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Introduction
The Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association, are a group of academics, activists and researchers seeking to “respect the existence of and continuing rights deriving from Indigenous sovereignties in Australia and elsewhere”, “critically investigate the construction and maintenance of race and whiteness both past and present” and “expose and challenge white race privilege in Australia and elsewhere” (http://www.acrawsa.org.au, 2004).
Such research is explicitly informed by the context (in Australia) of Indigenous sovereignties and a recognition of the impact that colonisation continues to have upon the lives of all people in Australia, whether it be through disadvantaging Indigenous people or accruing unearned privilege to non-indigenous people (Riggs, 2004). As a result, the study of whiteness in this framework is intimately related to an examination of race and race privilege – the context of Indigenous sovereignty draws attention to the raced status of non-indigenous people, and thus turns the gaze “from the racial object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and imaginers; from the serving to the served” (Morrison, 1992). Whiteness is seen as a thoroughly racialised project that aims to legitimate the authority of certain groups over others by drawing on the legacy of ‘biological’ explanations of race (Riggs, 2004).
White privilege is a term used to describe certain unintentional benefits given to people of Caucasian descent. It is distinct from racism, as the recipients and even practitioners may be unaware that they are in a race-based system of decisions. Experts are divided over the presence and prevalence of white privilege in modern society; some believe it is a serious problem with little hope of solutions, while others consider it a dwindling concept in the modern world.
Recent academic work concerned with the problematic of whiteness typically starts with two interrelated assumptions (Ganley, 2003). The first is that there is significant privilege and power associated with being (identified as) white (Ganley, 2003). The second is that much of this white race privilege extends from the monopoly that whiteness has over the norm (Ganley, 2003). Thus, the theory I will adopt in this case study will be that of the belief that the concept of whiteness and white privilege presents a barrier to successful reconciliation amongst the Indigenous and Non-Indigenous population in Australia. I will achieve this through reference to the work of Bipasha Ahmed, Michelle Carey, Barbara Nicholson & Roberta Sykes, among many others; who have all shaped the way the concept of whiteness is understood.
Body
Findings
The Problem of Terra Nullius
The desire to establish Australia as a white nation is one of our central foundation stories (Carey, 2004). However, understanding the manifestation of white race power in Australia also needs to be taken in context with our other central foundation story – the myth of ‘terra nullius’ (Carey, 2004).
It is often said that ‘terra nullius’ was the principle that Aboriginal people did not exist – that this was ‘empty land’ (Cathcart, 2000). But ‘terra nullius’ was a much more complex idea than that (Cathcart, 2000). In law it stood for the principle that Aborigines did not occupy the land in a manner which constituted ownership (Cathcart, 2000). That is to say, it did not deny their existence, but it did deny that they were people with a culture (Cathcart, 2000). It did not deny their presence but it did deny their humanity. It licensed a contradiction which said that the Aborigines were here – but mutes (Cathcart, 2000).
The exercise of white power in this country is sustained by the theft of a/Aboriginality as much as it is the theft of Aboriginal land (Carey, 2004). In post-Mabo Australian society, the appropriation of a/Aboriginality works to maintain the myth of ‘terra nullius’, and as such, is an expression of white, neo-colonial power relations (Carey, 2004).
In order to deal with white race supremacism as it manifests here, ‘white’ Australians need to re-conceive them/ourselves as ‘non-Indigenous’ – both in relationship to Aboriginal people and in relationship to the land we occupy as members of an invader society (Carey, 2004).
The Aboriginal Tent ‘Embassy’ and National & International Recognition
The indigenous black community’s situation was pushed to the fore by the erection of an Aboriginal Tent ‘Embassy’ strategically positioned in front of Parliament House in Canberra, in 1972 (Nicholson & Sykes, 1994). The Embassy highlighted the extent of alienation Aborigines had suffered in their own country (Nicholson, et al, 1994). Soon, researchers began publishing the appalling statistics of Aboriginal health, housing, environmental conditions, life expectancy and imprisonment rates, and demonstrations about conditions were held around the Commonwealth Games in 1982 (Nicholson, et al, 1994).
Much of this data and many of these events were featured on television and in the print media overseas, and some were given front page headline prominence (Nicholson, et al, 1994). When this information was followed by a confirming Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the fraudulent projection of Australia as the land of ‘A Fair Go, Mate’ was exposed (Nicholson, et al, 1994).
Throughout the past twenty years, the Aboriginal community has continued to assert that Aborigines are the ‘true’ Australians, and that Aboriginal culture is the foundation of whatever may emerge as an Australian culture (Nicholson, et al, 1994).
White ‘Belonging’ in Australia
Interestingly, while some theorists have focused their attention on whiteness in recent times, others have been drawn to an exploration of white ‘belonging’ in Australia (Carey, 2004). This new field of study reflects the impact of the high court’s Mabo decision, and subsequent legal and political reactions to Aboriginal land-rights, on the white, mainstream community (Carey, 2004).
The discussions have, however, thrown up new problems relating to the appropriation of ‘aboriginality’ as an identity marker for white Australians (Carey, 2004). David Tacey’s 1995, Edge of the Sacred: Transformations in Australia, has been criticised for trying to legitimate white Australians’ sense of belonging by appropriating aboriginal or indigenous identity for ourselves (Carey, 2004).
Tacey’s work came under stinging attack from Mitchell Rolls, who argued that Tacey undermined Aboriginal people’s land-rights, undermined Aboriginal people’s unique status as Australia’s first peoples, deployed generic concepts of a/Aboriginality and undermined the integrity of the diversity of Aboriginal identities, asserted non-Aboriginal people as the liberators of Aboriginal people, and asserted non-Aboriginal people as rightful and equal inheritors of a/Aboriginal identity (Rolls, 1998, in Carey, 2004).
A Perceived Loss of Power and Reluctance to Change
It is argued that, as women, people of colour, gays and lesbians and other minority groups have gained a greater degree of social, political and economic power, there has been a growing perception of disadvantage amongst members of mainstream white group (Carey, 2004). Rapid social, political, technological and economic change over the last twenty five years is said to compound this (Carey, 2004). Resorting to white racial identity as a pivotal marker for self-identity is understood to offer a sense of certainty and stability in a time of turmoil. It is also a reclamation of power in the face of a perceived erosion of power (Carey, 2004).
The famous outbursts of the Australian politician Pauline Hanson throughout this period of change highlighted the reluctance of some white people to change and accept their whiteness and thus, white privileges. “I am fed up with being told ‘This is our land’. Well, where the hell do I go? I was born here, and so were my parents and children. I draw the line when told I must pay for something that happened over 200 years ago. Like most Australians, I worked hard for my land; no one gave it to me.” (Pauline Hanson in Carey, 2004).
A Step towards a Better Future
In the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, the ‘timeless’ Djakapurra Munyarryun and the young Nikki Webster walked, hand-in-hand, towards a perfectly harmonious post-colonial future (Carey, 2004). As an inspirational comment, the image of the older black man and the young white girl walking together is a valid one (Carey, 2004). The images of ‘partnership’ and ‘journey’, and ‘old’ and ‘new’ are consistent with the iconography of the Reconciliation Movement (Carey, 2004).
The Problems of Teaching Critical Psychology of ‘Race’ Issues
White lecturers who describe themselves as Critical Psychologists imply that as white lecturers they would feel uncomfortable, talking about ‘race’ issues because they are not black (Ahmed, 2008). Other lecturers simply claim ‘race’ issues are not relevant in what they teach or in some cases they do not have the time or resource to include them in their teaching (Ahmed, 2008). However, what is problematic about this is that this can lead to the commonly debated scenario whereby ‘ethnic minority’ staff members are burdened with the role of dealing with ‘race’ issues in teaching (Jacobs & Hai, 2002).
There are clearly some distancing practices occurring whereby some white members of staff feel they cannot or should not try to tackle ‘race’ issues (Ahmed, 2008). These lecturers fall into the trap of not seeing their own ‘whiteness’ as ‘raced’, leading to a failure to interrogate the category of ‘whiteness’ and the privileging and normative effects it can have (Ahmed, 2008). In other words, this leads to representations of ‘race’ and racism that exclude white subjectivists and discourses from the practices of racialisation (Ahmed, 2008). This is clearly extremely problematic as it maintains the common ideology that ‘race’ is something about ‘non-white’ people only (Ahmed, 2008).
Discussion
New Abolitionism – The Way to Change?
‘New Abolitionism’ “refers to the abolishment of the white race so that whites may gain their freedom from the enslavement of their cooperation in racism” (Levine-Rasky, 2002). This concept is based on the notion that if we accept that race (and whiteness in particular) is a construct then we must accept the possibility that such a category can be dismantled or abolished (Ganley, 2003). Describing whites as those who accept the privileges associated with whiteness, and the white race as a ‘club’ that people may or may not be born into, new abolitionists call for white people to reject white race privilege and relinquish membership of the club (Ganley, 2003). New abolitionism distinguishes itself from ‘anti-racist’ movements due to the reliance of these movements on (and therefore the support that they offer to) the concept of race (Ganley, 2003).
There are, however, a number of criticisms that can be made of new abolitionism (Ganley, 2003). Levine- Rasky argues that “the option to choose the terms of one’s racial membership in social relations is a function of white privilege itself (Levine-Rasky, 2002). Disaffiliation from whiteness is exercised through the racial domination from which, the race traitor attempts to withdraw” (Levine-Rasky, 2002). Therefore, the call for whites to relinquish their membership to the club that is the white race is based on (and therefore reproduces) the power of whiteness (Ganley, 2003). As has been argued elsewhere, it is an aspect of white race privilege that white people have the capacity to “choose whether or not to be concerned about racism” (Tannoch-Bland 1998).
Similarly then, it is an aspect of white race privilege that the suggestion is made that white people ought to opt out of whiteness – there is no similar option for those marked out as not white (Ganley, 2003). New abolitionism relies upon, to some degree, the privilege and power attached to being recognised as white (Ganley, 2003).
Sara Ahmed Questions Whiteness Studies
Sara Ahmed questions some of the foundational assumptions that inform whiteness studies, namely the role that is accorded to ‘revealing’ whiteness, and the corollary assumption that naming racism or identifying one’s own race privilege is sufficient to warrant the term ‘critical’ (Riggs, 2004). Thus as Ahmed suggests, “if disciplines are in a way already about whiteness, showing the face of the white subject, then it follows that whiteness studies sustains the direction or orientation of this gaze, whilst removing the ‘detour’ provided by the reflection of the other” (Riggs, 2004). Ahmed here points towards some of the risks that inhere to whiteness studies, if it only serves to re-centre the experiences and values of white people (Riggs, 2004).
Ahmed further elaborates this by suggesting that claims to ‘naming whiteness’ in actuality do very little to challenge it – the claim that ‘naming race’ performs a useful function may instead be seen as yet another means through which white privilege is explained away (Riggs, 2004). Ahmed’s challenge is thus that researchers in the area of critical whiteness studies need to make “a double turn: to stay implicated in what they critique, but in turning towards their role and responsibility in these histories of racism, as histories of this present, to turn away from themselves, and towards others” (Riggs, 2004).
Robyn Westcott Elaborates on Sara Ahmed
Robyn Westcott elaborates on Ahmed’s points about ‘naming whiteness’, as she questions the authority that is accorded to white people who ‘speak out’ about race privilege (Riggs, 2004). Westcott suggests that such a ‘white confessional’ approach to research may only serve to accord further privilege to white people, and to offer a form of ‘redemption’ in the face of Indigenous sovereignty (Riggs, 2004). To counter this, Westcott proposes moving into the autobiographic mode: “to write one’s story, to enact the autobiographic, is to let go of the finality and legitimation offered through the technique of confession” (Riggs, 2004). Westcott thus suggests that such an approach may be a more transparent method for engaging in the study of whiteness as white people, a method that in many ways responds to Ahmed’s call for a ‘double turn’ (Riggs, 2004).
Fiona Probyn Discusses the Issues of Whiteness
Fiona Probyn elaborates these issues of ‘giving and taking up power’ by examining how complicity is evident in white attempts at ‘giving up power’, and how such complicity may only serve to turn attention away from white people, through the appropriation of the position of the other within whiteness studies (Riggs, 2004). Probyn thus suggests that claims to ‘giving up power’ only make sense in relation to having the ability to choose to do so – they only reassert white dominance, and thus do little to engage in a response to Indigenous sovereignty, or to recognise the in-commensurabilities that shape Indigenous and non-indigenous experience (Riggs, 2004). Probyn concludes by suggesting that what is required is an understanding of power that sees it not as a possession, to be taken or given up, but rather as a product of social relations, and their location within particular historical frameworks (Riggs, 2004).
Conclusion
The problem of Whiteness stems from the problem of colonial settlement in Australia and the subsequent loss of land of the Aboriginal people. Therefore, this ‘taking of the land’ led to the creation of the Aboriginal Tent ‘Embassy’ and subsequent fighting for their land rights. This saw a landmark moment in Australia with the Mabo Decision. In order to disengage themselves from the problem of whiteness, Non-Indigenous Australians tried to change. But this only reinforced their ability to exercise white privilege which allows them to make such decisions. It is safe to assume the belief that the concept of whiteness presents a significant barrier to successful reconciliation. White people struggle to see themselves in a position of power, using the power that they are privileged with. Thus, white people who attempt to remove themselves from the problem of white privilege are essentially exercising their white privilege of being able to make such decisions.
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