Book Review
Blackfellas, Whitefellas, and the Hidden Injuries of Race
Gillian Cowlishaw
ISBN: 978-1-405114-04-2 2004 288 pages Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford
AW (Bill) Anscombe
Centre for Rural Social Research, Charles Sturt University, NSW
Although there is criticism of Australian academic discourse for its construction of a Western perspective on Indigenous reality, Mick Dodson rejects the view that only Indigenous people should comment on this reality: ‘The tragic circumstances ... are not alone the business of those who suffer them'. Using the ‘so called' Bourke riots as a focus for a discussion of race and associated topics, Gillian Cowlishaw shows how powerfully a non-Indigenous author can address such circumstances.
The topics that her remarkable book addresses include: the way that ‘conventional metropolitan social science', in interpreting scenes such as those in Bourke, clothes ‘the whites in garments of self-interest and mindless racism and attribute mindless anger and passive victimhood to blacks' (Chapter 1); perceptions and victimology, in particular the competition for moral ascendency between what she categorises as two ‘cultures of complaint' (Chapter 2); stereotyping (Chapter 3); the roles available to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people as they engage in dialogue (Chapter 4); boundaries between social groups, particularly ‘ambiguous boundaries' which challenge racial identification and racial loyalties (Chapter 5); the meanings and uses of violence as they apply in an inter-racial context (Chapter 6); the way that different notions of citizenship are demanded, offered or denied to both Indigenous and non- Indigenous people (Chapter 7); the way that the riots have transformed the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians (Chapter 8).
Dense, well-argued, fascinating and insightful, the book offers fresh perspectives that seriously challenge contemporary understandings and accepted perceptions. Cowlishaw is admirably open and forthright about her approach and purpose, which, she says, ‘may be deemed revelatory'. Focusing on ‘the discursive identifying and reproducing of practices of identity which inhabit definable social and geographic spaces with some degree of comfort and stability over time', the book, she says, aims ‘to destabilise the normative framings which are the basis of knowledge we all carry, not so much of Bourke, but of race relations there and elsewhere in the nation'. But the book does not, she says, ‘seek specific solutions to what are defined as social problems'. As a social worker, I regret this limitation of purpose; but that is more a discipline-based perspective than a criticism of the book.
A more serious concern is that some statements seem to reinforce existing urbo-centric stereotyping of rural Australians - for example, the statement that ‘rural towns are parochial'. The reality is that rural Australia is not a mono-culture and does not display mono-cultural features. Parochialism may be a feature of some rural communities but it is not a feature of others.
This book is a contrast of styles. Some of the discourse, designed for academic readers who are seriously thinking through the issues of race, racisms, whiteness and other concepts, is dense: ‘Aboriginality is expressed in a range of performative responses, dramatic fabulations which are characteristic of contemporary Aboriginal narratives, and are generated as a counter-discourse to the conventional white norms'.
Yet the book is interspersed with Cowlishaw's comments on and assessments of (largely) Indigenous people with whom she has formed relationships. Despite these relationships, she acknowledges that she remains ‘an outsider, especially in relation to the difficult struggles'. Elsewhere she says that when approaching the front door of an Aboriginal family home, she ‘felt a horrible sense of replicating a missionary or welfare official, there to inspect the condition of the house more than to do good'. The book is an interesting blend of academic thinking based upon the reflections of participants and the self-reflection of the author.
Clearly structured, Blackfellas whitefellas achieves, at least for this reader, much of its purpose. It describes and analyses the hidden injuries of race and provides a framework for understanding inter-racial relationships in a rural community. It describes Bourke as ‘one town, one community, and in a sense, one culture albeit marked by a deep rift'. While it is unarguable that Bourke is one geographic town, some social scientists (including myself) may see it as one town exhibiting multiple communities and a multiplicity of cultures, including an Indigenous and non-Indigenous culture. What is clear, however, is that a better informed and a better articulated and localised approach to race and racisms is needed and in this regard Cowlishaw's contribution is timely and necessary - particularly now that ‘practical reconciliation' has become the hallmark of Australian public policy towards Indigenous Australians. She asserts that ‘the terra nullius doctrine has been abandoned in the law but it still pervades popular conviction'; and she tellingly challenges tendencies (exemplified by some social scientists) that dismiss race and marginalise Aboriginality. Her localised understanding of the ‘hidden injuries of race' - occurring for blackfellas and whitefellas - highlights the need for a rural and regional response to an agenda that is largely driven by urbo-centric policy makers and media representatives who do not daily understand these injuries.
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