Aileen Moreton-Robinson

UNMASKING WHITENESS: A GOORI JONDAL'S

LOOK AT SOME DUGGAI BUSINESS1

Since invoslon and subsequent colonisation, Australia has a hism!y

of preferring and privileging people who have white skin. Ar, I
have remarked elsewhere:

Whiteness in its contemporary form in Australian society

is culturally based. It controls institutions, which are
extensions ofWhiti, Australian cultun; and is governed by
the values, beliefs and assumptions of that culture and it,;
history. AUS1ralian culture is less White than it used to be,
but Whiteness forms the centre and is commonly referred
to in public discourse as the 'mainstream' or 'middle
ground'. (MQTeton-Robinson 1998:11)

Some white people do not adhere to or feel comfortable in this

centre, but it remains close to its historical pO,Silion of being
nearly all white.

Most AuSln'llian cities have been, and continue to be, developed

spatially around invisible conveniences that give social and physical
prcfcn:ncc to whiteness in lhe delivery of transport, health and
other municipal services. The development of cities and the
naming of streets have been planned to preserve and honour
white dominance. The street names in city centres usually
represent the white British monarchy: Mary, Margaret, Alice,
Elizabeth, George, Albert, Edward and William. This spatial
centring of white dominance is in mark~d contrast to where
Indigenous reserves and mission,~ were and are located.

Richard Dy1'T argues that 'for those in power in the West

.. , Whiteness is felt to be the human condition ... it alone defines
normality and fully inbahits it.' (Dyer 1997: 9) Other theorists
position whiteness as social process, a.s racial identity, as social
 Unmasking whiteness Aileen More/Oll·Robinson 29

location, as pedagogy or as perfonnance.' What they all share

in common ls that they are involved in the process of raciahsing
whiteness, whether by intention or omissioo. This new schol=h;p
is in marked contrast to the paradigm in which the construct
'race' has been, and continues to be, applied to non-white people.

In this paper I draw on this new scholarship. I am providing an

Indigenous representation of whiteness as hegemony, which I
make visible through eJ<posing different aspects at two sites: that
of subjectivity, and that of institutional practice within the centre.
I do this from my standpoint as a Goori Jondal - that is, as
an Indigenous woman. Tiris standpoint recognises the importance
of the cognilive component of eJ<peric:ncc and identity, and begins
from the premise that all knowledge is socially sitoated and
therefore partial. Such a standpoint is informed methodologically
by my spiritual relation to land, my commonity's oral tradition,
my academic training and political activism. I deploy hunting and
gathering methods when I observe, track, dig out, capture and
dissect white dominance and its representations of Indigenous
women and men. In this paper I do not seek to obfuscate the
hegemony of whiteness by discussing whiteness as a racial identity
in its multiple fonns.' I also acknowledge that, wilhin the
hegemony of whiteness, the majority of Indigenous people are
captives of difference.

Subjectivity
At the site of subjectivity, white people in the centre eJ<perience
being white as a dominant status, but they do not usually perceive
it as a consciously acknowledged status. Instead, they accept
and experience it as the taken for granted features in their social
world that have surrounded them since birth. White cultural
values, which transcend ethnicity and class, are applied to all
areas of human cx..perience 1 often unconsciously, but sometimes
not. 1 Images of white people are normalised through
representations 1n magazines, books, billboards. newspapers and
television every day; to be nonnal is to be a white person.
Media representations of Indigenous people:: position us as
abnormal: we are deviant, inferior, exotic or primitiveJThcse
positionings are further complicated by feelings of desire, curiosity
and repulsion by white people. In this sense, Indigenous people
have become captives of certain kinds of racial difference.
,0 Unmasking Whitoness: Raco Relations and Reconciliation
.---- ---- .. · - - - - - -

However, the practice of interrogating and racialising the

Indigenous 'other' is rarely applied by white people to their own
racial difference. White people in Australian society are not
coerced into or required to have a consciousness of, or to define
what is, their culture; this is evident in the expressions of white
people who relegate culture to only being opera, dance, music
and art. Culture is rarely perceived as white people's daily life;
it remains invisible and unnamed. but familiar and common. White
cultural values are taught to children, not as if they were ~-,,
alternatives from which to choose, but as the right and only
values. "Ibey leam to interpret and understand their social world
as this is what 'everyone' knows and believes, and is the way
'everyone' should act. The fact that most white people socialise
and form close friendships predominantly with those who share
their 'sameness' reinforces this dominant ideological position.

White people exclude from and include other people into the
category 'white' in different contexts where colour is projected
as being neutral; people believe they are 'colour blind'. Once
this status is confern:::d, it allows access to certain resoirrces and
is assumed to be the same as that of any other white person
with regard to whiteness. However, skin colour does play a part
in the conferring of this status: the closer you are in colour to
being 'white', and if you speak English with an Australian accen~
the more readily you are accepted. For example, in the
commentary on !he 1998 Commonwealth Games, Michael Klim,
a blond blue.eyed male of Polish descent,, was promoted as a
fine ex•mplo ofmulriculturol Australia. He was proudly endorsed
as an Australian. However, the same remarks were not made
about Geoff Huegill from Townsvi!le, whose mother is an ,,
Islander, and who is one of the fastest male butterfly swimmers i
in Australia. Huegill defeat£d Klun to win a gold medal in the L
I00 metres butterfly event at the Commonwealth Games in
Kuala Lumpur. Skin colour does play a part in detennining who
is, and who is not, included as an Australian. However, a common
way of defining one's Australian identity is usually as a non·
racialised, sometimes ethnic:1 sometimes classed and sexed
individual. The ideological deployment of individualism allows for
the distancing of one's subjectivity from a collective racial identity
and contributes to making whiteness invisible.

However, white people are visible and are perceived by

Indigenous people as having a collective racial identity. When
Indigenous people say that white people behave the same, white
peopk are quick to tell us that we arc making generalisations I
'
ti
 Unmasking whiteness Aileen Moreton-Robinson 31

about their ethnicity. White people then give examples to show

Uu,t individual white people do not all behave in the manner
generalised, so Indigenous people's claims must be fal9e. Here
individualis:m i!i: u,:;~d to disc.t·edit our pen::;eption,;i, b•Al it a.lf!.O
confinns them through leaving us with the impression that
ethnicity is symbolic for white people because it can be
individualistic, voluntary and changeable.

Institutional practices within the centre

In the white centre within both political and academic institutions,
discourses about ·race' usually refer to the 'non-white other'
who is, more often than not, the Indigenous other. Deliberations
within these discourses about 'race' generally focus on the
experiences or socio-economic position of Indigenous people.
Seldom is the critique fixed on white Australians. Instead, most
popular and academic discussions of 'race' position whiteness
as a cultural norm that does not require an examination of the
values and assumptions which maintain its dominance and
privilege. For example non-Indigenous scholarship on Indigenous
literature often cites or critiques racial influences on Indigenous
writers and the way in which their concerns with 'race' manifest
themselves in various strategies. However, little attention is given
to the impact of. whiteness on white writers and their craft.
Unlike I Aboriginality' the presence of whiteness in k:xts has
rarely received scholarly scrutiny because it is often invisible
and nonnalised to its producers. Yet 'race' does inform
assumptions and influences the work of white academics just as
it shapes the being and writing of Indigenous scholars and white
non·academics. '

In Australian academia, whiteness has been so deraeialised that

it is difficult to outline its substantive characteristics and trace its
genealogy in theory and practice. The racialisation of whi tc
academic culture itself is not a point or priority for discussion,
focus or examination. Instead, Indigenous people and other non-
white people become the objects of attention and scrutiny through
the application of western theories usually developed in Britain,
France or America. The effect of such theorising is to marginalise
Indig~ous academic work. Our work is often referenced to
support white academic voices, hut our different knowledges
are not applied as tools for thinking about and theorising the
hwnan condition. The effect of such theorising is thus to recentre
whiteness.
32 Unmasking Whitoness: Race Relations and Reconciliation

I have discovered that in making whiteness visible in academia

I am trespassing in the forbidden zone. My encroachment has
on sevm1l occasions received a particular kind of reception,
usually related to denying my subjt:ct position as an academic.
I am ama..ed at how often I am asked by members of the
audience how 1 • feel' aft~ delivering my paper. I have yet to
hear the same question being asked of white men and white
women academics with whom I have shared the same platfonn.
In the academic context. ·race' belongs to me; I am racialised
and positioned as both object and subject. My subjectivity is
never perceived by my white audience as neutral because of my
embodiment as a racialised woman. 'Therefore I too share Spivak's
apprehension tha~ in a time when the postcolonial subject finds
voice, there is an impm1tive to be anti-essentialist and to focus
on heterogeneity. In the desire to negate homogeneity and
essentialisrn, scholars have become concerned with unpacking
the specificities of conte,cts, but in doing so most scholarship
detracts from e,camining the relations between those contexts
and bodies. We need to be alert as to how specificity and
context can hide the shared assumptions, common values and
racialised and se,cualised bodies that exist and are socially
constructed ac-ross conttxts.
t
Toe study of 'race' within Australian academia focuses on the l
racial oppression of 'an other' not on the privileged race location
of white people. which in effect often results in white academics r
spending a lot of time interrogating 'other'. One outcome of this II
paradigm is that it centres being white as normal, but invisible, I
and white superiority and internalised dominance is hidden by 1,

the concept of ethnocentrism. White self-centredness allows i

white academics and students to unconsciously accept that they
are better and know more than those who are positioned as the
non-white other. White academics, while absorbing an attitude
of superiority, ca.n accept their sclfTcentredness because they
rationalise it as not being based on race hatred - therefore they
are not racist.

Students in academia arc taught as though they can know

!.
everything and that white people do know everything. Tuey are
taught to believe that all knowledge is available to them for the
taking and everything is knowable. Knowledges that exist outside
the realm of white western knowledges arc perceived as being
available for appropriation because they are positioned as being
unowned and therefore free. Scientists ask Indigenous peaple
about their knowledge. For e,carnple, they ask us to identify
 Unmasking whiteness Aileen Moreton-Robinson 33

Indigenous hush medicine plants. They then record the plants,

take samplest conduct tests in lhc laboratory and file a patent
which gives them ownership of the discovery oft\\e drug derived
from the plant. Th-i,;: theft is b::ts~cl on .a. vvhi~ fi~tiou Lh1:1.t .I t~r.111.
'Terra Knowlegius' - knowledge belonging to no one. Under
intemational patent laws, Indigenous people have no intellectual
property rights concerning their knowledges.

White academic discourse and cultural practice provide

opportunities and give preference for economic support and
professional advancement to white people, mainly males. This
preference is hidden in white cultural processes, knowledges,
procedures, protocols and rules which are presented as being
neutral and based on merit. Indigenous academics are rarely
located in the centre in universities, and where they are, the
expectation is that they will only be able to teach on 'race'.
Most Indigenous academics are relegated to the margins, usually
in Indigenous identified enclaves.

The political centre

The political and economic institutions within the centre contain
dominant values, which function in effect to make everyone
interact through some shared basis of meaning and understanding.
For those within.the centre there is a perception !hat 'everybody'
lends lo accept doing things the same way, to use the same
language and to want to celebrate in the same events. White
people within the centre will defend its values and place negative
sanctions upon Indigenous people who contradict or expose the
hypocrisy of white values in practice. White Australian culture
will not tolerate prolonged disruption, so the core values at the
centre arc those which are most defended by its members. For
example, the value attached to the private ownership of land is
worth fighting for and protecting. When Indigenous claims to
land are forced into the centre, white people express their
antagonism through words that are perceived to be the opposite
of themselves: such as 'unAustralian', ·angry', 'irrational',
'emotionar and "irre9ponsiblc'. They portray the dominant values
of the centre as being morally correct and those of Indigenous
people as being less morally souud. The white Australian centre
does allow access to ~others\ hut this depends on appealing or
adhering to the rules of the culture and showing a willingness to
accept compromise.
34 Unmasking Whiteness; Race Relations and Reconciliation

All cultures change and evolve, often under the influence of

changes in the enviromncnl and/or through contact with other
cultures, The Australian centre has evolved this way by
appropriating knowledges from different cultures and claiming
them for its own, For example, the Australian federal government
is based on both the American and British systems of government.
However, whit<: Aus1ralian culture has not extended Lo lndipous
people's cultures the same courtesy or freedom to change, Whit<:
Australia only recognises Indigenous culture as such if it is
traditional and fixed. 1k political and economic institutions within
the centre, having defined Indigenous people as outsiders, have
never fully accepted the claims oflndigenous people to share its
central· values or to defend these values faithfully.

Yet there are those who belong to the centre, who feel that they
arc being dcccntred and undennined by the claims oflndigenous
people. Pauline Hanson appeals to these white people because
she represents the conscious fabrication of a nation seeking a
unified identity for fragment<:d white ethnicities in a country in
which they feel they are no longer part of the centre. Her r I
representation is an exemplar of a form of white Australian
diaspora, which feels the need for the closure and erasure of
colonisation and dispossession in order to obtain a sense of
belonging to the centre. It is ~ form of diaspora that was born
not of migration, but colonisation. However, the more that this
diaspora seeks closure, the more it makes visible the Indigenous
presence whjch is ever prc$ent by its absence as the conscience
of white Australia. Followers of .Pauline Hanson share much in
common with their colonial ancestors who painted stylised
landscapes of the Australian bush reminiscent of England, but
felt compelled to insert a few Indigenous people.

Conclusion
The relationship between the whit<: centre and Indigenous people
at the margins of Australian society has been s. feature of
colonialism since its appearance at Botany Hay to the present.
Power relations between the white centre and the Indigenous
margins have changed over time, b11t white culture has not offered
Indigenous pc0ple a place in the centre. Instead white dominance
has been powerful enough to maintain Indigenous people at the
rf
margins of society. At times offers of exchange and justice are t,
made on white terms, but there is no collective white experience
of offering and accepting Indigenous people on Indigenous terms.

i
'
'

r
.
I
 Unmasking whiteness Aileen Moreton·RO/Jinsan 3:;

Whiteness confers both dominance and privilege for white people;

it is embedded in Australia· s institutions and in the social practices
of everyday life. Indigenous women, men and children are forced
to live with whitenes:s: ftttd the tcnsiott. a.t'.l.d conllict it .::T"<,.'1.-.te,~ i.n
our lives on a daily basis. Whiteness 1s thus also ever present
in the psyche oflndigenous people, but not because of its absence.
Living with whiteness means experiencing being treated as less
than or not white, or for some Indigenous people with white
skin, being positioned as white. We are positioned as not being
entitled to an eqlllll share in the resources of Australian society
as our interests are not included within the sphere of the interests
of the nation. Indigenous people know that white culture does
not respect, value or view as legitimate and valid our knowledges
and righ~s on our own terms. Our knowledges are only given
some validity when they can be exploited or appropriated for
white purposes. We arc constantly reminded of our place in
society by representations within the media: we are presented
as 'the problem' on the margins of Australian society.

In order to reverse such representations and resist the hegemony

of whiteness, there is a need to deconstruct and racialise
whiteness to offer useful insights about power relations in
Australian society which can inform practice and theory. Such
analyses. sliould not only reveal complicity and resistance to
whiteness since invasion, but should inform us about white
hegemony and people who i<lc::ntify themselves to be white,
Indigenous and non-white as we all grapple with ti,., legacy of
our specific staging through a history of white colonisation.

Notes
Aboriginlll people rrom southeast Quecn1;1,lanct refer to themselves w, Gooris. Jonda/ means
woman and duggai means white among my peoplt:: of Quandamooka, our name for Moreton
Bay.
2 Here I refer to the work of Frankenberg 1993. 1994 and 1997: Hill 1997; Dyer 1997 and
Fine et W. 1997.
3 T use the concept of hegemony here in lhe G:ramscian sense to denote dominance ~ing
exercised and achieved through a combination of political and ideological means.

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38 Unmasking Whiteness: Race Relations and Reconciliation

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