In talking/discussing/debating with a number of people for some time now, I have noted that some of them seem offended/angered and/or defensive when the term middle class white is used to describe a certain perspective. This is problematic for a number of reasons. One being that these people rarely question why it is that they find it offensive, another that it should not be offensive, and a third being that the increasing number of people who identify as middle class indicates the success of the conservative spectrum of mainstream politics (and also the ‘failure’ or s…

#othering #paternalism #prefigurativity #whiteness

For some time now I have been critically analysing white accounts of a walk-off of Aboriginal workers and their families from Wave Hill station in Australia’s Northern Territory in August 1966 – with the participants eventually receiving inalienable freehold title to (part of) their ancestral lands at Daguragu. This event received national prominence and forced the hand of the government – and people more broadly – to address the situation in which Aboriginal peoples lived under and colonialist assumptions that mediate and shape perceptions of them (at east to some degree). The more I dig, the…

#sovereignty #whiteness

The ‘race riot’ in Sydney on Sunday November 11 and the continuing aftermath is something I am sure many people have an awareness of. I was horrified though perhaps I should not have been given the promotion of race baiting that has essentially been government ‘policy’ since the ‘boarding’ of the Tampa by the Australian navy in September 2001 and the negative portrayal and stereotyping of refugees that intensified and continues to this day. As I hear more detail from friends and relatives who are witnessing first hand, or have friends suffering at the hand of the apparently ‘non-race based’ at…

#racism #whiteness