White people have no face: Aboriginal perspectives on White culture and the costs of neoliberalism

ABSTRACT

Australia has a significant Aboriginal population but while much is known about how White people view Aboriginal culture, Aboriginal perspectives on White culture are not well known. Drawing on survey (N = 474) and in-depth interviews (N = 43) we aim to reposition the normativity of White culture by asking a diverse group of Aboriginal people what they think of White Australian values and behaviours. Regardless of social position, as a subaltern population, respondents have a heightened sense of the alienation inherent within contemporary neoliberalism. Most respondents believe most Australians live in ways that go “against nature”, at high cost to the social fabric and environment. The contrast with the respondents' own sense of connection to each other and to the natural world provides an opportunity to reset the race relationship because it demands a re-evaluation of the hegemonic assumptions within the reconciliation dyad. The findings disrupt the identities of Aboriginal and White people, and position Aboriginal people as both deserving of inclusion and as proferring knowledge of benefit to all Australians.

KEYWORDS:

• Alienation
• Indigenous
• race relations
• reconciliation
• values
• Whiteness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Daphne Habibis http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5491-2089

Penny Skye Taylor http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7648-314X

Bruna S. Ragaini http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3603-2544

Notes

1. In using the term “White” we acknowledge the problematic nature of an uncritical use of the race binary which this can imply. Not only does it perpetuate a harmful colonial construct, but the groups to which it supposedly applies are neither clearly distinct, nor internally homogenous. However, while race may not be real, racism is. Despite their limitations, terms such as White culture and White Australian are useful for their historical and political connotations. They help keep in view socially constructed divisions and their consequences, without admitting an underlying biological reality. The term was used to communicate with participants, who were also invited to use their preferred term in the research interaction.

2. The survey design and collection was led by one of the ARC grant’'s Chief Investigators, Prof Maggie Walter of the University of Tasmania.

3. This was evident in the response of some White people to our use of a community Facebook page as a source of data collection from Aboriginal people. The site received significant negative comment from them because they objected to their exclusion from participation in the site.

4. “Balanda” is the Yolgnu term for White people used by many Aboriginal people in parts of northern Australia.

5. Centrelink is the government provider of income support.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [Grant number LP130100622].