Since invasion and subsequent colonisation, Australia has a history of preferring and privileging people who have white skin. As I have remarked elsewhere:

Congratulations to the organisers of the ‘Unmasking Whiteness’ conference for their courage in putting on the first ever conference dealing specifically with Whiteness in Australia. It does indeed take courage given that whiteness is, I have found, a disturbing and perturbing topic, not only to white people but also, I believe, to people of colour.

I'd therefore like to preface my paper by stating that I am speaking about my experience only, my life only, my interpretation only. I speak only for myself. I definitely am not speaking on behalf of others, especially other Aboriginal people. I state this up front, for just as whites who question their whiteness are often considered traitors to their race, I have found the same reaction when I have said to certain Aboriginal people who misunderstand my point and my pain: ‘I'd really like to be white, for a change’. Such a statement has been seen as a betrayal and a violation of Aboriginality when in fact it is a cry from the heart which has been ravaged by racism.

Thus should anybody, black or white, be offended by my remarks, I take no responsibility for your interpretation, only for my intention, which is to share rather than to offend. I would also like to say that my paper is not an academic one, for which I make no apologies.

Black Heart
My heart is black as Cherbourg although my skin is fair, my Goorie blood predominant though European shared.
My heart is black as Cherbourg where both my parents raised, State wards for their protection, deculturised, enslaved.
Grandmothers were traditional, born of sacred land; Dalungbara, Jugera the heritage I claim. Grandfathers anonymous, one English one a Dane, black women, sex, come children, disowned to disguise shame.
My heart is black as Cherbourg, until the day I die, where my ashes will be scattered this place my mother lies.

If, as a famous dead white European man once suggested, the point of studying racism is to change it, what can we learn about ending racism by studying it as whiteness? The first part of the paper summarizes some of the major issues and findings of recent studies of whiteness in the United States. It suggests that there is a hidden life at the heart of whiteness which is about preserving a set of specifically white constructions of masculinity and femininity, and that whites' lack of consciousness about this, and about white privilege in general, have undermined antiracist efforts. It summarizes some of the ways in which working-class white privilege is gendered, and how notions of masculinity and femininity are racial. Part II examines whiteness as ambivalence about the privileges and costs of whiteness as a useful entry point for understanding impulses to white antiracism.

When I first saw the newspaper advertisementsfor the Coalition's proposed tax reform I was struck by the people in it — their whiteness and their white (British) names — Marge and Dave, Doug and Betty, Sylvia and Alistair and their children Alex and Kate, Michelle and her daughter Chelsea and so on. It was not that it came as a surprise; rather it was the recognition of a normalising of white culture firmly based in British traditions and heritage. Here was ‘white’ presented as homogeneous (we are all white), which denies the degrees of whiteness referred to by writers on whiteness. It caused me to reflect on John Howard's understanding of Australia, his view of Australia's past. His focus on a British white heritage is mirrored by his focus on Aboriginality. This is the key to understanding what the government sponsored advertisements reveal, either consciously or unconsciously, and the particularity of their representation of ‘white’ society. I argue that the implicit agenda of the tax reform advertisement campaign, with its concept of homogeneous whiteness, is the demise of Aboriginality as well as multiculturalism, and the effacing of otherness.

Analyses or descriptions of the history of race relations (and cultural production) in what has been called Australia for about a hundred years, have frequently been informed by two orientations that might be simply categorised as the white blindfold and the black armband positions. In many cases, these two mindsets can be observed in other Western cultures although the interaction between them, and the society around them, gets played out differently in particular places at particular times.

The last decade of the twentieth century has seen some highly significant symbolic advances for Indigenous people in Australia and Canada representing golden opportunities for their respective governments to advance the reconciliation process. But the political will to capitalise on them has varied enormously. This paper focuses on two case studies drawn from Australia and Canada which look at Indigenous people's continuing struggle for land rights.