This paper will show that 'race' is an historically and socially produced concept which works to grant or deny different life opportunities. I will analyse in particular how 'whiteness' is socially constructed, examining its position of relative dominance in contemporary Australian society. I argue that becoming aware of white advantage is a necessary requirement to challenging it. In recognising that race, and thus white privilege is socially and not biologically determined, 'whiteness' becomes something which is possible to deconstruct.

Racism and race-based inequalities can be determined by a number of factors. Some of these include 'biological determinism', which rests on an essentialist notion of the inherent characteristics of a particular race; the economics of imperialism or colonialism; nationalism, and xenophobic explanations for dealing with 'otherness'. None of these explanations is sufficient on its own however, in providing an understanding of the specific forms racism can take in any given context. Not only are there shifting 'explanations' for racism, but the definitions of those targeted for racial subordination also vary. The identity of the oppressed group will alter depending not only on who is doing the defining, but also on what informs their motivations or reasons.

In some instances racial categorisation does not specifically rely on the race of the designated group. Racism is a discourse and practice of inferiorising particular groups of people, which may be just as easily justified in terms of the negative attribution given to "culture, ethnic identity [or] personality as well as 'racial stock'".1 Thus it becomes necessary to distinguish between 'race' and 'ethnicity'. Race differences are assumed to be biological and immutable, while ethnic differences are seen as cultural and language-based, and so can be changed.2 But the categorisation of human populations by culture or ethnic origin is "no different from racial categorisation when the ascription of origin assumes a fixed cultural essence in the individuals categorised".3 Because racism varies temporally and spatially, it becomes important to locate a specific incidence of racist structuration. After a brief overview of some basic properties of race and racism, the paper focuses on racism in the Australian context. "That racialism is an important force in Australia's history cannot be denied".4 Indeed, I would argue that racism is the premise upon which this nation was established. Through a description of Australian race relations, the paper will show that different 'reasons' for racism have been invoked at various stages and that conceptions of those victimised by racism have also varied.

The concept of 'race' is used to divide the human population according to some notion of 'stock', common descent or origin. Specific races are seen to possess their own collective heredity or traits based on immutable biological or physical differences. Once individuals are categorised as belonging to particular races, their access to other races can be restricted. 'Race' can thus act as a prerequisite to grant or deny entry into a particular collectivity or population.

The term 'racialisation' is used to refer to the process whereby social significance is attached to certain genetic categories or visible physical features. Social relations between people have thus been structured according to the significance attributed to these biological human features. In this way, 'race' can be perceived as a socially constructed ideology. As Ruth Frankenberg notes, the assertion that race and racial differences are socially constructed is not made in order to minimise their social and political reality, but rather, to insist that their reality is, precisely, "social and political rather than inherent or static"5

Racism occurs when racial categories are imbued with negative meanings or inscriptions. The supposed 'essence' which differentiates groups is allocated a negative valuation which serves to deny the group's full participation in economic, social, political and cultural life. Racism as an ideology is highly flexible; requiring only identification of people on the basis of real or perceived physical characteristics, and the assumption that these characteristics are inferior. What is important is its function: to justify or explain the 'inferiority' in ways which place responsibility for that inferiority on the victims, thereby providing a powerful rationalisation for inequality.6

Focusing on the ideological dimensions of racism may work to undermine the severity of institutional racism. Unless the political conditions and economic foundations of hegemony are shifted, attempts to alter people's attitudes may be superficial and easily reversed.7 The concept of institutional racism reminds us that racism is not just a matter of personal belief, but is also embedded in a system of power relations. Correcting the institutional basis of racism requires a fundamental change in social institutions; a restructuring of society including the transformation of the economy.

Another difficulty with combating racism is that notions of racial inferiority rooted in the past, can still act to infect a nation's psyche. Frankenberg contends that the white imaginary is by no means confined to the present in its construction, but rather draws, "consciously and unconsciously on moments in the racial order long past in material terms".8 We are often unaware of the ways in which our cultural heritage continues profoundly to influence our 'common sense' beliefs about race. But as long as the conditions of the past "are the conditions of the present .... then the past is not past".9

In order to understand racism in today's Australia, it is compulsory that we acknowledge the role racism has played in Australian history, "in loading our language, shaping our images, myths and institutions".10 In the following section, I will provide an overview of racial structuring in the Australian context. In Australia the economic concerns of colonialism have been used to justify racism. Racist sentiments have also been invoked through the ideal of nationalism. More recently a so-called 'new' racism has emerged which can be seen in policies espousing multiculturalism.

Australian Context

Racism is deeply embedded in the cultural fabric of Australian society and, as such, racist practices may be routinely enacted by people who do not consciously accept racist views.11 Racism is more than just anger, hatred or prejudice; "at the very least it requires prejudice plus power".12 Of course not all white people are located in an equal position of dominance. In fact, most do not individually possess the economic or social power to effect any substantial change. But while not all whites accrue benefits equally from racism, as a whole, white groups do possess more economic and ideological resources than non-white people.

Contemporary Australia is a nation formed by invasion and colonisation. In the name of capitalist expansion, Aboriginal people were dispossessed of their land, and forced to endure a history of slavery and labour exploitation which as Anne Brewster13 contends, has only recently been acknowledged. Material or economic justifications were used to rationalise depriving Aboriginal people of their land and, in racist constructions, relegating them to the status of 'naturally inferior'. Thus the "economic relations developed first, and then an ideology of racism was 'thought of' to justify them".14

In order for Aborigines and future migrant groups to be 'accepted' as members of a single Australian community, they had to stop being culturally distinctive and learn to adopt the assumed monolithic and homogeneous Australian culture. As long as the onus to adapt was placed on Aboriginal and migrant groups, white Australians would not have to change their attitudes towards these populations. The ideal of a common national identity coupled with the tendency to overlook real differences in economic status reinforced racist notions that those not living up to the required (white) standard were to blame. By overlooking the structural disadvantages facing Aborigines and migrants, the concept of 'nationalism' promulgated an ideal which could rarely be met. Those groups perceived as inadequate in terms of the required standard were blamed for their own victimisation.

The ideal of a united or homogeneous nation can also be found in policies advocating multiculturalism. Policies of multiculturalism promote the concept of cultural diversity, while maintaining that all cultures are essentially equal. Issues of power differentials between and within minority groups (and between minority and majority groups) are thereby obscured. Moreover, in public discourse the cultures of multiculturalism are assumed to be homogeneous, as if neither class nor gender differences helped structure these communities.15

Policies of multiculturalism do not comfortably address issues relating to Aboriginal people. Many Aborigines have attacked multiculturalism, claiming that the idea of the equal validity of all cultures in Australia reduces them to the status of just another ethnic minority.16 Furthermore, the status of Aboriginal people as the 'first' or indigenous people - neither immigrant nor 'settler' - troubles identifications of the nation.17 Aboriginal people resist being drawn under the rubric of multiculturalism, maintaining their racial difference as the original owners of this land. As Brewster states: "It is for its implicitly political critique that the term 'race' continues to be necessary".18

Racism can still exist when the dominant theme is not race or biological heredity, but the insurmountability of cultural differences. According to Etienne Balibar, this constitutes "racism without races", and what we see with this 'new' racism is that biological or genetic naturalism is "not the only means of naturalizing human behaviour and social affinities".19 Stephan Feuchtwang claims that categorising people according to their culture or ethnic origin is no different from racial categorisation "when the ascription of origin assumes a fixed cultural essence in the individuals categorised".20 For no matter how we characterise this new form of racism, the fact is, it is still "racism pure and simple".21

Whiteness

White people are 'raced', just as men are 'gendered'. Since race does indeed shape and inform white people's lives, the cumulative name given to this by Frankenberg is "whiteness".22 One of the insidious properties of the dominance of whiteness, and thus of white racial privilege in Australia, is its seeming normativity, its structured invisibility. "Naming 'whiteness' displaces it from the unmarked, unnamed status that is itself an effect of its dominance".23

If being white is not a matter of skin colour (which is beyond our capacity to change), but is one of political and social classification, it is thus possible to disaffiliate, and whites "are not doomed to dominance by logic or nature".24 While this is an important reconceptualisation, the potency of whiteness will not be undermined simply because one can provide an intellectual demystification of its existence. A telling joke among African-American scholars comments on the distance between academic trends in writing on race and life in the real world: 'I have noticed', the joke laments, 'that my research demonstrating that race is merely a social and ideological construction helps little in getting taxis to pick me up late at night'.25 While the various properties of inheritance invoked by racism may be imaginary, they operate to fix and legitimate real positions of social domination or subordination.26

Whites must not fall into the trap of assuming that challenging racism is solely for the benefit of people of colour. Racism also damages whites because it works to keep us separate and distinct from people of colour with whom powerful alliances might otherwise be built. The following Jeanne Adleman passage sums up this position succinctly: "Any perception that racism hurts only people of colour is false. People of colour are most dangerously impacted, and white people accrue both known and unrecognized benefits from the system of racism. But we who are white are also damaged by being led to believe we are better than others - we are not - by being kept ignorant of all but white histories sanitized, distorted, and taught in our schools; by being encouraged to live in fear of those oppressed in a system of white dominance ....".27

In order to bring white people to an awareness of their privileged status, Black feminist writer bell hooks 28 recommends usage of the term 'white supremacy', rather than 'racism'. Racism/white supremacy is a societal illness. For people of colour, race acts as a filter through which they perceive the world. White people tend not to look at the world through this filter of racial awareness, despite the fact that they also comprise a race. We have been 'whitewashed' out of our specific cultural, ethnic and national identities, and have lost our particular cultural heritages.29. But it is impossible to combat or change racist attitudes if we do not recognise that they exist. As Olivia Espin explains, "someone who does not see a pane of glass does not know that she does not see it" .30 White people are often taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, without recognising one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which thus puts whites at an advantage .31

Peggy McIntosh 32 claims that white privilege is an invisible package of unearned assets, special provisions and assurances which most whites are able to guarantee. She provides an exhaustive list of benefits which whites can expect to receive, but are not required to earn, from which I have selected several examples.
I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely and positively represented.
I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
I did not have to educate our children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. I am never asked to speak for all people of my racial group.
I can remain oblivious to the language and customs of persons of colour who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

If any or all of these unearned rights and advantages sounded familiar to you, then you do not live in such a free or 'lucky' country. As whites are lulled into being made confident, comfortable with, and oblivious to these benefits, by extension, other groups are being made "unconfident, uncomfortable and alienated".33 The kind of 'privilege' that allows white people to remain oblivious to the benefits entailed with having white skin should not be heralded as a desirable attribute. Such privilege may be widely desired, but paradoxically it is in no way beneficial to our society.34

Racism is a waste of human resources which divides us from our allies, and prevents us from participating in the realisation of any version of a new, just culture.35 Viewing racism as a system that is imposed on individuals (both oppressors and oppressed), may help alleviate irrational feelings of guilt and shame. It stresses that no one is born racist, that we have all been damaged by our induction in the system, and that what we have learned can be unlearned.36

Racism is often confused with prejudice, discrimination or violent acts involving aggression and hostility. But racism is not so much a psychological or personal problem as a relationship of domination and subordination, of inclusion and exclusion.37 Often when people seek to identify and challenge racism they are accused of being 'political'. But simply going along with the system and following everyday practices is also a political act since endorsing 'commonsense' Australian beliefs may work to discriminate against or devalue others.38

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