Abstract
This article explores the attitudes and beliefs of 38 people who made claims of anti-white racism in a national survey that measured the extent and variation of racism in Australia. Quantitative analysis of survey data reveals that those who make claims of anti-white racism are nearly twice as likely as the rest of population to hold negative views about cultural diversity and immigration, to identify ‘out-groups’, and to self-identify as racist. They are also much less likely to recognise the existence of white privilege in Australia. Discourse analysis of these participants’ open-ended survey responses reveals their attitudes stem from a belief that their white national identity, and the privilege and ownership that accompanies this, is under threat. They view this ‘threat’ as a form of racism they are victims of. These discourses of anti-white racism reflect key mechanisms of institutional racism, in particular white privilege.
In his 2000 book, White Nation, Ghassan Hage introduced the ‘white worrier’ – a person who is impelled to worry, about migrants, jobs, single mothers on the dole, foreign investment and, we also might add, their loss of societal status and their loss of a white national identity. 1 Hage’s ‘white worrier’ was typically a white, working-class, Australian male, marginalised by perceived economic and ideological inequalities, with a set of ready-made problems (immigration, multiculturalism, migrant integration) not only for him to worry about, but also to blame for his predicament. Today’s ‘white worrier’ is, however, far more diverse than this. This article will demonstrate that similar to Hage’s definition, the ‘modern white worrier’ pursues a discourse couched in terms of fear and hatred of the other, but our research also reveals that it is not necessarily the prerogative of a particular demographic, it has increasing reach across the socio-economic spectrum and has become worryingly complex and increasingly more prevalent.
The notion of the modern white worrier helps to conceptualise a group of white Australians who believe themselves to be victims of ‘anti-white racism’. 2 We posit that these claims are informed by three broad themes: (1) claims of reverse discrimination that emphasise injustices enacted upon white Australians; (2) historical and contextual references to a white Australian national identity and threats to it; and (3) white ownership of a national space and identity. Our research shows that the attitudes of those who claim anti-white racism stem from a belief that their white national identity, and the privilege and ownership that accompanies this, is under threat. They view this ‘threat’ as a form of racism they are victims of. They are increasingly vocal about these prejudices against them, prejudices they associate with increased immigration, the loss of privileged status of Anglo-Celtic heritage, and a perceived ambivalence from the Australian government about this change in status. These fears are not contained to the private sphere, nor can they be attributed solely to errant individuals. They are present across a wide cross-section of Australian society. We see it manifest in public and political discourse on asylum seekers (Marr and Wilkinson, 2003; O’Doherty and Augustinos, 2008; Ricatti, 2016), anti-Chinese sentiment found in commentary on government corruption and real estate investment (Dunn et al., 2018; Rogers et al., 2017), Islamophobia (Abdel-Fattah, 2017), and media coverage of ‘African gangs’ (Baak, 2018, see Hunter and Preiss, 2018 for example).
A particular high-profile example of the modern white worrier is Pauline Hanson, the leader of the One Nation political party in Australia. In 2018 Hanson submitted a motion to the Australian Senate that they acknowledge: ‘a) The deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation, and b) It is okay to be white’. While the motion was narrowly defeated, it is significant and abhorrent that a white supremacist slogan 3 made its way into the legislative chamber of Australia’s parliament. It also highlights the increasing normalisation of claims of anti-white racism and a fervent need by those who make the claims to have it acknowledged and legitimised. The previous month, conservative commentator Andrew Bolt wrote a piece in the Herald Sun (3 August 2018) titled ‘Tidal wave of new tribes dividing us’. He goes on to state, ‘There is no “us” any more, as a tidal wave of immigrants sweeps away what’s left of our national identity.’ Bolt has consistently spoken of immigration as a threat to white Australians and to the white Australia national identity. It is evident that claims of anti-white racism are both a reflection and driver of the larger public and political discourses of immigration and belonging in Australia. Comments such as Hanson’s and Bolt’s work to amplify these concerns.
Claims of anti-white racism are also finding traction globally, in the UK, the US and many parts of Europe. This includes high-profile cases like Google Memo author James Damore suing Google for discrimination against white males (Mac, 2018) and UK Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner stating that the focus on women and ethnic minorities in the UK education system may have inadvertently negatively impacted ‘white working-class males’ (Walker, 2018). These claims traverse complex categorisations, including the impacts of class and gender, yet the common, dominant framing is a racial one, a perceived discrimination because of being white. These voices have become increasingly emboldened by the current dynamics in global politics. Since the 2016 election of Donald Trump in the US there has been a significant rise in hate crimes and race hate groups in the United States 4 and the quality of the debate in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum in the UK has been deemed partially responsible for a steep rise in race hate crimes in the UK. 5 These are just two examples indicative of larger global trends where we see the rise of far-right movements based on a reaffirmation of white supremacy. This manifests in diverse ways, from the emergence of far-right political parties like the Freedom Party in Austria, the National Front in France, and One Nation in Australia, to the popularity of far-right media outlets like Breitbart News and online racist forums like Stormfront.org. We are also seeing far-right conservative attitudes manifest in violent and extremist actions like the white nationalist/supremacist protests in Charlottesville in the US in 2017 and far-right terrorist acts such as Anders Breivik’s killing of 77 people in the 2011 Norway attacks and Robert Bowers’ killing of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.
While these far-right extremist and often violent views on race are not necessarily prevalent in the attitudes of the ‘ordinary’ Australians discussed in this article, they are worth noting. In the face of a resurgence of white supremacy and nationalist populism, we posit that those like the respondents in our research can become susceptible to these more extremist leanings. Our survey respondents could be described as ordinary people expressing problematic, but essentially commonplace concerns around identity and belonging. In a sense this is true, but in unpacking the nuances of how we construct and practise national identity and belonging we must be careful not to deflect from the role both individual and institutional racism, including white privilege, play in these commentaries. There is an unexamined sense of ownership over the national space that comes through in the commentaries examined in our survey data, a white-washing of Australian history that ignores both the Indigenous history of the land and the contributions of immigration and multiculturalism. There is privilege in being able to ignore these things. There is also a sense of injustice, manifest in a perceived discrimination because of being white, which is in turn attributed to a strengthening of the position of non-whites at white Australia’s expense. These are uneasy bedfellows, and unchecked they allow racism to thrive.
Historical and contextual frameworks: de-constructing the white Australian national identity
In the context of this research, we use a number of conceptual framings that need definition. We use the term ‘racism’ throughout this article, in both interpersonal and structural terms. We therefore define racism as a set of structures, actions and beliefs that maintain or exacerbate inequalities across power, resources and opportunities across racial, ethnic, cultural or religious groups in society (Matlock and DiAngelo, 2015; Nelson et al., 2011). The article is also more broadly framed by the concept of whiteness. Here, we find Frankenberg’s (1997: 211) definition useful: First, it is a position of structural advantage, associated with ‘privileges’ of the most basic kind, including, for example, higher wages, reduced chances of being impoverished, longer life, better access to health care, better treatment by the legal system, and so on. (Of course, access is influenced by class, sexuality, gender, age, and in fact ‘privilege’ is a misnomer here since this list addresses basic social rights.) Second, whiteness is a ‘standpoint’ or place from which to look at oneself, others and society. Thirdly, it carries with it a set of ways of being in the world, a set of cultural practices, often not named as ‘white’ by white folks, but looked on instead as ‘American’ or ‘normal’.
While the terms ‘white’ and ‘whiteness’ come with complex associations, examinations that are beyond the scope of this article, our interest is in how they describe social processes of power and privilege. To understand this, one must return to the historical frameworks in which a white Australian national identity has formed.
Australia has been engaged in a long discussion around what constitutes Australian national identity (Blainey, 1984; Brookes, 2017; Castles et al., 1992; Hage, 2000; Hughes, 1988). From its colonial beginnings, it has been both a nation founded on immigration and a nation that has sought to carefully control and define the national imaginary based on white British hegemony. In 1901, the Immigration Restriction Act, was introduced, and was hailed by parliamentarians as a legitimate attempt to preserve Australia’s white racial purity. This became known as the White Australia Policy (WAP) and restricted migration first from non-British and then non-European backgrounds, and marginalised those who did not fit the narrative or picture of Anglo-Celtic whiteness. Australia’s first prime minister, Edmund Barton, presented a ‘potential influx of Asiatic labour’ as justification for the WAP and linked the desire for racial purity with the protection of Australian working conditions (Barton, 1901, cited in Younane Brookes, 2010: 5; see also Tavan, 2005). Reporting in detail on the WAP’s effectiveness in keeping ‘undesirable’ immigrants out of the national space, Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second prime minister, emphasised ‘whiteness’ as a marker of immigrant desirability and sought to construct both himself and the (white) Australian people as managers of the national space (Younane Brookes, 2010).
The WAP was a key feature of Australian Federation and subsequent immigration programs; it epitomised the exclusionary articulation of Australian identity. It is a policy that must be wholly understood, not only as a response to concerns around migration and national identity, but in the first instance in the context of Australia as a colonial settler-nation and the ongoing act of Aboriginal dispossession. White Australia has embedded the anxiety of the ‘other’, who might disrupt the ‘settlers’ position of power and privilege, in institutional and policy frameworks – the first of such otherings being the dispossession of First Nations peoples. From the Australian Constitution, which explicitly stated that Aboriginal peoples should not be counted as citizens, and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, through to present-day legislation, the Australian Border Force Act 2015 being one such example, the Australian nation is deeply embedded in a normative narrative of white privilege that protects white Australia’s claims to ownership over land (territory) and national identity.
The WAP was slowly dismantled by successive Liberal governments starting in the 1960s and eventually discarded by Labour’s Whitlam government in 1973. Since this time, Australia has moved towards the notion of a multicultural society. It is important not to simplify the complexities of multiculturalism in Australia. In many ways, multiculturalism can be seen as a policy that reinforces the central position of white Australia. As Jon Stratton argues in his article ‘Multiculturalism and the Whitening Machine’ (1999), multiculturalism didn’t actually challenge the hegemonic position of white Australia, it entrenched it through a system that allowed the ‘multicultural other’ into the fold under a policy of inclusion, but only where the ‘other’ met the strict criteria set by white Australia. Multiculturalism in Australia has also universalised the ‘other’; this is particularly problematic in the way First Nations are grouped in the same ‘multicultural’ category as migrant populations (Curthoys, 2000; Kamp et al., 2018). This obfuscates First Nations’ claims to sovereignty and denies that both Anglo-Celtic and migrant populations benefit from Aboriginal dispossession. It also largely removes the unique position of First Nations experiences from multicultural discourses (Kamp et al., 2018: 52).
The shift towards multiculturalism precipitated discussion, with some degree of angst, about Australia’s national identity. At the centre of these debates is a tension between honouring Australia’s colonial past and embracing a diverse future, and with little to no thought given to how this sits with Aboriginal sovereignty. Too often these debates are hamstrung by exclusivity – we can only be one or the other. Perhaps the most notable policy discourse that articulated something uniquely Australian, that showed an inclusive, progressive future, without ignoring the contributions of Australia’s colonial ties, was Labour Prime Minister Paul Keating’s 1994 Creative Nation speech. This speech was significant in its reference to the importance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and migrant cultures in the development of an Australian cultural identity and for its optimistic embrace of the potential for a national culture that is ‘an exotic hybrid’, that pushed towards Asia rather than our colonial inheritance (Keating, 1994). In the aftermath of this speech, John Howard, then leader of the Liberal opposition, responded with a reactionary return to white colonial traditions. In a speech given in 1995 as part of the Headland Speech series, Howard, while acknowledging Australia’s culturally diverse community, articulated a national identity driven by an ‘overriding and unifying commitment to Australia’ (Howard, 1995: 7). One could argue that Howard’s main purpose was to reinforce our Anglo-Celtic heritage as central to the Australian identity. Subsequent governments have followed a course that has led to progressively more conservative and restrictive enunciations of the Australian national identity.
Over the past two decades, the Australian political landscape has turned increasingly to the right. This has been spurred by the political dominance of Australia’s conservative Liberal Party, which has governed for 18 of the past 24 years (1996–2007, 2013–present), as well as the ascent of various far-right parties which have helped push narrow expressions of Australian identity out of the political margins and onto the national stage. As laid out earlier, this work has been particularly amplified by prominent modern white worriers. For example, One Nation took a famously strong line on immigration and multiculturalism in the 1990s, with party leader Pauline Hanson calling for a radical review of the immigration policy and the abolition of multiculturalism. More recently, she sought to capitalise on anti-Islam sentiments and pushed the belief that whites are victims who are not protected by anti-racism legislation or social practices. In late 2018, Senator Cory Bernardi, leader of the Australian Conservatives party, released a number of blog posts attacking the recognition of ‘white privilege’. According to Bernardi (2018), ‘this “white privilege nonsense” is a contagion’, and ‘is offensive, if not racist, towards many Australians’. Comments such as these highlight a normative discourse of white privilege that underpins many of these viewpoints. This normative discourse is equally evident in the comments of the respondents below, where we see claims of anti-white racism, and ownership over a white national identity and a national space, partially informed by a constructed fear of the ‘other’. In a time where white supremacy is increasingly the critical focus, there is a danger that a normative discourse of white privilege becomes neglected or overlooked in these debates. We maintain that examining white privilege as a normative discourse is crucial to understanding how structural racism underpins the expression of racism in individual respondent comments.
These positions constitute some of the ongoing tensions that define our policy and public debates over migration and national identity in Australia. While our politicians jockey to create the definitive understanding of what the national Australian identity is and who should belong, the Australian public, and in particular those who feel threatened by the nature of these debates, find themselves in an environment rife with the politics of fear and division. The theme that emerges from these policy debates, and which we see reflected in the populist media, is a powerful dichotomy: the struggle between our potential as a national people that can embrace its cultural diversity, and what we need to safeguard, typically articulated as the need to protect our white colonial heritage or white national identity.
The modern Australian ‘white worrier’: an analysis of survey data
With these conceptual and historical frameworks in mind, we now turn to the particularities of our research. This article explores the attitudes and beliefs of 38 Australians who made claims of ‘anti-white racism’ in an online survey. The survey was conducted in July–August 2015 and November 2016 by the Challenging Racism Project and generated a completed sample of 6001 respondents (see Blair et al., 2017). Survey respondents were asked a range of questions relating to their attitudes toward cultural diversity and immigration and their experiences of racism. This article is focused on the respondents who used an open-ended question, ‘Are there any other impacts of your experience(s) of racism?’, to make a claim of ‘anti-white racism’. The collection of data on claims of anti-white racism was not the intention of the research, but rather an unintended consequence of asking the participants about their experiences. We isolated these comments, conducted a discourse analysis of the written responses, and mapped these discourses against the same participants’ attitudinal data. While acknowledging a large body of literature on critical discourse analysis, we draw specifically from Teun van Dijk’s work (1993, 2002) on discursive analysis of racism in texts. We use van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis to frame an examination of the respondents’ comments. As white researchers in the academy, we acknowledge our own positionality at a site of privilege. Further, we make no claims to being discriminated against because of our whiteness, and therefore are not approaching this topic from a point of experience, but rather in terms of a critical engagement with the literature on whiteness and in particular white privilege.
Who makes claims of anti-white racism?
The demographic data from these 38 respondents showed men are slightly more likely to make claims of anti-white racism than females (53% to 47%). The majority of claims were made by 46–55-year-olds (34%), followed by the 36–45-year-olds (24%) and 18–25-year-olds (13%). The most common level of education was a Trade or TAFE (technical and further education) qualification (23%), followed by a university degree (18%). Almost half the respondents were employed (47%), with retirees (16%) and home duties (13%) being the next most common employment type. Of those making claims of anti-white racism, the vast majority, 90%, were born in Australia, with 97% speaking English only. These findings indicate that anti-white racism is a sentiment that is prevalent in a cross-section of society.
The survey respondents who made claims of anti-racism were nearly twice as likely as the rest of the population to hold negative views towards cultural diversity and immigration (see Table 1). While they agreed racial prejudice exists in Australia at the same rate as the rest of the population (79%), they were more than twice as likely to self-identify as racist (24% compared to 11% of the national sample). They held negative views against a number of predictors of tolerance (see Table 1), and only 13% acknowledged that white people enjoy a privileged position in Australia, compared to 40% of the national sample. When it came to questions that measure comfort and concerns around people of different ethnic backgrounds, those who claim anti-white racism were more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to hold negative views towards those from Middle Eastern, African, Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan backgrounds, and those who identified as Muslim. Only 1 in 3 stated they felt secure when they are around people from different ethnic backgrounds. Our data showed that those who made claims of anti-white racism are more likely to hold negative views towards cultural diversity, to comfortably admit they are racist, to have an assimilationist view of immigration, and to hold negative views of new and emerging migrant groups. This suggests a high level of intolerance towards the principles of multiculturalism, which in turn fuels the discombobulation white Australians feel around their current status of privilege in Australian society.
Attitudes of anti-white racism claimants.
Source: Challenging Racism Project Survey, July–August 2015 and November 2016.
Question wording:
It is a good thing for a society to be made up of different cultures.
Australia is weakened by people of different ethnic origins sticking to their old ways.
People from racial, ethnic, cultural and religious minority groups should behave more like mainstream Australians.
Australians from a British background enjoy a privileged position in our society.
Do you think the number of immigrants accepted into Australia is too high, too low or about right?
All boats carrying asylum seekers should be turned back.
What is the tenor of an anti-white racism claim?
A discourse analysis of the open-ended survey responses from those who made claims of anti-white racism was also conducted. This analysis sought to tell us how the participants understood and portrayed minorities or ethnic relations in Australia. Our analysis asked what the participant’s chosen structures and strategies of discourse tell us about their underlying beliefs and what the social, political, and cultural contexts and functions of such discourses were (see van Dijk, 1993). In particular, the role these discourses play in the development, reinforcement, legitimation and reproduction of white dominance was examined. We also looked for connections between the written comments in terms of terminology and modality. The comments were then arranged under three themes:
Claims of reverse discrimination: a reverse rhetoric of the positive discrimination debates, where the over-emphasis on minorities or identity politics has led to the disadvantage of white Australians.
Erosion of white culture/white national identity: inherently Australian values are being undermined or denied, e.g. ‘I can’t be myself, I can’t be a true Aussie anymore’, or ‘loss of the Australian way of life’.
Ownership over space: incorporates debates around inclusion/exclusion and belonging/not belonging. Space can be physical (e.g. a shopping mall) or abstract (e.g. ‘our country’).
A key tenor of these themes is the use of race to frame commentary around a white national identity, a broader take on the impact of race on the socio-political structures of the dominant white discourse that has long defined Australia’s identity. Analysis of these written texts has led us to explore notions of nationalism, institutional racism and white privilege, rather than individual interactions or practices of racism. As set out earlier in the article, this allowed us to examine the attitudes and beliefs of ordinary Australians as they were informed by the practices of structural racism.
Claims of reverse discrimination or anti-white racism
A number of survey respondents made reference to being treated with prejudice because they were not a member of a minority group, a claim of reverse discrimination. One respondent stated, ‘I feel like society does not treat me fair because I am not aboriginal’, while another said, ‘as a white Australian I feel like I am the minority now’. The inference in these comments, though in some cases it was quite explicitly stated, being that minority groups have gained privilege at the expense of white Australians. This is often referred to in terms of minority groups having a more prominent voice or more institutional support. One respondent stated: ‘Minorities have too much say’, while another commented: ‘I just wish that I could be treated and looked after like “Indigenous Australians”.’ There is also the suggestion that this emphasis on minority or ethnic groups is at the expense of white Australians: ‘being a white Christian aussie male, it happens all the time, especially dealing with government, where I am now on the lowest rung of importance’. One man equated his loss of status with the perceived gains of migrants and refugees: I’m a 55yo white, single 7th generation Australian who gets treated worse and is given less than any migrant/refugee. That make me very angry and sad for my fellow, forgotten Australian and very angry that the sacrifices of our ancestors were all for nothing as our country is given away and overrun by all foreiners [sic].
There are a number of points of interest in this comment. The first is how the respondent emphasises his ‘Australianness’. In stressing his whiteness and ancestry, and perhaps also his family’s loyalty to the country, he positions himself as an authority on this topic and, thus, presents his personal experience as undeniable ‘fact’, using argumentations that then lead to negative conclusions about minorities (see van Dijk, 2002). He infers the sacrifices of his ancestors, which we can take to mean his white ancestors and the construction of Australia as a white nation. In doing so, he employs the semantic move of reversal, victim-blaming, that seeks to instantiate overall strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation (van Dijk, 2002). The positive part seems to function as a form of face-keeping and impression management: he and his family love their country, he feels for his fellow Australians (so it is not just about him) and he is increasingly on the receiving end of negative treatment. The ‘anger’ he describes then becomes justified as the rest of the text focuses on the perceived negative characteristics of ‘foreigners’, who have ‘overrun’ a place that does not belong to them and who are said to be responsible for the negative treatment of white Australians.
This respondent presents a version of history that denies the founding presence of Aboriginal people and their contributions to the land and culture, an important example of the white-washing of history that is a key trope of the modern white worrier. This respondent has privileged white Australians as the owners and creators of this country, a wilful deception regarding the realities. This construction seeks to lay the groundwork for his accusation that he, and other white Australians like him, have been pushed to the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. This provides a useful point of analysis around privilege. There is a failure to recognise the unstated privileges that allow such respondents to be, if not at the top of the ladder then at least at its upper reaches. While they may be aggrieved that they are ‘treated worse’ and ‘given less’ than they would like, the more pertinent question is what allowed them to be at the higher reaches of the ladder to begin with. What is left unsaid is any recognition of the unearned privileges that give white people the advantage of starting at these farther reaches. That these advantages go unrecognised is, in part, to do with a position of privilege that allows such structural gains to go unexamined (DiAngelo, 2018). This aligns with the respondent’s stated attitudes around white privilege, where a clear picture of denial emerges. This suggests an obvious failure to acknowledge the social and institutional status of white people in Australia, and in some ways accounts for why those who make claims of anti-white racism see their circumstances as equivalent to or worse than those of ethnic migrant groups.
Claims of anti-white racism are often expressed in terms familiar from the anti-discrimination debates. Many participants talked about being treated unfairly or being in the minority now as a white person. One respondent indicated they had difficulty finding work because they are white: ‘I’m Australian and can’t get a job because other races are employed first. I am left out because I’m AUSTRALIAN.’ Others spoke of derogatory remarks being made against them because they are Australian or white, or of being treated as inferior: ‘at hospital when asked for a cigarette, on refusal I’m called a white c**t’. These are discourses of victimhood, where white respondents have adopted anti-discrimination language and turned it back on those it was developed to protect.
Another example is the use of the quintessentially Australian value of a ‘fair go’ or social equality. Many of the survey responses contained the perception that white Australians are not getting a fair go. For many, the policies developed to correct discrimination against minority groups have in turn created a system of discrimination against whites – at least this is their perception. This constitutes a disruption to the status quo, the structures that underpin white privilege are no longer working to maintain the elevated status of white people. It could be argued that the modern white worrier has adopted the language and mechanisms of anti-discrimination debates to benefit their own perceived predicament (see Fozdar, 2008).
Those who make claims of anti-white racism exhibit a complex set of grievances that are tied up with fear and uncertainty and which find their outlet in a negative ‘othering’ of minorities. The ‘other’ is therefore presented as both the one who does not belong and the source of the rupture to the status quo. This particular preoccupation with ‘othering’ could be seen as an attempt to draw attention away from public policy failures to address structural change that could account for the social inequalities underpinning many of these insecurities. In fact, a number of scholars have made this observation, showing how strangers/refugees/migrants are represented as responsible for these complex social phenomena rather than weak public policy (Bourke, 2002). For governments to advocate someone (the ‘other’) as being to blame for these insecurities rather than something (governments and public policy), makes this process a convenient and attractive approach for governments. Migrants or refugees become easy targets, and effective scapegoats for government inaction.
Erosion of white nationalist identity
A common thread throughout respondents’ comments was the notion of a white Australian identity under threat. As many scholars writing about national identity have shown (Hage, 2000; Sharples, 2017), a perceived threat to identity or culture often results in a hardening of resolve to preserve and protect that culture/identity. Within the participants’ comments, this took the form of reifying cultural identifiers such as multi-generational claims to the land or origin stories of white settlement, and references to the dominant governing structure, such as adherence to democratic principles and rights.
Many of the participants positioned their claims to the Australian national narrative in their long-standing connection to the land: ‘Every time a minority group is calling for more rights at the expense of us 5th generation Australians, their “win” gives us less freedom of speech more and more all the time.’ In drawing our attention to their established ancestry, this participant employed the strategy of legitimisation to communicate their right or claim to the Australian national identity. As indicated earlier in our framing of anti-white racism, this emphasis on claiming history and the national space is a common trope of the modern white worrier. Further, a strategy common in racist discourse is ‘speaking for all’, as though one is simply voicing the majority view (Fozdar, 2008). Generalities about what the majority think or have experienced were common among the participants’ responses. Such framing of social reality functions as common-sense knowledge which is ‘treated as given’ (Edwards, 1997: 124). They are set up specifically to avoid detail and new information, and to present their position as that of the ‘common person’ – an unthinking majority position which needs little justification. In the above quote, the participant speaks on behalf of ‘us 5th generation Australians’, differentiating ‘us’ from ‘them’ (vaguely described as ‘a minority group’), and employs a dichotomy in which he and other Australians like him are unquestioningly entitled to make complaints about the minority ‘other’.
The participants’ comments also reveal references to a loss of Australian values and rights such as freedom of speech or the elusive ‘Australian way of life’: ‘Less freedom of speech and the Australian way of life I have grown up with has denigrated to a point I feel I can’t be myself as a true Aussie anymore.’ Although unsaid, the participant implies that ‘others’, either immigrants themselves or those responsible for Australia’s immigration program, are to blame for the denigration of his Australian identity. He employs the same strategy of reversal, positioning himself as a victim of Australian identity politics, while the ‘other’ is guilty of ‘anti-white racism’.
In both comments above, it is clear the participants believe that Australian values and rights cannot coexist with anti-discrimination principles and practices. These two sides are presented as incompatible and in conflict with each other. According to this argument, by providing protections for minority groups we are undermining our own national identity. This forms part of what Ghassan Hage calls ‘white paranoia’ – fear of losing privileged access to a national belonging that is an Anglo or European construct. Hage talks of this as a sense of white decline, that being a ‘white Australian’ no longer affords you the privileges or opportunities of previous eras (Hage, 2003: 64). The comments made by the survey respondents indicate the projection of an Australian identity that is opposed to attempts to change the status quo; a push back against the presence of ethnic minorities that are perceived to disrupt the accepted dominance of a white nationalist Australian identity (see Bliuc et al., 2012).
This positioning becomes a useful tool for mobilising ordinary Australians around a national identity that provides a sense of security, that protects against the perceived threat of the migrant’s own culture and identity. The participants’ comments are predominantly statements of what Hage (2000: 47) calls ‘nationalist exclusion’, where white Australians imagine themselves to have a privileged position in the nation. The grievances of those making claims of anti-white racism are therefore an articulation of a disruption to this understanding, and a response that is framed by a perceived right to protect the integrity of the national space. This position partially stems from the nation’s roots in settler colonialism, and the forced and violent taking of the land from the Aboriginal inhabitants. The unacknowledged, unresolved nature of this act, our estrangement from its occurrence and legacy, has made us defensive and fearful of circumstances that could potentially see ‘our Australia’ in turn taken from us, that ‘white Australia would one day suffer the same fate as Aboriginal Australia’ (Ang, 2003: 60). Cruz and Steele (2003: 279) state that Australia’s politics and its national identity is steeped in the fear of the ‘world’s most dispossessed people (invariably people of colour) whether refugees or Aborigines’. Anthony Bourke (2002: 24) suggests that Australia’s ‘national identity had been based on exclusion and security, consistently purchased at the expense of the Other’. In other words, migrants, refugees, Aboriginal people, have all been presented as deviants to the Australian way of life, a threat to white Australia’s rightful place as the keeper of our national identity.
In some cases, the participants also identified specific cultural or religious groups to express their grievances. The negative positioning of the ‘other’ often related to perceptions of particular migrant communities being ‘non-assimilationist’ or ‘incompatible to Australian values’. One respondent commented: religious middle eastern groups using their numbers to take over particular areas and causing disintegration between their culture and other groups they believe they are a superior race of people and are not to be trusted in any way that is fact not racis [sic].
The use of the term ‘disintegration’ in this participant’s comment is a naming tactic common in the articulation of racist discourse (Wetherell and Potter, 1992). In this case, the naming takes the form of an extreme case formulation, which forces the hearer to view the act in a particular way – it claims the moral high ground by characterising the action as not only creating division but eroding a cohesive Australia. Further, the definitive use of the term ‘fact’ reinforces the veracity of his argument and positions him as something of an ‘expert’ on the subject of race relations in Australia, and therefore beyond critique (Nelson, 2014). The inference in this participant’s comment is that by their sheer numbers, such migrant communities may convert white Australians away from Australian values.
Ownership of space
A number of respondents expressed concern over the loss of ‘their space’. This could include a physical space, a shopping mall, or a more abstract space, ‘our country’ or ‘our Australian way of life’. The shopping centre and other public spaces are typical racial contact zones. They can be a visual representation of Australia’s diversity but also hotspots where that diversity can interact in negative, aggressive and divisive ways. They direct us to where tensions are emerging or already exist, and where debates around race, culture and ethnicity are being played out in real-life settings. A number of respondents stated they felt alienated, excluded or discriminated against at their local shopping centre: ‘yes, i am a and [sic] white Australian and I was shopping at Westfields Bankstown and i felt discriminated against by the HUGE Middle Eastern and Muslim people who have inundated that area!’ Another stated: I am an anglo saxon australian and I experience racism all the time by groups of other denominations- I have experienced racism by asians, and by muslim people (calling me derogatory names due to what i was wearing), its very hard to go to a suburb where ifferent [sic] races have made that suburb their own and donot [sic] want me there.
Both participants shared their first-hand personal experiences of perceived undesirable out-group behaviour. In doing so, they first make sure to inform us of their whiteness and their Australianness, and by implication their assumed ownership of the spaces in question. The use of vague and indeterminate quantifications such as ‘HUGE’, and exaggerations such as ‘inundated’, simultaneously stress the magnitude of immigration while allowing the participants to invoke a range of unstated negative properties (LeCouteur and Augoustinos, 2001). This is rhetoric we have become familiar with in Australia, particularly in the era of ‘Hansonisms’ (racist and inflammatory statements by Pauline Hanson spread through online platforms), where we commonly hear we are being swamped or overrun by foreigners – again a key trope of the anti-white racism amplifiers. This framing is problematic in that it reinforces the idea of the dominant identity (a white nationalist identity) that claims ownership over and the right to articulate the space, as well as the notion of who belongs or does not. The shopping centre goes from being a shared public space to one of exclusion that emphasises ownership by a particular group.
An articulation of the Australian identity that is evident in the survey responses is one defined by loss or what Hage calls ‘loss of control over the white nation fantasy’. This loss is what Howard (2001) was trying to rectify when he stated: ‘But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.’ This sentiment echoes that of Bob Hawke in the late 1970s: ‘Any sovereign nation has a right to determine how it will exercise its compassion and how it will increase its population’ (Megalogenis, 2015: 250). It is also evident in Pauline Hanson’s Maiden Speech to Parliament in 1996: ‘They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate. [. . .] if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country’ (Hanson, 1996). The use of such rhetoric evokes fears of a national-spatial disintegration. As Ien Ang rightly points out, this anxiety is not only about protecting the status of the white national identity, but also about protecting the white integrity of the national space (Ang, 2003: 53). Part of that protection is couched in terms of ownership of the space, as in the right to determine who and how it is constructed as per the political partisan comments above. Inherent in the participants’ comments was an anxiety around the cultural survival of white Australia were the national space to be ‘fragmented’ by cultural diversity. This is predicated on multiculturalism equating to negative outcomes; diversity weakening the nation rather than building and strengthening it. This Australia has a disproportionate fear of immigrants and their contributions to the Australian national identity. In a sense this is the unfinished business of the multicultural project in Australia: a persuasive positive message that cultural diversity can strengthen the nation and our national space. Such an argument however is predicated on our capacity to recognise and undermine systems of governance that support a hegemonic white discourse of privilege. For it is within the structures that uphold this narrative – laws, policies, media representations, education institutions – that cultural spaces for racism thrive.
Conclusion
In analysing the comments of people who made claims of anti-white racism we found a discourse of anti-white racism framed by a perceived threat to a white Australia national identity and reflective of key mechanisms of institutional racism, in particular white privilege. These are encapsulated in the three key themes discussed above. The first is the perceived elevation of migrants at the expense of white Australians, in particular through anti-discrimination policies, leading to a heightened sense that white Australians are being discriminated against. The second is the ‘white paranoia’ that perceives the white Australian national identity as under threat by the presence of ethnic minorities who disrupt the dominance of white Australia, and this is coupled with a hardening resolve to protect it, even if the nature of that identity is contested. The third is that these claims are intrinsically linked to the privileging of white Australians as the owners of the national space and identity, and this is accompanied by a sense of loss of control over the nature of that space. These themes highlight the increasingly fearful and racialised tone of Australia’s national identity debates.
Those who make claims of anti-white racism share common traits with Hage’s ‘white worrier’. They express a fear of immigration and its embodied ‘other’, they see change as a threat to their status and privilege, and they see their whiteness as a racial category that affords prejudice against them. They ‘worry’ about their nation, and use this is as an expression of their national belonging (Hage, 2003). These perceived prejudices are associated with increased immigration, the loss of their privileged position, and a perceived government ambivalence about this change in status. In the 20 years since Hage wrote White Nation we argue that the modern white worrier has now become prevalent in a cross-section of Australian society, and they have become emboldened, and their fears and concerns legitimised, by a resurgent white supremacy in global and domestic politics. These conditions have contributed to a racialisation of being white that is now expressed through far-right agendas of white solidarity and white nationalism.
The Australian national imaginary has long epitomised an exclusionary national identity, one that privileges white British hegemony at the expense of its Indigenous and migrant heritage. The current era of political and public discourse has further entrenched this position, enabling narrow expressions of national identity to become mainstream and acceptable. There are, of course, alternatives. Most notable would be a national identity that embraced Australia’s diverse heritage; one that acknowledges and resolves Indigenous claims over the land and the contributions both migrants and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders make to the nation. As Ghassan Hage (2003) has noted, this is an Australia that sees our future as hopeful, as secure in what the future may bring, and as a nation that cares for ALL its peoples. To achieve this, we must also be a nation that is secure enough to dismantle the systems that support and embolden a normative discourse of white privilege and the normalisation of racist rhetoric.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the generous comments of the anonymous reviewers. Their feedback made this article infinitely stronger.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The larger research project this study draws from was funded by the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS).
