is no
sense, in the words of Cathy Caruth that '[H]istory, like trauma, is never simply one's
own ... history is precisely the way we are implicated in each other's traumas' (1996: 24).
There are two troubling forms of cultural appropriation that silently structure Rhys's
novel, and each is imbricated in the masking over of white colonial power and the
imagined historically contingent loss(es) that accompanied the abolition of slavery. The
first, and most significant appropriation involves an African-Caribbean slave resistance
known as ‘marronage’ or ‘marooning’. In Wide Sargasso Sea, marooning is the
metaphor that sustains the pathos around which the novel turns. 'Now we are marooned ...
what will become of us', Annette says with anguish on the second page of the novel
(1997: 6).
lxxvi
However, it is a metaphor that has a situated Caribbean etymology that
Rhys chose to disregard. Marooning signifies the revolutionary activity central to the
Caribbean, in which runaway slaves fled their enslavement on the sugar plantations to the
inhospitable mountains, from whence they fought back against the white plantocracy,
often with great success. Indeed, so great was this maroon defiance that it was
considered 'the chronic plague' of New World plantation societies.
lxxvii
Few slave
societies had a more impressive record of revolt than Jamaica. The earliest definition of
the word ‘maroon’ in use by the early seventeenth century, refers, as stated, to fugitive or
runaway slaves.
lxxviii
Much later on, the term came to refer to the act of putting a person
ashore, leaving him or her on an island or coast as punishment for an infraction on a
voyage, abandoned without resources or hope to almost certain death. It is this second
usage that Rhys employs as a metaphor for the white creole historical trauma of post-
Emancipation. Yet, once removed from its socio-historical context and used in a
generalised and ahistorical vacuum, Rhys's use of this seemingly insignificant metaphor

126
effectively erases the existence of the historical trauma of racial slavery in New World
plantations of the West Indies.
Colonial discourse 'takes over as it takes cover, revealing and concealing the
appropriating impulse in the same rhetorical gesture,' writes David Spurr (1993: 31). As I
see it, Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is implicated in the machinations of the colonial 'cover
up', in the sense that the text's moral abstraction through the use of metaphor and
metaphorical logic becomes an intricate part of the rhetorical act of the colonial
appropriation to which Spurr alludes. Spurr argues that colonial discourse claims the
other's territory as its own, covering this act of appropriation by converting the
proprietary strategy into 'the response to a putative appeal on the part of the colonized
land and people' (1993: 28). This is what Rhys does with her appropriative use of the
concept of marooning. In Wide Sargasso Sea it is the binding metaphor of the text that
implies the historical dispossession and abandonment of white creoles by the white
imperial centre: it is also a metaphor for the painful repression of the trauma that results
from the actions of the racial other. The important difference is that Rhys reverses the
power differentials, thus creating a vicarious victimisation not only of white creoles by
their imperial superiors, but also by the island blacks. Indeed, the novel's first sentences
draw us into a participatory reading of white creole persecution and an acceptance of the
important role of Christophine, Antoinette's black nurse and surrogate mother, as
protector of her white mistress. 'They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the
white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican ladies had never
approved of my mother, "because she pretty like pretty self" Christophine said' (5). Thus,
by the end of the opening paragraph, the politics, thematics and tone are laid out, along
with acceptance of the presence of Christophine's explanatory, empathetic voice.
By arrogating an African-Caribbean trope of resistance and reassigning its meaning from
a white Jamaican perspective centring around individual trauma, Rhys creates an aura of
sympathy for the much maligned creoles in her textual world, who effectively become the
victims of history, rather than the slaves and ex-slaves on whom their fortunes had
ridden.
lxxix
In Rhys's novel, the African-Caribbean trope of subversive rebellion which
has a history of its own becomes anglicised, whitened and reformulated and a historically
important form of black resistance politics is erased. Black suffering and the trauma of
slavery is re-written as white suffering, and that is where the textual empathy lies.
To a great extent, Jean Rhys was a product of a certain historical and racial positioning.
However, the role of an ethically responsible postcolonial critic is to expose and then
read beyond the historically inflected authorial complicity, while at the same time
ensuring that the racial othering embedded in past ideologies is not replicated in
contemporary interpretations. Nevertheless, while there is substantial material available
on maroon resistance history, on the whole this continues to be glossed over in
contemporary literary-critical expositions of Wide Sargasso Sea. For instance, Elaine
Savory, a prominent Rhys critic, recently claimed in her monograph on Rhys, 'it is
imperative that critics, especially white critics, recognise and identify those failings'
(1998: 135). Yet Savory does not follow her own advice, often writing from a
Eurocentric perspective that disregards the interwoven ambivalence of the history out of

127
which Rhys wrote. For instance, in a reference to Rhys's use of marooning, Savory
assumes the universal definition (as do the majority of critics), but goes further by
suggesting that while this metaphor merely means that Antoinette and her mother are
now cut off from society, Antoinette in her adult 'defiance against a husband and a
culture that oppresses her ... becomes a maroon in the Caribbean sense' (1998: 136).
lxxx
Hereby a gender reading completely overrides the racial underpinnings of the metaphor
and its power differentials and in effect reproduces the logic of Western imperialism in its
unthinking appropriation of the difference of the other.
The second form of cultural appropriation in Rhys's novel is the installation of a central
black voice to espouse the white creole point of view. Christophine, the powerful black
‘obeah’ character, the only woman in the text with 'spunks' (1997: 63), is chosen as the
enunciator, even the defender, of the white trauma. Beginning with the opening
paragraph, it is Christophine who shapes how everyone else feels or acts throughout most
of the novel and, ironically, she is the site of affirmation for this white trauma novel.
However, Christophine's forceful textual presence coexists in an uneasy simultaneity with
her social place, which is, as Gayatri Spivak states, 'the category of the good servant'
(1985: 252). Paradoxically, Christophine is always spoken through the consciousness of
white characters - what she says is always screened through the point of view of
Antoinette or Rochester - but she is also the only one who voices a critique (and an
extremely potent one) of the appropriating power of imperial whiteness and its model of
obdurate masculinity. It is left to Christophine to critique imperialist white masculinity,
but not from the point of view of her own people. Her critique, a defence of Antoinette,
her much-loved surrogate daughter, is from a white creole perspective. Yet eminent
postcolonial critic, Benita Parry, argues that 'Christophine's defiance ... constitutes a
counter-discourse' (1987: 38). This completely ignores the fact that Christophine's daring
verbal assault is always probing and protecting on the behalf of her white mistress.
Ultimately, Christophine's strong black voice utters a white point of view. Annette and
Antoinette are represented as traumatised by history, their personal identities fragmented
by their collective and individual pain and loss: Christophine, the subaltern figure
representing the other side of the story, stands strong and fierce. Yet there is no interior
reading of her interpellated subjectivity or of the constitution of self as imbricated in the
traumatising legacies of slavery.
In a novel that displays a complex fluctuation between colonial and postcolonial
perspectives, the ending is interestingly ambivalent. Predetermined to end in Bertha
Mason's death, Rhys's re-writing of Bertha's life parodies and in a way mimics the white
imperial culture that historically othered white creoles, as represented in Jane Eyre. In
the process Wide Sargasso Sea unsettles the imperial reading of history. However,
despite its resistance to the imperial metanarrative, what the text does not do is to provide
a space for Christophine's own story, the story of enslavement and appropriation of
people's lives for the greater profit of the white race.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a courageous novel that struggles with an historical trauma that
haunted Jean Rhys all her life, in both a collective and individual sense. This resulted in
a trauma narrative of extraordinary immediacy, both past and present, a 'wounded

128
space'
lxxxi
that begins a postcolonial renegotiation of the power structures of colonialism.
What I have not been able to address here within the confines of a short paper is that in
one sense Rhys's appropriation of Afro-Caribbean resistance practices as metaphors of
white trauma silences the history on which they are predicated. In the other sense,
however, the unconscious ambivalences which structure her novel open up possibilities
of re-readings, not just against Jane Eyre, but of the whole ambivalence of the
postcolonial era, and its academic speculations and theories. Above all, the mutability of
the category of whiteness in the time of colonisation comes under Rhys's ambivalent
scrutiny. In doing so, she exposes how whiteness is a socio-historical construct with
immeasurable powers that constantly shifts its power bases, both ideological and
material, as it adapts to changing historical circumstances. It is of vital importance that
contemporary academic endeavours continue to do the same.

129
References
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Antze, Paul and Michael Lambek (eds.) (1996) Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma
and Memory. New York & London: Routledge.
Bhabha, Homi. (1994) The Location of Culture London & New York: Routledge.
Blanchot, Maurice. [1980] (1985) trans Ann Smock. The Writing of Disaster. Lincoln &
London: University of Nebraska Press.
Brown, Laura S. (1991) 'Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic
Trauma', American Imago 48:1: 119-33.
Burrows, Victoria (2004) Whiteness and Trauma: The Mother-Daughter Knot in the
Fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison. New York &
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Campbell, Mavis (1988) The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796: A History of Resistance,
Collaboration & Betrayal. Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvey.
Carr, Helen (1996) Jean Rhys. Plymouth, UK: Northcote House.
Caruth, Cathy (1996) Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore
& London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Du Bois, W.E.B. ([1903] 1989) The Souls of Black Folk. New York & London: Penguin.
Farrell, Kirby (1998) Post-traumatic Culture: Injury and Interpretation in the Nineties.
Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub (1992) Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature,
Pyschoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge.
Horner, Avril and Sue Zlosnik (1990) Landscapes of Desire: Metaphors in Modern
Women's Fiction. New York & London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
LaCapra, Dominick (1999) 'Trauma, Absence, Loss', Critical Inquiry 25:4: 696-727.
LaCapra, Dominick (2001) Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore & London:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Leys, Ruth (2000) Trauma: A Genealogy. Chicago & London: University of Chicago
Press.
Lifton, Robert Jay (1979) The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life.
New York: Simon and Schuster.
Morrison, Toni (1989) 'Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in
American Literature’, Michigan Quarterly Review 28: 1-34.
Parry, Benita (1987) 'Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse', Oxford
Literary Review 9: 27-58.
Price, Richard (1973) 'Introduction: Maroons and Their Communities', pp. 1-30 in
Richard Price (ed.) Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas.
New York: Anchor.
Raiskin, Judith L. (1996) Snow on the Canefields: Women's Writing and Creole
Subjectivity. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
Rhys, Jean ([1966] 1997) Wide Sargasso Sea. London: Penguin.
Savory, Elaine (1998) Jean Rhys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1985) 'Three Women's Texts and a Critique of
Imperialism', Critical Inquiry 12: 243-61.
Spurr, David (1993) Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel
Writing, and Imperial Administration. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

131
WHITE WOMEN IN PRINT AND THE IMPRINT OF WHITE/NESS
Diana Sweeney
The Australian women's magazine industry is an environment structured by race and
whiteness. Appearing to uphold their own version of the White Australia Policy,
Australian women's magazines remain steadfastly pro-white. This is especially
evidenced by the covers which rarely, if ever, stray from depicting a white face. For
example, in a study comprising 336 Cleo covers and 62 marie claire covers (a total of
419 models appeared on the 398 covers), the percentage of white models was 95.5 per
cent for Cleo and 96.9 per cent for marie claire (Sweeney 2001: 48). In the study,
whiteness was determined primarily by skin colour and modified by facial characteristics,
that is, within a visual range of white appearance factors (such as facial
features/characteristics, skin colour/tone, hair and eye colour) the degree of whiteness
was ascertained. Notably, models classified as non-white were those whose racial
characteristics were distinct (for example, Chinese model Nicki Turner, Cleo Oct. 1975).
However, in the absence of clearly defined differences, non-white also categorised some
models whose faces were racially ambiguous.
Racial ambiguity as a term is itself intriguing. Predicated on the melting-pot ideal of the
1970s, it is a loose but nonetheless reliable descriptor which has been used to describe the
'face of the future' (The Age 2004: 1), along with 'racial hybrid' (Das 2004: 4), as terms
sympathetic to the multiracial world community. And whilst there is currently a handful
of models and singers in the media who trade on their mixed-race looks (Das 2004: 4-5),
it is a scenario not represented in the above Cleo/marie claire research which stretched
from 1972-2000. Nor is it a reality in my 2004 study of mainstream publications which
thus far has yielded only one unambiguous non-white cover, that of Australian Idol
winner Guy Sebastian (Dolly Jan. 2004).
Certain aspects of how we interact with the world arise from humans' capacity for
vision. Most social encounters begin with an assessment, however fleeting, of the
apearance of the other. (Baldwin et al 1999: 269)
When regarding a data set of magazine covers for analysis, I privilege vision as an
integral aspect the qualitative measures used to determine whiteness or non-whiteness. In
other words, I subjectively designate whiteness as substantially visual. However,
appearances can be problematic. For example, in the Cleo/marie claire study, even
though I was attempting to make a broad sweep of covers in order to make a point about
the visually white appearance of Australian magazines, there were cover models who
looked white but were categorised as non-white (for example, Indigenous athlete Kyle
Vander-Kuyp, Cleo Feb. 1998), and others who would normally be categorised as white
but appeared non-white (such as Helena Christensen, Cleo Aug. 1993). That visual
appearance impacts on, and is impacted upon, by what is known, was, and remains,
problematic, primarily because while social constructions of whiteness can be
academically discussed at length, day to day decisions regarding whiteness might
constitute the relative consciousness of a hunch. It is my contention that whiteness is
highly subjective and deeply personal, and impossible to describe objectively. Because

132
of this, I will sketch a brief outline of myself with the aim of clarifying my interest in the
topic, both personally and professionally.
In 1975, I began a 15 year career as a model. Models in the 1970s and 1980s were
predominantly tall, white and often blonde. This description fits both me and one of my
sisters, Lynne, who started her modelling career working for Dolly magazine when she
was 12. Our youngest sister, Rebekah, who was short, black-haired and Chinese (she was
adopted) never modelled. However, this was despite being 'spotted' by Vogue magazine's
favourite photographer, Patrick Russell. Russell's reputation and influence were such that
few in the industry ignored his recommendation, yet Rebekah was informed by my
modelling agent (and others) that, whilst she was remarkably beautiful, the chances of her
achieving success were remote. Quite simply, work almost never came in for Asians.
The reality of being tall, white and blonde enabled both Lynne and me to forge successful
careers in an industry where white people were represented almost to the exclusion of
every other group. At a tall 175 centimetres and quite thin, I arrived on the wave of the
post-Twiggy phenomenon. Regarded as one of Australia's top fashion models, I was part
of an elite group who worked with the best photographers and designers and was a
favourite of fashion guru Maggie Tabberer. I appeared in the editorial, fashion and
advertising pages of all the major women's magazines, also making the covers of
Cosmopolitan, Cleo, Women's Weekly, New Idea and Woman's Day. I was a regular in
the fashion and advertising sections of the Sydney newspapers which, during the peak
years of my career, meant every day. In addition, I worked as a catwalk model for the
one-off designer shows, department store new-season launches and each year for the then
forerunner of Fashion week: the Australian Fashion Awards. I also appeared in
commercials for Grace Bros, Cadburys, Revlon, Telecom's Yellow Pages, Air New
Zealand and Sussan to name a few.
My past defines my present. It succinctly places my current research interests in
perspective by obviating their genesis. It also unmasks the insidious nature of racism,
moreover the paradigmatic whiteness of which I am a part, the proof of which resides in
the lack of reaction surrounding my sister Rebekah's exclusion. Certainly part of my
research agenda is to right a wrong, however distant, and given that Australians are the
highest per capita consumers of magazines in the world (Cunningham and Turner 2002:
188), the magazine industry, and the women's genre in particular, offers a substantial
opportunity for the exploration of racsim, whiteness and the racial monoculture the
magazines espouse.
The monocultural nature of women's magazines is illustrated via a snapshot of
mainstream publications from October 2003. The selection, which became the basis for
my presentation at the Placing Race and Locating Whiteness Symposium (Flinders
University, Oct. 2003), was based as much on my familiarity with women's magazines in
general, as their positioning in the newsagency. Australian mainstream magazines are
generally grouped together along the bench in stacks, while the less known, more
expensive, or imported editions are placed on the shelves. My selection included Vogue,
Dolly, marie claire, Cosmopolitan, New Woman, B.Magazine, Good Medicine, Harper's

133
Bazaar, Women's Weekly, HQ, InStyle and Cleo, with Woman's Day and New Idea to
represent the weekly magazines, and Cosmopolitan Bride to represent the 12 Australian
produced bridal magazines (which, incidentally, all had white-skinned brides on their
covers).
Of this group, all 15 magazines depicted a white face on the cover, although one cover,
that of the Puerto Rican singer/actor Jennifer Lopez, is questionable. Lopez, who has
Hispanic features, dark eyes, a prominent nose, olive skin and long hair which ranges
anywhere from dark brown to blonde, actually appears on two October covers, Cleo and
marie claire. The marie claire cover presents her as racially ambiguous (which could be
construed as non-white) because her lightened hair and complexion, together with the
photographic lighting, tend to blur the distinction between white and non-white. The
Cleo cover has all but obliterated her Hispanic features, making her look distinctly
Caucasian as opposed to Latino.
According to Stratton (1999: 164), since the 1950s the category of 'white skin' has
broadened to include people with much darker skin than would previously have qualified
as 'white Australian.' Dyer (1997: 48) suggests this phenomenon happens because 'white
people are who white people say are white' - in other words, whiteness is subject to the
practice of exclusion and inclusion. But for Lopez, who appears three times in the
October marie claire (cover, advertisement and interview), the subjectivity of whiteness
is exemplified due to the quite radical contrasts in skin colour in each photograph. On
the cover she appears white (albeit ambiguously), while in the advertisement (for her new
fragrance) she appears distinctly Caucasian with the lightest blonde hair and palest skin.
Her body, which is naked (she is in the shower) seems thinner and leaner. Her nose
appears airbrushed, as does her jaw line and her eyebrow arch has been shortened. Yet in
the interview photograph her jaw is square, her nose is broad, her eyebrows are full, her
hair and skin are dark brown and contrast starkly against her white shirt and white
painted nails. The difference is striking. Lopez's look can vary greatly, from dark-
skinned Latino to pale-blonde Caucasian. Notably, the dark-skinned version does not
grace the cover.
...in the notoriously racist world of fashion you can count on one hand the
black, brown, tan or Asian faces that have been granted the privilege of
appearing on the cover of a fashion magazine. (Tebbel 2000: 23)
Since their inception, women's magazines have presented bourgeois femininity as
normative (Ballaster et al 1991: 171). '[White] culture has given itself the right to dictate
and promote an ideal of beauty that both arises from, and reinforces, its political and
social hegemony' (Lakoff and Scherr 1984: 246). According to Cyndi Tebbel (2000: 23),
former editor of the Australian edition of New Woman, 'black models do not receive the
level of cover appearances...as their white supermodel counterparts' because magazine
editors believe that a black face on the cover means 'No Sale'. The importance of the
cover cannot be underestimated. Covers are burdened with the responsibility of selling
the magazine, and only then can it 'succeed in its most important function of selling other
commodities' (McCracken 1993: 14). This is an industry where advertising - not editorial

134
- rules (Tebbel 2000: 17). ‘For women of colour (not counting Oprah Winfrey) it's almost
impossible to penetrate an industry that continues to support the dogma of apartheid’
(Tebbel 2000: 23).
However, two Australian magazines did have black women on their covers during
October 2003. Both magazines were not included in the initial selection (of October
2003 publications) for analysis because neither is strictly mainstream - they are classified
as special interest and their placement on the newsagent's stand confirms their place on
the periphery - but their inclusion now seems pertinent given the direction of the
discussion. They are the Sept/Oct 2003 issue of the Australian Weight Watchers
magazine which has Halle Berry on the cover and New Idea's Spring 2003 edition of Diet
and Health which has Sarah Ferguson on the cover. The latter has a small insert of Sarah
Ferguson standing alongside Oprah Winfrey, with the caption reading weight wars: how
Fergie won and why Oprah can't.
Difficult to explain is why Halle Berry, an Oscar winner, is gracing the cover of a less
than prestigious publication. Were this simply one of her many cover appearances, such
an inquiry would be a non-sequitur, but this is hardly the case. Her single other
appearance on an Australian publication was New Idea (April 19, 2003), a weekly
publication. She was one of seven on that particular cover. Similar questions spring to
mind regarding Oprah's relegation to the insert placement rather than the full-sized
covershot. It seems that the only cover Oprah can grace with certainty is "O", her own
production, on which she appears without fail every month.’The insidious forms of
racism lead a respectable life’ (Sardar 1999: 14).
The way race is portrayed in women's magazines highlights a number of inconsistencies,
the primary one being that, while race, gender and class are three inseparable realities
(Smith 1998), Australian periodicals appear preoccupied with gender and class as though
race was a matter of choice. This insidious form of racsim which exists as an over-
representation of white women, relegates non-white women, even those with a high
profile, to the position of 'other'.
Positioning is everything. Aside from the front cover of a magazine (page one), the
second best positions are the double-page spread immediately inside (pages two and
three) and the back cover. In the October (2003) issue of Vogue Australia, both positions
are filled by Estee Lauder and feature white-skinned models. In the first advertisement,
the layout is simple with the close-cropped head-and-shoulder shot of the model on the
left page, product-shot and copy on the right. The model is fair skinned, blue eyed, with
long blonde windswept hair slightly concealing one eye. She is face-on to camera.
Overall it is a natural looking shot. On the opposing page, the product shot is boxed with
the copy directly underneath. The product and background colour are both aqua. The
product name, Idealist, is reiterated in the opening dialogue of the advertising copy in the
phrase 'your ideal skin.' The word 'idealist' appears four times and 'ideal' appears twice.
The back cover features a model in a feminine pink slip-dress. She sits on a railing, is
side-on to camera and is holding a blonde coloured labrador puppy up to her face and is

135
laughing. She is white-skinned with long dark-blonde hair. Behind her the garden is
flooded with pink flowering bushes and the sky is a dazzling white. The copy is minimal
and consists simply of a perfume bottle, positioned in the lower right corner, with the
name Pleasures written in flowing script, below which is written Estee Lauder: defining
beauty.
These images contrast starkly with the third Estee Lauder advertisement on pages 32-33.
Here, the model is black, the colours are vibrant, the background is striped. The shot is
head to mid-torso, the model is full face to camera with her body slightly angled and
arms gently folded. She has brown eyes and her hair is black and pulled tightly back
from her face. Her make-up is simple and understated save for bright pink lipstick. She
wears large gold drop earrings and a deep-pink satin shirt. Bangles, nail colour and the
background stripes are red. The layout mirrors the Idealist spread, with the model on the
left page and the boxed product-shot with copy underneath, on the right. However, as
this is the product launch it also carries a tear-out cardboard flyer with free lipstick
sample offer.
Colour is the obvious theme in the third example. It is reiterated in the choice of model,
clothing, accessories, background, product shot and flyer. The copy is full of words
which describe the colour: pure color (sic), saturated colour, high-beam colour and
audacious shades. But the word 'new' in the advertising copy is a doubly loaded word
signifying both the product and the model. Estee Lauder has, for the first time ever,
signed a black model to one of their lucrative cosmetic contracts, creating a buzz in the
industry which Vogue takes up in the same issue (Singer 2003: 168-169). Here, it is
claimed, two models, Natalia Vodianova and Liya Kebede, are changing the face of
beauty. One is Russian, the other Ethiopian. The article is headed by a double-page shot
of the two models, facing each other, nose to nose. Kebede is black, Vodianova white.
L'Oreal's risk, according to the article, is in signing a fashion model instead of the usual
choice of actor or singer. Estee Lauder's daring, however, is more obvious.
Kebede is the first woman of African descent to represent the 57 year old
brand, and her appointment signals an effort on the part of Estee Lauder to
think more globally about beauty and its requirements. After all, Estee
Lauder products are sold in more than 120 countries, and that means they
must appeal and cater to a wide range of skin tones and ideals. (Singer
2003: 169)
However, for all Estee Lauder's hype about breaking the mould and becoming global,
when comparing the two shots of Kebede, her complexion is considerably lighter in the
Estee Lauder advertisement. Of course, it is impossible to know from a single
comparison which shot of Kebede is accurate and it must be noted that magazine images
are always subject to differences in production. But on appearances, Kebede's image has
been whitened, insinuating the strength of the white ideal.
The role that the advertising media plays in the construction and commodification of race

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(and racism) - either in its treatment of the 'other' as secondary, or in the depiction of
whiteness as superior - is a crucial factor in the perpetuation of subtle prejudice (Coltrane
and Messineo 2000). Subtle prejudice, in this instance, can be construed by ad
placement, that is, the advertisments carrying white models were in the most prestigious
spots. Also, three Estee Lauder advertisements in the same issue enable comparisons to
be made regarding the subtle inferences to do with stereotyping and race. For example,
the vibrantly coloured lipstick requires a woman of colour to bring home the point; the
white, blue-eyed blonde model is the one who has ideal skin; and lastly, the soft, pink-
clad, feminine model who represents playfulness and pleasure is also white-skinned. ‘The
visual component is the predominant nonverbal element of presentation in
advertisements’ (Tom and Eves 1999).
A 'major goal of advertising is not only to inform, but to persuade' (Tom and Eves 1999:
39). Given that women's magazines, as primary vehicles for advertising, are virtually
inseparable from their advertising component (McCracken 1993), the persuasive power
of women's magazines as an influential moulder of cultural values is inestimable. 'The
racial dimensions of cosmetic advertising are brought home, partly by the invariability of
having white faces in illustration, partly by the vocabulary...in the copy' (Dyer 1997: 78).
For example, Revlon's Skinlights Collection (Vogue Oct/2003: 129) seems undisguised
about catering directly to the white face, not only because the model is a young, white,
blue-eyed blonde, but because the product range clearly excludes non-white women. The
free sample called nude (itself reminiscent of boxed sets of coloured pencils which
always included a pinkish tone called 'skin colour') easily blended into my skin shade.
The whiteness of the product is also accentuated through the wording in the advertising
copy which proclaims to 'capture the beauty of light.'
Editorial articles, too, are relentless - especially in the absence of overt racism. Subtly
insinuating ideas about what it means to be middle-class and white, whiteness is defined
against the absent racialised other. For example, the article Fair Game (Vogue Oct/2003:
114-116) centres around what the author claims is a return to the beauty of alabaster skin.
Citing redhead Karen Elson as 'the epitome of pale-skinned beauty...[with] a complexion
so creamy and flawless it almost doesn't look real,' Brown (2003: 114) maintains that
'unabashedly untanned skin' is simply 'a question of aesthetics.'
At this year’s Oscars, alabaster skin was the look favoured by the most A-
list of the A-listers. How stunning Renee Zellweger looked, her rich, ruby
coloured Carolina Herrera gown set against porcelain shoulders. For
Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore, ivory complexions proved to be their
best accessories, too. "Right now, women want to look as feminine and
polished as possible. Smooth, milky skin gives you more of a canvas,"
says makeup artist Gucci Westman, who admits that she, too, has
abandoned her trademark tan in favour of her natural colouring.
(Brown Vogue Australia 2003: 116)
By creating a context where white/ness appears to represent all members of society,
white/ness remains the dominant form. In this framework '...racism seems normal, part

137
of the status quo, in need of little correction' (Delgado 1995: 221). Thus, with the
ubiquitous nature of white racial preference distinctly visible both on women's magazine
covers and as a continuing theme within the advertising and editorial content, Kebede's
blackness, and the extraordinariness of her being chosen to represent Estee Lauder, is
flattened within Vogue's advertising and editorial content. But rather than negate
Kebede's achievement outright, it is first acknowledged, then sidelined to the real issues
of what Bolitho (2000) calls 'white skin business'.
But not everything is bleak. Dolly magazine's article entitled 'Why are we locking up
innocent kids?' (Parry Oct/2003: 52-55) is a hard-hitting piece about detention centres in
Australia. The magazine makes it quite clear that it disapproves of the government's
treatment of refugees and even includes a Dolly campaign, where readers are encouraged
to write to politicians in protest. Cosmopolitan ran an article entitled 'Racism in Australia
- The ugly truth: Why young women are being spat on because of their skin colour'
(Marinos Oct/2003: 170-172, 174). The article highlights the level of racism and
discrimination which exists in Australia today. However, while both articles portray non-
whites in roles characterised as outside the mainstream, the bulk of the magazines'
content depicts whites in a wide range of roles, both positive and negative.
Clearly, the media relies on symbols and stereotypes (Diuguid and Rivers 2000: 122).
When articles, advertising or models are utilised to position otherness within the
contextualised whiteness of the women's magazine, it obviates a '...conceptual framework
which valorises a particular race over another' (Asante 1998: 91). The overall message, it
seems, is that racism plays a pivotal role in determining the ideals of both race and beauty
in Australian women's magazines. Granted, this article has taken but a snapshot of the
women's magazine industry, even so, the analysis indicates that the dominance of white
representation in Australian women's periodicals is a reality which is distinctly visible
both on the magazine covers and as a continuing theme within the advertising and
editorial content.
References
The Age, Melbourne Publishing, Tuesday April 20, Section A3, p.1.
Asante, M.K. (1998) 'Identifying racist language; linguistic acts and signs,' in M.L.Hecht
(ed) Communicating Prejudice. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Baldwin, E., Longhurst, B., McCracken, S., Ogborn, M. & Smith, G. (1999) Introducing
Cultural Studies. Essex, England: Prentice Hall.
Ballaster, R., Beetham, M., Frazer, E. & Hebron, S. (1991) Women's Worlds: Ideology,
Femininity and the Woman's Magazine. London: Macmillan.
Bolitho, A. (2000) White Skin Business: The Language of Home, unpublished

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manuscript.
Brown, S. (2003) 'Fair game: Does resisting an island tan and staying pale - really pale -
in summer, break the rules of fashion?' Vogue Australia, Oct., FCP Magazines, Sydney.
Coltrane, S. & Messineo, M. (2000) 'The representation of subtle prejudice: Race and
gender imagery in 1990s television advertising,' Sex Roles 42 (5/6).
Cunningham, S. & Turner, G. (2002) The Media and Communications in Australia.
Crows Nest, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Das, S. (2004) 'They've got the look: The music, fashion and advertising worlds have
already picked up on the fact that the world is already becoming more racially
ambiguous', The Age, Tuesday April 20, A3-cover story, pp.4-5.
Delgado, R. (ed) (1995) Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.
Diuguid, L. & Rivers, A. (2000) 'The media and the black response,' Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 569 May.
Dyer, R. (1997) White. London: Routledge.
Lakoff, R.T. & Scherr, R.L. (1984) Face Value: The Politics of Beauty. Boston:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Marinos, S. (2003) 'Racism in Australia - The ugly truth: Why young women are being
spat on because of their skin colour,' Cosmopolitan, Oct., Hearst/ACP, Australia.
McCracken, E. (1993) Decoding Women's Magazines: From Mademoiselle to Ms.
London: Macmillan.
Parry, J. (2003) 'Why are we locking up innocent kids?' Dolly, Oct., ACP Publishing,
Sydney.
Sardar, Z. (1999) 'Politeness is a racist's secret weapon,' New Statesman 12 (553).
Singer, S. (2003) 'Faces of change: Liya Kebede and Natalia Vodianova are fashion's new
superstars - challenging the beauty standard and winning the world's most coveted
cosmetics contracts,' Vogue Australia, Oct., FCP Magazines, Sydney.
Smith, V. (1998) Not Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist Writings. New York:
Routledge.
Stratton, J. (1999) 'Multiculturalism and the whitening machine, or how Australians
became white,' in G.Hage & R.Couch (eds.) The Future of Australian Multiculturalism.
University of Sydney: Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences.

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Sweeney, D. (2001) 'Monochromatism: Representations in women's magazines,'
unpublished honours thesis, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW.
Tebbel, C. (2000) The Body Snatchers: How the Media Shapes Women. Sydney: Finch.
Tom, G. & Eves, A. (1999) 'The use of rhetorical devices in advertising,' Journal of
Advertising Research 39 (4).
Acknowledgement
I wish to thank my supervisor, Dr Elisabeth Porter, whose help in writing and formulating
this article has been invaluable.

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RACISM IN THE SUBURBS: THE DEPICTION OF RACIAL DIFFERENCE IN
AUSTRALIAN SOAP OPERA
Melissa McEwen
Television in general, but soap opera in particular, is a strong contributor to our sense of
national identity. While soap opera is perhaps one of the strongest generic forms for
conveying this sense of identity due to its depiction of every day life, it generally fails to
reflect the racially and culturally diverse make up of Australia. The depiction of race on
television is a fraught issue, and the difficulties of getting depictions ‘right’ would appear
to lead us to a situation where producers would rather ignore race than grapple with the
issues that it presents. I argue that there is a way in which soap opera can succeed in its
portrayal of racially diverse characters.
While the Australian government has an official policy of multiculturalism, up to now
Australian television programming in general, and soap opera in particular, has reflected
the historically dominant policies of exclusion and assimilation when it comes to the
depiction of race and ethnicity. This is also despite the object of the Australian Content
Standard (Australian Broadcasting Authority: 1) for television stating:
The object of this standard is to promote the role of commercial television broadcasting services in
developing and reflecting a sense of Australian identity, character and cultural diversity by
supporting the community's continued access to television programs produced under Australian
creative control.
This exclusionary approach is slowly beginning to change with the ethnic diversity of
Australian television drama improving over the last decade. A study (May et al 2000)
undertaken of Australian television drama in 1999 showed that between 1992 (the last
survey) and 1999 there had been increases in the number of actors in on-going roles from
a non-English speaking background born outside Australia (2 per cent - 3 per cent) and of
Indigenous backgrounds (0 per cent – 3 per cent). A further 17 per cent of actors were
from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB), born in Australia. In this category, the
proportion of actors was greater than the general population (10 per cent), although
NESB actors born outside Australia were under-represented compared to the general
population (14 per cent) (May et al 2000: v). While these increases have meant that non-
white and non Anglo-Celtic faces are being seen on television, it does not necessarily
mean that the strategy of assimilation has been abandoned, that these representations are
more balanced or that they reflect the actual experiences or values of culturally or racially
diverse Australians.
SOAP OPERA
Soap opera is a powerful genre with respect to the transmission of a sense of national
identity. I believe this is the case because of a number of generic features of soap opera. I
will outline what I mean by soap opera before clarifying why I believe it is more likely to
convey these ideas than other television genres.

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Robert C. Allen (1985:137-138) was one of the first to codify the soap opera genre.
Based on an examination of early radio soap operas, he described four basic qualities
which marked soap opera as a distinctive textual system. These qualities were:
• absolute resistance to closure
• use of contemporary settings and emphasis on ‘domestic concerns’
• didacticism and
• being produced for and consumed by women, most of whom spend their
weekdays at home looking after children.
While I do not wish to discuss Allen’s definition here in depth, it is important to note that
it was produced at a specific moment in the history of the genre and was influenced by
his work on radio soap opera. Soap opera has developed and expanded as a genre in a
number of ways since 1985. Of Allen’s criteria, the one which now can be most
questioned, particularly in relation to Australian soap operas, is the fourth. Soap operas
are no longer only produced for and consumed by women. Neighbours and Home &
Away have specifically targeted a youth demographic, and their scheduling in the early
evening reflects this target audience. Similarly the prime time scheduling of Australian
soap operas such as Blue Heelers and McLeods Daughters allows them to seek a broader
audience.
I do however believe that Australian soap opera still conforms to Allen’s first point, that
it is resistant to closure. By this Allen means both that soap opera never ends, and that
stories within it replace each other on a never-ending cycle. That is, even as one story arc
is completed, there are three or more other stories left unresolved. This is particularly true
of programs such as Neighbours and Home & Away which have endured for well over 15
years and have maintained cycles of constantly renewing story arcs.
While most Australian soap opera uses contemporary settings (although there have been
examples where soap opera has been set in the past such as The Sullivans), Christine
Geraghty’s (1991: 12) idea that the relationship between soap opera time and real time is
a defining characteristic of soap opera is more relevant. By this she means that what is
happening on the television mirrors what is happening in the audience’s life – for
example, students on Neighbours and Home & Away receive their HSC results at the
same time as students in the audience. There are some discrepancies in this approach – in
particular, small children often age at a dramatically increased rate – however, in general,
the time that passes on and between each episode is reflective of audience time. Episodes
which follow each other do not tend to leap ahead by weeks or months, rather they are
generally set in the following days.
While the term ‘domestic concerns’ is a little limiting, it is certainly the case that most
soap operas privilege the private over the public sphere. Even when workplaces are
featured, they tend to be a venue for some crisis within a personal relationship or to
highlight some internal dilemma for a character. Generally however, the employment of
soap opera characters is secondary to their personal lives.

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While some theorists may take issue with the idea that soap opera continues to be
didactic (for example Gripsrud 1995: 194), Australian soap opera occasionally maintains
an open didacticism, though I would not see this as a defining generic characteristic. This
capacity for didacticism is recognised by the wider world and there have been a number
of occasions on which government or community bodies have sought to use soap opera,
particularly Neighbours and Home & Away, to convey messages to the wider community.
For example, in 2000 the Deputy Chair of the NSW Premier’s Council for Women,
bemoaning the lack of participation by women in the information technology sector,
suggested ‘...introducing girls in IT as role models in TV soaps such as Home and Away’
(Baird 2000: 2) as a way of convincing young women that IT represented a viable career
option.
My own definition of soap opera, then, is that it is programming which privileges the
private sphere over the public sphere and presents its narrative in a serial form which is
resistant to closure, while reflecting ‘audience’ real time. The first and last components of
this definition make soap opera a compelling conveyor of ideas about national identity.
The focus on the private sphere means that issues of identity are more at the fore; they
cannot be ignored or glossed over in the manner which often occurs in genres where
action is the driver of the story. For soap opera, questions of identity, roles and personal
choices are what drive the narrative. Secondly, the mirroring of audience time tends to
close the gap between audience and character, making identification and acceptance of
ideas presented more likely. The didactic potential of soap opera also cannot be ignored
here, as it is a key reason why what soap opera says about our national identity matters.
While the resistance to closure and the long-running nature of soap opera mean that a
large number of Australians (and international audiences) have been exposed to the ideas
within these programs, this resistance to closure also presents soap opera with unique
opportunities to present more balanced depictions of racially diverse characters, an idea
which I will discuss further later.
RACE IN SOAP OPERA
In her work on US and UK soap opera, Geraghty (1991: 140-147) argues that there are
three strategies which prime time soap operas use to incorporate ethnic characters: the
‘singleton’, the appearance of one character who is marginalised and only comes to
prominence in storylines which emphasise difference; the ‘exotic’ strategy in which
characters appear for a short time, often generating disruption, although this disruption is
not usually due to their race; and the ‘incorporation’ strategy in which ethnic characters
face problems but have them solved through their absorption into the community. I
believe that Australian soap operas use the first and last of these strategies most often.
The community basis of many Australian soaps, for example, sees the incorporation
approach the most popular as it diminishes difference and removes disruption.
This process of ‘incorporation’ which Geraghty discusses is similar to an idea discussed
by David Buckingham (1987: 103) in his work on EastEnders: that is, the presentation of
‘...white characters with black faces.’ Here the strategy is overtly assimilationist – non-
white characters are accepted into the soap opera community when they act in the same
way as white characters, and their racial and cultural difference is ignored or discarded.

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Alan McKee (1997: 55) in his work on soap opera and Aboriginality, has an ideal version
of the representation of Aboriginality in soap opera. He sees the goal for the depiction of
Aboriginality, achievable in a serial drama due to its ongoing narrative, as ‘..to address
Aboriginality as a narrative issue, and to accept it as a narrative given’. To achieve this
the narrative would have to acknowledge the difference of the soap opera character, and
incorporate relevant aspects of that difference into the story, without turning difference
into the main focus of the character or storylines associated with that character. A racially
or culturally diverse character should not be entirely defined by their difference, but
neither should this difference be entirely ignored. This approach would overcome the
emphasis on difference and exoticness discussed earlier by Geraghty, while avoiding the
assimilation to which both Geraghty and Buckingham refer.
METHODOLOGY
This paper draws on research I undertook into the construction of Australian identity on
Neighbours and Home & Away. In 2000 Channel Ten screened both the current series of
Neighbours and repeats of programs from 1987. Channel 7 was screening only the
current series of Home & Away. I watched these programs intensively over a nine month
period, as well as examining program treatments (summaries of the action of each
episode) from the original series of Home & Away from 1988. The majority of my
observations are based on this period of close textual reading.
However, I have also watched both programs intermittently since their inception. This
kind of viewing of soap opera mimics the way most ordinary viewers watch these
programs. In her work on US daytime soap opera, Laura Stempel Mumford (1995: 3-4)
argues that this approach to the study of soap opera is valid as it prevents the separation
between audience and theorist that characterises some studies of soap opera. Therefore,
included within my analysis are examples from the program from all periods since their
commencement up to 2003.
While I cannot claim to definitively catalogue all the depictions of non-white and non
Anglo-Celtic characters from both programs, I can provide an overview which is
representative of the kind of impressions that a viewer may have of these programs.
AUSTRALIAN SOAP OPERA AND RACE
So how does Australian soap opera, particularly Neighbours and Home & Away, tackle
race? As the previous discussion of Buckingham, Geraghty and McKee might suggest,
mostly by not directly tackling the issue. The number of specifically race-based storylines
in recent years has been small. There are times however when race is directly addressed
and problematised. These storylines often relate to Indigenous characters. Often however,
race is not directly remarked upon.
Both Home & Away and Neighbours are almost exclusively white, and generally white
and Anglo-Celtic. In 2003 there were no non-white ongoing characters on either program.
Both programs have generally been tentative in dealing with race, and non-white
characters are almost always short term, rarely ongoing.

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Other Australian drama tends to reflect this, with a similarly homogenous cast on
programs like All Saints and Blue Heelers. The Secret Life of Us has broken the mould
somewhat and at the end of 2003 featured both an Indigenous and an Asian character in
on-going roles. Genre drama is also occasionally more inclusive – Wildside, MDA and
Water Rats all featured an ongoing Indigenous character, though it must be noted that, in
each case, it was the same actor. Other Australian genre drama like White Collar Blue,
however, has remained firmly white.
One example of Australian drama which was clearly distinct from other drama in its
depiction of race and ethnicity was Heartbreak High. Designed to explicitly address these
issues, it featured a racially and ethnically diverse range of characters and was set in an
inner-city high school. I do not want to discuss this drama, given that what I am most
interested in is the way that mainstream drama incorporates the issue of race, rather than
looking at the way a program tackles the issue when its primary purpose is to provides a
counter narrative to dominant discourse on race. It is interesting though that Heartbreak
High only lasted a couple of years in prime time on commercial television before being
moved to a late night slot and then to the ABC, where it was reconfigured from an hourly
drama to a serial form. It lasted seven seasons in all.
INDIGENOUS CHARACTERS
There has never been an ongoing Indigenous character in either Neighbours or Home &
Away. This, in itself, presents a problem for the depiction of race. If programming is to
aspire to McKee’s (1997) goal of achieving depictions in which race is seen as both a
narrative issue and a narrative given avoiding both assimilation and overt
problematisation, the base requirement is an ongoing character. It is only when a
character appears over a long term that this sort of approach can be successful, due to
extended character development.
The appearances of Indigenous characters on programs include the tenure on Neighbours
of Sally Pritchard, a teacher at Erinsborough High School. During her brief stint, Sally
had to come to terms with her Aboriginality before being married and then immediately
leaving the show (McKee 1997: 46-47, 56).
Race and racial prejudice were the key components of a storyline featured in 1999 on
Home & Away involving an Indigenous teacher at Summer Bay High School. One of the
ongoing characters, Hayley, reacted against the teacher, referring to him as a ‘boong’ and
using other terms of racist abuse. She argued that ‘they’ were all lazy and cited her
mother’s complaints against some former Aboriginal neighbours as evidence. All the
other students, including her boyfriend, and other people in the community condemned
her racism. Eventually, after getting to know the teacher better, she changed her mind
and became one of the school’s strongest advocates for reconciliation, starting a ‘Sorry
Book’ for Summer Bay. Here racism was depicted as an individual issue rather than a
social or structural problem, to the extent where Hayley’s racism put her outside the
bounds of the community. Buckingham (1987: 102) argues that EastEnders’ stance on
racism can be ‘explicitly didactic’ in this regard, with characters who display racist

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beliefs being corrected or attacked for their beliefs by more sympathetic characters. We
see this explicit didacticism in Hayley’s storyline. Interestingly, the teacher also remained
on the outside; even once the racism storyline was over, he was ‘othered’ in a different
way, through the focus on him as a representative of Indigenous people through
discussions of reconciliation. He was at no time treated as just another member of the
community.
Another time an Indigenous character appeared on Home & Away was when Kevin was
temporarily fostered by a Summer Bay family. Kevin was lively and mischievous,
eventually becoming part of a scam organised by another teenage character, Shane. An
excellent artist, Kevin could draw well in a traditional Indigenous style. Shane and he
tried to mass produce Indigenous style art and sell it to tourists. While Kevin was
reluctant, he took part until they were caught, later feeling ashamed of having exploited
his culture. McKee (1997: 47) argues that Kevin’s status on the program could be seen as
liminal due to the fact that he was not featured in the opening credits, but credited at the
end of the program, ‘...alongside incidental, single-line characters’. While this is true of
all temporary characters regardless of ethnicity or race, it does emphasise the fact that
Kevin’s role was not ongoing. A more interesting observation made by McKee (1997:
49) is that, despite the clutter of romance in Summer Bay, Kevin was ‘...not in love with
anyone. And no one is in love with him. He evinces no interest. And no character
comments on his singleness. It is not even presented as an issue’. This could relate to
concerns regarding the depiction of interracial romance, as an important role usually
played by temporary characters is that of ‘love-interest’ for a permanent character, or it
could merely reflect the limited nature of the producers’ interest in Kevin as a character;
his characterisation does not extend much further than his Indigenousness.
The most recent depiction of an Indigenous character on Home & Away was through a
near death experience of Alf, a major character. During this experience, he was able to
interact with the Summer Bay community only in the form of an Aboriginal stranger,
who was also represented as his spiritual guide. In a complex representation, the
Aboriginal stranger was configured as almost angelic (similar to the angel seeking his
wings in It’s a Wonderful Life), guiding Alf through his choice between life and death.
He also was othered, and yet at the same time part of Alf, almost his photo negative. This
character has only appeared in a handful of episodes, although he did help to save another
character in a life-or-death situation, acting as a kind of spiritual guardian. There are a
number of possible reasons for this kind of representation. Given the relatively secular
nature of Home & Away at the time of this depiction, the Indigenous nature of the
character may have been used to draw on notions of spirituality which are often
connected with Indigenous people, avoiding any overt Christian references which
producers may have been concerned would repel audiences. It is also possible that while
Alf has always represented the archetypal white male Australian, according to the history
of the program his family were some of the earliest founders of Summer Bay, and the
presentation of his guide as an Indigenous character may be being used to represent some
passing of guardianship of the land and its people; during his experiences Alf is shown
what would happen to the people he knows if he is not around to help them.

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In general, Indigenous characters are depicted in storylines which present them in the
singleton’ mode discussed by Geraghty (1991), where their race is the central driver of
stories about them. They are different from the community and often present a ‘problem’
which requires solution. Usually they do not remain in the community long after this
problem is solved. Racism which they encounter is generally constructed as the problem
of an individual, rather than a structural or social issue. The community is not disrupted
by this racism, rather it teaches tolerance to the aberrant individual and thus removes the
problem.
ASIAN CHARACTERS
While there are some differences in the manner in which Asian characters have been
depicted on Neighbours and Home & Away, the representations have been no more well-
rounded than those of indigenous characters.
The classic ‘problem’ depiction of Asianness came with the depiction of an illegal
refugee in 2000 on Home & Away. Refugees beached their boat near Summer Bay
(despite the fact that it is nominally on the south-east coast of Australia) – and despite the
racial identity of the majority of refugees currently featured in the media, they were
Asian, rather than Middle Eastern. One of the young Summer Bay teenagers found a girl
who had escaped detection by the authorities, and brought her food and tried to help her.
The refugees, however, were depicted as sick with typhoid and the Diner, owned by the
character’s mother, had to be temporarily closed due to his actions. Here the Asian
character represented a total other, a displaced, homeless refugee who was also the
archetypal ‘Typhoid Mary’.
There have been few other Asian characters featured either in major roles or as extras at
main locations such as the Diner, school or beach in Home & Away. One exception
followed an approach by the Human Rights Commission, as part of their Different
Colours One People program, when producers introduced an Asian girl. During her eight
weeks on the program, her Asian background was only referred to once and in general
she was ‘...just like the Anglo-Australians’. The Home & Away producers argued that this
was best because ‘…otherwise it becomes the worst kind of tokenism you can imagine’
(Ang and Stratton 1995: 138).
This again highlights the problematic nature of featuring racially diverse characters only
in guest or short-term roles. It can be agreed that there is an element of ‘tokenism’ in the
depiction of non-white characters as different (although the Home & Away producers
obviously had fewer qualms with respect to Kevin, for example), yet the assimilationist
approach of making them identical to everyone else merely reduces them to the white
characters in black-face to which Buckingham (1987) refers. These strategies both fail to
adequately explore the notion of diversity.
There have been similarly few Asian characters on Neighbours. Most recently Laurie
featured as the girlfriend of an on-going character. Despite her Asian appearance, the
only reference to her ‘difference’ was that her parents were from New Zealand. Here she
constituted an undifferentiated character, assimilated into white norms.

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Another Asian character who ‘visited’ Neighbours was May, illegitimate daughter from
Hong Kong of Lou, a major ongoing character. Lou had met her mother while he was
living in Hong Kong. While her arrival caused some discomfort at first, she was accepted
by Lou, who asked her to stay in Australia with him. She chose, however, to return to
Hong Kong and then was pretty much never seen again.
Asian characters have thus represented the ‘problem’ character in these soaps, the
‘exotic’ character, in the case of May, and the assimilated character discussed by
Geraghty (1991), all appearing for a short term and failing McKee’s (1997) test of an
adequate approach to representation.
TOTAL ASSIMILATION?
As I have demonstrated, at times non-white and non Anglo-Celtic characters are virtually
assimilated into the soap opera community with little attention paid to their difference.
Ang and Stratton (1995: 138) critique this assimilationist approach as ‘...remain[ing]
firmly within the ideological preoccupation with community and homogeneity which
characterizes the traditional soaps, and with Australia’s assimilation policy of the post-
Second World War period...’ An extreme version of this is where characters of clearly
non Anglo-Celtic origins are depicted with Anglo-Celtic relatives and no mention of race
is ever made. May et al (2000: 12) point out that when they undertook their study there
was a ‘…total lack of reference to the sustaining actors’ ethnicity or cultural
background...The ethnicity of these actors was never referred to in the analysis period’.
This contrasts with guest characters in non-ongoing roles whose ethnicity generally
represented their dramatic raison d’etre. Neighbours tends to be more Anglo-Celtic in its
overall ‘look’, but there have been a number of examples of this racial blindness in Home
& Away. Two strong examples are the on-going characters of Charlotte and Will.
Charlotte first appeared in 2001 and continued to appear for most of 2002 until she
drowned. She was a young doctor working in Summer Bay hospital. She was clearly not
entirely Anglo-Celtic in origins and it is likely that she was part Asian. This was never
mentioned or discussed. The only relative of hers who ever featured on the program was
her grandmother who was Anglo-Celtic. While this was obviously not impossible, it was
never commented upon, even in passing.
Similarly Will, a long term character on Home & Away, was very dark skinned and
appeared to be from a non-Anglo background, however both his sister and younger
brother were very blonde and fair. His father Ken was also very Anglo in appearance.
When their mother made a brief appearance on the program, she too was clearly fair and
Anglo-Celtic. Will’s difference in appearance was left unexplained.
There have been a number of other similarly incongruous genetic matches on Home &
Away, but the point here is that this extreme assimilation into the generically white soap
opera world seems to seek to remove difference completely. I recognise that physical
difference based on race should not necessarily be an extensive point of discussion, just

148
as with many second or third generation Australians there is a desire not to be viewed as
of a certain race or ethnicity ahead of their identity as Australians. Nonetheless it is also
important that these characters should not have that point of difference completely
ignored. As Zevallos (2003: 84) points out ‘…the identities of second-generation
migrants are self-reflexive and under a constant state of re-negotiation’. In assimilating
non-white and non Anglo-Celtic characters and making them the same as white
characters, soap opera removes an important component of the identity of these
characters. This is particularly problematic in a genre where the focus is on the private
sphere, and questions of identity are often paramount. These assimilated characters are
also often denied the back-stories and history that other characters gain. White, Anglo-
Celtic characters have families who visit and relatives who propel the narrative, or, like
Alf in Home & Away have a long family history of settlement in an area. The assimilated
non-white character does not. Similarly, in Home & Away where twins do not look alike,
this difference is initially explained, and then, years later, re-explained through a
dramatic device whereby one of the twins is found to not be biologically related to the
rest of the family. These kinds of explanations are not bothered with for the non-white
family members. Assimilation also denies the reality of racism, and the difficulties that a
non-white or non Anglo-Celtic person may face. As an Asian-appearing female doctor in
a semi-rural environment, one would imagine that Charlotte would be likely to face some
resistance or intolerance, but these issues are never raised. Given the ongoing nature of
the narrative, it should be possible to feature these kinds of incidents or family histories
without making this ethnic or racial difference the sole defining feature of the character.
It is also interesting to note that the program which has featured both an Indigenous and
an Asian character in ongoing roles, The Secret Life of Us, has tended to be
assimilationist in its approach. While Kellie’s Indigenous background is very
occasionally alluded to, Chloë’s Asian heritage has never been mentioned. Her position
as a lesbian, however, is a constant narrative feature. One could argue that this has
something to do with the focus of the show – on sex rather than race – however it is
nonetheless a striking differentiation. While Secret Life appears to want to be
inclusionary – it has also featured a Jewish character as Kellie’s boyfriend and an
Indigenous boy (from the ‘bush’, despite the city-based nature of the program) and his
family as a hospital patient, it has not been able to overcome the tendency to neutralise
the race question by refusing to refer to it, or conversely turning it into the ‘issue of the
week’, especially in the case of the Jewish boyfriend.
And in that, The Secret Life of Us is hardly alone. Almost no drama program on
Australian television has achieved the goal set by McKee (1997) for racial difference
generally, let alone for Indigenous characters. The closest any mainstream program has
come is in the characterisation of Leah Poulos and her family on Home & Away. Here it
is not so much a question of race as ethnicity – Leah is Greek. When she first appeared
on the program in 2000, Leah was overtly the ‘Greek girl’ running away from an
unwanted wedding. The characterisation of Leah has moved away from this overtly
stereotyped depiction, and yet she has retained aspects of her heritage. Similarly her
family were initially depicted as very Greek’ but in return guest appearances their
depiction has become somewhat more complex. In the portrayal of Leah her ethnicity

149
remains a feature—she cooks Greek food for the Diner and speaks Greek to her ex
fiancée and has a Greek Orthodox wedding, however she remains an integrated member
of the soap opera community. The permanent arrival of her brother, Alex into the
community has seen this relatively balanced depiction expanded to include him.
Perhaps this more balanced approach to Greek characters is possible because of their
long-term visible cultural presence in Australia or because Greek culture is not
considered as alien or as ‘othered’ to Australians as Indigenous or Asian cultures. In my
discussion in this paper I have not mentioned Middle Eastern characters, particularly
Muslims. The reason is that they do not feature in Australian programming – except for
the very rare guest appearance in hospital or crime programs, where they are the story
feature of the week, in a storyline generally highlighting their otherness. Jewish or black
African characters are similarly rare.
CONCLUSION
It would seem that there is a failure to meet the object of the Australian Content Standard
when viewed through the lens of race. Race and ethnicity are problematic areas for
television in general, and in particular for soaps which focus so greatly on the private life
of their characters. Producers must often feel that they are trapped in a position where
criticism can be levelled at them no matter what strategies they utilise. Trying to ignore
the existence of non Anglo-Cetic characters still appears to be the major strategy for
many soaps, and Australian soaps are probably less racially diverse than many, though
not all, of those from the US and UK. The use of occasional, short term, racially and
ethnically diverse characters can almost exacerbate the problem as their limited duration
on the program means that it is inevitable that they are either totally defined by their race,
or that it is ignored. It would appear necessary for characters to be ongoing to present a
chance for a balanced depiction. The problem of the assimilation of racially diverse
characters into the white milieu does draw unfortunate parallels with Australia’s
approach to Indigenous policy pre 1969 and our early attitude to non-Anglo migrants. As
the example of Leah shows, it is possible to achieve McKee’s (1997) goal and present
characters who are neither solely defined by their race or ethnicity nor completely denied
it. When characters are allowed to develop and expand over an extended period of time,
as is allowed by the soap opera form, aspects of their difference, if not initially
highlighted, can be introduced and acknowledged, without trapping a character in some
kind of ethnic ghetto. As an increasingly multi-racial society with an official policy of
multiculturalism, we should have television which reflects a modern Australia.
References
Allen, R. C. (1985) Speaking of Soap Operas. USA: University of North Carolina Press.
Ang, I. and Stratton, J. (1995) ‘The End of Civilisation As We Knew It: Chances and the
postrealist soap opera’ pp. 122-144 in R. C. Allen (ed.) To Be Continued: Soap Operas
Around the World. Great Britain: Routledge
Australian Broadcasting Authority. Australian Content Standard, 2003.
http://www.aba.gov.au/tv/content/ozcont/std/index.htm accessed 21 July 2004.

150
Baird, J. (2000) ‘Geek image is putting women off jobs in IT’. Sydney Morning Herald
Online. http://www.smh.com.au/news/0012/0/national/nationl10.html Accessed
4/12/2000
Buckingham, D. (1987) Public Secrets: EastEnders and its Audience. Great Britain: BFI
Publishing:
Geraghty, C. (1991) Women and Soap Opera: A Study of Prime Time Soaps. Great
Britain: Polity Press.
Gripsrud, J. (1995) The Dynasty Years: Hollywood Television and Critical Media
Studies. Great Britain: Routledge
May, H., Flew T. and Spurgeon, C. (2000) Report on Casting in Australian Commercial
Television Drama. Brisbane: Centre for Media Policy and Practice, Queensland
University of Technology.
McKee, A. (1997) ‘Marking the liminal for true blue Aussies: The generic placement of
Aboriginality in Australian soap opera’, Australian Journal of Communication 24(1).
Stempel Mumford, L. (1995) Love and Ideology in the Afternoon: Soap Opera, Women
and Television Genre. USA: Indiana University Press.
Zevallos, Z. (2003) ‘‘That’s my Australian side’: The ethnicity, gender and sexuality of
young Australian women of South and Central American origin’, Journal of Sociology
39(1): 81-98.

151
WHITE MEN CAN TELL STORIES BUT...: READING AUSTRALIAN RULES
AND THE TRACKER AT THE ADELAIDE FESTIVAL OF ARTS, 2002 (A
FESTIVAL OF TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION).
Lorraine Johnson-Riordan

1
From the outset, Los Angeles based Festival director Peter Sellars set out to turn upside down
the Adelaide Festival’s tradition of ‘importing’ overseas acts. This Festival, Sellars declared,
with its themes of Truth and National Reconciliation, cultural diversity and environmental
sustainability would not be about going shopping on the international Arts market. Instead,
the focus was to be on the production of Arts in and by local communities, on unknown
artists, companies and individuals, and on the production of new works for export. Further, it
would be a ‘unique celebration told from our hearts and minds’, involve Indigenous and non-
Indigenous collaborations and a ‘very different process of culture, protocol and production to
that of Western festival productions’. It was only in this way that the core themes, which
Sellars perceived to reach ‘very deep into belief structures’ and ‘personal and collective
identity’, could be addressed. ‘You really have to reach inside to make a culturally rooted,
conscious decision to live differently.’ ‘What does it take to create a space with somebody
who is trying to kill you or you have tried to kill?’ That is the moral and ethical question
facing Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, historically the colonized and colonizers. ‘If
you are trying to kill me, if you have killed me, if you are still killing me one way or another,
how can I be with you? How can I walk by your side? How can I hold your hand? How am I
to talk to you? How can I love you? If I have killed you before, if I am killing you now, how
can I, must I ...STOP THE KILLING AND REACH OUT to you with care, responsibility
and love?’
lxxxii
Clearly, one of Sellars’ guiding principles for change was ‘cultural democracy’. He was
interested in asking questions like: ‘What constitutes cultural democratic practice?’ In what
ways, culturally, are we strengthening the democratic process? How, culturally, can we, are
we, contributing to truth and justice, to the Reconciliation process? How, culturally, are we
‘helping people to recognize the nature of the debate, the nature of the controversy,
the...contradictions... that are painful and violent?’ This Festival was to be a forum for the
exploration of the idea that the Arts were not just decorative, not merely a source of
entertainment, but could work for moral action and social transformation.
In Adelaide as elsewhere Sellar’s radical vision provoked never-ending controversy.
Adelaide’s traditional white middle class patrons resisted the overwhelming number of local
(mainly Indigenous) performances. There was nothing else they could find in the Festival
brochure. The Festival was not serving ‘the people’, they said. The program was ‘an
embarrassment’, ‘nothing short of a disaster’, was ‘without focus’ and had no ‘substantial
content’, according to the Editorial of the Adelaide Advertiser (November 2, 2001). It was not
‘world class’, not ‘important’. The Festival looked ‘thin and uninteresting’, according to
former artistic director Rob Brookman.
lxxxiii
Where were all the big international names, the
big ticket opera, the ‘imports’ patrons had come to expect? wrote The Age.
lxxxiv
Why had
Sellars let them down, let Adelaide down, let down the 40 year tradition of the ‘flagship’
Festival of Arts? Peter Goers wrote that ‘no-one wants to lose OUR festival - second only to
Edinburgh, the most prestigious in the world.’
lxxxv
In the City Messenger
lxxxvi
Russell Starke
wrote that while there was ‘integrity, propriety and value in involving the Indigenous
community’, he thought the inclusion of only local events ‘an exercise in navel-gazing’. And
later, ‘[W]e need the Festival as a major part of our existence. It has always been an exciting
window to the world bringing in performances and productions that challenge and inform
interstate and overseas audiences.’
lxxxvii
(my italics) Here was ‘the country’s most
adventurous arts festival in one of its stodgiest cities,’ wrote Rosemary Neill in The
Australian.
lxxxviii
(Sellars had told the New York Times that Adelaide was ‘a suburban colonial

2
backwater stuck in the 1950's’.
lxxxix
) Still, Neill thought, Sellars’ advocacy of ‘art as social
justice’ or ‘art as moral action’ was a ‘messianic mission’, a ‘civic experiment for
disenfranchised minorities’ which had failed before (Sellars’ 1992 Los Angeles Festival).
Ron Banks wrote in the West Australian
xc
that Sellars was a social activist but that was not
what people wanted; they wanted ‘what has gone before...the so-called shopping trolley
experience of picking the best international acts off the shelves’. Community-based arts such
as Indigenous weaving, conceived within a notion of broadening the Festival’s appeal beyond
European classical music, ballet, theatre and so on, were thought to lack quality. ‘I felt a
sense of loss, deprived of the anticipatory thrills of traditional festival programs,’ wrote
Samela Harris in The Advertiser.
xci
Some reviewers and commentators supported Sellars’ vision. He was asking the right
questions about the Arts in society, according to Penelope Debelle in The Age (‘Please don’t
let Sellars be misunderstood’).
xcii
He was making people think about the power of the Arts to
do good. The Arts did have the power to change, to help define and focus thinking, agreed the
Australian Jewish News.
xciii
Rex Jory wrote, ‘Art is not a mirror to reflect the world but a
hammer with which to shape it.’
xciv
And Sellars defended himself. He was ‘more than just a
funny haircut,’ he told The Australian.
xcv
And while there was story after story in the media
about what wasn’t being done in this Festival, Sellars tried to refocus people’s attention on
what it was all about.
xcvi
When would people stop noticing that the Festival wasn’t what they
expected it would be, and start noticing what it was offering instead, he wanted to know?
White men can tell stories but...:Reading Australian Rules and The Tracker
One of Sellars’ Festival innovations was his decision to include film. Film, he declared, was
‘a major cultural tool’.
xcvii
The outcome was “Shedding Light”, a Film Festival within an Arts
Festival. Four feature films were commissioned by the Festival, in collaboration with SBS
television, on the theme of Truth and Reconciliation: Australian Rules, The Tracker,
Kabbarli and Walking on Water.
xcviii
The films were screened at Her Majesty’s Theatre, a
stone’s throw from Victoria Square (Tandanyangga
xcix
), the scene of the Festival’s powerful
opening night event during which the statue of Queen Victoria, bound in white, had been
‘unveiled’ to reveal the black, red and yellow colours of the Indigenous flag. I want to focus
on two films, Australian Rules (written by Phillip Gwynne, directed by Paul Goldman) and
The Tracker, written and directed by Rolph de Heer. While The Tracker was well received at
its opening night, Australian Rules set off a furore. Indeed the protest of the Indigenous
community of Point Pearce, York Peninsula, where events narrated in the film had taken
place more than 20 years before, was such that Festival organizers (post Sellars’ abrupt
departure) had been forced to consider whether to pull it from the program altogether. But the
screening went ahead, provoking more protests. My argument here will be that both films are
white (men’s) narratives written from the side of /inside Empire/modernity and its
temporal/spatial arrangements, and while they undoubtedly contribute to the
recuperation/regeneration of their white writers/ directors/ producers, they function as
redemption narratives, not narratives that work for Australia’s national Reconciliation in
positive and significant ways.
On time, space and the whiteness of the narrative in Australian Rules
Australian Rules, based on Phillip Gwynne’s award winning book for adolescents, Deadly,
Unna? is set in the small country town of ‘Prospect Bay’ (Port Victoria), a fishing village, on
Yorke Peninsula, South Australia. (The real location is supposedly ‘disguised’ in both the

3
book and the film.) The story is autobiographical, telling of events in Gwynne’s life growing
up as a boy (the author is the character ‘Blacky’ in the film) in a poor white family of seven
children in a racially segregated town where the shooting of two Aboriginal boys took place
in 1977. Prospect Bay, the ‘tidy town’ runner-up in 1993, is a one pub town where ‘blacks’
from the mission (‘the mish’), located a comfortable (for whites) distance outside the town,
get served (if they wait long enough) from the back door of the pub, while white locals, men
like Blacky’s father Bob, sit at the front bar commentating on the town and the times. In this
tidy town, everyone has his/her place and rules which keep them in their place. It’s a town
where education is thin on the ground and any women who have some of it (like Blacky’s
mum, who knows the meaning of the word ‘sartorial’) are more than likely ‘unemployed’
housekeepers, dependent on their men financially, and at the mercy of whatever else they
serve out, including physical and sexual violence. The town encapsulates the raced and
gendered time/space relations at the heart of imperial modernity in Australia.
Prospect Bay lives for football. Everybody, black and white, is a football fanatic. The local
youth spend their time dreaming of football and the opposite sex. This year Prospect Bay has
made it into the grand final. Team, town and the glory of a premiership is what the Bay’s
coach (the local butcher) instils in the team. But the team consists largely of a group of
Aboriginal boys from the mission and Blacky knows that ‘without them we wouldn’t be in
the grand final, we wouldn’t even have a team.’ But when the police turn up at a training
session to arrest Carol Cockatoo, one of the best players from ‘the mish’, the question turns to
how the grand final can be won without him. ‘It’s our team, unna?’ notes Dumby Red, star
Aboriginal player, to his mate Blacky (though whether they can be real mates across the
racial divide in this town in the 1970s is an issue. Racism is endemic.)
Meanwhile, Blacky is in the uncertain throes of young love with Clarence, an Aboriginal girl
from ‘the mish’ and Dumby’s sister. (‘Nothing like a bit of black velvet,’ says Pickles
tauntingly, after eying him off with Clarence through a hole in the jetty boards).‘What do you
think of girls from the mish?’ Blacky asks Darcy, the solitary next door neighbour. ‘You
don’t see them necking down the jetty and next day holding hands,’ Darcy replies. ‘Why
hasn’t anyone married ‘em?’ ‘It’s not the done thing,’ Darcy warns. In any case, Darcy
‘steers clear of sheilas, black, white or brindle’. To him they are ‘strange cattle’. Can there be
anything ‘real’ in a relationship between a black girl and a white boy? Only if they leave
town, Darcy warns.
But Blacky’s father, Bob Black is the central figure in the narrative’s portrayal of white
masculinity. Bob Black is a racist, a wife beater and child abuser (his wife’s facial bruises are
obvious, her protestations from the rape in the middle of the night loud enough to wake the
kids and send them creeping into the fowl shed where they spend the night.) He enjoys
testing his son Blacky’s manliness, playing one son off against another. Bob Black is a
fisherman and when Blacky dives, reluctantly on his father’s orders, to cut the fishing net
from the propellor and fails, his father orders him off the boat once and for all. Blacky does
not measure up to his father’s standards of what it means to ‘be a man’ and finds himself on
the receiving end of abusive labels like ‘pussy’ and ‘you gutless f... wonder’ which circulate
amongst white males in the town. In return, he hates his father and is protective of his mother
and siblings.

4
It’s grand final day and there’s tension in the air. Prospect Bay wins by a point through a
brilliant mark by Dumby and a clumsy, but effective clash between Blacky and his opponent
making a run for a last minute goal. Presentations and celebrations follow that night. Dumby
is expected to get the MacRae medal for best on ground. Instead, he is passed over and the
coveted prize goes to Mark Robertson, the white coach’s son. In protest Dumby storms out
followed by Clarence, his father and members of the Aboriginal community. ‘Best man on
ground as long as he’s white,’ they say. Late that night, when the Bay Hotel is abandoned but
for a few sleeping drunks, including Blacky’s father, two hooded men enter the premises with
the intention of carrying out a robbery. Bob Black wakes to the noise, grabs a shot gun and
interrupts the intruders. Within minutes the talented Aboriginal boy Dumby lies dead. Bob
Black claims self defence and no charges are laid. But the shooting brings to the surface the
race politics deeply entrenched in the town. Through Blacky, the film poses the question:
Whose side are you on? Black or white? Blacky confronts his mother as she hangs out the
washing. She defends her man. ‘He’s your father, Gary,’ she reminds him. A son must stand
by his father no matter what. Bob Black tells his son: ‘We gotta keep tight on this, back each
other up.’‘Whose side are you on?’ Bob Black rages at his son finding him in bed with
Clarence. Will Blacky stand by his Aboriginal mate or his white father? Will Blacky go to his
mate’s funeral? He packs his bag in the middle of the night, takes his father’s special purple
tie and Fruit and Nut chocolate (left in the fridge for all to see but not touch) and walks out to
the mission. Later, when he is dropped back at the house, his father disowns him. ‘You’re not
welcome in this house, not after today.’ Father and son fight. It’s a battle between right and
wrong, between the good (son) and the bad (father). Blacky wins. Good triumphs over evil.
Bob Black gets in his car and roars off, leaving the family on the front steps of the house,
visibly relieved to see the back of him.
What is the outcome? The Black household is free of its brutish master. And mateship on the
one hand, and sexual love on the other, have won out over the race divide. But what, if
anything, has really changed for the better? For the Aboriginal community things have gone
from bad to worse. At the film’s close Blacky tells us: ‘Now the boys from the mission don’t
come to town any more and there’s no footy team. Me and Clarence, well we’re leaving.
There’s nothing here for us now, not in this tidy town.’ In the end the town’s reputed
‘tidiness’ (underlined in the film’s title Australian Rules), is reasserted. Men and women,
black and white return to their allocated places. The Aboriginal community and the town are
further apart than ever. Those who don’t abide by the race rules must leave. The only
glimmer of hope for a ‘Reconciliation’ between black and white seems to lie in the
transgressive behaviour of individuals. According to this film narrative, ‘Reconciliation’ can
only be found through cross-race sexual relations, the solution many assimilationist
conservatives advocate in Australia today, while the real issue of justice for Indigenous
communities in the wake of the ongoing effects of colonization is simply erased.
Post screening
‘Literary texts are historical events.’ Further, a ‘text is an event under contest,’ writes Anne
McClintock (1995: 306). Following the Adelaide Festival screening of Australian Rules, the
filmmakers were confronted (as they had been before) by those in the Indigenous community
of Yorke Peninsula who had endured pain and suffering from the injustices of the past (the
events of 1977), and were again suffering from what they saw to be injustices in the present
(the representation of those events in the film). A small vocal group of people of the
Narrunga nation - members of the Coalition Against Deadly, Unna? - demonstrated outside

5
Her Majesty’s Theatre. On the following day at the Film Festival’s forum at the Mercury
Cinema, Australian Rules became the focus of a heated debate, segments of which were later
broadcast on Radio National’s Awaye! program under the provocative title ‘Who makes the
Australian Rules?’
c
The film script had been co-written by Phillip Gwynne and the film’s director Paul Goldman
with minimal consultation with the Point Pearce community.
ci
Indeed the Coalition Against
Deadly, Unna? claimed the film perpetuated the genocide of the Narrunga nation. According
to them (and Peter Sellars agreed), very serious protocols had been violated in the making of
the film, especially in regard to the lack of proper consultation and negotiation with the
Indigenous community. The film’s production had caused great distress to the Narrunga
community and to the families of those shot dead in the town in 1977. Had protocol been
followed, it was argued, community distress could have been avoided. In addition, objections
were raised to the film’s use of racist language, to its portrayal of Aboriginal women and,
perhaps most especially, to the film’s representation of the shooting and the funeral. These
objections had been raised on the one occasion the filmmakers had visited the community at
the pre-production stage and they remained serious, indeed insurmountable, sticking points.
Sally Riley (head of the Indigenous branch of the Australian Film Commission) told the
forum that to seek consultation at that point was too late in the process. The wheels were
already in motion and it would have been difficult to stop the production of the film at that
time. It left the community no time to think through the idea, to ‘live with it’. ‘It was up to
you (the filmmakers),’ Riley said, ‘to take responsibility for respecting that story. You have
to go to that community. You can’t rely on them coming to you, you can’t rely on sending a
box of books and expecting them to have read it.’ Further, efforts to conceal who the story
was about in real life (by changing names and places) were in vain, since the Aboriginal
community knew of the incident and knew who was involved. ‘I was at the funeral,’ David
Wilson, a member of the Coalition Against Deadly Unna?, told the ABC. He thought the
filmmakers just wanted to wash themselves of the anger and grief of the community. Worse,
they would profit from the Indigenous community’s pain by representing these events.
Wilson claimed that, although the Point Pearce community had attempted to work with the
filmmakers and had suggested changes to the script (for example, substituting a robbery for
the shooting, changing the setting so that the real event was not recognizable, dropping the
racist language which they found offensive, and cutting the funeral - a funeral is sacred, ‘a
line you don’t cross’), ‘they closed the doors on us’. Further, Wilson thought the Festival had
tried to wash over the whole affair by appealing to artistic license (‘this artistic banner’ that
‘you can’t censor art’). ‘They put their version of what Truth and Reconciliation is’ but ‘it’s a
sham,’ Wilson thought. ‘I’d call it not the Adelaide “Festival of Truth and Reconciliation”
but the “Festival of Misery”.’
cii
By contrast, the film’s producer Mark Lazarus told the forum that he ‘loved’ the book,
‘loved’ the screenplay and ‘loved’ the movie. He didn’t say why. He confessed he ‘just didn’t
know’ about the sort of consultation process that was required. He assumed that, since the
book had been out for some time, and since no objections had been raised by the community
about it, approval for the film could be taken as assured. (How he could think this is unclear
since the story told in the book differs in significant respects from the film.) He recalled the
time when four of the filmmakers went to consult with the Point Pearce community. He
remembered it as ‘one of the great days’ in his life, an ‘amazing experience’. ‘We went
through a series of meetings, we attempted to address every single one of their concerns. And

6
they were still not satisfied...Emotions got so high we withdrew because we were physically
endangered.’ After that experience, Lazarus admitted, ‘We had huge doubts about what we
were doing. We holed up for a weekend and we asked ourselves one question: Do we make
this movie or don’t we? We knew we would be causing some pain for some people.’ ‘And
when we weighed up all the factors...we decided it was the right thing to do to make this film.
We wanted to do it and we were on the edge of making a moral choice - the movie has
generated this sort of debate, this is why we wanted to make the movie to begin with, to talk
about these issues.’
ciii
Lazarus’ retrospective justification of the film (the debate it had
sparked), still leaves questions to be asked of the filmmakers’ earlier claims to the moral high
ground. What ‘factors’ was Lazarus referring to which enabled them to claim the moral high
ground following the disastrous meeting with the community? For whose gain, and at whose
cost?
The single most contentious point in this debate revolved around the politics of ownership of
the narrative. Whose story was it? For his part Phillip Gwynne asserted that the story was
‘his’ (‘my’ town, ‘my’ father, ‘my’ story) and that he had a ‘right’ to tell it. ‘It’s my story.
It’s about me growing up in a country town with seven brothers and sisters. I still have
connections with that community. I’m proud of the book. It did not involve consultation with
the community. As a writer I have a right to use anything I like in my book. That has caused
pain to the parents of the children (victims of the shooting) and I feel for them...but I still
have a right to use that story.’
civ
Phillip Gwynne assumes the position of the writing subject
familiar in modernity, the white male who, writing autobiographically, claims the right to
‘his’ life story as his ‘own’ story. His story is his property, and he claims the right to tell it
how he wants. The story owned as property, his private property, gives Gwynne the right, he
thinks, to write about Indigenous people, to incorporate their story as his story, without
further discussion or consent. Gwynne’s stance exemplifies a key assumption underlying the
genre of modern autobiographical writing (strictly defined), namely the desire of the writing
subject to produce the truth of his narrative through a return to an origin without alterity.
cv
It
assumes a notion of (white/European) self-identity identified with that genre namely ‘the
Western conception of identity as unity closed upon what is one’s own’ in which ‘[t]he act of
entering into relation is conceived as a relation to oneself and not as a relation to the
other’(Irigaray 2002: 89). The time/place of Indigenous people as colonized abject other is
erased in the narration. They remain ‘faceless puppets’,
cvi
absent and distant in their presence
and proximity in the political landscape of this film. The ‘I’ (of the white male
writer/filmmaker) that relates ‘my’/‘his’ story does so within the temporal/spatial relations of
the machines governing imperial modernity, a system which displaces the other from its
founding moment, locating white/European men at the centre of every scene.
Later, in a post-Festival interview, Goldman said he sometimes wondered ‘if the film is even
mine’.
cvii
In much of that interview Gwynne and Goldman reflected on how they had worked
together, how they had talked things through. That the father-son relation interested (even
obsessed) both of them in their ‘personal’ lives is reflected in the main story of the film. But
Goldman also saw the film as ‘an opportunity to say something about where the country is
now’(20). The film was to be ‘aggressively contemporary and confrontational,’ he said. (22)
Whereas Gwynne had written the book as a comedy for adolescents in which relatively little
is made of the shooting, and black and white relations remain ‘underdeveloped’ to say the
least, Goldman had pressed for additional scenes not in the book. Significantly, Goldman
viewed the ‘Aboriginal story’ as ‘intersecting’ with the main story. (My emphasis) It was an

7
addition to the main story but not interwoven with it. But to explore the truth of white
masculinity (masculinity is race-d) and the truth of the shooting (a real historical event)
would have required critical insights into the race-d history of the town and of the location of
the mission at Point Pearce, and a commitment to weave present and past times in the
ongoing history of genocide of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. This weaving (weaving was a
central theme in this Festival - see the Festival poster and its ‘Intertwine’ program) is a
marker of attention to history and genealogy (so strongly evident in Indigenous women’s
narratives told at the Festival of the Dreaming in Sydney in 1997). Instead, the filmmakers
have returned themselves to centre stage in the narrative while Indigenous people appear as
colourful additions with box office appeal. How, then, can we agree with film critic Garry
Maddox who, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald of the controversy surrounding
Australian Rules (‘Reel Life’), argued that the film was ‘clearly anti-racist’?
cviii
Can white (male) filmmakers tell stories for Reconciliation, then? For David Wilson ‘the idea
that whitefellas should have the right to do content about Aboriginal people because it’s their
story, their view, their perspective’ was wrong. ‘White people don’t have the right to write
about us, without our approval, without our consent. Aren’t their own lives interesting
enough? They should write about themselves, let us tell our stories. If they want to do stories
with us, then start at the idea stage and work that right through with that community, and as
complex as Aboriginal communities are that’s the way it is, that’s the way they have to work’
(Radio National 2002). Indigenous filmmaker Rachel Perkins took the view that Indigenous
people needed to tell their own stories but that Australia’s history was ‘a shared history’ with
white people. ‘It’s their story as well.’ ‘This film is about a white boy, his experience,
growing up in a country town.’ ‘We have to allow white people to work through their
participation in this country. If we stop white people making films we’re saying: ‘You don’t
have anything to do with the history of this country’ (Radio National 2002, my emphasis).
The question remains, though, as to what kind of narratives allow for the working through
that Perkins recommends. Certainly not the genre of autobiography in its traditional form.
Time, space and the whiteness of the narrative: The Tracker
All men choose the path they walk... (de Heer, The Tracker)
The World Premiere of The Tracker on the opening night of the Film Festival was a
wonderful theatrical event. De Heer noted, in more than one interview later, that the film’s
debut at the Festival opened up interesting possibilities for a different kind of presentation.
cix
Indigenous musician Archie Roach gave a specially moving live performance of the music
accompanying the soundtrack. Peter Coad’s artworks, which had been used in the film, were
displayed in the foyer. David Gulpilil and other actors joined de Heer on the stage afterwards.
The Adelaide audience responded with a standing ovation. And, with few exceptions, critics
gave the film rave reviews.
cx
29
Coming at a time when public debate has been heated on issues surrounding Australia’s
history of frontier/colonial violence including the massacres of Aborigines by white settlers
and police and the reprisal killings,
cxi
de Heer’s film The Tracker (de Heer wrote the script
and the song lyrics and directed the film) could be viewed as a timely intervention. It takes up
the historical fact of massacres, subject matter filmmakers have scarcely dared touch,
according to critic Paul Byrnes (2002). De Heer thought such events should be told in film.

8
He had written a treatment for The Tracker back in 1990 as a result of researching another
project on first contact between Aboriginal and European Australia, research which had
brought him face to face with some of the ugly details of Australia’s early history. That draft
had been put aside for ten years until Adelaide Festival organizers approached him with an
offer of funding for a film that would fit the theme of ‘Reconciliation’. However, the position
I want to take is that de Heer’s film rewrites Australia’s history as another redemption
narrative; it’s a ‘white man’s fiction’
cxii
, a ‘parable’, as film critic Julie Rigg labelled it,
cxiii
which is likely to undermine, not to work for national Reconciliation.
The film opens onto a stunningly beautiful outback Australian scene ‘somewhere in
Australia’.
cxiv
We are told it is 1922. Not that events narrated in the film actually took place
in that year but that was the year of the birth of de Heer’s father and the director wanted to
establish ‘a living connection’ with the time of the events.
cxv
These events happened during
his father’s lifetime, within living memory, not, as conservatives would have it, too long ago
for anyone to take responsibility now. We are introduced to the main protagonists, members
of a small party of white men on horseback journeying in single file, ant-like figures in a vast
alien landscape. The Fanatic, a mounted policeman, is ostensibly in charge of the party. He is
in ruthless pursuit of a mostly invisible Fugitive, an Aboriginal man wanted for the rape of a
white woman. The Fugitive is as much a figment of the white man’s imagination as he is real.
He is the unseen, unknown(able) other, prejudged and predestined to die if he is caught by the
white man. He represents the feared other ‘out there’, somewhere, watching and waiting ‘to
get us’ if we don’t get him first. He invokes white paranoia. ‘They could be all around and we
wouldn’t hear them...stealthy black buggars.’ ‘Watch yer arses, watch yer side,’ warns The
Fanatic. Accompanying him is The Follower (a raw recruit who generally does what he is
told, when he is told) and The Veteran, a civilian who is an apathetic, passive onlooker
apparently drafted into the cause.
The central figure is The Tracker played by Indigenous actor David Gulpilil.
cxvi
‘Native to
other parts, little is known of this man,’ we are told. An Indigenous man recruited in the
service of the white colonizer’s quest to dominate the land and its peoples, he walks ahead of
the party. His relation to the land (though this is not ‘his country’), and its people, is intimate.
Here the white man is the alien, dependent for survival on the black man. The white man
needs him; white/European progress is dependent on his knowledge and skills, yet he
distrusts, disbelieves him (‘You’re not telling me everything’). De Heer is obviously
fascinated by issues of power and control in the relationship between The Fanatic and The
Tracker.
The men journey on, make camp, and journey on again. Soon The Tracker signals the
presence of ‘bush blacks’ ahead in a creek bed. The white police charge the blacks’ camp,
surround the group and chain and shackle them. We witness the shameful eruption of white
male power fuelled by racism. At the end of the encounter, all Aborigines are dead. I closed
my eyes in anticipation of the violence but here, as in other select points in the film, De Heer
uses Coad’s paintings to depict the terrifying scene. The Veteran has not participated but nor
has he intervened. ‘You have to be firm with them,’ The Fanatic instructs The Follower.
‘They are cannibals, very treacherous. They’ll kill a white man in broad daylight!’ The irony
is not lost as The Tracker and the audience bear witness to the first massacre in the film. ‘Too
much bulldust yackin’ Boss! Better keep after that other savage...Only innocent black is a
dead black,’ says The Tracker, moving them on, and driving home the white man’s view of

9
humanity and justice. The men journey on, leaving five black bodies hanging in the trees of
the creekbed.
The packhorse is speared and slides down a slope. Now there is no food and half the
ammunition is gone. Still, The Fanatic is adamant he will continue. ‘I’m not gonna let any
black bastard get the better of me!’ The men journey on, alert to the possibility of a surprise
attack from the unseen enemy, as the song ‘All men choose the path they walk’ plays. The
key line in the lyrics, prominently displayed in the film’s promotion literature, encapsulates
the politics that dominate the narrative. ‘All men’ (but not women?), (black and white?),
apparently have the power of choice over the lives they lead.
They camp. The Tracker ‘disappears’. The film is replaying familiar old scenes. Returning
with bush tucker, he is punished by The Fanatic who fastens a metal collar around his neck.
Now they journey with The Tracker walking out front, like a dog, tracking ‘faithfully’ with a
long chain running ‘from his neck to The Fanatic on horseback behind’ until suddenly The
Veteran is speared in the midriff. He is bandaged, put back on his horse and made to continue
the journey. That night we witness the death of The Veteran at the hands of The Fanatic. The
Tracker has one eye open, watching, bearing witness to the multiple murderous ways of the
white man. Next morning, an unspoken bond forms between The Tracker and The Follower.
Now that The Fanatic has murdered a white man too, the Follower has changed sides.
The party comes to a deep waterhole. The Tracker, held by the neck chain, plunges over a
cliff ledge taking with him The Fanatic on the other end of the chain. A violent underwater
struggle ensues between the two men, another struggle between good and evil, right and
wrong, a struggle for ‘justice’. Both survive ... for the moment. The party continues on. They
come upon another group of Aborigines. The Fanatic, ‘obsessed with his task’ (de Heer 1990:
51) fires his rifle, reloads, fires, reloads... many in the group are shot dead... another
massacre, until The Follower is finally moved to intervene. ‘Drop the gun,’ he commands.
‘They’re innocent women and children.’ Now it is The Fanatic who is chained, metal collar
around his neck. But he’ll see justice done, he warns. ‘They’ll hang this black lover, I’ll see
to that’ (de Heer 1990: 55). The Follower has broken the race rules and crossed over.
On the fifth night, The Tracker again takes ‘justice’ into his own hands. This time he
succeeds. The Fanatic and The Tracker come face to face. ‘You are charged with the murder
of innocent people. How do you plead?’ asks The Tracker. ‘Who the hell are you?’ replies
The Fanatic. ‘On behalf of my people and all people, I am your judge and jury. How do you
plead?’ Again de Heer uses a painting to show The Fanatic hanging dead from a tree. In the
final scenes we witness something of the workings of Aboriginal Law. The Fugitive, innocent
of the rape of the white woman, is guilty of breaking Aboriginal law. As punishment he is
speared. Free now, The Tracker rides off into a cloud of dust. And who killed the white
woman? ‘Prob’ly some white fella, Boss,’ he calls back to The Follower.
A scriptwriter sets the parameters and guides the emotions of viewers. As a white filmmaker,
de Heer claims he positioned himself within the dominant culture but accepted responsibility
to ‘get it right’. He took the view that Aboriginal people were suffering from post-traumatic
stress, the result of colonization. And ‘I am part of the culture that created that stress.’ ‘My
point of view is the white people did the massacres and it’s the white people who need to
come to terms with that history more than anyone else. I tried to make a film that worked for

10
both sides.’ But how does the film work for non-Indigenous audiences? Does the film
provide ‘detonation points’ (Sellars’ term), points of entry to a national Reconciliation
between ‘black’ and ‘white’?
Positive things can be said of the production of the film. While de Heer wrote the script
without collaborators (it is ‘his’ story), he engaged in lengthy consultations with various
Indigenous people during the film’s production. This film’s box office success is surely due
in large part to de Heer’s successful collaboration with David Gulpilil, and musician Archie
Roach. De Heer speaks in various interviews of the complexity of his collaboration with
Gulpilil. How was he, a white filmmaker, to direct Gulpilil in the role of ‘The Tracker’? ‘I
don’t know him culturally, I don’t know how to talk to him,’ de Heer admitted thinking. ‘And
therefore how do I direct him?’
cxvii
Gulpilil, for his part, did not think that he was performing
the role of tracker but merely doing what he knew how to do, the daily task of tracking. ‘I’m
really a tracker,’ said Gulpilil. Veronica Gleeson wrote that he ‘zigzags across time frames’.
He had a better idea of the role of the tracker than did the director himself.
cxviii
(There is a
reminder here of Luce Irigaray’s [2002] question: How are ‘we’ to approach ‘the other’?
How are ‘we’ to make preparations for this approach?) These are significant questions for
non-Indigenous professionals working with Indigenous people at this time, as Gulpilil’s
‘advice’ to journalist Veronica Gleeson also suggests. ‘I want no bullshit in that paper when
you write it...you gotta look...Because if you do it wrong...Gotta be straight one! And good
one. The whole world gotta listen. No bullshit. True story.’
cxix
For his part, de Heer’s
response was to take up Gulpilil’s invitation to visit him in his own country, Ramingining, in
Arnhem Land. De Heer spent eight days in what he called ‘the most foreign country I’d ever
been to’.
cxx
This was one of the things de Heer did to work through a relationship in which he
created the conditions for Gulpilil to do his best work.
Nevertheless, if we ask questions of the narrative such as: What does the text privilege? What
does it make, or let, happen and what not? What does the narrative enable a white and an
Indigenous audience to see that is ‘new’? How does the text open up or delimit the
production of meanings and new speech? How does the narrative work as political practice,
as a cultural tool for political intervention in the Reconciliation process? (the point Sellars
had made in support of the inclusion of film in the Festival), I argue that the narrative in The
Tracker falls short.

PROOF
11
Like Australian Rules, and despite the claim to narrate history, The Tracker tends to erase
Time and History. Certainly, the narrative takes real historical events (massacres, racism,
White man’s Law) as its starting points. De Heer’s text quickly subverts what is the initial
obsessive quest for white ‘justice’ (the alleged rape of a white woman by an Aboriginal man)
and pursues the greater cause of black justice in the face of European colonization (a reversal
of power which is a signature of de Heer’s film narratives). In this the narrative poses the
questions: who are the real perpetrators of crime and how is justice to be done for the
massacres carried out by white police? Clearly these are significant questions for white
audiences in postcolonial Australia. But from thereon, out of ‘a very real, very bloody
history’, de Heer has created a fictional journey
cxxi
through which the narrative is lifted out of
history, transcends history. Real historical time is suspended, absorbed into the filmmaker’s
time.
cxxii
The narrative loses credibility. How does this happen? Firstly, de Heer’s
‘generalizing’ strategy (the film’s location ‘somewhere in Australia’, the archetypal
characters), intended to suggest that events like this happened everywhere, that ‘men like that’
frequented the wider Australian society at the time, risks diminishing the complex historical
truth of the colonization of a peoples, reducing history to a problem of bad, even evil,
behaviour on the part of individuals (which, in turn, can be resolved by punishing those
individuals). Unintentionally, de Heer runs the risk of reducing the quest for justice for the
colonized to the problem of dealing with fanatic individuals. Fanaticism and racism merge.
Men with traits are what they are without historical foundations, a familiar story told in
modern social science (and in the traditional genre of autobiography).
Secondly, The Tracker exploits White Australia’s long-time primitivist romance with the
figure of the black tracker - his knowledge of country, his mystery and power, his seemingly
super ability to win through - which undermines the tracker’s true history of cooptation and
exploitation by whites in the race wars against his own people. In this film, The Tracker, the
good black man, as super-hero, hangs The Fanatic, freeing himself (an historical
improbability) and, unfortunately, freeing whites of responsibility for moral action. De Heer
repeats old primitivist scenes, (re)captivating his white audiences in the pleasurable fantasy of
old ‘black magic’.
Thirdly, the effectiveness of de Heer’s strategic use of paintings to represent violence remains
contentious. The violence and cruelty of the frontier that de Heer had read about was not
representable on the screen, in his view.
cxxiii
He thought audiences did not want to see
violence. Taking a stand against the exploitative use of screen violence and ‘what it does to
us’, he has adopted the strategy of using 14 paintings by Peter Coad as a substitute for the
typical screen depiction of graphic violence. ‘The challenge was: what could I do to cause us
to reflect, to make the violence different and therefore more effective’. By using paintings, de
Heer has argued, ‘I could generalize the violence. It’s not that this was done to this person by
that person, but that this was done by these people to those people.’
cxxiv
The paintings were to
be representative of the sort of thing that happened between colonizer and colonized. The
unusual use of artworks did attract the attention of audiences and reviewers. Most commented
positively. De Heer ‘keeps us at a distance’ ‘but the scene is no less shocking for what it
withholds’.
cxxv
Sandy George wrote that the paintings worked to emphasize the truth.
cxxvi
In
Brechtian fashion, the painter was positioned as recorder of the real event. Veronica Gleeson
wrote that the paintings ‘neatly avert what could have been a descent into morbid blood and
guts slather’.
cxxvii
Violence portrayed obliquely is ‘no less harrowing’, wrote The Age (July
22, 2002) following the screening of The Tracker at the opening of the Melbourne Film
Festival. But some, like Mike Walsh commented negatively. ‘In the end they (the paintings)
prevent us from truly witnessing the horror of history, a horror...essential to see.’ And as a

PROOF
12
consequence, we are prevented from bearing witness. ‘The film is unfailingly beautiful, but
the insertion of paintings at moments of violence suggests that the aesthetic is what we invoke
when we can’t bear to watch,’ Walsh argued.
cxxviii
Aestheticization is a dehistoricizing and depoliticizing move. The end result may well be a
further downplaying of the violence that White Australia has for so long repressed and which
de Heer claimed he wanted us to see. Further, that the narrative depicts the history of colonial
violence generally - the rapes of black and white women, the massacres of Aboriginal people
and the murders of whites - also has the potential to downplay the specific violence of race
war in which white settlers targeted ‘primitive’ Aborigines. This makes it all too easy for the
white audience to come out of the film with the view that violence was generally widespread,
and that one culture was just as bad as the other (a view expressed to me by one film goer).
This perpetuates a serious misreading of history.
Despite his efforts to tell history through film, even to use film as a decolonizing tool, de
Heer’s text, I argue, falls back on an easy ‘resolution’ of the race wars, reducing everything to
yet another redemption narrative, a struggle between good and evil in which good wins out.
Evil people who commit evil deeds must be punished. Further, the black man, according to
this narrative has freed himself, his own people and whites, too. There’s nothing more to be
done. The mostly white audience at the opening night performance, positioned as a cheer
squad for The Tracker as he hangs The Fanatic, could go home feeling good but without a
sense of active moral responsibility in the future. It was a good night out, a pleasurable event.
The film narrative, unbelievable to those familiar with Australia’s history, offered little
challenge to change for those who were not. Interestingly, when The Tracker screened at the
Filmfest in Rotterdam, Holland, early in 2003, one ardent reviewer wrote of his experience,
Will the audience jump up and dive into the silver screen to stand up for these black
people?... the hatred against the three white men grows and grows... the crowd is ready
for justice... Standing ovation. Great film!...Outside in the cold rain, at the entrance of
the cinema, stands a middle aged man. His skin is black and he tries to sell
newspapers... Suddenly he looks up and says something in a language which we don’t
understand. His voice is warm and mellow but the yellow light in his eyes is foreign.
We choose to walk on...’(January 28, 2003).
cxxix
Some, but not all men (let alone women) may choose the path they walk. While we might
remind ourselves that the structure of a text cannot be ‘reducible to its truth’, it is likely that
both films, Australian Rules and The Tracker, despite these attempts to undermine the Law of
the (white European) Father at the core of Empire and modernity, are nevertheless told in
nomine patris,
cxxx
repeating familiar old scenes. Written from within, far less than outside its
game plan, too profoundly implicated in its programming machines, the narratives serve the
interests/ investments of the white men who narrated/directed/produced them and are not
likely to work for national Reconciliation in Australia.
Footnotes

PROOF
13
References
de Heer, Rolph (1990) The Tracker. (Filmscript)
Derrida, Jacques (1988) The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation.
(Trans. Peggy Kamuf (ed.) Christie McDonald). Lincoln & London: University of
Nebraska Press.
Fabian, Johannes (1983) Time and the Other: How Anthropology makes its object. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Gwynne, Phillip (1998) Deadly, Unna? Penguin.
Irigaray, Luce (2002) The Way of Love. (Trans. Heidi Bostic & Stephen Pluhácek).
London & New York: Continuum.
McClintock, Anne (1995) Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial
Contest. New York: Routledge.

PROOF
14

PROOF
15
i
We presented an earlier version of this paper to the Placing Race and Localising Whiteness Conference,
Flinders University, Adelaide, 1-3 October 2003, and would like to thank the organisers and participants
for their comments. We conducted part of the research for the Department of Social Inquiry at the
University of Adelaide pursuant to an ARC grant and acknowledge the support of the following. The
SEARCH Foundation, the Greek Atlas League, the Greek Orthodox Community of South Australia, the
Greek Australian Women’s Movement, the Victorian Trades Hall Council, the Maritime Union of Australia
and the Greek Democritus League.
ii
See also the articles in the “Special Issue on Indigenous Rights” Australasian Journal of Philosophy
(2001) 78:3.
Footnotes
iii
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for the contributions made to this paper.
iv
It is claimed the driver may never be held to account for the boy’s death because of his
incapacity to stand trial due to brain damage from solvent sniffing. Martin, B. (2003),
Charges Laid, But May Be in Vain. The West Australian. Perth: 6. 20th August 2003.,
adding another layer to blame.
v
Although people from different European and British countries have been variously
excluded/included in this history, there is no doubt that their status, position and life
chances now afford them better access to achievement and acceptability than those of
people whose ancestry and cultural background does not come from Britain, Europe and
other Anglo-related countries.
vi
It is, however, noted that who can be and have been called ‘white’ has changed over the
years. A number of edited works address this, for example: Gregory, S. and R. Sanjek
(eds) (1996) Race. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press; Delgado, R.
and J. Stefancic (eds.) (1997) Critical white studies: looking behind the mirror.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
References
Castles, F. G. (1985) The Working Class and Welfare : Reflections on the Political
Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand, 1890-1980.
Wellington and Sydney: Allen & Unwin in association with Port Nicholson Press.
Chance, K. (2003), Transcript of evidence taken at Perth on Wednesday 30th July, 2003.
Select Committee on the Reserves (Reserve 43131) Bill 2003. Perth, WA
Government.

PROOF
16
Davidson, A. (2003) 'The Politics of Exclusion in an Era of Globalisation', pp.129-144 in
L. Jayasuria, D. Walker and J. Gothard (eds.) Legacies of White Australia: Race,
Culture and Nation. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.
Delgado, R. (ed.) (1995) Critical Race Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Delgado, R. and J. Stefancic (eds.) (1997) Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the
Mirror. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Department for Community Development (2003) Young People in Northbridge policy -
statistics. Excel.
Dominelli, L. (1997) Anti-racist Social Work: A Challenge for White Practitioners and
Educators 2nd Edition. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Egan, C. (2003) 'Boys put in lock up for theft of gum', The Australian. Perth: 6. 26th
August 2003.
Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Frankenberg, R. (1997) 'Introduction: Local Whitenesses, localising whiteness', pp. 1 - 34
in R. Frankenberg Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural
Criticism. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Gauntlett, K. and C. Wilson-Clark (2003) 'Excuses' no help to youth: Gallop. West
Australian. Perth: 6. 20th August 2003.
Gregory, S. and R. Sanjek (eds.) (1996) Race. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press.
Hall, S. (1992) 'New ethnicities', pp. 252-259 in J. Donald and A. Rattansi 'Race',
Culture and Difference. London: Sage and Open University.
Hewitt, S. (2002) Northbridge curfew urged. West Australian. Perth. 26th February 2002.
Johns, G. (2003) Aboriginal Separatism has Failed, So Let's Stop Funding It. The
Australian. Perth: 13. 20th June 2003.
Leonardo, Z. (2002) 'The Souls of White Folk: Critical Pedagogy, Whiteness Studies, and
Globalization Discourse', Race, Ethnicity and Education 5(1): 29-50.
Martin, B. (2003) Charges laid, but may be in vain. The West Australian. Perth: 6. 20th
August 2003.
Office of Crime Prevention (2004) Discussion paper: parental responsibility orders.
Perth, http://www.crimeprevention.wa.gov.au/html/fs04pub.htm, 15/1/04.
Pearson, N. (2000) 'Passive Welfare and the Destruction of Indigenous Society in
Australia.', pp. 136-155 in P. Saunders Reforming the welfare state. Melbourne:
Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Pennels, S. (2003) Rural MPs demand action. The West Australian. Perth: 7. 16th April
2003.
Pettman, J. (1992) Living in the Margins: Racism, Sexism and Feminism in Australia. St
Leonards: Allen & Unwin.
Ruse, B. (2003) Man of the People: Hard Work the Key. The West Australian. Perth: 1.
23rd June 2003.
Russell, M. (2003) Curfew Provides Black and White Response to Grey Area of Racial
Tension. The Age. Melbourne: 8. 5th July 2003.
Select Committee on Reserves, WA Parliament (2003) Transcript of evidence taken at
Perth on Wednesday 30th July, 2003. Select Committee on the Reserves (Reserve
43131) Bill 2003. Perth, WA Government.

PROOF
17
Tascon, S. and R. Imre (2003) Uncovering Race, Returning to Origins. Placing race and
localising whiteness symposium, Adelaide
Toohey, P. (2003) It's Not About Race: Unrepentant Premier. The Australian. Perth: 6.
27th August 2003.
Toohey, P. and M. Schubert (2003) Premier Attacks Black 'Culture of Denial'. The
Australian. Perth: 1. 20th August 2003.
Wilson-Clark, C. (2003) Traders Back Clamp. The West Australian. Perth. 16th April
2003.
vii
We thank the anonymous reviewer for her/his very helpful comments and reading suggestions. We also
thank participants at the Placing Race and Localising Whiteness Conference for their questions and
feedback
viii
Both Zimbabwe and South Africa are now selecting non-white players, however the Australian team is
still virtually entirely white.
ix
We presented an earlier version of this paper to the Placing Race and Localising Whiteness Conference,
Flinders University, Adelaide, 1-3 October 2003, and would like to thank the organisers and participants
for their comments. We conducted part of the research for the Department of Social Inquiry at the
University of Adelaide pursuant to an ARC grant and acknowledge the support of the following. The
SEARCH Foundation, the Greek Atlas League, the Greek Orthodox Community of South Australia, the
Greek Australian Women’s Movement, the Victorian Trades Hall Council, the Maritime Union of Australia
and the Greek Democritus League.
References
Chesterman, J. and B. Galligan (1999) Defining Australian Citizenship: Selected Documents.
Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Davies, W. and A. Dal Bosco (2001) Tales from a suitcase. Melbourne: Lothian Books.
Dutton, D. (1998) ‘Mere Passion and Prejudice: The Allegiance and Nationality of Aliens in
Commonwealth Government Policy, 1914-1957’, pp.96-115 in D. Day (ed.) Australian
Identities. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Dutton, D. (2002) One of Us?: A century of Australian Citizenship. New South Wales: University
of New South Wales Press.
Gilchrist, H. (1997) Australians and Greeks II: The Middle Years. New South Wales: Halstead
Press.
Kanarakis, G. (1997) In the Wake of Odysseus: Portraits of Greek Settlers in Australia. Melbourne:
RMIT University Publishing (Greek Australian Studies Publication Series No. 5).
Murphy, J. (2000) Imagining the Fifties: Private Sentiment and Political Culture in Menzies’ Australia.
New South Wales: University of New South Wales Press.

PROOF
18
Nicolacopoulos, T. and G. Vassilacopoulos (2002a) ‘The Concept of the Foreigner and
Refugee Rights’, Social Alternatives 29(4): 45-49.
Nicolacopoulos, T. and G. Vassilacopoulos (2002b) ‘Doubly Outsiders: Pre-war Greek-
Australian Migrants and their Socialist Ideals’, Hellenic Studies 10(2):141-158.
Nicolacopoulos, T. and G. Vassilacopoulos (2003a) Locating the Foreigner Within. manuscript
in preparation.
Nicolacopoulos, T. and G. Vassilacopoulos (2003b) ‘Indigenous and white Australians: The
ontological encountering and the betrayal of thought’, paper delivered to the Placing Race
and Localising Whiteness Conference, Flinders University, Adelaide, 1-3 October 2003.
Nicolacopoulos, T. and G. Vassilacopoulos (2003c) ‘Racism, Foreigner Communities and
the onto-pathology of white Australian subjectivity’, Forthcoming in A. Moreton-Robinson
(ed.) Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism. Aboriginal Studies Press
Nicolacopoulos, T. and G. Vassilacopoulos (2003d) ‘The Making of Greek-Australian
citizenship: From Heteronomous to Autonomous Political Communities’, Paper delivered
to Greeks in the Modern World, 6th Biennial Conference of the MGSAANZ, La Trobe
University, Melbourne, forthcoming in Modern Greek Studies in Australia and New Zealand

PROOF
19

PROOF
20
x
For an account of the genesis and themes of this project see Garbutt (2003).
xi
For additional theoretical discussion on critical self-reflective writing as a methodology and way of knowing
see Chapters 1, 2 and 12 of Jackson (1990), and ‘The Autotheoretical Texts’, Chapter 3 in Young (1997). Evans
(1999) is an example of this genre, particularly the Introduction (pp. 1-18).
xii
For the concept of transparency in belonging Linn Miller’s (2003: 218-220) discussion of the Kierkegaardian
notion of correct relation is especially useful. Frankenberg (1993:265, note 1) raises a clear warning regarding
the limits to transparency when undertaking an anti-racist project from a position of dominance.
xiii
My reflections in the following paragraphs are of events as I experienced them, however, I have altered the
names of streets and people.
xiv
Through a detailed Lacanian analysis Seshadri-Crooks (2000:58ff) argues that Whiteness offers a ‘fantasy of
sameness and mastery’ (58).
xv
Giroux (1997:208) notes that ‘white experience … is mediated through the diverse but related lens of class,
gender, and sexual orientation’. For brevity the analysis here focuses solely on whiteness, however these
alternative lenses deserve attention, particularly noting the dominance of middle-class, patriarchal, heterosexist
thinking in East Lismore during the 1960s and 1970s.
xvi
In the 1971 census, Lismore had the lowest recorded Aboriginal population as a percentage of total
population of all major cities and towns on the New South Wales north coast. On 30 June 1971 Lismore’s
Aboriginal population was 0.24% of the total. This compares with 0.86% at Grafton (the only other city in the
region) and 0.85% at the nearby municipality of Casino. In the shire that then adjoined Lismore, Gundurimba
Shire, the Aboriginal population was 1.91% of the total due to the presence of the Cubawee Reserve. While it is
typical that surrounding shires of towns would have a higher proportion of Aborigines than the towns
themselves, it appears that Lismore was particularly effective at excluding Aborigines from residing within the
city limits. (Population percentages have been calculated from Commonwealth of Australia (1974a) and
(1974b).)
Exclusion may go some way to explaining my not seeing Aborigines in East Lismore and in Lismore generally,
however, there is also the possibility that this ‘not seeing’ is part of the curriculum of a local pedagogy of
whiteness. I have noted this elsewhere (Garbutt 2003) as has Lorna Lippmann. In her 1969 research on racial
attitudes in the town she calls Eastville on the far north coast of NSW, a town remarkably similar to Lismore,
Lippmann writes: ‘More than one white respondent, when questioned as to his opinion on Aborigines in
Eastville, expressed astonishment that there were any Aborigines in Eastville (despite the fact that they may be
seen in the town every day of the week…)’ [emphasis in the original] (Lippmann 1973: 109).
xvii
As de Certeau (1984: 96) reinterprets Foucault: ‘‘[t]hese often minuscule ruses of discipline’ … draw their
efficacy from a relationship between procedures and the space that they redistribute in order to make an
operator out of it’.
xviii
The Northern Star, Friday 11/4/1958, ‘Assimilation Pattern Accepts Basic Rights’.
xix
The Northern Star, 23 January 1962, ‘Rehousing Aborigines: Protest Meeting on Thursday’, p. 2.
xx
The Northern Star, 26 January 1962, ‘Housing Aborigines: Opposition to Protest’, p. 1.
xxi
The Northern Star, 26 January 1962, ‘“Pure Prejudice” if Colour Offends’, p. 2.
xxii
The Northern Star, 24 January 1962, ‘Urgent Need to End Cubawee Blot’, p. 2.
xxiii
The Northern Star, 23 January 1962, ‘To the editor: Opposition to Reserve Plan for Aborigines’, p. 2.
xxiv
Ibid.
xxv
The Northern Star, 23 January 1962, ‘Aboriginal Settlement: Council Not Willing to Sell Land’, p. 1, quoting
Alderman H. P. Habib.
xxvi
Ibid, Alderman Fitzhugh.
xxvii
I should note here that in a recent discussion about the account presented here, Tess Brill (2004) raises
doubts about The Northern Star’s accounts of the opposition to the Wyrallah Road site. Her recollection is that

PROOF
21
opposition ‘was monolithic!’ and that the reports in the newspaper were altered to be indicate greater generosity
from the white community towards the Aborigines.
xxviii
The Northern Star, 7 March 1962, ‘Council Somersault Dodges Leadership’, p. 2.
xxix
The Northern Star, 24 February 1965, ‘Student Group’s Uneventful Visit’, p. 2.
xxx
The Northern Star, 24 February 1965, ‘Gains by responsibility among aborigines’, p. 2.
xxxi
Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1965, ‘Most Sympathetic Reception: Lismore Greets Students’, p. 4.
xxxii
Richmond River Historical Society Bulletin, Volume 46, June 1968, ‘Society’s New Emblem’, page 1.
xxxiii
Deborah Bird Rose (1999: 7-11) speaks of ‘Year Zero’, the moment of the birth of Christ in the Christian
calendar. In her metaphor colonial time is understood as the New Testament, a time of events which is the
‘fulfilment’ of the Old Testament, a pre-colonial time of events. While this metaphor has some resonance, time
in the Biblical Old Testament maintains a historical structure. For this reason I prefer a reading of the settler
construction of time in which pre-colonial time is viewed as dark, unstructured and dreamlike. Paul Carter
(1999:61) conveys this poetically in a scene from a colonial performance: ‘Two old women in the front row
sleep through the entire performance…: they only wake up briefly when one of the actors utters the words
‘Once upon a time…’. The pedagogy of whiteness rests on a temporal conceptualisation that is only ‘awake’
from the colonial time zero.
xxxiv
Lismore Visitor Information Centre (no date: 2-3). It is notable that amongst these rainbow ‘incidents’ no
mention is made of events organised by Lismore’s thriving gay and lesbian community.
xxxv
Lismore Visitor Information Centre, 2003: 20
xxxvi
Aunty Irene Harrington, personal communication, 19/1/2004. Aunty Irene, cultural custodian of the
Widjabul people from the Lismore area notes that in the stories and places shown to her by her grandfather
and father, there is no mention of the Rainbow Serpent. This leaves open a place for the Rainbow Serpent in
the stories of other Bundjalung people.
xxxvii
Ruby Langford Ginibi (2003a) alludes to this white naming in her ‘Forward’ to Belonging in the Rainbow
Region (Wilson ed., 2003a) by referring to her ‘…belongin’ place – the place the contributors to this book call
‘The Rainbow Region’’ (p. iii, my emphasis). Wilson (2003b: 1-3) provides alternative narratives of the naming
of the ‘Rainbow Region’ to the one I present here, though the area ‘[t]he Rainbow Region definitely includes’ in
her definition (p.2) would be contested by the Lismore City Council. In ‘My Belongin’ Place’, Ruby Langford
Ginibi (2003b) speaks further about naming and places from her Bundjalung perspective.
xxxviii
My thanks to Dr. Baden Offord for his insightful reinterpretation of Geoffrey Blainey’s phrase. The
tyranny of distance is not solely an issue in everyday white practice, but is also a consideration for white
scholars engaged in theorising whiteness. White theorists, in their desire for ‘objectivity’ through maintaining a
‘critical distance’, risk positioning themselves in such a way that distance is favoured over critical reflexivity.
References
Blainey, Geoffrey (1966) The Tyranny of Distance: How distance shaped Australia’s
history. South Melbourne, Victoria: Sun Books.
Brill, Tess (2003) Transcript of interview with Tess Brill, 26/5/2003.
Brill, Tess (2004) Notes of conversation with Tess Brill, 10/2/2004.
Carter, Paul (1999) ‘Footings: The Mythopoeic Foundations of Imperial Time’, pp. 56-77
in Klaus Neumann, Nicholas Thomas and Hilary Ericksen (eds) Quicksands:
foundational histories in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, Sydney: University of
New South Wales Press.
Commonwealth of Australia (1974a) Census of Population and Housing, 30 June 1971.
Bulletin 7 Characteristics of the Population and Dwellings. Local Government Areas.
Canberra: Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics.

PROOF
22
Commonwealth of Australia (1974b) Census of Population and Housing, 30 June 1971.
Bulletin 9 Aboriginal Population. Characteristics of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Population. Canberra: Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics.
Daley, Louise Tiffany (1966) Men and a River: A History of the Richmond River District
1828-1895. Carton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.
de Certeau, Michel (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. (Trans. Steven Rendall).
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Evans, Raymond (1999) Fighting Words: Writing about Race. St Lucia, Queensland:
University of Queensland Press.
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Frankenberg, Ruth (1993) White Women, Race Matters: The social construction of
whiteness. London: Routledge.
Frankenberg, Ruth (1997) ‘Introduction: Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in
Ruth Frankenberg (ed.) Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism.
London: Duke University Press.
Frye, Marilyn (1983) ‘On Being White: Toward a Feminist Understanding of Race and
Race Supremacy, pp. 110-127 in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. New
York: The Crossing Press.
Frye, Marilyn (1992) ‘White Woman Feminist’, pp. 147-169 in Willful Virgin: Essays in
Feminism 1976-1992. The Crossing Press.
Garbutt, Rob (2003) ‘On shaky ground: Land, Australian settler belonging and
Reconciliation’, presented at the Activating Human Rights and Diversity Conference, 1-4
July 2003, Byron Bay Community Centre, Byron Bay, NSW. Available:
http://www.scu.edu.au/research/clpc/human_rights/.
Giroux, Henry (1997) ‘Racial Politics and the Pedagogy of Whiteness’ in Mike Hill (ed)
Whiteness: A Critical Reader. New York and London: New York University Press.
Goodall, H (1996) Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales,
1770-1972. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin.
Hall, Stuart (1996) ‘New Ethnicities’, pp. 441-49 in David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen
(eds.) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge
Jackson, David (1990) Unmasking Masculinity: A critical autobiography. London:
Unwin Hyman.
Langford Ginibi, Ruby (2003a) ‘Foreword’, p. iii in Helen Wilson (ed) Belonging in the
Rainbow Region: Cultural perspectives on the NSW North Coast. Lismore: Southern
Cross University Press.
Langford Ginibi, Ruby (2003b) ‘My Belongin’ Place’, pp. 13-19 in Helen Wilson (ed)
Belonging in the Rainbow Region: Cultural perspectives on the NSW North Coast.
Lismore: Southern Cross University Press.

PROOF
23
Lippmann, Lorna (1973) Words or Blows: Racial Attitudes in Australia. Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books.
Lismore Visitor Information Centre (no date) Lismore and its Villages – Origins of some
of the place names. Lismore Visitor Information Centre, Lismore, New South Wales.
Lismore Visitor Information Centre 2003 experience Lismore’s rainbow region
[promotional brochure]. Lismore Visitor Information Centre, Lismore, New South Wales.
Miller, Linn (2003) ‘Belonging to Country—A Philosophical Anthropology’, Voicing
Dissent, New Talents 21C: Next Generation Australian Studies 76: 215-258.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen (2000a) Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women
and Feminism. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen (2000b) ‘Troubling Business: Difference and Whiteness
Within Feminism’, Australian Feminist Studies 15(33): 343-352.
Perkins, Charles (1999 [1965]) ‘Charles Perkins to Mr A.G. Kingsmill, Chairman, New
South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board, 18 January 1965’ in Bain Attwood and Andrew
Markus (eds) The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History. NSW: Allen
and Unwin.
Rose, Deborah Bird (1999) ‘Hard Times: An Australian Study’, pp. 2-19 in Klaus
Neumann, Nicholas Thomas and Hilary Ericksen (eds) Quicksands: Foundational
Histories in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Sydney: University of New South
Wales Press.
Seshadri-Crooks, Kalpana (2000) Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis ofRrace.
London and New York: Routledge.
Wilson, Helen (ed.) (2003a) Belonging in the Rainbow Region: Cultural perspectives on
the NSW North Coast. Lismore: Southern Cross University Press.
Wilson, Helen (2003b) ‘Introduction’, pp. 1-11 in Helen Wilson (ed) Belonging in the
Rainbow Region: Cultural perspectives on the NSW North Coast. Lismore: Southern
Cross University Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980 [1977]) Culture and Value. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Young, Stacey (1997) Changing the Wor(l)d: Discourse, Politics and the Feminist
Movement. London and New York: Routledge.
xxxix
For an account of the genesis and themes of this project see Garbutt (2003).
xl
For additional theoretical discussion on critical self-reflective writing as a methodology and way of knowing
see Chapters 1, 2 and 12 of Jackson (1990), and ‘The Autotheoretical Texts’, Chapter 3 in Young (1997). Evans
(1999) is an example of this genre, particularly the Introduction (pp. 1-18).
xli
For the concept of transparency in belonging Linn Miller’s (2003: 218-220) discussion of the Kierkegaardian
notion of correct relation is especially useful. Frankenberg (1993:265, note 1) raises a clear warning regarding
the limits to transparency when undertaking an anti-racist project from a position of dominance.
xlii
My reflections in the following paragraphs are of events as I experienced them, however, I have altered the
names of streets and people.
xliii
Through a detailed Lacanian analysis Seshadri-Crooks (2000:58ff) argues that Whiteness offers a ‘fantasy of
sameness and mastery’ (58).

PROOF
24
xliv
Giroux (1997:208) notes that ‘white experience … is mediated through the diverse but related lens of class,
gender, and sexual orientation’. For brevity the analysis here focuses solely on whiteness, however these
alternative lenses deserve attention, particularly noting the dominance of middle-class, patriarchal, heterosexist
thinking in East Lismore during the 1960s and 1970s.
xlv
In the 1971 census, Lismore had the lowest recorded Aboriginal population as a percentage of total
population of all major cities and towns on the New South Wales north coast. On 30 June 1971 Lismore’s
Aboriginal population was 0.24% of the total. This compares with 0.86% at Grafton (the only other city in the
region) and 0.85% at the nearby municipality of Casino. In the shire that then adjoined Lismore, Gundurimba
Shire, the Aboriginal population was 1.91% of the total due to the presence of the Cubawee Reserve. While it is
typical that surrounding shires of towns would have a higher proportion of Aborigines than the towns
themselves, it appears that Lismore was particularly effective at excluding Aborigines from residing within the
city limits. (Population percentages have been calculated from Commonwealth of Australia (1974a) and
(1974b).)
Exclusion may go some way to explaining my not seeing Aborigines in East Lismore and in Lismore generally,
however, there is also the possibility that this ‘not seeing’ is part of the curriculum of a local pedagogy of
whiteness. I have noted this elsewhere (Garbutt 2003) as has Lorna Lippmann. In her 1969 research on racial
attitudes in the town she calls Eastville on the far north coast of NSW, a town remarkably similar to Lismore,
Lippmann writes: ‘More than one white respondent, when questioned as to his opinion on Aborigines in
Eastville, expressed astonishment that there were any Aborigines in Eastville (despite the fact that they may be
seen in the town every day of the week…)’ [emphasis in the original] (Lippmann 1973: 109).
xlvi
As de Certeau (1984: 96) reinterprets Foucault: ‘‘[t]hese often minuscule ruses of discipline’ … draw their
efficacy from a relationship between procedures and the space that they redistribute in order to make an
operator out of it’.
xlvii
The Northern Star, Friday 11/4/1958, ‘Assimilation Pattern Accepts Basic Rights’.
xlviii
The Northern Star, 23 January 1962, ‘Rehousing Aborigines: Protest Meeting on Thursday’, p. 2.
xlix
The Northern Star, 26 January 1962, ‘Housing Aborigines: Opposition to Protest’, p. 1.
l
The Northern Star, 26 January 1962, ‘“Pure Prejudice” if Colour Offends’, p. 2.
li
The Northern Star, 24 January 1962, ‘Urgent Need to End Cubawee Blot’, p. 2.
lii
The Northern Star, 23 January 1962, ‘To the editor: Opposition to Reserve Plan for Aborigines’, p. 2.
liii
Ibid.
liv
The Northern Star, 23 January 1962, ‘Aboriginal Settlement: Council Not Willing to Sell Land’, p. 1, quoting
Alderman H. P. Habib.
lv
Ibid, Alderman Fitzhugh.
lvi
I should note here that in a recent discussion about the account presented here, Tess Brill (2004) raises
doubts about The Northern Star’s accounts of the opposition to the Wyrallah Road site. Her recollection is that
opposition ‘was monolithic!’ and that the reports in the newspaper were altered to be indicate greater generosity
from the white community towards the Aborigines.
lvii
The Northern Star, 7 March 1962, ‘Council Somersault Dodges Leadership’, p. 2.
lviii
The Northern Star, 24 February 1965, ‘Student Group’s Uneventful Visit’, p. 2.
lix
The Northern Star, 24 February 1965, ‘Gains by responsibility among aborigines’, p. 2.
lx
Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1965, ‘Most Sympathetic Reception: Lismore Greets Students’, p. 4.
lxi
Richmond River Historical Society Bulletin, Volume 46, June 1968, ‘Society’s New Emblem’, page 1.
lxii
Deborah Bird Rose (1999: 7-11) speaks of ‘Year Zero’, the moment of the birth of Christ in the Christian
calendar. In her metaphor colonial time is understood as the New Testament, a time of events which is the
‘fulfilment’ of the Old Testament, a pre-colonial time of events. While this metaphor has some resonance, time
in the Biblical Old Testament maintains a historical structure. For this reason I prefer a reading of the settler
construction of time in which pre-colonial time is viewed as dark, unstructured and dreamlike. Paul Carter
(1999:61) conveys this poetically in a scene from a colonial performance: ‘Two old women in the front row
sleep through the entire performance…: they only wake up briefly when one of the actors utters the words
‘Once upon a time…’. The pedagogy of whiteness rests on a temporal conceptualisation that is only ‘awake’
from the colonial time zero.
lxiii
Lismore Visitor Information Centre (no date: 2-3). It is notable that amongst these rainbow ‘incidents’ no
mention is made of events organised by Lismore’s thriving gay and lesbian community.
lxiv
Lismore Visitor Information Centre, 2003: 20
lxv
Aunty Irene Harrington, personal communication, 19/1/2004. Aunty Irene, cultural custodian of the
Widjabul people from the Lismore area notes that in the stories and places shown to her by her grandfather

PROOF
25
and father, there is no mention of the Rainbow Serpent. This leaves open a place for the Rainbow Serpent in
the stories of other Bundjalung people.
lxvi
Ruby Langford Ginibi (2003a) alludes to this white naming in her ‘Forward’ to Belonging in the Rainbow Region
(Wilson ed., 2003a) by referring to her ‘…belongin’ place – the place the contributors to this book call ‘The
Rainbow Region’’ (p. iii, my emphasis). Wilson (2003b: 1-3) provides alternative narratives of the naming of the
‘Rainbow Region’ to the one I present here, though the area ‘[t]he Rainbow Region definitely includes’ in her
definition (p.2) would be contested by the Lismore City Council. In ‘My Belongin’ Place’, Ruby Langford
Ginibi (2003b) speaks further about naming and places from her Bundjalung perspective.
lxvii
My thanks to Dr. Baden Offord for his insightful reinterpretation of Geoffrey Blainey’s phrase. The tyranny
of distance is not solely an issue in everyday white practice, but is also a consideration for white scholars
engaged in theorising whiteness. White theorists, in their desire for ‘objectivity’ through maintaining a ‘critical
distance’, risk positioning themselves in such a way that distance is favoured over critical reflexivity.
References
Blainey, Geoffrey (1966) The Tyranny of Distance: How distance shaped Australia’s
history. South Melbourne, Victoria: Sun Books.
Brill, Tess (2003) Transcript of interview with Tess Brill, 26/5/2003.
Brill, Tess (2004) Notes of conversation with Tess Brill, 10/2/2004.
Carter, Paul (1999) ‘Footings: The Mythopoeic Foundations of Imperial Time’, pp. 56-77
in Klaus Neumann, Nicholas Thomas and Hilary Ericksen (eds) Quicksands:
foundational histories in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, Sydney: University of
New South Wales Press.
Commonwealth of Australia (1974a) Census of Population and Housing, 30 June 1971.
Bulletin 7 Characteristics of the Population and Dwellings. Local Government Areas.
Canberra: Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics.
Commonwealth of Australia (1974b) Census of Population and Housing, 30 June 1971.
Bulletin 9 Aboriginal Population. Characteristics of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Population. Canberra: Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics.
Daley, Louise Tiffany (1966) Men and a River: A History of the Richmond River District
1828-1895. Carton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.
de Certeau, Michel (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. (Trans. Steven Rendall).
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Evans, Raymond (1999) Fighting Words: Writing about Race. St Lucia, Queensland:
University of Queensland Press.
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Frankenberg, Ruth (1993) White Women, Race Matters: The social construction of
whiteness. London: Routledge.
Frankenberg, Ruth (1997) ‘Introduction: Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in
Ruth Frankenberg (ed.) Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism.
London: Duke University Press.

PROOF
26
Frye, Marilyn (1983) ‘On Being White: Toward a Feminist Understanding of Race and
Race Supremacy, pp. 110-127 in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. New
York: The Crossing Press.
Frye, Marilyn (1992) ‘White Woman Feminist’, pp. 147-169 in Willful Virgin: Essays in
Feminism 1976-1992. The Crossing Press.
Garbutt, Rob (2003) ‘On shaky ground: Land, Australian settler belonging and
Reconciliation’, presented at the Activating Human Rights and Diversity Conference, 1-4
July 2003, Byron Bay Community Centre, Byron Bay, NSW. Available:
http://www.scu.edu.au/research/clpc/human_rights/.
Giroux, Henry (1997) ‘Racial Politics and the Pedagogy of Whiteness’ in Mike Hill (ed)
Whiteness: A Critical Reader. New York and London: New York University Press.
Goodall, H (1996) Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales,
1770-1972. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin.
Hall, Stuart (1996) ‘New Ethnicities’, pp. 441-49 in David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen
(eds.) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge
Jackson, David (1990) Unmasking Masculinity: A critical autobiography. London:
Unwin Hyman.
Langford Ginibi, Ruby (2003a) ‘Foreword’, p. iii in Helen Wilson (ed) Belonging in the
Rainbow Region: Cultural perspectives on the NSW North Coast. Lismore: Southern
Cross University Press.
Langford Ginibi, Ruby (2003b) ‘My Belongin’ Place’, pp. 13-19 in Helen Wilson (ed)
Belonging in the Rainbow Region: Cultural perspectives on the NSW North Coast.
Lismore: Southern Cross University Press.
Lippmann, Lorna (1973) Words or Blows: Racial Attitudes in Australia. Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books.
Lismore Visitor Information Centre (no date) Lismore and its Villages – Origins of some
of the place names. Lismore Visitor Information Centre, Lismore, New South Wales.
Lismore Visitor Information Centre 2003 experience Lismore’s rainbow region
[promotional brochure]. Lismore Visitor Information Centre, Lismore, New South Wales.
Miller, Linn (2003) ‘Belonging to Country—A Philosophical Anthropology’, Voicing
Dissent, New Talents 21C: Next Generation Australian Studies 76: 215-258.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen (2000a) Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women
and Feminism. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen (2000b) ‘Troubling Business: Difference and Whiteness
Within Feminism’, Australian Feminist Studies 15(33): 343-352.
Perkins, Charles (1999 [1965]) ‘Charles Perkins to Mr A.G. Kingsmill, Chairman, New
South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board, 18 January 1965’ in Bain Attwood and Andrew
Markus (eds) The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History. NSW: Allen
and Unwin.

PROOF
27
Rose, Deborah Bird (1999) ‘Hard Times: An Australian Study’, pp. 2-19 in Klaus
Neumann, Nicholas Thomas and Hilary Ericksen (eds) Quicksands: Foundational
Histories in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Sydney: University of New South
Wales Press.
Seshadri-Crooks, Kalpana (2000) Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis ofRrace.
London and New York: Routledge.
Wilson, Helen (ed.) (2003a) Belonging in the Rainbow Region: Cultural perspectives on
the NSW North Coast. Lismore: Southern Cross University Press.
Wilson, Helen (2003b) ‘Introduction’, pp. 1-11 in Helen Wilson (ed) Belonging in the
Rainbow Region: Cultural perspectives on the NSW North Coast. Lismore: Southern
Cross University Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1980 [1977]) Culture and Value. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Young, Stacey (1997) Changing the Wor(l)d: Discourse, Politics and the Feminist
Movement. London and New York: Routledge.
Footnotes
lxviii
For an important work on testimony and its relationship with literature see Shoshana
Felman and Dori Laub (1992); Paul Antze and Michael Lambek eds. (1996); and Kirby
Farrell (1998).
lxix
Here Leys uses a quotation of Freud's about his race in which he in fact is referring to
his Jewishness.
lxx
LaCapra emphasises it is very important to distinguish between the notion of absence
and that of loss. In general terms he situates the historical past as the scene of losses
which holds the possibilities of reconfiguration through narrative in ways that may
transform the present and the future. He situates absence, on the other hand, in the realm
of the transhistorical because in the way in which he is using the term it is not as a
locatable event, so that it does not imply the temporal concepts of past, present and
future. See (LaCapra 1999: 699-700).
lxxi
Other than slavery, LaCapra lists the Holocaust, apartheid, and the effectts of the atom
bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples of founding trauma.
lxxii
I have taken the distinguishing definitions of reactive and endogenous from Robert Jay
Lifton's discussion of depression in his book The Broken Connection: On Death and the
Continuity of Life (1979).
lxxiii
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, ([1966] 1997). This Penguin edition has a useful
introduction, appendix and notes by Angela Smith. Further references to the novel will
appear as page numbers in parentheses in the main text of the essay.
lxxiv
Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1894, the daughter of a Welsh doctor and a white
Creole mother.
lxxv
The phrase 'white but not quite' is an intervention into Homi Bhabha's theoretical
exposition of his reading of the ambivalence of 'mimicry as ironic compromise'. See his
essay 'Of Mimicry and Man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse.' (Homi Bhabha
1994: 85-92). See especially 86, 89 & 91 for variants of the phrase.

PROOF
28
lxxvi
The second example of Rhys's use of the word 'marooned' is on page 11 of the novel.
lxxvii
See Mavis Campbell (1988) and Richard Price (1973). The root of the word maroon
is the Spanish cimarron which referred to domesticated cattle which escaped to the
mountains. Carib Indians who avoided being massacred by the colonisers by also
escaping to the mountains were then called maroons. However it was when the African
slaves started fleeing the plantations in sizeable numbers, forming communities and
engaging with highly effective guerilla tactics against the plantation owners that the term
maroon became synonymous with successful resistance. Maroon societies have survived
on into the present day in Jamaica and Surinam. Continuation of the Maroon tradition of
resistance to oppression resonate in great freedom fighter icons of the twentieth-century
such as Marcus Garvey, whose father was a Maroon (Campbell 1988: 12). The 'chronic
plague' is a quotation taken from Lucien Peytraud, L'esclavage aux Antilles françaises
avant 1789, Paris, Hachette, 1897, 373, and cited in Price, (1973: 2).
lxxviii
Oxford English Dictionary, Vol VI, L-M, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961, 178.
lxxix
However, LaCapra maintains that while empathy can be 'mistakenly conflated with
identification or fusion with the other ... it should rather be understood in terms of an
affective relation, rapport, or bond with the other recognized and respected as such',
sympathy implies 'difference from the discrete other who is the object of pity, charity, or
condescension' (LaCapra 2001: 212-3). In my three chapters on Wide Sargasso Sea
(Burrows 2004), I have used the categories of empathy and sympathy interchangeably
because in Rhys's novel they are affective weapons of power that are utilised in the same
way for the same result.
lxxx
Another example that is particularly striking is a chapter on Rhys in a text of literary
criticism that focuses on metaphor in women's fiction. The chapter is entitled '"...
marooned ...": Jean Rhys's desolate women' and yet it completely overlooks the
importance of the metaphor's Afro-Caribbean cultural significance. See Avril Horner and
Sue Zlosnik (1990: 133-80).
lxxxi
This phrase is Maurice Blanchot's from his The Writing of Disaster ([1980] 1995: 30).
lxxxii
Sara Wolf (2001) interview with Peter Sellars.
lxxxiii
“Sellars departs and critics roar”, The Advertiser, November 16, 2001, Arts:18.
lxxxiv
The Age, November 2, 2001, Review 5.
lxxxv
“Festival Joke’s On Us”, Sunday Mail, November 4, 2001:48.
lxxxvi
“Beyond anger: our 2002 Festival program”, November 7, 2001:11.
lxxxvii
March 20, 2002:12.
lxxxviii
November 16, 2001, Opinion:13.
lxxxix
www.nyt.com/2001/11/13/arts
xc
Ron Banks, “Sellars market wasn’t there”,14/11/2001
xci
“Program for truckers”, November 1, 2001:4.
xcii
November16, 2001, Review 5.
xciii
November 2, 2001: 3.
xciv
“Festival needs its ability to shock”, The Advertiser, October 30, 2001:18.
xcv
The Australian, November 13, 2001:1.
xcvi
“Ruckus good for preparing public,”The Australian, November 12, 2001:21.
xcvii
The Advertiser, January 12, 2002:57.
xcviii
See Festival catalogue, Shedding Light and Casting Shadows, Her Majesty’s Theatre,
Grote Street, Adelaide, March 2-7, 2002.
xcix
The Kaurna name meaning ‘place of the red kangaroo’.

PROOF
29
c
March 23, 2002. www.abc.net.au/rn
ci
See Peter Galvin, “Bending the rules”, interview with Phillip Gwynne and Paul
Goldman, IF-inside film, 46, August 2002:18-22; see also Kelrick Martin, “Australian
rules - for who?” Opinion, Inside Film, 46, August 2002, 24-27; Review, Australian
Rules, IF-inside film, 46, August 2002:74.
cii
Radio National, Awaye! March 23, 2002. www.abc.net.au/rn
ciii
Op cit.
civ
Op cit.
cv
See, for example, Vance in Derrida (1988) pp.80-83.
cvi
Frank Devine’s term in “Jack Davis leaves a sweetener for a better country”, The
Australian, March 30, 2000:11.
cvii
Inside Film, 46, August 2002:20.
cviii
March 9-10, 2002:27.
cix
I am indebted to Adelaide based filmmaker Rolph de Heer for time spent discussing
the film’s narrative; to Julie Ryan (co-producer of The Tracker) and Vertigo Productions
for their kind provision of the script and access to resource materials relating to The
Tracker. See Vertigo Productions www.vertigoproductions.com.au
cx
See Paul Byrnes, “The Tracker”, www.smh.com.auAugust 8, 2002; Sandy George, “Mayhem and
magnificence in Aboriginal drama”, Screen International, March 29, 2002:18; Veronica Gleeson “Tracking
David,” IF- inside film, 46, August 2002: 32-37; interview with Rolph de Heer, IF- inside film, 46, August
2002: 38,9; Richard Guilliatt, The Double Life of David Gulpilil, The Age, Good Weekend, December 7,
2002;Philippa Hawker, “Haunted by history”, The Age, July 22, 2002; Jo Litson, Weekend Australian,
Review, “The Natural”. November 10-11, 2001:4;Tony Love, “Film closes the gap”, Insight, The
Advertiser, January 12, 2002:57; Garry Maddox, “Aboriginal films breaking free,” Sydney Morning
Herald, Tuesday March 5, 2002:17; Julie Rigg, review of The Tracker, Radio National, Night Club,
5/3/2002 www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/nclub/stories/s646462.htm; Robin Usher, “Sellars’ legacy: new films for
new audience,” The Age, January 25, 2002; David Varga, “Tracking Truth”, interview with Rolph de Heer,
Storyline (Journal of the Australian Writers Guild), #1, summer 2002-3: 6-9.
cxi
See the public debate between historian Henry Reynolds and conservative Keith Windschuttle.
cxii
According to Veronica Gleeson, IF - inside film, The Tracker was a ‘white man’s
fiction’ though ‘ultimately a blackfella’s tale’.
cxiii
Radio National, The Night Club, 8/8/2002.
cxiv
The film was shot in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in the north of South
Australia.
after de Heer had negotiated with local Indigenous people the use of specific parts of the land.
cxv
Interview with Karen Heinrich, “Rolph de Heer: Making Tracks”, What’s Hot on
Video. Melbourne: Text Pacific, March 2003:12. See also
www.vertigoproductions.com.au
cxvi
David Gulpilil also played the tracker in Rabbit-Proof Fence.
cxvii
The Advertiser, August 10, 2002: 71,72. See also Richard Guilliatt, “The Double Life
of David Gulpilil,” The Age, Good Weekend, December 7, 2002.
cxviii
Veronica Gleeson, “Tracking David,” IF- inside film, 46, August 2002: 32-37.
cxix
Op cit.
cxx
Veronica Gleeson, interview with Rolph de Heer, IF:39.
cxxi
Op cit.
cxxii
This is not dissimilar to the situation of the Anthropologist noted by Fabian (1983)
where writing about the other became an imperialistic act of eating and incorporation.
cxxiii
The Age, July 22, 2002:1.
cxxiv
Weekend Australian, Feb 9-10, 2002, Arts:17.

PROOF
30
cxxv
The Age, July 22, 2002:3.
cxxvi
Screen International, March 29, 2002:18.
cxxvii
Inside Film, 46, 2002: 74.
cxxviii
Mike Walsh www.abc.net.au/triplej/review/film/s647454.html“The road less
travelled,” Weekend Australian, Feb 9-10, 2000, Arts:16,17.
cxxix
The Tracker file, Vertigo Productions. Courtesy Julie Ryan.
cxxx
The Tracker’s words in Latin as he hangs The Fanatic.