Resentment and Reluctance: Working with Everyday Diversity and Everyday Racism in Southern Sydney

Abstract

Pilot research on community conflict resolution, conducted in a local government area in southern Sydney in late 2006, revealed paradoxical findings: the simultaneous presence of both high levels of cross-cultural mixing and appreciation of the area's culturally diverse population; and the prevalence of prejudice against Arab and Muslim residents and visitors to the area. Many respondents, who supported cultural diversity, saw Arab and Muslim Australians as an exception and even a threat to harmonious community relations. Particularly striking was the anxiety and anger caused by their apparent large numbers, seen to be taking over certain public recreational spaces. This paper explores the contradictions in these findings in light of other contemporary Australian research and identifies complex and difficult issues to be addressed by research and by local government. In particular, the paper discusses the need to address the interconnections between both everyday multiculturalisms and everyday racisms, to distinguish between ‘victim’ claims amongst diverse communities, and to ground research and policies on ‘place-sharing’ in Indigenous sovereignties.

Keywords:

• Everyday Multiculturalism
• Everyday Racism
• Indigenous Sovereignties
• Place-sharing
• Public Space

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Pauline O'Loughlin and UTS Shopfront for supporting this research, Carol Arrowsmith, Teresa Leung and Debbie Osgood at Rockdale Council for their assistance and the project steering committee for valuable contacts and guidance. Research for this paper was funded by a UTS Shopfront–Rockdale Council Partnership.

Notes

1. Stratton acknowledges the work of Philomena Essed who, in 1991, published the book Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

2. Brown and other scholars use the term most famously described by Nietzsche as ‘ressentiment’ (Genealogy of Morals), defined as “the moralising revenge of the powerless, ‘the triumph of the weak’” (in Brown 66–67). Although ‘ressentiment’ and ‘resentment’ are not identical in meaning, they are close enough to allow us to use the English word.

3. The aforementioned issue of History and Anthropology includes articles on Primo Levi and his experiences in Auschwitz; the Emergency (1975–77) in India; Turkey and the PKK; memories from the Italian city of Trieste during the Second World War (which had an Italian majority and Slovene minority); analogies between Jewish experiences of the Holocaust and Israeli Jews’ experiences of the Intifada – to name a few.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Barbara Bloch

Barbara Bloch is a part-time tutor/lecturer and Research Associate in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. Following a doctorate on the role and effects of Zionism and Israel on the Australian Jewish Community, Barbara's research interests include the diminishing status of official multiculturalism in Australian politics, the positive and negative ways local ethnically diverse communities negotiate difference, the intersections of gender, class and ethnicity in current debates, the rise of religion in our public life and the concomitant urgent need to demonstrate the significance of secularism for a civil society. She is currently researching the purposes for and effects of interfaith dialogue on individuals who pursue it and the multicultural polity in general

Tanja Dreher

Tanja Dreher is an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, researching news media and community conflict resolution with a particular interest in debates around multiculturalism, whiteness, media, gender and violence. Tanja is also a co-coordinator of The Listening Project, funded by the Cultural Research Network to explore the politics and practices of ‘listening’ as an emerging focus in media studies. Her previous research has focused on news and cultural diversity, community media interventions, experiences of racism and the development of community antiracism strategies after September 11, 2001