Unmasking Whiteness
A Goori Jondal's Look at Some Duggai Business
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600001823Keywords:
Whiteness, White Australian culture, public discourse, privilegeAbstract
Since invasion and subsequent colonisation, Australia has a history of preferring and privileging people who have white skin. As I have remarked elsewhere:
Whiteness in its contemporary form in Australian society is culturally based. It controls institutions, which are extensions of White Australian culture and is governed by the values, beliefs and assumptions of that culture and its history. Australian 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’ (Moreton-Robinson 1998:11).
References
Cochrane, P. 1994. ‘Anglo-Saxonness: Ancestors and Identity’ in Communal/Plural 4, pp 1–16.
Dyer, R. 1997. White. Routledge, London and New York.
Fine, M. Weis, L. Powell, L. C. & Mun, Wong L. 1997. Off White: Readings on Race, Power and Society. Routledge, New York and London.
Frankenberg, R. 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Race. Routledge, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Frankenberg, R. 1994. ‘Whiteness and Americaness: Examining Constructions of Race, Culture, and Nation in White Women's Life Narratives’ in Gregory, S. & Sanjek, R. (eds.), Race, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, pp 62–77.
Frankenberg, R. 1997. Displacing Whiteness: Essays in the Social and Cultural Criticism. Duke University Press, Durham and London.
Hill, M. 1997. Whiteness: A Critical Reader. New York University Press, New York and London.
Hitchcock, J. & Flint, C. 1997. Decentring Whiteness. Centre for the Study of White American Culture, New Jersey.
hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press, Boston.
Moreton-Robinson, A. 1998a. Witnessing Whiteness in the Wake of Wik in Social Alternatives 17.2, pp 11–14.
Moreton-Robinson, A. 1998b. ‘Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism in Australia’, unpublished PhD thesis, Griffith University.
Morrison, T. 1993. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Picador, London.
Spivak, G. 1988a. Can the Subaltern Speak? in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Nelson, C. & Grossberg, L. (eds.), University of Illinios Press, Illinios. pp 271–313.
Spivak, G. 1992. ‘The Politics of Translation’ in Destabilising Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates. Barrett, M. & Phillips, S. (eds.), Polity Press, Cambridge. pp 177–200.
