History of Australian racism

What's the myth of the Eureka stockade being racist? My school never mentioned racism in relation to the Eureka stockade in the first place. I'm curious.

Did we dispossess the Indigenous population I thought the problem was that we tried to Westernise them and stop them from being free - or dispossessed in a way...?

bsolah said:

Some people claim that the miners were racist by calling for the expulsion of Chinese miners. But the truth is that the politicians passed a tax on Chinese miners after the stockade but not because of the stockade. The miners were in fact about uniting nationalities and against the rich. There's more details but I need books for that.

Click to expand...

Wow - hadn't heard that bit - just the bit about the miners vs the rich. Thanks for the insight.

bsolah said:

The dispossession was when the First Fleet landed and the white men killed off millions of indigenous people. The Westernization came after, with stealing the children of the rest of them.

Click to expand...

Ah, the murdering bit. Gotcha.

You might find something here...

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/

bsolah said:

The dispossession was when the First Fleet landed and the white men killed off millions of indigenous people. The Westernization came after, with stealing the children of the rest of them.

Click to expand...

There weren't "millions" of indigenous people. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle wouldn't have supported that many.

As for killing them off, measles, smallpox and other communicable diseases were the main cause: they were less likely to kill the Europeans because they were from an area where the diseases were endemic. Hitting a virgin, genetically similar population like the Amerinds and Australians they took off like wildfire.

You've got an amazing resource right at Melbourne, in the public library archives. I licensed photos and oral histories from them years ago for CD-ROM.

Also look for a book, with casette tapes, or a CD-ROM called:

Long Time Olden Time.

Some things to Google:

massacres
Hodgson Downs
Tipinpa
Wajinpulungk

Actually...

people of my grandfather's generation talk of the hunting parties where they shot abos/darkies/black boys. This was Tasmania and it is true that natives were hunted like animals and shot on a regular basis there.

In the 1970s when I was in Alice Springs the taxi drivers used to try and 'collect an abo'.

You might want to put the history in context with other countries as a comparison. Given the embarrassingly bloody history of almost every nation on earth, it is impressive that anybody on this planet is reasonable!!

If you don't do this, it ends up implying that this particular country was racist compared to others, rather than being a terrible case of being the status quo of a very sad era. For example, the English (where we inherited many of our traditions) were sadly worse in that period of history .

Obviously the most famous Marxist work on Racism in that area is http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/...alians - Social conditions"&offset=17&max=436

To be fair, however, the Marxists in Australian History were also very sexist as well as racist - it seems to have been an 'everyone but us' attitude that was prevalent in the Aussie Communist Party - which some might argue is the total opposite of Marxist theory indicates, but sometimes the practise is quite different to theory!

Check out: "Women and the Communist Party of Australia (1920-1945)". Link: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~griff52/Women and CP.rtf

Funnily enough, even though the Marxists and labour movement in Australian history were very racist elements, there were some impressive exceptions. For example, the Shearer's Union in the 1890s fought against excluding Aboriginals, and proposed that they only be charged half the normal union fees due to their terrible living conditions.

Post WW I was a fascinating time for figuring out what race and nationality meant to Australia. An obvious example of this was Billy Hughe's objection to the 'Japanese racial equality proposal' in the 1919 Paris treaty that would recognise that the Japanese were racially equal to the Whites.

1919 also saw an interesting debate as to what 'Australian' really meant. Some 2nd generation Australians were deported to Germany after World War I because they were officially classed as 'German' ... they didn't speak of word of German, nor did their parents, who had never been outside of Australia. Their offences seemed to be because they were (shock, horror) German CATHOLICS, which seemed to be worse than simply being German.

The language of the time was largely describing our country as being 'British' rather than being 'Australian'.

I'd hate that some casual readers of this thread scan a few words and come to the conclusion that 'Australia = Racist', which is far,far from the truth. (Remember that Pauline Hanson, as of a week or so ago, only had 8 people following her twitter feed and had lost her seat in Parliament)

Good luck - this is a fascinating subject.

Mac

A couple of publishers I found in last year's Writers Market:

ABC Books
Acer Press
Acland Press
Aiatsis Aboriginal Studies Press
Black Ink Press
Indra Press
Magabala Books
And, of course, the National Archives of Australia

These may or may not be any help in finding what you are looking for!

I am not a Marxist (yet) but am reading up on the same topic at the moment, researching my historical novel, which takes place on the far north Queensland frontier. Any book by Henry Reynolds is worth the reading. He was my first year politics lecturer, the year before the Mabo decision came out (it was exciting to be a law student that year!).

Another book I am finding very useful is The Secret War: A True History of Queensland's Native Police, by Jonathan Richards. It not only looks at the official police records, but also explains the cover up of the abominations that went on right up until the 1900's. The author has used oral history as well as written, which adds a degree of balance, by giving voice to those who were ignored at the time.

I am researching a particular incident and a very specific time period and place, but I have been surprised at how much material I have managed to find. Good luck with your research!

Emma (in Brisbane)