Australian Indigenous early career researchers: unicorns, cash cows and performing monkeys

Figures & data

Figure 1. Eight behaviours identified in Mellor (2003) behavioural racism category.

Table 1. Behavioural racism experienced by Indigenous ECRs.

Racist Behaviours (Mellor 2003, 478-479)	Indigenous ECR Experiences	Racist Theme identified by Indigenous ECRs
		Unicorn	Cash Cows	Performing Monkeys
1. Ignoring: ‘interpreted to be on the basis of Aboriginality and associated stereotyped inferiority’	Chair of committee ignorant to Indigenous ECR presence	✓
	Confusion and disbelief of Indigenous ECR as lead researcher	✓✓
2. Avoiding ‘can be considered as being either personal or a more general avoidance of Koories’	Unsupported & redirected to a different dept, that also did nothing		✓
	Indigenous ECRs academic progression ill-considered and/or overlooked		✓✓	✓✓
	Silencing Indigenous voices		✓✓
3. Looking: ‘occurrences in which the participants felt that they had been looked at either directly or indirectly because of their race’	‘they look at you like you’ve got one eye and you’re from Mars’	✓
	‘little black trophies’	✓	✓	✓
4. Patronizing: ‘patronizing behaviour occurs when people are treated as if they are inferior’	Tokenistic & box ticking approaches to inclusion	✓	✓	✓
	Low expectations, deficit positioning			✓✓
5. Segregation: ‘separating one group of people from another because they are different in some way’.	Indigenous ECRs ‘pigeonholed’ into Indigenous/culture roles			✓✓
	Indigenous intellectual property not recognised & is used for the benefit of a non-Indigenous academic		✓
	Non-Indigenous academics failing to take responsibility to support Indigenous students and/or the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges		✓	✓✓
6. Harassment: ‘people reported being harassed on a repeated and unnecessary basis because of their Aboriginality’	Expected to work for free		✓✓✓✓
	Misled & manipulated in research project		✓
	Underestimated & undermined			✓✓
	Institutions failure to address racism	✓	✓	✓
7. Assault (verbal): ‘general remarks that were interpreted by the interviewee to be racist in some way’	Non-Indigenous academics speaking negatively (deficit discourse) about Indigenous peoples			✓
	‘All they want you to do is turn up’			✓
8. Denial of identity: (Marginalisation)	Trivialising Indigenous protocols such as Acknowledgement to Country	✓
	Necessity for Indigenous research to be validated by non-Indigenous academic		✓
	Attempts to limit/control no. of Indigenous academics in faculty/institution			✓✓

Mellor, D. 2003. “Contemporary Racism in Australia: The Experiences of Aborigines.” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 29 (4): 474–486. doi:10.1177/0146167202250914.

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