Divide and Conquer

This week Andrew Bolt was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act. A range of columnists - including Langton, Flanagan, Joseph, and Marr - have penned columns that analyse the events and/or Bolt's writing. Most point to Bolt's use of poor research and inaccurate facts (which to my mind, renders his whole exercise illegitimate). Flanagan (The Age, Oct 1) laments that Bolt commonly 'shadow boxes' with individuals by re-stating their arguments inaccurately, and proceeding to criticise them. Langton (The Age 2 Oct) writes eloquently about some of the historical and contextual factors that render Bolt's allegations against the plaintiffs so deeply insulting and harmful. Indeed Langtan positions Bolt's focus on 'white' Aborigines within an historical policy framework that was also fascinated with 'white' Aborigines - one in which 'half caste' children were removed from their families.  It is many of these still commonly denied elements of Australia's history that are important to assessing the messages behind Bolt's words.

As Bolt laments in his post judgement column, race shouldn't matter. Outsiders or newcomers should reject elements of their 'old' identities in order to embrace being 'Australian'. But what exactly does this mean? Who, gets to determine what values, behaviours, and aspects of identity prevail in Bolt's version of an 'Australian' identity. The answer to this question, as Langton so incisively notes, is tethered to the fact that white Australia is seen as 'raceless', while all other forms of color and ethnicity are slotted as 'different' and problematic. The norms of white Australia prevail by virtue of their hypothetically 'non ethnic status'. They represent an unspoken 'common sense' - the same kind of common sense that used exclude all women and Aboriginal people from voting - and that underpinned the removal of 'half caste' Aboriginal children from their families. It is generally the case that values which attract a 'common sense' label in any culture are held by a powerful elite or majority - which does not necessarily make those values right or so. The world is not flat and the sun doesn't rotate around the earth - although the Roman Catholic Church took severe action against individuals who stated differently.

Historically, powerful elites have engaged a range of strategies for suppressing, undermining, or deligitimising marginal perspectives. At their extreme, some of these strategies include jail, torture, or death - note for example the jailing of alleged 'communists' by the House Committee for UnAmerican Activities or the range of genocides, especially of indigenous peoples, we have seen across the globe. However as notable philosophers and linguists point out, such strategies can also be executed in words that shape dominant understandings of what makes 'common sense'. These strategies don't even need to be highly sophisticated - simply powerful. In my view, Bolt's columns reflect a number of these discursive strategies. One such strategy is to undermine the hard fought for gains of a marginal social group by raising questions about the legitimacy of its membership. I will position some of my discussion here within the politics of feminism (because this is a position from which I feel I can speak with some legitimacy), before raising questions about the 'interference' in Aboriginal affairs by Bolt.

Social justice movements that gained momentum in many Western nations during the 1960s were premised on unifying identity factors - such as sex in the case of the women's movement, or color in the case of the black power movement in the US. It is well established that the politics in these movements were commonly influenced by some of the core principles of Marxism - most popularly that an 'oppressed' underclass must collectivise in order to militate for rights. Of course, none of these movements was perfect, and it was (and is) the voices of more privileged individuals that commonly gain more widespread recognition. In the 'women's movement' it is often the voices, needs, and agenda of white western women that have been highlighted and privileged.

Further to this, no identity is unitary. As bell hooks (1981) so eloquently argues, many women of color feel caught in a bind by 'silo' driven social movements - they are encouraged by the sisterhood to prioritise the elements of their identity shaped by gender discrimination, and encouraged by the black power movement to prioritise aspects of their identities shaped by race discimination. As these social movements have evolved, it has become clear that 'identity politics'- a politics based on the perspective that everyone in a marginal group must be 'the same' - has its limitations. Post-structuralism - which challenged essentialism - offered a partial solution to this conundrum, although post-structuralism also has its detractors. But what is important to draw from this evolution of politics, and from the maturation of social justice movements, is that it was ridiculous to argue that all people in a marginalised group needed to be 'the same' in order to form a politics of resistance. Indeed to deny difference within our 'ranks' is to commit acts of oppression ourselves.

While these tensions are difficult, challenging, and undesirable, they constitute a somewhat inevitable process when groups of marginal people are attempting to define themselves and find their voices. It is important for so called 'marginal groups' to examine the power dynamics and hierarchies within their own midst. Who, for example, is the 'women's movement' designed to benefit? What basis is there for its politics? Isn't it perpetrating the same kind of oppression as the dominant patriarchal culture if it silences 'different' women? It is fundamentally necessary to ask and address such questions - the problem is, however, when the dominant culture which inspired the political movement draws upon these tensions as a strategy for undermining the movement. The lessons of Marxism said that one could not afford to be fighting battles within, if one wished to win the battle outside. Solidarity was the call - yet whose version of lived experience should be used to define 'the group' in its solidarity? Populist movements have continued to grapple with these tensions - who are we representing. This is a good thing. However less desirable are the not so subtle ways that dominant elites exercise power by drawing on these tensions to undermine the legitimacy of a marginal group and its membership.

Bolt's column reflects such a strategy. He seeks to pass judgement over who ought constitute a legitimate part of the Aboriginal community and who ought not - claiming that he is acting in the interests of a united Australia. Discrimination can be an invidious thing, and its operations are not always overt. While I would never argue that men cannot comment about feminism, or in fact that they have nothing valuable to say, there are some issues around which it makes no sense, or less sense, for them to comment. I say this because it is impossible for us to shed our vested interests when we speak from positions of privilege. There is no escaping the fact that I am a descendent of diverse white migrant families and I enjoy the residual benefits of invasion and colonial practices. Therefore, while I might speak about a range of issues pertaining to Aboriginal rights or identity, it doesn't mean I should - or more to that point, that an Aboriginal person should ever be expected to believe my perspective is divorced from my positionality. When men comment about the ineffectiveness of the women's movement, its redundancy, its fractured nature, or its illegitimacy it is from their position of cultural privilege. When a man calls feminism into question entirely because it includes or excludes one group or another, I cannot divorce his view from the fact that the dominant culture privileges his view. Don't get me wrong - he is free to speak it . . . . but from where I sit, his words are weighed down with self investment. It is women - the subjects of gender discrimination - who carry the right and responsibility for discussing, navigating, and politicising their own differences. It is not to say that some/many women don't behave badly, or exercise a self serving politics. It is unfortunately the case that social justice movements include well motivated as well as poorly motivated individuals. But if the exercise of power by men in a patriarchal discourse has commonly led to the oppression of women, then the exercise of 'commentary' by men about ills of the women's movement will ultimately be construed as a further effort to exercise power. Personally, I have no problem with men engaging in the discussions around feminism. I live, work, and research in a world where critical partnerships between men and women advance social justice outcomes for many groups of people, including women. But it is for women to sort out and navigate their own differences - not for men, as has occurred across cultures and generations, to dictate which women should be allowed to be heard.

People who are the subjects of a social justice movement or minority group are the best qualified to speak of their own experiences. I take, as examples, commentators in the African American such as bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, or even filmmakers such as Spike Lee. There are themes that these commentators explore which it would be completely inappropriate for 'outsiders' - or outsiders alone - to comment upon. For example, the politics that surround skin color in the African American community or the ways in which race intersects with gender in debates about desirability and class mobility in the US. bell hooks illustrates this point beautifully in exploring the stereotyped views of dominant white historians about slave hierarchies in the south. hooks argued that while 'house slaves' may have enjoyed superior physical conditions and less 'labor intensive' work, they lived in close quarters with their masters, subject to an unrelenting, constant and strict surveillance in a 24 hour relationship. In the house there was no escape - no release or let down time.  White judgements of these experiences only serve a further colonial purpose.

Which returns me to the topic of Bolt's column. The message underpinning Bolt's column is clear - 'dark' Aborigines are more oppressed than 'white' Aborigines. Perhaps worse - 'dark' Aborigines are more 'real' or 'legitimate' Aborigines 'White' aborigines shouldn't call themselves 'aborigines' because this is somehow to detract from the legitimate category 'aboriginal'.  In short, for 'white' Aborigines to claim they are Aboriginal is to 'undermine' the legitimate suffering of darker Aborigines. This argument is abhorrent, and fails on so many levels. Bolt's article follows the simplistic, but commonly successful, tactic of attempting to undermine the hard fought battle for a collective Aboriginal identity and politics by undermining the basis for that politics - which he infers is a unitary (dark) Aboriginal identity.

Aboriginal identity is underscored by a common link to original land ownership, and a common experience of the impacts of invasion and oppression. Those experiences of oppression have resulted in a range of real world and damaging outcomes - shorter life expectancy, higher incarceration rates, etc. This is not to say that all Aboriginal experience is the same.  It may, for example, be true that darker skinned Aboriginal people cannot ever 'choose' to identify publicly as anything other than Aboriginal - that darker skinned Aboriginal people may be more commonly subject to overt and lurid acts of racism because they are 'visibly' different. On the other hand, how can one escape the particular experiential scars that have attached to individuals who are not readily identifiable as 'straight black'? How can one circumvent the impacts of colonialism - of rape, of the imposition of white culture, of assimilate or die - that brought about those differences in skin color? Or the reprehensible policies of removal that left generations of 'mixed blood' Aboriginal children without their parents, and parents without their children? Or the relationships - whether through necessity or choice - that bring individuals of different backgrounds together to form families.

The problem is - and one of the problems I have with Bolt - is that it is not for us - neither him, nor I - to evaluate, control, narrate, or judge those experiences. It is for Aboriginal communities - owners of their own experiences, narrators of their own stories, and navigators of their own politics - to speak those experiences. Bolt does not belong to a culture that has been subject to invasion and colonialism. He does not know what the experience of being 'whiter' or 'darker' in that culture is, nor the consequences of being identified with that culture. He certainly doesn't appear to understand the complexity of Aboriginal identity and the way in which it has likely affected each of the individuals in this case. As Langton notes,


'What is particularly insulting about Bolt's diatribes against the particular individuals who litigated in this case is that each one of them has identified as Aboriginal, aimed high, and beaten the odds. They have achieved great things in their fields; each one has worked inordinately hard and striven for excellence. And each one has been recognised in his or her field for that excellence'.


There may well be discussions - vivid, uncomfortable, and complex - within Aboriginal communities about a range of issues, such as the meaning of skin color, wealth, education, health, and a range of other factors that influence experience. But those discussions are not for Bolt to arbitrate - nor is it for him to decide who is 'more deserving' or 'most appropriate' within Aboriginal communities. Despite the clear sense one gets that Bolt believes he is doing a public service by 'outing' white Aborigines, the premise for his actions is misplaced and, as Mordecai has found, racist. 


In contrast, Langton makes the basis for an Aboriginal politics plain. 


'We don't have to agree with every one of them [the litigants]; we don't have to like each one of them, but none of them deserve the ugly scorn and race hate of Bolt's columns in the Herald Sun'.



The boundary lines in Langton's argument are clear - Aboriginality is not one thing. Aboriginal people and communities are diverse. Indeed Aboriginal communities, like any other community on earth, will host discussions, disagreements, and divisions. However these communities, including the litigants, are united in the face of adversity by the consequences of an illegal invasion and acts of discrimination and oppression that impact their daily lives. Bolt's columns undermine his own argument in this respect. Clearly these litigants did not escape the pitfalls of Aboriginality because it is for the very reason of their Aboriginality (as Mordecai found) that they were singled out for criticism. And as Langton so astutely observes, it confounds the 'common sense' of many dominant representations that these litigants have prevailed in their various areas of expertise despite their identification as Aboriginal.