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Keywords: Whiteness

  • INTERNATIONAL

    The violence in making America great again

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 03 October 2017
    11 Comments

    Terrorism has its loaded associations, a distinct demonology. To suggest that a US citizen might be a terrorist hardly accords with the project of Making America Great Again. Paddock was not a Muslim, which would have been a useful alibi for the restrictive policy on arrivals from specific Islamic countries.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why 'white' isn't a racist slur

    • Sonia Nair
    • 13 July 2017
    11 Comments

    I hung out with a group of Indian-Australians while I was a university student who called themselves 'curries', but the unspoken camaraderie that ensued from this self-identification stood in stark contrast to that time I was called a 'f***ing curry' by a passing car full of white people. You often hear from white people that they can't be called 'white' because that too is racist language. This reflects a flawed assumption that societal structures advantage and disadvantage people in the exact same way.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Moderates must realise whiteness rests on oppression

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 14 December 2016
    7 Comments

    If the political trash-fire of 2016 has taught us anything, it's that white moderates are more than willing to throw minorities under the bus in order to preserve the status quo. It comes out in their tone policing. It comes out in calls for 'respectful' dialogue without considering how socio-political power structures mean minorities are always at a disadvantage in those kinds of conversations. Whiteness has always been a moving target and has more to do with power and privilege than skin colour.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How the working class became white

    • Evan Smith
    • 27 October 2016
    19 Comments

    While the White Australia Policy attempted to prevent non-white workers from living and working in Australia, people from across the globe continued to do both, although often at the margins of white Australian society. The Australian Labor Party and the trade unions were complicit in maintaining this racial divide. In Australia today, a new wave of migrants is working in convenience stores, driving taxis or cleaning buildings. They are part of the Australian working class, but are often not considered such.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Whose Australia Day?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 22 January 2016
    18 Comments

    Last November I was on a panel at the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters Council conference, musing about postmodern identities, whether 'ethnics' were mainstream and not peripheral, and whether 'Aussie values' are in fact universal. I enjoyed the discussion, but part of me felt worn. It seemed to me that black and brown folks like us are less concerned about what it means to be Australian than how Australian we would have to be, to be as Australian as everyone else.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'Australian Muslim' is not an oxymoron

    • Somayra Ismailjee
    • 15 June 2015
    16 Comments

    There is a particular anatomy to the process of othering. In any context, the formula consists of propaganda, hatred, division, suppression and control. I'm from Perth. Some people would dispute this due to my brown skin and non-Anglo name. But I was born here, and have lived here for my entire life. Still, people like me are too often considered Australian only by law, and not by sociocultural connotation.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Meeting a fish

    • Yan An
    • 11 November 2014
    1 Comment

    The fish, ferocious like the eerie bird … challenges me to take it out of the water. … The thought of chucking it down from the heights, and sinking it into the unknown abyss, causes me to break out in a cold sweat. … Its mouth open … as if it had broken its vocal cord, reminding me of one night, when a kid, lost on the road, was crying, imperceptibly, in the darkness, half-visible, walking alone.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A Woman from the Provinces

    • Xiao Xiao
    • 16 September 2014
    2 Comments

    The woman from the provinces must have disturbed someone. Listen: the noise from below the Square. Countless faces aslant, breathing heavily. Rusting in the shell of broken words.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Birdwatcher's odyssey

    • Diane Fahey
    • 03 May 2011
    3 Comments

    those hypnotic swerves, a mark of dominion like all else: its height, its eight-foot span, its primeval patience. The eagle turned, an archer's bow; became a bold emblem that could impress the red seal on a document of war; rip out an eye.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The westernisation of Asian beauty

    • Ellena Savage
    • 04 February 2011
    8 Comments

    In many Asian cultures paleness is an indication of class and beauty. But why would Asian women want to look like Pamela Anderson? For the same reason white women do: there's a globalised beauty standard that is gendered, racialised, and hierarchical.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Aboriginality's urban outback

    • Pat Mullins
    • 16 October 2009
    3 Comments

    In Mt Druitt lives one of the largest groups of Aboriginal people in Australia. Gillian Cowlishaw shows the hope and despair, the visions and realities, of life in this youthful, growing, struggling and fascinating part of Australia.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The brush and the pen

    • Peter Steele
    • 01 July 2006

    Art speaks, but we sometimes need translation

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