An Examination of the Significance of the Concept of Internalised Racism in the Contemporary Australian Zeitgeist
Adam Z. Seet B.SocScCoun (ACU), M.Coun (Monash), GradDip.EdRes (Monash) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9563-9346
This thesis is submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date submitted: 30th November 2020
Melbourne Graduate School of Education The University of Melbourne
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Abstract
This study investigates the usefulness of the concept of internalised racism (IR) in
understanding issues of racism in contemporary Australian society. It does so via the lived
experiences of 1.5 and 2nd generation Australians of East and Southeast Asian descent. The
research consisted of multiple semi-structured interviews discussing experiences of racialisation and racism with each of the 17 participants. The study aimed to both utilise the concept of IR to understand the lived-experiences of the participants, and to determine how it could be revised for salience in the contemporary zeitgeist.
Through the analysis of participants’ lived experiences, the study demonstrates that the concept
of IR, whilst contested within the extant race scholarship, is nevertheless integral to
understanding the structural impact of racism within the narratives. As such, in order to retain
the concept of IR for contemporary salience, it needed to be revised to account for both
psychological and sociological dimensions. Subsequently, the study demonstrated how
revising the concept of IR impacts current dominant forms of anti-racist praxis. By
acknowledging these limitations, the revised and rearticulated concept of IR was then applied
to the narratives again to demonstrate its utility in better understanding contemporary
experiences of racism.
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Declaration
i. This thesis comprises only my original work toward the PhD;
ii. Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used;
iii. The thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables,
bibliographies, and appendices.
Signed…………………………………………………………………………………………..
Date……………………………………………………………………………………………..30th November 2020
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Preface
The research upon which this thesis is based was supported by an Australian Government Research
Training Program Scholarship (RTS).
Some of the chapters compiled in this thesis have been published elsewhere. Part of Chapters 2 and 4 appeared in a Youth Research Centre online report at the University of Melbourne in 2018. Part of
Chapter 2 was published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies in 2019. Part of Chapter 3 was published with Ethnicities in 2021. A version of Chapter 6 was published in the Journal of Sociology in 2019. A version of Chapter 7 was published in the Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal in 2020, and an extended version was published with the Journal of Sociology in 2021. A version of Chapter 8 was published as part of a special issue in the Journal of Intercultural Studies in 2020.
A full list of publications by the author that occurred during the duration of candidature is reflected below. Of publications that were co-authored, the author contributed to more than 80% of the overall work and original contribution.
Seet, A. Z. (2018). Researching Race, Racism, And Internalised Racism in Australia. In H. Cuervo &
J. Chesters (Eds.), Researching young lives: Methodologies, methods, practices and
perspectives in youth studies (Volume No. 2). Retrieved from
https://education.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2925770/MGSE-
ResearchingYoungLives_Vol2.pdf
Seet, A. Z., & Paradies, Y. (2018). Silenced Realities: The Significance of the "Old Racism" In
Contemporary Australian Society. Journal of Australian Studies, 42(4), 445-460.
doi:10.1080/14443058.2018.1528293
Seet, A. Z. (2019). Racialised Self-Marketisation: The Importance of Accounting for Neoliberal
Rationality Within Manifestations of Internalised Racism. Journal of Intercultural Studies,
40(2), 155-171. doi:10.1080/07256868.2019.1577227
Seet, A. Z. (2019). Serving the White Nation: Bringing Internalised Racism Within A Sociological
Understanding. Journal of Sociology, 1-18. doi:10.1177/1440783319882087 v
Seet A. Z. (2020). Divide and Conquer: Gendered Divisions Within the Process of Internalised
Racism. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 41(6), 677-693.
doi:10.1080/07256868.2020.1831458
Seet A. Z. (2020). Surviving the Survival Narrative Part 1: Internalised Racism and the Limits of
Resistance. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, 12(2-3), 179-193.
doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v12.i2.7154
Seet A. Z., & Paradies, Y. (2021). Surviving the Survival Narrative Part 2: Internalised Racism and
Whiteness-As-Utility. Journal of Sociology, 1-18. doi:10.1177/1440783321992859
Seet A. Z., & Zhao, A. (2021). The Paradox of Whiteness: Neoliberal Multiculturalism and The Case
of Chinese International Students in Australia. Ethnicities, 1-23.
doi:10/1177/1468796821991619
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to my supervisor Professor Fazal Rizvi for his valuable philosophical insights on the entirety of the thesis, without which it could not have been written. Likewise, to my supervisor Professor
Ghassan Hage, for his theoretical brilliance, and works of which I have been a close study of, often allowing it to influence my theoretical conceptualisations within this thesis.
I would also like to thank the following people:
To all of my participants, for their time and interest in the project, without which it could not be possible.
To Professor Yin Paradies, for his intellectual guidance and excellent advice in the initial stage of the project, and subsequently providing keen insights of various pieces I have written. To Ms Hannah
Garden, who has read everything I have written, and has had to endure countless hours of listening to my ideas in (arduous) conversation. To my uncle, Mr Muhammad Zaki bin Abdul Jalil, for first facilitating my intellectual journey into postcolonial thought.
To Professor Helen Cahill, Professor Elizabeth McKinley, Dr Jessica Walton, Dr Sophie Rudolph, Dr
Xinyu (Andy) Zhao, and Ms Claudine Lam, for having contributed in their own way to aspects of the project, either by providing theoretical advice, or by indulging me in conversations and hours of jouissance.
And last, a message from a loving son. To Safiyah binte Jalil, my mother, I dedicate this thesis to you. May its completion be emblematic of the courage, resilience, and patience you exemplify. They are virtues you have imparted to me through your words and actions for 29 years, which I continue striving to embody. And they are the virtues you will undoubtedly use in continuing your battle with cancer. In even the deepest despair, one finds time for pause; though I weep for a life to be spared, may my strength mirror yours. vii
Table of Contents
Abstract ...... ii Declaration...... iii Preface ...... iv Acknowledgements ...... vi Table of Contents ...... vii Chapter 1: Introduction to an Examination of the Significance of the Concept of Internalised Racism in the Contemporary Australian Zeitgeist ...... 1 What is Internalised Racism? ...... 5 Criticisms of the Concept ...... 9 The Research Site ...... 10 Tools for Studying IR ...... 16 Thesis Structure ...... 20 Chapter 2: Conceptualising Race and Internalised Racism ...... 24 Conceptualising Race: An Anti-Realist Perspective ...... 26 Origins of the Concept of Racism ...... 27 Racism as Individual Prejudice ...... 28 Racism as Institutional/ Structural Phenomenon ...... 30 The Three Forms of Racism ...... 33 Internalised Racism: Contestable Definitions ...... 35 Aetiological Considerations of IR: A Postcolonial Perspective ...... 40 Criticisms of the Concept of IR ...... 45 Importance of Studying IR...... 49 Conclusion ...... 54 Chapter 3: Alien Australians and Internalised Racism: A Sociohistorical Analysis of ‘the Asian’ in Australia ...... 56 Aliens/ Asians in Australia: An Historical Perspective ...... 57 The Colonial Period (1788 – 1901): Need for an Imperial Workforce ...... 59 White Australia (1900s – 1970s): Managing the Menace ...... 61 Multicultural Australia (1970s – Current): Asian Taste with a White Face ...... 63 Contemporary Experiences of Racism towards Asian Australians ...... 68 The Channels That Shape Our Racialised Realities: Perpetuating White Supremacist Ideology ...... 70 Ideology in the Media ...... 71 viii
Ideology and Pedagogy ...... 76 Ideology and Social Groups ...... 80 IR Amongst Asians in Western Societies ...... 84 Impact on Acculturation and Ethnic Identity Development ...... 85 Internalising White Norms of Attractiveness ...... 87 Impact on Relationships: Racialising Romantic Preferences ...... 91 Internalising Colour-Blind Racial Ideology (CBRI) ...... 96 Conclusion ...... 99 Chapter 4: Methodology ...... 101 Racialisation and the Construction of Racialised Knowledge ...... 104 Participants ...... 106 Towards Decolonised Terminology: Thoughts on Asian Australian Subjectivity ...... 107 Selection Strategy and Procedure ...... 109 Number of Participants ...... 110 Participant Demographics ...... 112 Data Generation ...... 114 Usefulness of the Narrative ...... 115 Process and Procedure: Utilising Semi-Structured Interviews ...... 117 Interview Protocol ...... 119 Researcher Positionality ...... 123 Data Analysis ...... 126 Stage 1: Preliminary Exploratory Analysis ...... 127 Stage 2: Analysis Proper ...... 127 Regarding Rigour ...... 138 Conclusion ...... 139 Chapter 5: Of the Racialised Intermediary: Racialised Positioning, Susceptibility to Internalising Racialised Ideology, and the Denial of Racism ...... 141 Internalising ‘Colour Blindness’: Denying Racism and the Curtailment of the Racialised Linguistic Register ...... 144 Invisibilising the Racialised Order and the Inadvertent Allocation of Racialised Blame ...... 152 The Racialised Positioning of Asians in Australia ...... 160 State of Passivity: Resilience without Resistance ...... 169 Conclusion: The Racialised Intermediary and the Maintenance of Racial Inequality ...... 174 Chapter 6: Serving the White Nation: Bringing Internalised Racism within a Sociological Understanding ...... 178 Racialised Subordinated Positionality and the White National Order ...... 179 ix
Racialised Inhabiting of a White Nation Fantasy and the Internalisation of Functional Belonging ...... 184 Affective Investment in Racialised Nationalism and the Sense of Possibility ...... 187 Addressing the Limitations in Current Understandings of IR ...... 193 Conclusion ...... 197 Chapter 7: Surviving the Survival Narrative: Internalised Racism and the (Political) Limitations of Resistance ...... 199 The Racialised Resistor: On the Politicisation of Racialised Identity ...... 200 Conscious Renouncing ...... 203 Inadvertent Complicity ...... 208 Non-Resistance ...... 216 IR and the Grand Narrative of Resistance ...... 218 Conclusion ...... 223 Chapter 8: Divide and Conquer: Gendered Division within the Process of Internalising Racist Ideology ...... 225 Engendering Nationalism: Patriarchal Nation-Building of the White Nation ...... 226 Internalising Gendered Functional Belonging: The Desire of White (Patriarchal) Approval ...... 229 Internalising Racialised Aversion: The Symbolic Eradication of the Racialised Counter-Will ...... 238 Divide and Conquer: IR’s Fracturing of the Subject and Community ...... 247 Conclusion ...... 253 Chapter 9: Recovering the Concept of IR ...... 255 Insights from the Research ...... 255 Illustrating the Utility of the Concept ...... 258 Conclusion ...... 261 References ...... 263 Appendices ...... 297 Appendix A: Participation Notice ...... 297 Appendix B: Plain Language Statement and Consent Form (PLSCF) ...... 298 Appendix C: Example of SOAP Notes ...... 302
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Chapter 1: Introduction to an Examination of the Significance of the Concept of
Internalised Racism in the Contemporary Australian Zeitgeist
“You don’t keep sideburns”, the man said, advising his son earnestly almost as a way
of preparing him for the world he would soon have to navigate. “We don’t have ang
moh kind of hair that sticks to the head”. Speaking with an authority a father
commanded, as he traced the outline of the side of his face with his index finger, the
man continued, “Our hair is not nice. Must keep it short.”
This dissertation is the product of many years of thought and reflection spent pondering upon what I have come to know as the phenomenon of internalised racism (IR). The work undertaken here can be seen as marking the cumulation of experiences that have fixed themselves upon me, demanding engagement, and explanation. For better or worse, my sustained preoccupation with this matter has led me to this study which, in part, is an exploration of, and a response to, my own relationship with the phenomenon.
Although there are variations in conceptualising the phenomenon which I examine later, IR is a term utilised within contemporary race scholarship to primarily refer to a racialised person or subject’s relationship with racism, or racist ideology, on an individual level. Briefly, it is where the racialised subject adopts the racialised (and often racist) beliefs and worldviews of the dominant group about themselves. As shall be seen within the extant literature, this can lead to a variation of (negative) impacts upon the racialised individual and group. The effect of IR often leads to a racialised subject’s inferiorised and devalued sense of self and/or group.
Drawing upon my own personal relationship with this phenomenon, I will provide two examples to illustrate how it can manifest. This will help to clarify the object of analysis at the onset. Yet, I do this not only for purposes of clarity, but to also demonstrate the kinds of experiences (of which there are many) that have predisposed me to sustain an intellectual interest with this subject matter. 2
The excerpt provided at the beginning is a narrativised version of a particular instance in my
childhood, where my father unknowingly, and I should add with the best of intentions, endorsed
and imparted a discourse so central to this study. This dynamic was emblematic of the racial
socialisation (cf. Juang, Shen, Kim, & Wang, 2016) that has come to be such an integral part
of the lives of the racialised in predominantly White Western societies. For those not versatile
with the Singaporean vernacular, what he communicated to me, in essence, was a lesson on the
importance of keeping oneself presentable in public. Hair length was of course part of this form
of (masculinised) presentation, and the standard by which he measured this aspect of decorum
was an “ang moh” standard, a common Singaporean term of reference that indicated a
White/Caucasian-looking person. ‘Asian’ sideburns were not presentable, at least not compared to one made possible by a European phenotype. And yet, it was also my father,
perhaps as another exercise in racial socialisation, who helped marked the significance of
European coloniality for me in understanding the dynamics of IR. Through remarks in passing,
always made with the same derisive inflection, on how “wherever the British went, their
architecture was all the same”, or how “ang moh always think they’re better than you – this is world we live in”, or that “you have to be three times better than them to succeed”, he alluded to the underlying contempt that the inscrutable Asiatic, the savage Hottentot, and the furtive
Semite all perhaps bore toward their unsuspecting Occidental counterparts. As such, taken together, I wondered how the racialised could both have a wider (socio-historical) understanding of the effects of Eurocentric racism as a result of post-coloniality, yet still subscribe to aspects of its ideological framework. How was it that both an underlying contempt for the colonial mechanism (and its archetypal “ang moh” representative) and an inferiorised sense of self, one cultivated through the aforementioned framework, coexist within the same purview? The insidiousness of the phenomenon was made all the more salient when I realised that racialised and racist ideologies could impact how the racialised related to each other. 3
On a night out in one of the many nightclub districts in Melbourne, I was walking with a group of acquaintances. Perhaps in a typically hyper-masculinised fashion, one of my (White) acquaintances decided to approach a passing group of girls with a boisterous and untactful line of inquisition. “Are you into Asians?”, he asked loudly and in jest, referring obviously to me, the only ‘Asian’ amidst a sea of White faces. “Eww!” shrilled one of the girls in response, “I don’t date Asians!” Strange, I thought. How strange that she was ‘Asian’ too. But this was, of course, a common experience. It was not lost on me that both the provoking question and the habitualised response involved a racialised and gendered dimension. It was the idea of Asian maleness, after all, that invoked what seemed like the expression of visceral disgust.
Affectively, although I felt the flood of shame, the low romantic-sexual capital that Asian maleness carried within this scene was perhaps common knowledge. Overt racism in this sense was, for better or worse, normalised. Indeed, I was old enough to be explicitly aware of the heavily racialised milieu that marked the clubbing/dating scene, at least in White Western contexts (cf. Caluya, 2008; Riggs, 2013; Rafalow, Feliciano, & Robnett, 2017). And yet, the issue was not simply having one’s racialised meaning arrive on the scene before one does, so to speak, the effect of being overdetermined that Frantz Fanon (1967 [1952]) so wonderfully describes. That is, it was not the shame of being ‘Asian’ per se, nor specifically what an Asian male meant in this milieu. Rather, what was particularly salient was remembering the feeling of overwhelming confusion, sparked by a sense of incredulity as I pondered upon the nature of these racialised and sexualised dynamics. How could an Asian woman find an Asian man repulsive on the fact of his Asian-ness? And yet this line of inquiry was rife with contradictions and further confusion. Was it incorrect, I wondered, to assume that an ‘Asian’ woman would be the ‘natural’ romantic partner of an ‘Asian’ man, as least generally speaking? But what then of the homogenised and racialised nature of this thought? Was this racist? Or was this sexist, if this supposedly signified (an ethnic) male’s entitlement to (ethnic) women? These thoughts, 4
drawn upon other similar experiences, enacted a centrifugal force upon the psyche. As I pondered upon these experiences, I found there was no reprieve in silent reflection. The shame and confusion only grew.
“I have often noted”, writes Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage (2009), “that racism works in such a way that it actually aims to ‘shatter’ those who are subjected to it. How much it can shatter the racialized subject will depend on the social and cultural resources that this subject has available to it in its effort to reconstitute itself, to ‘pull itself together’” (p. 68-69).
I interpret the shame and confusion captured in the above narrative as the affective component of efforts in psychic self-constitution, in the face of the shattering impact of realising that one’s
(gendered) racialisation could evoke such visceral disgust. And indeed, this effect was amplified when such a reaction was seen to be evoked from one’s co-ethnics. Revealingly, however, I think the two examples above are suggestive of the various ways in which racist ideology can be transmitted by racialised folks, who themselves embody manifestations of IR.
As demonstrated, this can either be through a devaluation of one’s self (i.e. phenotypical hair growth), or of one’s group/ co-ethnics (i.e. racialised romantic/sexual aversion). Importantly, the reflection that went along with acknowledging the racism experienced, led me to reflect upon whether or not I was in some sense lacking as a result of my racialisation. Shame, it seemed marked the transmission of the dynamic of IR. Perhaps affectively, the fracturing of one’s sense of self is already indicative of an acceptance, however partial, of the hegemonic weight of racist ‘truths’ enacted upon my epistemological and ontological schema.
It was thus that this collection of personalised experiences with manifestations of the phenomenon, both within myself and noticed in others, began to occupy a significant part of my contemplations. This work, then, is perhaps a step towards engendering a sense of finality by way of seeking closure to the long hours of deep reflection, sometimes marked by optimism, sometimes hopelessness. As illusory as the notion of finality may be in this case, the conduct 5
of this project has nevertheless afforded me brief moments of clarity in thought. And it has, in some sense, acted as a panacea towards the affective effects of the shattering, in attempts to
‘pull myself together’. I wish to share the result of my sustained engagement with this subject matter, which can perhaps offer some insight for others who find themselves in similar circumstances.
This intellectual engagement begins with first tracing both the historical utilisation of IR as a concept and phenomenon.
What is Internalised Racism?
In a broad sense, the utilisation of the terms internalised racism, internalised racial oppression, or more generally, internalised oppression within the scholarly literature refers to the acceptance or inculcation of racist ideology by a member of a subordinated racialised group.
Conceptually, these terms derive from a political position that draws upon both Marxist and
Lacanian thought. For instance, embedded within Marxist theory, György Lukács’ (1971
[1968]) suggested that there existed forms of working class-based consciousness that were
‘false’. This produced rationalisations that caused them to work against their own interests (or rather, for the primary interests of the bourgeoisie). This is reminiscent of Lacan’s (1960) psychoanalytical understanding of a desiring subject. As he understands the subject to be always fractured (non-unitary fragments that constitute the ‘I’), one’s desire comes not from what one wants, but rather what one wants as it inhabits the position of ‘its other’. It is upon these philosophical roots that the concept of IR is built upon.
Historically, IR as a concept was utilised to study the impacts of racist ideology upon Black
Americans in particular. For instance, Suzanne Lipsky (1977) was one of the first scholars to utilise this term (utilising both internalised racism and internalised oppression interchangeably) to describe the phenomenon. In an article titled “Internalized Oppression”, 6
she defines and explains the concept, inter alia, as an act of “turning upon ourselves, upon our families, and upon our own people the distress patterns that result from the racism and oppression of the majority society” (p. 145). Lipsky understands the phenomenon as “the primary means by which we have been forced to perpetuate and ‘agree’ to our own oppression”
(p. 144). This understanding was developed as part of counselling (psychological) practice, to counteract the effects of racism as it impacted upon the psyche of Black Americans, in particular. As such, there has always been a political application toward the concept of IR with a transformative purpose of, as Lipsky puts it, the “black liberation effort” (p. 144). In a similar vein, and given the North American context within which these forms of scholarship were situated, bell hooks (1995) prefers the term “internalized White supremacy”, to target the underlying ideological framework that Black Americans inculcated within their worldview.
Given its historicity, scholarship on IR tends to be situated within psychological scholarship
(i.e. Taylor, 1990; David & Okazaki, 2006; Shen, Wang, & Swanson, 2011; Hatter-Fisher &
Harper, 2017), although more recently has begun to be orientated towards sociological research
(i.e. Tappan, 2006; Trieu & Lee, 2018). Whilst scholarship still primarily focuses on Black
Americans, other racialised groups in the North American context have also been studied, albeit to a lesser degree. Extant research has demonstrated the salience of IR within communities such as the First Nation peoples of the Americas (i.e. Poupart, 2003), Latinx Americans (i.e.
Padilla 2001; Hipolito-Delgado, 2010), and Asian Americans (i.e. Pyke & Dang, 2003).
Although relatively less studied, extant research demonstrates the wide range of negative impacts upon racialised individuals and communities that have been correlated with IR. At least in the North American context, Brown and Segrist (2015) have demonstrated how IR is correlated with lowered career expectations amongst Black Americans. Poupart (2003) suggests the prevalence of domestic violence in Native American communities can be seen as an internalisation of colonial oppression and violence. Padilla (2001) demonstrates how IR 7
correlates with Latinx Americans acceptance of negative stereotypes about themselves,
harbouring negative attitudes toward Latinx migrant labour. Although the above impacts are
numerous, the psychological impact of IR has been linked to depressive symptoms across
various racialised groups (i.e. Taylor, Henderson, & Jackson, 1991; Poupart, 2003), negative
acculturation and ethnic identity development (i.e. Leong & Chou, 1994; Farver, Narang, &
Bhadha, 2002; Hipolito-Delgado, 2016), and other stress-related symptoms (i.e. Butler, Tull,
Chambers, & Taylor, 2002; Lu & Wong, 2013). More recently, Abdel-Fattah (2017)
demonstrates how the contemporary White Western gaze upon those racialised as
‘Arab/Muslim’ within contemporary Australian society have led to internalised Islamophobia
amongst members of this group. This leads some Muslim Australians to implicitly accept
responsibility for acts of Islamist terrorism, and are sympathetic with the view that their
racialised groups deserve racist treatment from wider society.
Whilst the above demonstrates the historical utilisation of IR as a concept within forms of
scholarship, it also highlights a phenomenon that has had a much longer prevalence in scholarly thought. Colonised mentality (David & Okazaki, 2006), for instance, is another term utilised to study the phenomenon of IR. This suggests the connection between White supremacist ideology and Eurocentric colonialist ideology. As an influential text in postcolonial studies,
Frantz Fanon’s (1967 [1952]) Black Skins, White Masks highlighted the salience of an institutionalised form of Eurocentrism borne through European colonialism. He demonstrated, inter alia, the experience of a Black body and what it meant in a White world. This highlighted the significance of Eurocentric racism manifested as a White Western supremacist epistemological frame, one which could be inculcated within the colonised subject. Other influential postcolonial texts also captured how the imperialist colonial machine enacted its violence symbolically upon colonised populations. It was Albert Memmi (2003 [1957]), for instance, who suggested that part of the colonial mechanism mirrored an inferiorised image of 8
the colonised back to themselves. I therefore utilised the postcolonial literature to understand
both the salience of hegemonic ideology as a colonial tool, and the aetiological roots of White
supremacist ideology. This is especially apt for my focus on Australian society. As a settler-
colonial nation-state, it has its foundation through acts of British colonisation (Hage, 1998), of
which the subsequent racialised (and racist) institutionalised policies (see Immigration
Restriction Act 1901) have contemporary impacts upon society and its subjects.
For the purposes of the current study, I canvassed the extant literature, alluded to above, to
derive a working definition of IR. I did this first to clarify the conceptual parameters of the
phenomenon. In this regard, I utilised Paradies’ (2006) conceptualisation of racism as having
three interconnected forms; (1) a structural, (2) an interpersonal, and (3) an internalised
dimension. I located my focus within (3) whereby racism is experienced as inherently a
subjective phenomenon (i.e. ‘within’ the individual). This differs from, say, the racialised
subject’s experience of an act of overt racism being directed towards them from an external
party, which would be described in (2). Second, I found the varying definitions within the
literature to be individually informative but incomplete. In drawing on multiple definitions, I
understood the phenomenon to be an effect of the racialised subject’s inculcation of dominant
racialised and racist ideology within their own worldview, which leads to “feelings of self-
doubt, disgust and disrespect for one’s race and/or oneself” (Pyke, 2010b, p. 553), and can
manifest covertly without the conscious awareness of the subject (Padilla, 2001). It can be
attributed to the racialised and racist structures of society (Tappan, 2006), but once internalised
can cause the racialised subject to perpetuate the same racist ideology (Salzman & Laenui,
2014). I expand upon this more in Chapter 2.
Despite what the above scholars would consider as an integral dynamic for race scholars to account for within anti-racism research, the concept of IR does seem to present a tension for anti-racist praxis. The concept has raised several important problems within race scholarship, 9
and these have potentially served as a potential bulwark against a wider focus on the phenomenon. In the following section, I briefly describe the main critiques sustained against
IR as a concept.
Criticisms of the Concept
One key understanding of the extant literature on IR is how the internalisation of racist ideology amongst racialised subjects serves to maintain a racialised and racist system (Pyke,
2010b). Perhaps concerningly, then, recent studies have suggested that IR tends to be a lesser studied phenomenon within psychological (Speight, 2007) and sociological (Pyke, 2010b) forms of race-related research.
Sociologist Karen Pyke (2010b) has identified reasons for a seeming hesitancy amongst the academic community toward sustaining a focus upon IR as a phenomenon. One reason is derived from a fear that engaging with IR as a concept will effect a slippery slope that leads to victim blaming. Pyke demonstrates how the hesitancy towards studying the phenomenon of IR within sociological research concerns an overarching misconception that studying and therefore recognising the salience of IR would inevitability suggest some inherent “ignorance, inferiority, psychological defect, gullibility or other shortcoming” (p. 553), in biological makeup or essence, on the part of the racialised. This suggests the importance of accounting for the “politics of knowledge” (Pyke, 2010b, p. 552), that is, to perform our due diligence as race researchers in ensuring that study on IR does not cause further detriment to structurally disadvantaged groups, or to act in opposition to anti-racism objectives.
Beyond this, however, are the critiques mounted against the philosophical foundations upon which the concept of IR rests. In particular, since its theorisation by Marxist philosopher
György Lukács (1971 [1968]), the notion of false consciousness has been a contested concept.
It can be defined as “the holding of false beliefs that are contrary to one’s social interest and 10
which thereby contribute to the disadvantaged position of the self or the group” (Jost, 1995, p.
397). Lukes (2011), in his own defence of the concept, has highlighted the objections against
the notion of false consciousness, which he suggests tends to come in two primary forms. The
first concerns the idea that the “true” interests of a subject are somehow knowable by an
external party who claims superior knowledge. In this sense, the claim that one has privileged
access to a higher moral truth is one that becomes difficult to sustain epistemologically. Second
is the objection that there could be any ‘true’ strain of consciousness, seeing as there are
multiple consciousnesses that coexist. On this postmodern view, the ascribing of false
consciousness to another party becomes the imposition of another epistemological
perspectivism, with the latter too being a product of power. Whilst Lukes does mount a defence
of the concept, this nevertheless demonstrates the complexity of understanding the concept of
IR.
The critiques above were important to consider as they helped to render moot any simplistic
understanding of IR. They also offered potential reasons for why there is a lacuna of IR-related research in the extant literature. This is not only amongst the general race-scholarship, but specific to the Australian race scholarly oeuvre, where IR-related studies are almost non- existent. As such, in light of the criticisms, I wanted to consider if the notion of IR still had contemporary salience, especially within the contemporary Australian zeitgeist. To what extent was the concept theoretically useful in helping to explain the racialised dynamics and mechanisms embedded within existing structures? Was it worth undergoing a ‘revival’ of sorts that would instil a more serious and sustained intellectual focus on IR within race scholarship?
The Research Site
Recognising the contestability of the concept through its critiques demonstrates that for some, the concept of IR is a futile notion. Either it has become outmoded, or else too problematic for anti-racist praxis to sustain a focus upon. Others have adopted it wholesale, 11
demonstrating the concept’s utility within the plethora of psychological studies. Here, research
suggests a positive correlation of IR with negative wellbeing for racialised subjects (see above).
Throughout this project, I have assumed the position of the middle ground. I demonstrate that whilst the concept has utility, it nevertheless needs to be built upon for applicability within the contemporary zeitgeist. As such, I turn to describing the local context in which the research project is situated. It is through this understanding that the questions, which directed the focus of the current study, can be better articulated.
The extant literature demonstrates the historical prevalence of racialised discrimination since
European colonialism and settlement of Australia (i.e. Riggs & Augoustinous, 2005). More importantly, social and political commentators have begun devoting attention to the contemporary rise of White nationalism in predominantly White Western liberal democratic nation-states (i.e. Elliot, 2018; Sanchez, 2018). This is especially so for the settler-colonial
CANZUS nations, of which Australia is a part (i.e. Johns, 2017). Australian researchers Khoo and Kwok (2017) have identified what they term Australia’s hyper-nationalist phase to categorise the contemporary zeitgeist. Held against a more ‘multicultural’ conceptualisation of ethno-racial diversity, it is one wherein the rhetoric of political leaders utilise pro-White ideologies whether covertly through appeals to “patriotism” or “heritage” (Sanchez, 2018), or overtly through celebrating “White identity” or cultivating a sense of “White pride” (Hartzell,
2018). Whilst the issue of burgeoning White supremacist movements is evidently a rising global phenomenon, this project has a local focus that examines how this ideology is implicitly cultivated and proliferates within contemporary Australian society. As such, Ghassan Hage’s
(1998) thesis is appropriate in highlighting the dominant national imaginary of Australian national space, one racialised as a White Nation.
In White Nation, Hage (1998) describes how it is within the White national imaginary where those deemed “Third World-looking” (TWLP) are subordinated within a racialised national 12
order. In his conceptualisation, it is those recognised as Whites that are imbued with what he
terms governmental belonging, inculcating a greater sense of ownership over the nation. Yet
TWLP are not ostracised from this imaginary; on the contrary, they are relationally incorporated within the national order and imbued with a functional belonging to the nation.
That is, within the dominant White national imaginary, it is their service to the White nation
that primarily determines their belonging. However, given the national order’s reliance on
White supremacist ideology which effects a material and psychological supplanting of non-
Whites (cf. Soutphommasane, 2017), I wondered how and why racialised groups and
individuals would contribute to the maintenance of such a structure. Put simply, if a racialised
system was constructed for the predominant benefit of one group (i.e. Whites), what stake did
other racialised groups have in its continued maintenance? In this sense, it seemed that the widespread proliferation and subsequent internalisation of a White supremacist frame of reference could act as an explanation. That is, how could the concept of IR help explain the maintenance of this racialised structure across shifting zeitgeists? And perhaps more importantly, what was the significance of a group/individual’s racialised positioning within this order in relation to the internalisation of racist ideology?
Similar to literature in the North American context, the particular set of racist ideological tenets
I discuss is centred upon a White supremacist framework. This term is utilised in this thesis in its (sociological) scholarly variation to refer to a power structure that privileges a quality of
‘Whiteness’, however internally variated markers of this ‘Whiteness’ may be. The privileging of ‘Whiteness’ in a racialised hierarchy works to accrue more social, economic, political, and psychological benefits to social subjects that can claim recognition through having accrued its contemporary markers. Importantly, it can coexist with other power structures (i.e. gendered).
It is therefore not to be confused with individuals who may claim a White racial identity, or be identified as such, who individually may not be socially, economically, politically, or 13
psychologically privileged in comparison to other members of society. Conceptualising this
doctrine as an ideology meant that it could be held by everyone; not just by an essentialised
idea of a White subject. This aspect of the conceptualisation is important in recognising a
potential complicity that non-Whites have in the maintenance of such structures; that is, it is
integral to understanding the phenomenon of IR.
Further, within the extant literature that deals with how racialised subjects internalise racist ideology and its subsequent impacts, IR has been studied and understood primarily as a psychological phenomenon (Banks & Stephens, 2018). This has obvious limitations, whereby the focus (understandably) becomes how the phenomenon manifests for the individual, without explicitly accounting for the structures that perpetuate the racist ideology the first place. As such, there has been a recent call by some contemporary scholars to bring the concept of IR within a sociological understanding (i.e. Tappan, 2006; Pyke, 2010b; Banks & Stephens, 2018).
Taken together, these concerns are formalised below to demonstrate the core objectives that guided the focus of this project.
My personal experiences and observations, engagement with the scholarly literature, and recognition of the sociocultural shifts both globally and locally, suggested the potential importance of IR in helping to explain the maintenance and evolution of racialised and racist structures within contemporary Australian society. Given the widespread impacts on racialised groups and individuals, it seemed that any conceptual framing of racism that did not incorporate an understanding of IR would be incomplete at best, or counterproductive to the anti-racist efforts at worst. As such, I wanted to focus primarily on examining the function of IR as conceptualised within a wider construct (racism as a structure), and subsequently the sociological salience of IR as a theoretical concept derived primarily from within the psychological field. Therefore, the aim of this project was two-fold. First, to utilise the concept of IR in attempts to understand the phenomenon it purports to describe. Second, to 14
simultaneously interrogate the concept itself for better applicability within the contemporary zeitgeist.
To examine these areas, I first utilised the extant IR literature to acquire a foundational understanding of how the phenomenon had been conceptualised. To build upon this, I
recognised that any theoretical robustness of the concept of IR, if present, was to be found in
the data. As such, I took as my research site the ethno-cultural groups racialised as Asian within
contemporary Australian society. This is so for two primary reasons. First, although
importantly acknowledging the factors of causality attributable to the racialised and racist
structures of society, a critical interrogation of IR seemed to be best captured via how it
manifests within the lived experiences of racialised groups and individuals. I drew inspiration
here from studies such as, inter alia, Pyke and Dang’s (2003) research on Asian American
youths and their within-group othering, Kohli’s (2014) study on pre-service teachers of colour
and how IR may impact their occupational roles, and Trieu and Lee’s (2018) exploration of
how forms of critical consciousness help shift Asian Americans in and out of acts and
behaviours associated with IR. These studies highlighted the requirement for human
participants engaged in sustained discussion regarding issues of race and racism. This enabled
an in-depth examination of the various ways in which IR could manifest within their lived
experiences.
Second, my selection of Asian Australians in particular could be attributed to considerations
of researcher positionality. Although I understood that I am always already both ‘insider’ and
‘outsider’ in any dialectical situation, I had to contend with the salience of visual markers of
racialisation. Being physically marked as Asian did indeed have a significant impact on this
particular study. This was especially so given the study’s focus on issues of race and racism.
Sharing my own experiences of racism and manifestations of IR helped to build trust with
participants and acted as a lubricant for the sharing of their own lived experiences. It is what 15
Rita Kohli (2014) calls reciprocal vulnerability, describing a method of establishing rapport between researcher and participant. From within a racialised social structure, my recognition as an Asian subject positioned me as more ‘insider’ then ‘outsider’ when it came to such experiences of, say, anti-Asian sentiment. And yet importantly, I remained aware of the other
social dimensions which positioned me as ‘outsider’, say, with issues that emerged out of an
intersection of race and gender. To conceptualise the research site, I devote Chapter 3 to a
socio-historical examining of a constructed essentialised idea of the Asian within the dominant
Australian imaginary.
Accounting for the particularities of the research site, I refined my overarching research question formally as:
In what ways is the concept of internalised racism (IR) helpful in understanding the social experiences of racism, glimpsed through the lived experience of 1.5 and 2nd generation Australians of East and South East Asian ethnicity, in contemporary Australian society? Subsidiary questions were thereby crafted to reflect temporal and spatial specificity of the focus
group:
1. Given the current scholarly understanding of racism as a structural phenomenon, what
does the concept of IR tell us about how Asian Australian subjects are positioned
within it?
2. How can the concept of IR, with its origins in the field of psychology as an
individualised phenomenon, be understood usefully within a sociological context?
So far, I have introduced and defined the phenomenon of IR as the object of study, identified
Asian Australians as the research site, and explicated the questions that guided such an examination. In the next section, I turn to briefly explicate the conceptual framework that facilitated the methodological tools required for the project. 16
Tools for Studying IR
Thorough engagement with extant literature on IR, whilst primarily within a North
American context, was fundamental to building a foundational understanding of the
phenomenon. Yet these works, which demonstrated the widespread and varying impacts of IR
upon the racialised, also suggested the complexity inherent within the study of this
phenomenon. Were there differences, for instance, between adopting stereotypical ‘White’
behaviours for the purposes of survival within a racist society, and internalising one’s
inferiority? Despite its shared Eurocentric heritage, were there subtleties of Australian racism
that could not be captured in the North American literature? Given Australia’s closer
geographical proximity to Asia, were there constructions of the Asian that differed from the
North American context? Accounting for these potential nuances, the need for in-depth
participant narratives to be utilised became important considerations as a method of
supplementing the extant scholarly literature. Drawing on my personalised familiarity with the psychological impacts of Asian racialisation in contemporary Australian society bolstered by the extant scholarship (i.e. Alvarez, Juang, & Liang, 2006; Hollero, 2007), I sought to examine the phenomenon of IR through Asian Australian subjects, members of a heterogenous collection of various ethno-cultural groups.
In planning to study the phenomenon of IR, accounting for and analysing issues of race and racism became central to the study. To address these concerns, I drew on several (but not all) resources provided by the Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework for both reviewing the literature and constructing an appropriate methodology. This is because some key tenets within
CRT, that on a ‘stronger’ usage, do not allow the examination of a phenomenon that has covert dynamics (Padilla, 2001) amongst the racialised. That is, the internalisation of racist ideology by the racialised subject can exist within their worldview without their conscious awareness
(Speight, 2007). CRT analyses how the dynamics of race, racism, and power interrelate within 17
a racially oppressive society to shape the experiences of racialised groups and individuals
(Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). The ubiquity/normality of racism thesis, for instance, is an
example of a CRT tenet that benefited the current study. It suggests that racism/ racist ideology
is common to the experiences of the racialised within a racialised social structure. It was
therefore especially applicable to studying IR, since it allowed examination of any social
interaction for racialised dynamics, even if it could not be consciously acknowledged by
participants themselves. In particular, this was an important qualifier for analysing the data for
the implicit manifestations of IR.
Yet, there were aspects of the CRT framework that did not immediately have applicability for
the current study. In particular, following Hochman (2017), I adopted an interactionist
constructionist approach to the notion of race, or more specifically, racialised groups. It is one which is based on an anti-realist perspective of race, that is incongruent with CRT’s reliance on social constructionism. I therefore integrated this approach with the CRT framework for intellectual consistency with my views on race. Further, because of IR’s ability to manifest within a racialised subject on a subconscious level (Speight, 2007), I considered the implications of adopting CRT’s voice-of-colour thesis for applicability to the current study.
Because it is a racialised version of feminist standpoint epistemologies, one which confers upon the racialised subject an expert-status regarding issues of racialisation and experiences of racism, I adopted a ‘weaker’ version of this tenet. I discuss such concerns more thoroughly in
Chapter 4, where I explicate the methodological tools utilised for this project.
In examining how IR manifests, I took reference from Speight who advises that the phenomenon is “not so easy to see, to count, to measure” (p. 131). Although there have recently been scales developed to quantitively measure the prevalence of IR amongst racialised groups
(i.e. David & Okazaki, 2006; Campon & Carter, 2015; Choi, Israel, & Maeda 2017), I found that these psychometric measures were less useful for the focus group in the current study. 18
First, a vast majority of the measures were developed within a North American context, and as such, are more specific to the socio-historical and political construction of racialised groups that may differ from the Australian context. Second, the questionnaires tend to err toward measuring the overtly negative affect experienced by racialised individuals (i.e. “Whites are better at a lot of things than people of my race”; Campon & Carter, 2015, p. 501). Although this is understandable since negative impacts and affect are the typical forms of IR studied within the psychological literature, a wider (sociological) understanding was required for the purposes of this study. Tappan (2006), for instance, has argued that IR, or what he terms appropriated oppression, is more emblematic of how the oppressed learn to master the tools of the oppressors. This alludes to a wider understanding of IR, wherein the racialised subject inculcates a dominant frame of reference in which they are subordinated, beyond any impact to the subject, negative or otherwise. To bring IR within a sociological understanding, and for the purposes of examining how IR manifests within Asian Australians, I found that a qualitative research design was most suitable.
Pyke and Dang’s (2003) work was therefore applicable, suggesting that analysing participant narratives for manifestations of IR can be glimpsed through “the subtle process by which racial inequality shapes the way that the oppressed think of themselves and other members of their group” (p. 150). That is, the authors allude to how subconscious manifestations are one of the ways that IR can be captured in the narratives. One of the ways they achieve this was to apply
Feagin and Vera’s (1995) concept of sincere fictions, originally applied to White subjects (in turn borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu, 1977). This refers to a fabricated social belief (such as the intellectual superiority of Whites over Blacks, for instance) that maintains one’s structurally privileged social relation to others, through a masking of certain social and historical dimensions. It is sincere because many White subjects may truly be unaware of such socio- historical dimensions, and appear to believe in their fictionalised narratives about themselves 19
and/or the racialised other. Pyke and Dang (2003) demonstrate that similar sincere fictions can be glimpsed in the narratives of racialised subjects, indicative of manifestations of IR.
However, Kohli (2014) highlights that the fluidity of a subject’s social development renders it
“problematic to pathologize someone as embodying internalized racism” (p. 370). Rather, she recommends viewing the phenomenon of IR “as something complex and fluid in its manifestation” (p. 370). To address this, the current study deployed multiple consecutive interviews per participant to facilitate a broader understanding of their narratives which accounted for a wider variety of social factors and experiences. Given the multiplicity of interpretations possible within any analysis, I placed importance on my socio-historical contextualisation of Asian-ness within Australian historicity (see Chapter 4). Understanding the socio-historical and political construction of this racialised group directly impacted the study’s utilisation of sincere fictions as a concept to analyse the participants’ narratives. As such, through a qualitative methodological structure, I conducted 3 semi-structured interviews with narrative-based inquiry with each of the 17 Asian Australian participants in the study. Due to issues of availability, one participant could only be present for 2 interviews, generating a total of 50 interviews. I personally conducted, transcribed, and coded all interviews to familiarise myself with the generated data. Each compiled transcription was vetted by the participants themselves to ensure participant confidentiality and ethical conduct. This was important to only present data that participants’ were comfortable in sharing.
In utilising these methodological tools to conduct the study, I compiled my findings into several chapters which make up this dissertation (i.e. Chapters 5 – 8). I briefly describe the argument made in each chapter below. 20
Thesis Structure
In Chapter 2, Conceptualising Race and Internalised Racism, I explicate the conceptual
field within which the research project is situated. In particular, I define and explain how
concepts such as race, racialisation, and IR are interrelated but distinctly separate. By locating
the object of analysis within the latter category, I canvass the extant literature to draw together
a working definition of the phenomenon. I also demonstrate the salience of the postcolonial
scholarship in helping to understand the aetiological roots (i.e. European colonisation) of the
particular form of hegemonic ideology, what I have termed White supremacist ideology.
Subsequently, by examining the wide-ranging variability in how IR impacts racialised groups and individuals, I suggest how any study of racism that does not incorporate the dynamic of IR will be incomplete.
In having attended to a more general understanding of IR in the extant race literature, in Chapter
3, Alien Australians and Internalised Racism: A Sociohistorical Analysis of the Asian in
Australia, I shift focus toward the research site. I trace the socio-political and historical construction of the Asian in the dominant Australian imaginary since pre-federation. Through examining the dominant understandings of this racialised group across shifting zeitgeists, I demonstrate how a specific anti-Asian racism is experienced by members of this group.
Because of the lacunae in the extant literature on IR amongst Asian Australians, I draw on
Asian American research due to the racialised and cultural similarities between groups. I categorise the main effects of IR to provide a foundational understanding of how the phenomenon may manifest for the current study’s participants.
Chapter 4, Methodology, describes the methodological tools utilised to conduct the research. I focus here on describing the theoretical tools that would benefit the study design. This entails a detailed explication of the qualitative design of the study, its narrative-based inquiry, and semi-structured interview format. By interrogating these methodological tools, I demonstrate 21
their benefits for answering the overarching questions set out in this project. In doing so, I draw on the extant literature to formulate a semi-structured questionnaire to facilitate the generation of data with participants. Likewise, I reference previous research conducted upon Asian subjects within predominantly White Western social contexts to suggest how the generated data can be analysed for manifestations of IR.
The next four chapters utilise the generated data from the participants’ narratives, in conjunction with the extant literature, to respond to the subsidiary research questions.
In Chapter 5, Of the Racialised Intermediary: Racialised Positioning, Susceptibility to
Internalising Racialised Ideology, and the Denial of Racism, I demonstrate how the internalisation of a colour-blind racial ideology (CBRI) amongst Asian Australian subjects, as
a manifestation of IR, can be attributed to a specific racialised structural positioning. It is a
positioning accorded to the Asian, within the dominant national imaginary, where they are placed second to Whites but positioned ‘above’ other racialised groups (what I term racialised intermediaries). As suggested through the participants’ narratives, I demonstrate how IR has a significant role to play in engendering one’s interest in the maintenance of a racialised system, despite being structurally subordinated within it. I argue that it is due to their particular structural positioning as racialised intermediaries that members of this group develop an increased susceptibility towards internalising racist ideology.
After establishing the significance of IR as a phenomenon through having highlighted its embeddedness within the worldview of racialised subjects, I then turn to examine how the concept can be understood within the sociological field. In Chapter 6, Serving the White
Nation: Bringing Internalised Racism within a Sociological Understanding, I respond to the current call by race scholars to bring the concept of IR within the field of sociology. To do so,
I apply Ghassan Hage’s White Nation thesis to interpret the perspectives of the racialised 22
subject. Utilising this conceptual framing, I draw on the participants’ narratives to demonstrate
the limitations inherent within current definitions of IR. In particular, I demonstrate how
dominant understandings of IR should be expanded past a focus on the negative affect
experienced by racialised subjects that cause them to adopt negative views about themselves
and/or their racialised group. I argue how IR is more definitive of the racialised subject’s
submission to a dominant racialised Will, which can also be experienced ‘positively’ by the individual.
In having argued for the importance of retaining the concept of IR, and subsequently to do so in a revised and rearticulated capacity, I then turn to examine its implications for anti-racist scholarship. In Chapter 7, Surviving the Survival Narrative: Internalised Racism and the
(Political) Limitations of Resistance, I am concerned with how the concept of IR problematises some key anti-racist tropes, especially those that focus on the politics of resistance. I do so by examining the significance of resistance strategies employed by racialised subjects in navigating racialised and racist social spaces. Utilising the participant data, I demonstrate that scholarship beholden to what is known as the grand narrative of resistance seem to inadvertently play an identity politics that may not be altogether useful for the overarching goals of anti-racist praxis.
Recognising the usefulness of the concept of IR to understanding contemporary race-based issues, I then apply its revised and rearticulated conceptualisation to the focus group of the study. In Chapter 8, Divide and Conquer: Gendered Division within the Process of
Internalising Racist Ideology, I examine what seem like racialised romantic preferences of the participants. In applying the concept here, I focus on how the internalisation of the White patriarchal national Will by the racialised subject may help explain the differing impact of IR between Asian women and men. More significantly, I then demonstrate how this 23
conceptualisation allows insight into a key function of the IR as a phenomenon, one that
fractures a racialised community from within through a divide and conquer manoeuvre.
In the final chapter, I re-examine the major ideas that were gained from the study and consider a wider application of the concept of IR through its implication in such areas as counselling psychology, the field of education, and ex-modern futures.
24
Chapter 2: Conceptualising Race and Internalised Racism
Part of this chapter was published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies in 2019.
Initially, I understood ‘racism’ through its colloquial and widespread utilisation that can be taken to mean something akin to ‘prejudiced speech acts or other behaviours by the perpetrator that are based upon and directed towards a racialised perception of the victim’. That is, my experiences with ‘racism’ were predominantly of an individualised nature. Whilst experience is a subjective phenomenon, I mean to suggest that the inception of my understanding of ‘racism’ was forged more through interpersonal instances of overt acts of race-based prejudice (i.e. ethnophaulisms), rather than any meta-structural apprehension of the issue. It was in recognising the insufficiency of viewing ‘racism’ as a series of prejudiced but otherwise isolated behaviours attributable to a minority of the population (i.e. working-class
Whites or neo-Nazis), that I focused on searching for an alternative explanation. My shift towards a meta-understanding in this regard can be conceptualised through Helen Ngo’s (2016) reading of phenomenologist George Yancy’s work.
Ngo’s identification of what she terms “three threads of coherences” (p. 6) can be instructive here in moving past individualised perceptions of racism, towards a recognition of what seemed like a much wider pattern. The coherence of breadth articulates a shared experience I had in recognising the commonality amongst other racialised individuals who also have experienced forms of perceived negative racialised treatment within contemporary Australian society.
Perceiving more covert and therefore ambiguous forms of racialised treatment, and realising that they too were shared with others in similar instances, is captured in the coherence of kind.
This is perhaps specific to my own visual racialisation as an Asian (male) Australian subject, whereby I experienced, inter alia, a felt sense of inferiorisation of my racialised masculinity in interaction with other folks. This was communicated in such areas as common circulating jokes
(i.e. “God is fair; look at Asian men, their genius is tempered with their small penises”), 25
responses in the dating scene (i.e. “sorry I don’t date Asians”), amongst others. Further, the
coherence of depth suggests that these experiences do not exist in a vacuum. This can be read
as a ‘wealth of the stimulus’ argument. That is, even if there was something essential about the
inferior quality of Asian male masculinity, the plethora of (White Western/ Australian-based) historical inferiorised representations of Asian men (and other racialised non-White folks) – whether as, inter alia, asexualised wimps (i.e. Chua & Fujino, 1999), drug dealers and gangsters (i.e. Pardy, 2009), or threatening rapists of White women (i.e. Walker, 2005) – would seem to override the requirement for any essentialist interpretation. Collectively, these three coherences (i.e. breadth, kind, depth) articulated something approaching a structural understanding of racism, within which I located the current study. This required the canvassing of the broad scholarly literature spanning Gordon Allport’s (1954) conceptualisation of racism as a manifestation of individuals’ prejudice toward out-groups, to the understanding of racism as a structural/ institutional phenomenon as first described by Ture and Hamilton (1992
[1967]).
As such, the aim of this chapter is to explicate the conceptual foundations upon which this study was situated. To do so, I contextualise the phenomenon of internalised racism within the extant race literature. I present a conceptual understanding of race and racism and how it relates within contemporary Australian society, with an emphasis on its structural nature. After situating the phenomenon of internalised racism within this construct, I examine the varying ways that it has been understood within contemporary race scholarship. Then, I demonstrate how the postcolonial scholarship offers an important insight into the aetiological roots of the phenomenon, suggesting the phenomenon’s connection with European colonialism. To illustrate the wider field in which the current study will be situated, I then consider major critiques of the concept, and present counterarguments highlighting the importance of studying 26
IR. Before I begin, however, I turn briefly to presenting my perspective on race as an exercise
in conceptual clarity.
Conceptualising Race: An Anti-Realist Perspective
I have followed the works of contemporary Australian race philosopher Adam
Hochman and, in particular, his shift from a social constructionist (i.e. Hochman, 2013) to an
anti-realist perspective on race (i.e. Hochman, 2014).
I adopt an anti-realist simpliciter stance on race, whereby ‘race’ means “a biological concept
which fails to refer” (Hochman, 2017, p. 3). This is because both a perspective of race as a
social and as a biological kind can coexist within a social constructionist view of race.
Understanding race as a social kind does not, conceptually speaking, exclude one from also
understanding race as a biological kind. Hence, for conceptual clarity, I refer to what is
commonly understood as human ‘races’ that is, of groups and individuals, as racialised groups/
individuals instead, which can be understood as “a population mistakenly believed to be a
biological race” (p. 75).
In order to maintain intellectual consistency within the anti-realist perspective on race,
Hochman (2017) developed an interactive constructionism approach to racialised groups through a theory of racialisation. He writes that racialised groups, on this approach:
emerge out of the ongoing interaction between a number of factors: administrative, biological, cultural, economic, geographic, gendered, historical, lingual, phenomenological, political, psychological, religious, social, and so on. Interactive constructionism rejects the metaphysical privileging of any of these interactants as the key to what racialized groups ‘really are’. The importance of any given interactant will depend on the context, and can change over time. None of these interactants are ‘racial’. Yet together, in interaction, they can produce racialization (p. 80). I prefer this explanation to one of racial formation (Omi & Winant, 1994) which attributes what an account of (social) race is to the current social structure of a given society, with a socio-
historical emphasis on the forms of racialisation made possible by it. Whilst socio-historical 27
factors do shape factors of contemporary racialisation, interactive constructionism widens the
conceptual field further to account for less common factors that contribute to racialisation, with
an emphasis on their complex interaction. This is because I view racialisation as highly
malleable and volatile in its application, yet one that is uniform in its impact upon racialised
groups and individuals (cf. Hage, 2017). This can be seen, for instance, with the racialisation
of “Muslims” contemporarily, that incorporates aspects of biology (i.e. an archetypal ‘Arab’
phenotype) and religious and cultural practice (i.e. adorning of the Niqab), but also mobilises
historical orientalist descriptors of that evoke geographical (i.e. “the Arab/ Muslim world”) and
perhaps psychological factors (i.e. “Muslims” as prone to fanaticism), amongst many other
factors. I adopt this view, again, not to reject the socio-historical salience of the ways in which groups of humans are racialised, but to encompass a wider range of factors that make the effect of racialisation so adaptable and persistent. Hence, racialisation can be a product of a multitude of factors, making it a highly dynamic process.
Importantly, it is along with the racialisation of human groups that racism occurs. Whilst the racialisation of groups (i.e. racialism) is often closely linked to racism, it is important not to conflate the two for conceptual purposes. In the next section, I introduce the political salience of the notion of racism in contemporary Australian society and describe how it is understood scholastically. This will be important to demonstrating how the phenomenon of internalised racism fits within this conceptual schema.
Origins of the Concept of Racism
The recently popularised question “Is Australia Racist?” (see for instance the nationwide SBS documentary; Hutchinson & Bluett, 2017) has been discussed widely by contemporary race scholars, often eluding to the problematic nature of such a query. Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage (2014), for instance, captures this sceptical view by rhetorically asking: 28
Even if we optimistically assume that we can have decent statistics about the number of people who are racists, what percentage of Australians need to be racist for ‘Australia’ to be racist or not racist? (p. 232). With the principle of charity in place, it may be that such a framing of the question is a way to begin a conversation with a majority of the population. Yet such a framing of the issue often locates the idea of racism as an individualised phenomenon. What the aforementioned banal nonquestion reveals is therefore a dominant understanding, amongst public and social spheres, of the nature of racialisation and racism. In this section, I demonstrate a conceptual evolution of the concept, by tracing the primary theoretical perspectives on racism as it appears in the literature. I also utilise this historicity of the concept to locate where the dominant understandings of racism within contemporary Australian society are derived.
Racism as Individual Prejudice
Gordon Allport’s (1954) study on prejudice acquisition amongst Whites within the
North American context highlighted the significance of cognition in the development of ethnic
(or racialised) stereotyping. This strain of scholarship can be seen as derived from a psychoanalytical-inspired framework in which one’s capacity for prejudiced attitudes were correlated with one’s personality structure (cf. Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, &
Sanford, 1950). As such, this understanding of racism as racist attitudes can be seen more as an individualised and psychological phenomenon.
Allport (1954) saw the capacity for the harbouring of prejudicial attitudes as an interrelation of cognitive, psychoanalytical, and developmental factors within the individual. Prejudice was seen here as the harbouring of beliefs about an outgroup that were inaccurate, “based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization” (p. 9). Because human ability to process information is limited, we tend to oversimplify a wide array of experiences and sensory information. By attempting to categorise various stimuli to make up for this limitation, narrow observations about a single member of an outgroup can become irrationally applied to the entire outgroup 29
as a whole. Prejudice was seen as generally resistant to change; that is, an individual’s irrational beliefs would rarely be altered in the face of oppositional data/ experiences. To this, Allport identified the functionality of prejudice within the individual’s cognitive schema. The expression of values, important to one’s sense of self and identity formation, “lay at the center of one’s ego structure” (Katz, 1991, p. 133). The need to defend and preserve the ego was therefore a rationale for one’s resistance to changing antipathic beliefs against an outgroup.
Finally, Allport located the formation of one’s prejudiced beliefs to be derived from one’s in- group loyalties, closely tied to one’s early membership within various groups. “There is one law universal in all human societies”, writes Allport (1954), “that assists us in making an important prediction. In every society on earth the child is regarded as a member of his parents’ groups” (p. 31, original emphases). Developmentally, then, he traced the role one’s parents played as central to one’s prejudice acquisition. Whilst this component of Allport’s conceptualisation of ethnic/ racialised prejudice (which he interpreted as racism) borders on the sociological, in which external factors shape the individual’s beliefs, his analytical focus still remained strictly within the confines of how the individual (child) conformed to in-group norms. This individual view of racism as prejudice, then, is a suitable ingress to frame contemporary forms of local race-related research.
Within contemporary Australian scholarship, the problematic of racism can be seen as being framed from a particular individualised perspective. The understanding of racism as predominantly a psychological phenomenon on behalf of the ‘racist’ tends to imply that it can be statistically measured on an individual level. These forms of quantitative research often approach and frame the issue as a matter of (often individual-level) prejudice or negative attitudes (i.e. Johnson et al., 2005; Forest & Dunn, 2006). For instance, Dunn and colleagues
(2004), in a study of 5,056 participants from Queensland and New South Wales, approximately
25% reported experiencing racism in their everyday lives. Additionally, 12% consciously 30
presented themselves as “racist”, which was determined through a positive response to the question “You are prejudiced against other cultures?” (p. 423) and about 45% believed cultural diversity constituted a threat to Australian nationhood. In a study utilising data sets from 1998
– 2007 Australian Election Studies, Bilodeau and Fadol (2011) investigated 4,627 “Australian- born respondents of English-speaking background” (p. 1093) and their attitudes toward immigration, of whose “views about the number of immigrants in Australia tend to be negative”
(p. 1095). The authors found that 49% of participants believed immigrants contributed to an increase in crime and 37% believed that immigrants caused unemployment. Specific to ethnic/culturally minoritised groups, 57% of participants wanted to admit fewer immigrants from the Middle-East, and 39% wanted to admit fewer immigrants from Asia. More recently, the Mission Australian Youth Survey (2016) found that 30.8% of Australian young people self- reported experiencing some form of race/cultural-based discrimination within the last twelve months, with males being affected more so (40.7%) than females (25.1%).
Although these statistical results can have some effect in raising awareness of the prevalence of racism (seen here as negative attitudes and beliefs) in contemporary Australian society, I suggest that such a view of racism-as-prejudice neglects a much wider understanding of the issue. Indeed, Forrest and Dunn (2007) have acknowledged that “it is likely that survey results on racism are, if anything, underestimations of the phenomenon” (p. 703), and caution a more judicious approach in interpreting the results. In focusing on the presentation of the data and conduct of such studies, and not on the viewpoints of these researches per se, what is absent from these characterisations is a structural understanding of the nature of racism.
Racism as Institutional/ Structural Phenomenon
Against an understanding of racism as individual prejudice is an institutional or structural perspective often attributed to Ture and Hamilton (1992 [1967]). In describing and highlighting the poor material conditions of the majority of Blacks in the North American 31
context, the authors describe a more subtle form of racism that cannot be entirely captured by
a sole focus on prejudices of individual Whites, which they term the first type of racism. “The
second type”, write Ture and Hamilton, “originates in the operation of established and
respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type” (p. 20). It is differentiated from the first type in that institutional/structural racism is “less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts” (p. 20). As such, race-related scholarship in the North American context during this period began to shift to focus more on the structural aspects of racism.
Within this conceptualisation, racism can be understood as an ideological component of a racialised social system. This is an understanding informed, in part, by the work of prominent
North American sociologist and race scholar Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (1996). This will be drawn upon in order to facilitate an understanding of how racialisation and racism manifest within contemporary Australian society, and to thereafter situate the current study within these constructs. As shall be seen, this will become important as I argue for a socio-psychological approach towards the study of internalised racism, one that needs to account for the individual subject’s inculcation of racist ideology (i.e. racism), but also to maintain a focus on the external
(to the subject) factors of causality. Note that I have adapted the following works to be congruent with an anti-realist perspective on race.
Bonilla-Silva (1996) developed a structural theory of racism as a response to what he believed were inadequate conceptualisations in the study of racism. Beyond the inadequacy of conceptualising racism simply as an outcome of individual prejudice, one of the primary concerns he had with prevalent understandings of the concept was the circular way in which it tended to be analysed. Bonilla-Silva argued that common conceptualisations of racism were often tautological; ‘racism’ is commonly understood as an expression of and through racist behaviour, which in turn, was attributed to being caused by ‘racism’, a conceptualisation that 32
conflated the effects of racism with its aetiological roots. Bonilla-Silva’s solution was to bypass this conceptual confusion by attributing racism (here as an ideological component) to a structural foundation. As such, racist ideologies are viewed as generated by the racialised structures of society, where racism and the racialised structure that cause it are not equated concepts.
Based on the above, Bonilla-Silva (1996) developed several tenets to his structural theory of racism:
1. First, the theory is materialist in thrust, that is, a racialised social system has several
valuable components (economic, political, social, and psychological gain), which are
distributed differentially along racialised lines. This he terms the racial structure of
society.
2. Second, within this racialised structure, racialised groups are a by-product of both
historical and contemporary racialised oppositional relations between groups. I also add
the other factors that Hochman (2017) has explicated within his interactive
constructionist view as also contributing to the racialisation of groups and individuals
to further explicate the malleability of the dynamic of racialisation.
3. Third, the oppositional constructs between racialised groups are embedded in social
relations through the development of a racialised (and racist) ideology, which gives
racialised notions a sense of permanency. Importantly, racism here is not merely a
“reflection of the racialized system” but “becomes the organizational map that guides
actions” (p. 474) of the racialised subjects within society. That is, it enables the subjects
to reproduce and re-enact racialised phenomena based on the contemporary racialised
structure of society, which paradoxically is re-created through interactions between
subjects. 33
4. Fourth, the embedding of racialised and racist ideology in social relations and wider
racialised oppositional constructs in the social system leads to all societal conflict
having a racialised component as racialised groups are subsumed under a racialised
hierarchy. Here, contestation between racialised groups is seen as “the logical outcome
of society” (p. 474). Fragmentation within racialised categories can occur along (that
is, influenced by) the dimensions of class and gender (amongst others), although these
social dimensions are in themselves racialised (see for example Zheng, 2016 for an
explanation of the racialised feminisation of Asians in the North American context).
5. Last, as Bonilla-Silva (1996) writes, this contestation “reveals the different objective
interests” held by racialised groups as they are ostracised from each other. This, on my
reading, refers to the implicit division amongst members of society caused by
racialisation.
Drawing on the racialised social systems approach, I understand ‘racism’ as the ideological component of a racialised system. I therefore utilise the terms racism and racist ideology
interchangeably. More specifically, the dominant racist ideology that proliferates within
contemporary Australian society could be stated to prioritise a certain understanding of
‘Whiteness’ as superior in essence (cf. Hage, 1998). That is, those social subjects marked by
Whiteness could claim (implicitly or explicitly), through this lens, that they too were superior
in relation to those racialised as non-White. This makes the hegemonic racist ideological frame
specifically a White supremacist ideological frame. With this in mind, I draw on the work of
Australian race scholar Yin Paradies to proffer a definition and conceptualisation of racism,
within which the concept of internalised racism can be situated.
The Three Forms of Racism
Paradies’ (2006) defines racism as “a societal system in which actors are divided into
‘races’ [that is, racialised groups] with power unevenly distributed (or produced) based on these 34
racial[ised] classifications” (p. 145). This system, according to Paradies (2006), is based on
“ideologies (worldviews) concerning differences between groups, which are embodied through
attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, laws, norms and practices” (p. 144), and thus can be situated
within a structural theory of racism as explicated above. Importantly, Paradies’ (2006)
conceptualisation of racism allows for the inclusion of both its oppressive effects (for
subordinated racialised groups), and the corollary manifestation of privilege (for the
superordinate group). He understands racism as manifesting on three interrelated levels; namely the systemic, the interpersonal, and the internalised. He defines systemic racism as “the racist production, control and access to material, informational and symbolic resources within a society” (p. 153), what has above been referred to as structural racism. Interpersonal racism is viewed as the “racist interactions between actors” (p. 153), which can include both covert and overt, intentional, and unintentional acts of disrespect, suspicion, devaluation,
scapegoating, and dehumanisation towards the victim, which we saw above as individualised
acts of racialised prejudice. Conceptualising it as such, however, offers the benefit of
attributing the racialised prejudices to the structural foundation of a racialised social system.
The third form, wherein the current study is situated, will be explored in depth in the next
section, specifically in regard to how racism is experienced as manifested ‘within’ the
racialised subject. Additionally, within a structural conceptualisation, those who stand to
benefit more from a racialised system often have a greater stake in the continued racialisation
of other groups. As such, within a White supremacist structure, subjects racialised as White
often can be seen as having a collective stake in their own racialisation, with other groups
having racialisation ‘done’ to them (i.e. “Asians”). This is not to ignore the effect of self-
racialisation of both groups and individuals (i.e. Ang, 2016), but to differentiate between those
who benefit more from racialisation, and from those who benefit relationally to a lesser degree.
Although under Hochman’s conceptualisation, those in the dominant racialised group (i.e. 35
Whites) do undergo a form of racialisation and as such are a racialised group, for ease of
reference I utilise the term “racialised” when discussing groups and individuals to refer to those
that are positionally subjugated within such racialised structures.
Internalised Racism: Contestable Definitions
Whilst the internalisation of racist ideology has been described in various forms since
the 20th century, such as W.E.B Du Bois’ (1929) famous notion of double-consciousness, my
focus in this section is on the phenomenon as it is recognised through the terms internalised
racism or internalised racial oppression. I do this for conceptual clarity, in that many of the
ways in which the phenomenon has been discussed prior to its recognition as ‘internalised
racism’ tends to be a subject of confusion. This is in regard to the conceptual distinction between internalised racism as a phenomenon in itself (i.e. what it is), as opposed to the resulting effects of the phenomenon (i.e. how it manifests, such as double-consciousness). My focus in this section will be on the former.
Conceptually, the understanding of the concept is derived from a political position influenced, in part, by Marxist and Lacanian thought. For instance, drawing on Marx and Engels (1974) in
The German Ideology, György Lukács’ (1971 [1968]) suggested that there existed forms of working class-based consciousness that were ‘false’. Inculcating the hegemonic ideological tenets of the bourgeoisie caused them to work against their own interests. Within
psychoanalytic thought, Lacan’s (1960) understanding of the subject as formed by non-unitary
fragments that constitute the ‘I’ also has salience. As one’s desire comes not from what one wants, but rather what one wants as it inhabits the position of ‘its other’, the desiring subject is susceptible to inculcating that which is ‘other’ to its interests, as its own. It is upon these philosophical roots that the concept of internalised racism is built upon. Within a racialised social system, this translates to racialised groups and individuals being susceptible to maintaining a system in which the interests of the dominant White group become their own 36
interests. Particularly concerning is when the interests of the dominant group are inherently and relationally oppressive to that of the subordinated groups.
The first few operational definitions of the phenomenon came from Suzanne Lipsky (1977). In writing specifically about the Black American community, she defined “Internalized oppression [as an act of] turning upon ourselves, upon our families, and upon our own people the distress patterns that result from the racism and oppression of the majority society” (p. 145).
Lipsky’s definition here only addresses and explicates some of the effects of internalised racism. Note that whilst referencing its aetiology towards structural factors of racism, she does not highlight its subtle nature. The limitations of this definition can be attributed to its early emergence in the field. This is understandable, as her conceptualisation of the phenomenon was directed toward alleviating (via counselling therapy) the negative psychological impacts of racism amongst Black American individuals who had accepted the racialised stereotypes about themselves. What this does demonstrate, however, is that a bulk of the studies were conducted specifically on Black Americans, and that the study of internalised racism began and is largely conducted within the field of psychology.
In canvassing the psychological literature on race, sociologist Karen Pyke (2010b) offers a definition situated within contemporary US society. Although she proceeds to level a sociological critique against it regarding its need to account for structural dynamics of racialisation, her definition captures the dominant understanding of internalised racism as it is studied within the psychological field. Note that Pyke highlights hegemonic Whiteness as a key factor in understanding the phenomenon:
Internalized racial oppression [is] defined as the individual inculcation of the racist stereotypes, values, images, and ideologies perpetuated by the White dominant society about one’s racial group, leading to feelings of self-doubt, disgust and disrespect for one’s race and/ or oneself (p. 553). 37
I utilise this definition here as it is an important summary of the dominant perspective of the
phenomenon as studied within the psychological literature. It is an area which I interrogate in-
depth in a later chapter (see Chapter 6). As shall be seen, some (see for instance Tappan, 2006,
discussed below, and more recently Banks & Stephens, 2018) have tried to expand upon a
strictly psychological understanding of the phenomenon.
Padilla (2001), for instance, conceptualises the phenomenon as “insidious forces that cause
marginalized groups to turn on themselves, often without realizing it. The combined effect of
internalized oppression and internalized racism is often devastating – it can reinforce self-
fulfilling negative stereotypes, resulting in self-destructive behaviour” (p. 61, emphases
added). Here, Padilla’s utilisation of both the terms internalised oppression and internalised
racism highlights a nuanced distinction that can help enrich a further understanding of the
phenomenon. The nuance in the distinction is elucidated by Paradies (2006), who
conceptualises racism through a dualistic nature as facilitative of both privileging and
oppressive dynamics. He defines the phenomenon as “the incorporation of racist attitudes,
beliefs or ideologies within an actor’s worldview” (p. 151), which, importantly, can manifest
in two forms. The first, referred to as internalised dominance, garners privilege for the subject.
The second, and the aspect of the phenomenon I am interested in examining in this project, is
internalised oppression, which garners self-subordination for the subject.
This is the position similarly taken by Tappan (2006), who prefers the terms appropriated domination/ oppression. Tappan does this as an attempt to elucidate the relational nature of privilege and oppression as a manifestation of sociocultural phenomena, in order to challenge the exclusively individual and therefore psychological conceptualisation of the phenomenon.
Tappan (2006) argues that the purely psychological view of internalised domination/oppression
perpetuates “a static and ultimately pessimistic view” where “the internalized image suggests
that oppression and domination become deep, internal psychological qualities… that are 38
extremely difficult (if not impossible) to resist, interrupt, or abandon once they are in place”
(p. 2122). Without disputing the important psychological impact of the phenomenon on both
those in privileged and oppressed positions, Tappan (2006) attempts to draw attention the
cultural tools (i.e. the ideological constructions inherent within a racialised society) which are
utilised by social subjects to reproduce forms of privilege and oppression, contributing to its
internalisation, or as he puts it, appropriation. This conceptualisation is, in part, reflective of a
racialised social systems approach (Bonilla-Silva, 1996) that places importance on the
mediated actions of social subjects. In particular, it gives credibility to the notion that dominant
circulating ideologies (i.e. racism) can in fact be challenged and resisted. For the purposes of
the current study, and in utilising Paradies’ (2006) distinction once more, I will be focusing on
internalised oppression as opposed to internalised dominance when examining the
phenomenon, given the study’s focus on the experiences of racialised individuals and groups.
For clarity, I simply refer to the phenomenon as internalised racism, abbreviated as IR.
A more recent and all-encompassing study of internalised oppression, of which IR is subsumed under, comes from an important publication edited by E.J.R. David (2014). He compiled several manifestations of internalised oppression on minoritised groups, such as racism, sexism, hetero-sexism, and ableism from various contemporary scholars. Within this anthology, Salzman and Laenui (2014) can be seen building upon the work of previous scholars, attempting a more in-depth definition of the phenomenon:
Internalized oppression is not the cause of mistreatment; it is a result of mistreatment. Internalized oppression would not exist without the real external oppression that is imposed on the less powerful by the more powerful… it includes the internalized negative self-evaluations and dehumanizations believed to be true by peoples suffering unjust and imposed social conditions such as racism, colonialism, and conquest… it influences the thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes toward self, members of one’s defined group, and the dominant group (p. 84). This definition places emphasis on the lasting impact of colonialism’s structures, thereby
refraining from explicitly discussing the reproduction of oppression by its victims. However, a 39
critical analysis of the above understanding demonstrates how cause and effect of racism can occur simultaneously. This highlights an integral aspect of IR, which whilst derived from the
ideological tenets of a racialised structure (cf. Bonilla-Silva, 1996; Paradies, 2006), upon subsequent internalisation, can be reproduced and perpetuated by its victims. In fact, postcolonial theorists of the past have in their own way studied IR as a direct and consequential effect of systematic oppression. This is embodied in its specific form through European colonialism, and enacted upon the indigenous populations of invaded lands, as will be explored in the subsequent section.
Hence, to formulate a working definition of IR, I reiterate Pyke’s (2010b) definition as seen above and supplement it from three other definitions:
1) Part of Padilla’s (2001) definition as “insidious forces that cause marginalized groups
to turn on themselves, often without realizing it…” (p. 61, added emphasis). This is
important because it highlights the phenomenon’s subtle nature, in that it can often
manifest covertly, without conscious awareness of the racialised subject.
2) Part of Tappan’s (2006) emphasis on an appropriated form of racism is important to
constantly maintain a focus on the structural nature of racism.
3) Part of Salzman and Laenui’s (2014) definition highlighting that cause and effect (of
racism) are not mutually exclusive factors within the phenomenon of IR.
Such a variation in terminology across different contexts, referring to similar (if not the same) phenomena foregrounds the significance of a dynamic of internalisation that exists within a paradigm of wider structural and systemic oppression. Importantly, in defining itself, the concept of IR borrowed heavily from the postcolonial literature to articulate the relevant dynamics within racialised power relations through which the phenomenon of IR occurs. In the 40
next section I address influential figures in the field of postcolonial theory to proffer a
theorisation upon the possible aetiology of the phenomenon.
Aetiological Considerations of IR: A Postcolonial Perspective
Before canvassing the postcolonial oeuvre to proffer an aetiological understanding of the phenomenon of IR both as ontological cause and as conceptual schema, it would be worthy to briefly highlight the prevalence of the underlying dynamic upon which IR is made possible.
I provide an excerpt from 14th Century Tunisian scholar, Abū Zayd Abdul ar-Raḥmān ibn
Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn al-Ḥaḍramī, in his work on the Berbers of Northern Africa. His thesis on the rise and fall of civilisations included many observations and theorisations upon group dynamics of nomadic Bedouins of the deserts and sedentary city-dwellers, including the salience of warfare in his cyclical model. In reading Khaldūn’s Al-Muqaddimah, and for the purposes of this project, it is this passage that stood out most:
The vanquished always want to imitate the victor in his distinctive mark(s), his dress, his occupation, and all his other conditions and customs. The reason for this is that the soul always sees perfection in the person who is superior to it and to whom it is subservient. It considers him perfect, either because the respect it has for him impresses it, or because it erroneously assumes that its own subservience to him is not due to the nature of defeat but to the perfection of the victor. If that erroneous assumption fixes itself in the soul, it becomes a firm belief. The soul, then, adopts all the manners of the victor and assimilates itself to him (Ibn Khaldūn, 1981 [1377], 2:23). What is interesting about this excerpt is that Khaldūn’s observation is similar to the phenomenon of IR, at least as I deploy it in this study. It implicitly articulates notions of structural power, and its imprint on the “souls” of the “vanquished”, which can be understood in somewhat more secular and sociological terms as the impact of structural power upon the psyche of the subjects within structurally oppressed groups. This suggests the need for adopting a socio-psychological approach to the study of IR. Perceptions of superiority and inferiority as an essence, if not seen as a universal constant, can at least render this relational dynamic salient within (military) expressions of power through warfare. Beyond this, Khaldūn also recognises 41
the assimilatory dynamic by the “vanquished” towards the “victor” and his customs, an effect
made possible through an “erroneous assumption” fixing itself “in the soul”, that is, on my
terms, being internalised. Hence, the postcolonial scholarship, replete with its account of the
effects of the European imperialist and militaristic impulse, will help to explicate the specific ideological framework upon which contemporary manifestations of IR can be understood.
The themes that arise out of the definitions above situate IR as an inevitable effect of militarised and subsequently, structural oppression, one that requires the oppressed to identify with the oppressor. It is also a dynamic that has been studied significantly in the field of postcolonial scholarship. Perhaps revealingly, IR has also been conceptualised under the term “colonised mentality” (Padilla, 2001; David & Okazaki, 2006), elucidating its relationship to (European) colonialism as a form of oppression. The influential works of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skins,
White Masks (1967) and The Wretched of the Earth (2004), Albert Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized (2003) and Paolo Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2005), amongst others, have laboured to explicate the effects of European imperialism and colonialism on its subjects and often discussing similar, if not identical, characteristics to IR. I devote this section not only to provide the aetiology of a conceptual understanding of IR, but to also examine its potential causal roots within the paradigm of European colonisation and its subsequent institutionalisation of (a globalised) White supremacist ideology.
In reviewing Fanon’s (2004) work in The Wretched of the Earth, David and Derthick (2014) summarise a four-phase colonial model that attempts to explain how IR results from colonialism:
1) The first phase characterises the colonists’ invasion of another land either to establish
a colony of exploitation, or a colony of settlement. 42
2) The second phase characterises the colonial powers injunction, either through force or
coercion, to commit a cultural genocide on the indigenous population, and recreate their
culture under a colonial gaze. Here, they establish Manichean binaries of coloniser-
colonised, superior-inferior, and with influence of European ideas of racialism, a White
- non-White distinction.
3) The third phase requires a form of paternalism, often racialised in nature, whereby the
colonists justify their exploitation and oppression via the ideological inferiorisation of
the indigenous population.
4) Lastly, the fourth phase establishes a hegemonic system that valorises the culture of
colonisers, benefiting the oppressors, whilst subjugating and denigrating the colonised
population. It is here, through an institutionalised structure and proliferation of
hegemonic ideology, whereby the colonised are coerced into accepting the worldview
of the colonisers (i.e. the process of internalisation).
This model has been heavily influential in the conceptualisation of oppressor-oppressed
relations. For instance, prominent figure in Southeast Asian scholarship, Syed Hussein Alatas
(1972) developed the concept of the captive mind as a response to adequately describe what he observed to be imitative, uncreative, and uncritical utilisation of Western models and theories in development studies by Southeast Asian scholars. Alatas (1974) described this, in part, as
“a product of higher institutions of learning, either at home or abroad, whose way of thinking in the fields of science and contemporary knowledge is dominated by Western thought in an imitative and uncritical manner”, and much like the phenomenon of IR, “it is unconscious of its own captivity and the conditioning factors making it what it is” (p. 108). Closely connected to the concept of the captive mind, and discussed more thoroughly in his later work, is Alatas’
(2000) concept of intellectual imperialism. 43
Similar to political and economic forms of imperialism, Alatas (2000) conceptualised the
imperialism of the mind through similar traits such as:
1) First, exploitation of raw data from underdeveloped regions, subsequently reframed
from a Western perspective and sold back the exploited.
2) Second, the trait of tutelage, where peoples in underdeveloped regions were required to
be dependent on everything from abroad (i.e. Europe, North America), including, for
these purposes, attaining an education.
3) Third, the trait of conformity, a kind of hegemonic coercion of expected behaviour that
is modelled on the colonisers/ neo-colonisers. In academia, this is demonstrated by the
expectation that Western models and theories are held to a higher standard than
anything ‘native’.
4) Fourth, the emphasis on the secondary roles ascribed to regional scholars, a form of
paternalistic management that work towards their continued subordination. Here Alatas
(2000) problematises the (often White Western) recommended notion that, because
such endeavours are costly, scholars in underdeveloped areas should work with applied
research, as opposed to engaging in creative and more autonomous research. Of course,
‘applied research’, in this case, often implied the de-contextualised utilisation of
Western models and theories.
5) Fifth, akin to justification of the civilising mission in politico-economical imperialism,
intellectual imperialism “assumes the monopoly of, and dominance in, the affairs of
science and wisdom” (p. 26). Alatas argues that these traits of intellectual imperialism
“effects a complete mistrust of one’s own cultural background” (p. 27).
One can contrast Alatas’ stadial understanding of intellectual imperialism to that of Fanon’s conceptualisation of European imperialism and colonialism above. For Alatas, it is the captive mind that gives way to intellectual imperialism. However, although he asserts that the 44
“captivity is self-induced”, Alatas (2000) continues to explain that the captive mind is a “result
of the overwhelming preponderance of Western intellectual influence on the rest of the world”
(p. 37), alluding to the structural nature of the ideological framework. As has been
demonstrated above, cause and effect are not mutually exclusive within the phenomenon of IR.
This, again, alludes to importance of both the sociological and psychological dimensions when
attempting to understand IR. It is important to stress that Alatas was critical of a wholesale and
uncritical imitation of Western models in application to Southeast Asian regions, and not of its
complete repudiation. In fact, he specified that critical assimilation of foreign (Western)
scholarship was not only a positive but a necessary endeavour for development studies. Overall,
Alatas’ (1972) focus on the captive mind was to ultimately “awaken the consciousness of the
social scientists in Asia to their own intellectual servitude” (p. 21).
This domination of thought and knowledge, that is, on epistemology, contributes to what has
been recognised as the colonisation of the mind, where, as Paulo Freire (2005) puts it, “the very
structure of thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential
situation by which they were shaped” (p. 45). Pyke and Dang (2003) summarise the general
argument in its contemporary form, arguing that:
Racial[ised] subordinates live under the constraints of racial[ised] categories, meanings, and stereotypes which effectively deny them the power of self-identity. Regardless of whether they construct identities that internalize or resist the racial[ised] ideology of the larger society, they are forced to define themselves in relation to racial[ised] schemas and meanings (p. 151). In their intellectual efforts, these theorists discuss the need for targeting oppression on the level of the individual in order to remove such an ideological hold from their psyches. They describe racialised oppression’s hold on the psyche in various terms such as experiencing a “double-
consciousness” (Du Bois, 1929) or developing an “inferiority complex” (Fanon, 1967; 2004).
Although these terms often describe the effects of IR as situated within a larger context of
European imperialism and colonialism, these influential works have since, in contemporary 45
times, been expanded to elicit “one more piece of the puzzle necessary for elucidating psychological injury that is due to racism” (Speight, 2007, p. 126). In other words, studying the effects of racism would be incomplete without identifying the internalisation of racist ideology amongst racialised subordinates, which has implications for shaping their feelings, worldviews, and as noted above, epistemological, and even ontological concerns.
Despite the seemingly unified understanding within postcolonial scholarship presented above, however, it is important to introduce Homi Bhabha’s (1994) work to demonstrate the complexity of the perspectives within this scholarly field. This is not only because Bhabha’s work is an inherently influential part of the postcolonial discourse, but that the ambivalence that his oeuvre introduces within postcolonial studies particularly applies to the concept of IR.
The concept of colonial mimicry, in particular, sees the colonised subject adapting the inherent racist colonial paradigm by (consciously) adopting markers of the coloniser. This allows the colonised (or racialised, for my purpose) subject to subvert the colonial system through the act of, in Bhabha’s own words, “mimicry and mockery, where the reforming, civilizing mission is threatened by the displacing gaze of its disciplinary double” (p. 127). As such, Bhabha can be seen locating agency within the mimic, as an act of colonial defiance. Although I deal with this in much more depth in Chapter 7, it is this framing of the encounter between coloniser and colonised that helps introduce a more complex understanding of the phenomenon of IR. This is also therefore a logical ingress to demonstrate that there have, indeed, been critiques mounted against the concept of IR. I consider these in the next section, which can help clarify why IR tends to be a lesser studied phenomenon within extant race scholarship.
Criticisms of the Concept of IR
Here I present some of the main concerns that may be held by scholars in their cautionary manoeuvre around or hesitancy toward studying IR, which may act as an explanation for its evident lacunae within race scholarship. Indeed, scholars of race may 46
hesitate to highlight the phenomenon of IR given its status as a taboo topic (Pyke, 2010b), one
that has seemingly controversial understandings conceptually and politically. I acknowledge
the concerns raised below as important considerations to account for within the current study.
Pyke reasons that the hesitancy towards studying the phenomenon of IR within sociological
research concerns an overarching misconception that the studying and therefore recognition of
IR would inevitability suggest some inherent “ignorance, inferiority, psychological defect,
gullibility or other shortcoming” (p. 553), in biological makeup or essence, on the part of the
racialised. This concerns a misplaced emphasis on the mode in which dominant racist ideology
is communicated. Indeed, whilst the latter is what I (and Pyke) consider to be the actual
problematic of the maintenance of racist structures and systems, what tends to be foregrounded
is the intergenerational transmission that implies fault on the families of the racialised (who are, of course, racialised themselves). This is, for instance, apparent in Aurielle Mason’s (2015) doctoral dissertation that discusses hair shame amongst African American women, and the intergenerational (and therefore cultural) transmission that enables such a manifestation of IR to occur. Whilst Mason makes clear that there are structural conditions (i.e. Eurocentric or
White supremacist standards of hair beauty) that act upon these racialised women, it is possible that one could read into such a study a form of racialised (communal/ cultural) blame. Take for instance pop singer Michael Jackson (see West, 2001, p. 137) and, as the narrative goes, his
“dramatic physical transformation” (Pyke, 2010b, p. 559) from a Black to a White man. This highlights the significance of a social milieu wherein racialised individuals who demonstrate manifested IR become the object of ridicule, blame, and may be considered ‘race traitors’. As such, it is clear that studying IR has political implications that would caution any IR scholar from such intellectual pursuits, lest more harm inadvertently befall the racialised.
Closely connected to the above is the potential blame upon the racialised subject themselves for their own hand in perpetuating racism, that may act as a point of hesitancy for some scholars 47
in the studying of IR. As highlighted earlier, cause and effect of racism are not mutually exclusive within the phenomenon (cf. Salzman & Laenui, 2014). That is, racialised subjects who internalise racist ideology can indeed perpetuate the same aspects of this racist worldview upon themselves and/or their own racialised group. This may have the unintended result of shifting the focus away from the external (structural) causes of racist ideology. Hence, one may foresee that a focus on how ‘victims’ of structural racism reproduce the same forms of oppression may subsequently lead to victim-blaming, whereby the racialised become sanctioned for being the orchestrators of their own oppressive conditions. This, of course, will be an important consideration for any scholar attempting to study this dynamic, highlighting the importance of conceptualising IR within a structural understanding of racism.
On the other end of the spectrum, the recognition of the insidious impacts of structural racism upon the racialised can contribute to another hesitancy towards studying IR, at least amongst racialised subjects (and scholars). Here, there is a risk of exposing a sense of vulnerability amongst racialised subjects in choosing to focus on a phenomenon like IR. That is, the hesitancy in studying IR here is potentially connected to refraining from making racialised subjects hyper-identifiable as victims. Claiming victimhood can be a shameful experience, as it may imply weakness on the part of the victim (Watt-Jones, 2002). This, then, highlights the importance for both recognising the salience of IR as manifesting within the lived experiences of the racialised in a way that still maintains a sense of agency.
Critiques mounted against the philosophical foundations upon which IR stands are also particularly salient here. Since its theorisation by György Lukács (1971 [1968]), the notion of false consciousness has been problematised within sociological and philosophical disciplines, and the debate still has contemporary salience. False consciousness can be defined as “the holding of false beliefs that are contrary to one’s social interest and which thereby contribute to the disadvantaged position of the self or the group” (Jost, 1995, p. 397). In attempting to 48
defend the concept, Steven Lukes (2011) has identified two main strains of critiques against
the notion of false consciousness. The first he identifies as the problematic of privileged
epistemology, wherein proponents of the idea of false consciousness are inadvertently making
a claim not only that there are objective interests of a group or individual, but that they, the
proponents, somehow have unique access to this truth. The second form of critique stands
somewhat in opposition to the former. It can be considered the problematic of the postmodern,
in which there can be no false consciousness, since all consciousnesses form part of a
multiplicity of coexisting consciousnesses that are in their own way constructed and sustained
by forms of power. Although Lukes does suggest that the notion, conceptually speaking, still
stands without having to claim “epistemic privilege” (p. 28), what is important here is to realise
that there are, in fact, scholarly contestations upon the philosophical foundations of IR as a
concept.
Although focusing on the reactionary actions of the racialised to White supremacist ideology
may indeed lead some to believe that IR is indicative of some flaw of the oppressed rather than
an effect of oppression (Pyke, 2010b), some scholars do still argue that targeting IR is essential
in uncovering the more insidious psychological impact of systemic racism (Speight, 2007).
There seems to be some strength to this argument. For example, David and Derthick (2014)
highlight that the World Health Organization (WHO) categorises the widespread usage of skin-
whitening products (amongst non-European populations) as a global health concern, yet
conceptualise this phenomenon as a ‘mercury problem’ (given the poisonous content of mercury in most of these cosmetics). This superficial conceptualisation implies that the flaw is with the individual’s choice of skin-lightening products, which ultimately fails to critically target the underlying issue of a widespread internalisation of a Eurocentric standard of beauty.
Indeed, colourism and light-skin preference have been recognised as an institutionalisation of a White aesthetic, attributable to the effect of European colonisation (Montalvo, 2005). And 49
herein lies the importance of taking the study of IR seriously. In framing the issue as one of IR,
racist systems are brought into focus, allowing underlying White supremacist ideologies to be
targeted. In refraining from studying IR, it seems one may overlook an essential dynamic in the maintenance and reproduction of racist ideology. More importantly, however, I reiterate that the current study’s focus on racialised individuals and groups must therefore reinscribe its understanding of IR as not reflecting a weakness of the racialised, but as an inevitable consequence of structural racism. Therefore, by adopting a conceptualisation of racism as the ideological component of a racialised social structure, I believe the above arguments suggest the need for engaging with both the sociological and psychological scholarly oeuvres. This will help to ensure that the manifestation of the phenomenon on an individual level is simultaneously understood and interpreted within a context that acknowledges external factors of causality.
In the next section, I further explore the potential positive impact of accounting for IR as a phenomenon. I do so by examining research conducted on the phenomenon, often within a
North American context, as experienced by racialised groups and individuals.
Importance of Studying IR
As both “products of British colonialism” (Stratton & Ang, 1994, p. 127) and as settler- societies largely populated by descendants of the aforementioned colonisers, Australian and
North American societies share significant similarities in their racialised structures. The importance in highlighting the utilisation of the North American literature in studying IR is due, in part, to the seeming absence of such research within the Australian academy. Yet this is not surprising, given that recent studies have highlighted that IR tends to be a lesser studied phenomenon within the wider field of race scholarship in both psychological (Speight, 2007) and sociological (Pyke, 2010b) fields. It is important to note that the utilisation of North
American literature is not to impose such an external framework onto the contemporary 50
Australian context, but so as to cultivate a foundational understanding of race-related issues that may arise during the current study.
The contemporary studies on the effects of IR tend to be specific to the North American context, and very often specific to a particular racialised group, such as African Americans (i.e.
Taylor, 1990; Parmer, Arnold, Natt, & Janson, 2004; Brown & Segrist, 2015). Other racialised groups in the US have also been the focus of IR studies, albeit to a lesser degree, such as the first nation peoples of the Americas (i.e. Poupart, 2003), Latinx Americans (i.e. Padilla 2001;
Hipolito-Delgado, 2010), and Asian Americans (i.e. Pyke & Dang, 2003). For conceptual clarity, I divide the scholarship on IR into two strains, both of which are dynamics related to the phenomenon. The first articulates the negative cognitive, behavioural, and affective consequences of internalising racist ideology upon the racialised. This is due to an inculcation of a racist framework through which they devalue members of their own racialised group, and/or themselves. Whilst there are some sociological studies within this oeuvre (i.e. Pyke &
Dang, 2003), a vast majority are the efforts of scholars within the psychological field. The second group of studies, closely connected to the inferiorisation explicated previously, describes the desire for, and/or acquisition of a racialised standard of being. Since most of the studies utilised here are from a North American context, the internalisation of racist ideology particularly concerns a dominant White supremacist ideology, with the acquisition of a racialised standard therefore being markers of Whiteness. Once again highlighting the similarities in the racialisation of their social structures as predominantly White settler-colonial nation-states, these works will contribute to a foundational understanding of the phenomenon as it occurs within the contemporary Australian context.
Earlier research studying aspects of IR focused mainly on the internalisation of negative stereotypes derived from the wider racist society. Studies demonstrate that ‘ethnic self-hatred’, a consequence of internalising of negative stereotypes about one’s racialised group may 51
correlate to negative concept of one’s ethnic/racialised self and community (Hipolito-Delgado,
2010). For instance, the Clark and Clark (1939; 1940; 1950) developmental psychology studies have demonstrated that IR can affect a racialised subject’s self-concept at a young age. Such influential research raised awareness of the negative psychological impact of racism on Black
American children self-concept, by virtue of their darker-coloured skin tone against normalised
Whiteness. ‘Ethnic self-hatred’ has also been shown in studies on juvenile offenders who
commit intracommunal crimes, potentially due to internalised disregard for Black lives
(Terrell, Taylor, & Terrell, 1980). More recently, Bryant (2011) has suggested a correlation
between IR and young Black US male’s propensity for violence. IR has also been correlated to
lowered career expectations (Brown & Segrist, 2015) and lower marital satisfaction for Black
Americans (Taylor, 1990). Poupart (2003) suggests internalisation of colonial structures of
violence upon First Nation peoples in the Americas as a contributing factor to contemporary
intracommunal violence in Native American communities. Padilla (2001) suggests that IR
causes Latinx Americans to accept deprecating stereotypes about themselves, thereby
harbouring negative attitudes toward other Latinx migrants for “taking jobs away from US
citizens” (p. 67). The psychological impact of IR, amongst other factors, have been linked to
depressive symptoms in multiple racialised groups in the North American context (Taylor,
Henderson, & Jackson, 1991; Poupart, 2003), negative acculturation and ethnic identity
development (Leong & Chou, 1994; Farver, Narang, & Bhadha, 2002; Hipolito-Delgado, 2016;
Nguyen, 2016), and other stress-related symptoms (Clark, Anderson, Clark, & Williams, 1999;
Butler, Tull, Chambers, & Taylor, 2002; Mok, 1998; Lu & Wong, 2013). Australian research
has demonstrated how IR impacts the Indigenous communities through the presence of lateral
or intracommunal violence (i.e. Bulman & Hayes, 2011). Amongst the Australian Islamic
community, Abdel-Fattah (2017) highlights the salience of an internalised Islamophobia,
whereby members of this group adopt a view of Muslims as problems, and are sympathetic 52
with the view that they deserve racist treatment. This should give a general overview of the
widespread negative affects accrued by the racialised within the aforementioned societal
contexts. Whilst the sheer diversity of negative impacts spanning the cognitive, behavioural,
and affective dimensions for the racialised is indicative of IR as a problematic worthy of serious
consideration, it is only one part of the dynamic. Not only does IR work to engender a sense of
lack within the racialised self, but as shall be seen, also mobilises one to attempt to rehabilitate
this sense of lack through the acquisition of Whiteness.
Connected with the above, research later evolved to include studies of racialised individuals
desiring more Eurocentric features as one of the most salient markers of Whiteness. Accounting
for the aetiological considerations of the phenomenon described in the previous section, the
internalisation of Eurocentric standards of attractiveness seems to be a particularly salient
consequence of European colonisation. hooks (1995) has argued that the colour-caste system
amongst Black Americans, that is, the valuation of lighter over darker skin-tones, can be
attributed to a history of White slave owners treating their lighter-skinned slaves better than
the darker-skinned slaves. This refers to a concept known as colourism (Jones, 2000) which describes the preferences of racialised groups for lighter skin-tone. For example, Parmer et al.
(2004) found that internalisation of standards of attractiveness by Black Americans, corresponded in particular to preferences for Eurocentric facial features, lighter skin colour, and straight hair. Colourism also has relevance for Latinx American communities. Mexican colonial history, for instance, instituted the policy of blanqueamiento (racial whitening) which
served as “an incentive for dark people to gain social advantage… to look and act like Spaniards
through social unions and marriage” (Montalvo, 2005, p. 28-29). Upward mobility could be
achieved through accepting and consenting to las castas, a caste system literally defined by its
White privilege, which continues to affect Latinx communities today (Montalvo, 2009).
Amongst Asian Americans, some scholars have connected blepharoplasties (or more 53
colloquially what has become to be known as ‘Asian eyelid surgery’) as connected to the desire
to acquire less ethnically Asian features and acquire a ‘Whiter’ aesthetic (Mok, 1998). Whilst there is some debate regarding this issue (see Elfving-Hwang & Park, 2016, for instance), studies on racism experienced by Asians within the Australian context have demonstrated the salience of eye-shape as a phenotypical marker of racialised difference and derision (Mellor,
2004; Hollero, 2007). Yet another mode of acquiring Whiteness can be seen through one’s racialised romantic preferences. Pyke’s (2010a) study on 128 Asian American women found that her participants tended to glorify White male masculinity as ‘egalitarian knights’, thereby preferring them as romantic partners. In doing so, they simultaneously contribute to racialising patriarchy as an essentialised Asian quality. As a manifestation of IR, Pyke argues that this form of combating gendered oppression inadvertently reproduces and maintains racist structures. In this particular case, it was through the selection of romantic partners that one attempted to acquire markers of Whiteness. On this issue and more, I have elsewhere posited the connection between IR and neoliberal ideology (Seet, 2019), which fosters within the racialised individual a need to acquire Whiteness as a form of self-marketisation.
Both dynamics of the phenomenon – the negative self-evaluations and subsequent negative impacts upon the racialised, and the drive toward acquiring markers of Whiteness – are separated here for conceptual purposes. They are, of course, inherently interrelated, in that the inculcation of racist ideology becomes constitutive of a lack within the racialised subject, mobilising them to acquire Whiteness as a resolution to the perceived inferiorisation. In doing so, they are co-opted (and subjugated) within a racialised social system, one which takes
Whiteness as the implicit standard. The above is, of course, not intended as an exhaustive list of the impacts of IR upon racialised groups and individuals. Rather, I include these studies to illustrate the range of impacts of IR upon the racialised as it has been captured in the extant 54
scholarship. This helps highlight the potential benefits for retaining the concept of IR, in order to understand the racialised dynamics within contemporary Australian society.
Conclusion
Through a canvassing of the extant race scholarship, I have articulated a framing of race and racism as a conceptual foundation upon which the current study will be conducted. In recognising the salience of both structural and individualised dynamics within the phenomenon, the need to adopt a socio-psychological perspective of IR became clear. This allowed an important acknowledgement of the individual manifestations of the phenomenon for the racialised, whilst simultaneously articulating a focus on the external causal factors that are derived from racialised structures (i.e. racist ideology).
The criticisms against the concept of IR highlighted the potential reasons for the lacunae in IR research within the extant race literature. Considering arguments both for and against the concept of IR allowed a more nuanced appreciation of the phenomenon, and its importance for anti-racism initiatives. In acknowledging the critiques sustained against the concept, I adopted a perspective within the current study that IR, as a concept, nevertheless has some value. The objective was therefore to investigate which aspects of the contemporary understanding of IR could be preserved, and which aspects could be usefully built upon. One way of answering this was by conducting a case study amongst participants from racialised groups. It was thought that the conversations had with this sample of the population could potentially shed insight into the contemporary impacts of IR within contemporary Australian society.
To study the phenomenon of IR more generally, then, I located my focus of analysis upon one specific racialised group. Through an investigation of how IR might manifest for the group racialised as Asians within contemporary Australian society, I aimed to deepen contemporary 55
understandings of the phenomenon of IR. Hence, in the next chapter, I trace the historicity of how the Asian has been racialised and positioned within the dominant Australian imaginary.
56
Chapter 3: Alien Australians and Internalised Racism: A Sociohistorical Analysis of
‘the Asian’ in Australia
Part of this chapter was published in the Ethnicities journal in 2021.
Focusing on the research site, this chapter is devoted to a sociohistorical analysis of the
group racialised as Asian Australians. I draw on the extant sociohistorical literature to
understand the dominant ideological frames through which Asian Australian subjects perceive
their social world, interact with other subjects, and make sense of their own subjecthood. This
will become important for the purposes of the current study in determining how IR manifests
for members of this particular racialised group. In this analysis, I utilise two primary forms of
scholarship.
The first oeuvre pertains to historical and ideological trajectories of how ‘the Asian’ has been
constructed through socio-political changes in the dominant imaginary of the Australian nation-
state, utilising the postcolonial literature. This suggests the need to account for an arguably
globalised ideological framing of (White Western) racialisation of the racialised other. This
globalised focus, however, is seen as a strength given the interconnectedness of contemporary
(Anglophonic) social zeitgeist. That is, ideologies of racialisation do not exist in a vacuum, but
are constantly circulated, perpetuated, and maintained. They draw both on existing
sociohistorical ideas, and on contemporary socio-political factors. It is therefore helpful that
the second strain of scholarship I draw upon has a wider focus of groups racialised as Asian in
contemporary White Western societies. I examine the literature on how Asian subjects navigate spaces saturated with White supremacist ideologies, in say, the North American context, to act as a foundational understanding of how Asian Australians may similarly navigate such racialised milieus.
57
Utilising the two forms of scholarship above, I organise this chapter in four main sections.
First, I examine the racialised construction of ‘the Asian’ (along with ‘the Aboriginal’) and how it became foundational to the construction and maintenance of the dominant White
Australian national imaginary. Second, I demonstrate how this (deficit) construction
contributes to the significance of anti-Asian racism. Third, in highlighting the significance of
a racialised social structure in contemporary Australian society, I articulate the primary
catalysts of how racist ideology tends to be transmitted. Finally, because of the lacunae in the
literature on how Asian Australians experience internalised forms of racist ideology, I draw
upon the North American literature on Asian Americans to examine the primary ways that
members of this racialised group experience IR.
Aliens/ Asians in Australia: An Historical Perspective
In this section, I highlight the larger context in which the groups and individuals
racialised as Asians have been, and continue to be, an integral part of the nation’s history,
despite continued demonisation, alienation, and disavowal of their belonging. In localising the
focus of analysis, I understand Whiteness not only as prevalent factor in Australian historicity,
but as uniquely foundational to its very formation as a nation-state. This is enshrined in policies
such as the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cth), known colloquially as the White Australia
Policy, demonstrating exclusionary and prejudicial treatment of those deemed non-White.
The perspective I adopt here is one informed by Edward Said (2003), whereby, “every domain
is linked to every other one, and that nothing that goes on in our world has ever been isolated
and pure of any outside influence” (p. xvii). Indeed, archaeological evidence suggests that
‘Asians’, here denoting peoples from a geographically defined boundary within landscapes
categorised as Asia, were already present in the region which came to be known as Australia.
For example, Australian historian and anthropologist Charles Campbell MacKnight’s (1976) demonstrated the existence of trade between Macassan trepangers from the Malay peninsula 58
and Indigenous Australians in what is now known as Arnhem Land, or what the Macassar
called Marege, since at least the eighteenth century. Likewise, the Japanese influence in
Broome since 1910 (Choo, 1995), and the integration of Islamic culture from the Malay
peninsula by some Aboriginal communities (McIntosh, 1996), also attest to a pre-European
intercultural history of the Australian continent.
This suggests the importance in adopting a decolonised perspective, that is, one that can be
divorced from a European monopolisation of historicity, and a White supremacist version of
history captured in the rhetoric of European ‘discovery’ (Smith, 1999). With this in mind, I
examine the literature that suggests an ‘Asian’ presence in Australia spanning the European
colonial era to contemporary times. I adopt the perspective that the figure of the Asian emerged
within the White Australian imaginary as a form of colonial management of racialised
populations, one that bore an underlying colonial anxiety (Riggs & Augoustinos, 2005). In fact,
the very act of racialising a group as the ‘Asian’ other is indicative of the racialised dynamic
inherent within the European colonial project (i.e. settler-colonial nation-building). Regarding
the colonial management of White identity exerting both external and internal control, Perera
(2005) describes how “Australian identity is grounded on a particular triangulated relation to
the Aboriginal and the Asian: the Aboriginal as an internal presence to be denied and
suppressed through genocidal and/or assimilationist practices; the Asian as a besieging other
to be held at bay” (p. 4). It is in this sense that the contemporary understandings of an Asian
subjecthood as othered within the dominant White Australian imaginary can be traced to its sociohistorical construction, one that became institutionalised and sedimented over time.
In doing so, I categorise this construction of Australian historicity in three primary periods for purposes of clarity. For the sake of brevity, I focus on the socio-political and historical
conceptualisation of ‘the Asian’ within the Australian imaginary through these eras. Whilst this
undoubtedly provides a particularised view on the various constructions of Asian-ness from 59
pre-federation onwards, I discuss the transformations insofar as they apply to gaining an understanding of the various hegemonic ideological frameworks that Asian subjects may themselves inculcate.
The Colonial Period (1788 – 1901): Need for an Imperial Workforce
Colonialist endeavours have had a long history of manipulating and appropriating indigenous knowledge for capitalist gain (Bazin, 1993; Smith, 1999). Indeed, evidence suggests that European colonists strategically monopolised the existing trade relations of the
Indigenous populations on the Australian continent (Balint, 2012), rather than pioneering them.
Establishment of trade between the peoples of the Malay peninsula and Aboriginal coastal communities of the north (Russell, 2004; Schwerdtner-Manez & Ferse, 2010), and the arbitrary nature of political boundaries established via imperial writ (Smith, 1999) evidences the continued ‘Asian’ presence in the region before the First Fleet landing in 1788 (Mackay, 1981;
Gergis et al., 2010). Choo (1995), for instance, draws on archaeological evidence to suggest that trade relations between the Aboriginal communities and parts of Asia have existed for at least two centuries beforehand (Choo, 1995). What European capitalist expansion did facilitate, however, was to increase the already existent migration between the Asian geographical region and the Australian continent. The necessity of cheap labour as part of the colonial project led indentured labourers to sign up “in the major ports of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Kupang”, amongst other places (Balint, 2012, p. 548). This can be seen, for instance, in the establishment of a pearling port in Broome that brought along workers “from China, Japan, Malaysia, the
Malay Archipelago, and the Philippines” (Balint, 2012, p. 548).
The earliest established record of pre-federation migration of the Chinese (primarily from
Guangdong and Fujian in South China), in particular, to Australia were in the mid-nineteenth century (Ang, 2016). This is often attributed to acquisition of wealth that the goldfields in New
South Wales and Victorian colonies had to offer. Around the same time, Chinese labourers 60
were also ‘imported’ to the North and Northwest of Australia as an attempt to shore up the
colonial effort via the exploitation of cheap labour in the communities built around the pearling
industries (Choo, 1995; Balint, 2012). Both cases of migration primarily included Chinese
males due to the nature of the work. Although in the Western Australian case, documented
evidence suggests that the few Asian women “worked as domestic servants and business
proprietors [and] prostitutes or brothel keepers” (Choo, 1995, p. 94). Both the Chinese miners
in the goldfields (Schamberger, 2015) and labourers in the pearling industries of the northwest
regions (Choo, 1995) worked in close proximity with European settlers who often treated non-
Whites with distrust and hostility (Ang, 2016), which in the case of miners, often entailed
violent outbreaks. A well-known instance of documented violence on the goldfields were the
Lambing Flat Riots in 1860, where “Australian born, European and American [White] miners
attacked Chinese miners” (Schamberger, 2015, p. 1), seemingly motivated by anti-Chinese prejudice. In the pearling industrial town of Broome, society was already stratified amongst its diverse (racialised) inhabitants, with a few European families that dominated and controlled its economy aided by polices that disallowed Asian proprietorship of pearling vessels (Choo,
1995). Whilst the exclusionary requirement is understandable within any capitalist enterprise, these narratives suggest the racialised dimension upon which lines of exclusion/inclusion are made apparent. Within this politico-economic conceptualisation, the impetus towards the federation of Australia in 1901 was, at least in part, a strategic political manoeuvre by colonial authorities to maintain the supremacy of White European-ness in the colonies. This is reflected within comments made by a member of parliament at the time in direct reference to the White
Australia policy:
With the Oriental, as a rule, the more he is educated the worse man he is likely to be from our point of view. The more educated, the more cunning he becomes, and the more able, with his peculiar ideas of social and business morality, to cope with the people here. I do not think there is any advantage in restricting the admission of coloured people to those who are educated; and, in any case, I contend that the number 61
which will filter through under the Government’s proposal will still be sufficiently large to constitute a great menace to the well-being of the people as a whole (Watson, 1901). It is less surprising, then, that the inaugural legislation of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901
(Cth) passed in parliament, in part, to curtail Chinese migration. Indeed, as a racialised group, the Chinese were already seen as an internal threat to the nation (Walker, 2002). Yet the need for legislation occurred only because cheap labour was still a necessary requirement for the furtherment of the imperialist colonial project. One can see here how the seeds of a racialised
(as White) form of citizenship to a soon-to-be-unified nation-state was already being planted.
Importantly, such a racialised form of belonging was strengthened through its differentiation from a foreign, unnaturalised essence embedded with the colonies. As the progression towards federation began, it was Asian-ness that ultimately symbolised that which was internally excluded from an otherwise largely White fabric.
White Australia (1900s – 1970s): Managing the Menace
The successful negotiation to maintain so-called coloured labour, which circumvented the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cth), perhaps was demonstrable of the full extent of colonial exploitation. This disallowed citizenship of Asian subjects whilst enabling their exploitation for the benefit of the colonial workforce, such as for the European pearling industry (Choo, 1995).
Further managing of the so-called Asian menace and maintenance of an all-White Australia required supplementary institutionalisation of racist polices. This was, in part, as a solution to the insidiously held belief of colonial officials of a growing coloured population of so-called degenerates, characterised by the offspring of Aboriginal-Asian unions. This was seen as a threat to the survival of White Australia (Balint, 2012). The passing of the legislation known as the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA), for example, directly prevented sexual relations between
Asian men and Aboriginal women; as Asian men were deemed to be spreading diseases and 62
performing “questionable sexual practices” (Choo, 1995, p. 106). Asian men also were
demonised ideologically within the national White imaginary as a sexual threat to White
women, akin to rapists (Walker, 2005). Drawing a connection between the management of the two racialised groups, Balint (2012) argues that the “policing [of] Aboriginal women’s sexuality was regarded as a principal means of restricting the movement of Asian men” (p.
549). The growing racism and discrimination and its institutionalisation post-federation led not only to the continued oppression against Aboriginal communities, but also to the deportation of the Chinese. The Chinese population which stood at approximately 30,000 in 1901 (ABS,
2008) was greatly reduced to approximately 6,000 by 1947 (Ang, 2016). The ultimate evidence of the racialised status of Australian identity is demonstrated by the ease of which the Asian population could be culled, in order to forge a White national identity. Jensen (2008), in discussing Australian national identity formation raises an interesting point; “the history of actual migration from Asia, which is almost as old as European migration… cannot alone explain why Anglo-Australians are referred to as ‘settlers’ whereas Asians become ‘migrants’”
(p. 544).
The example above illustrates how Australia, as a nation-state, acted from a perspective of an imagined Whiteness, and subsequently maintained this imaginary through its policies and practice. Likewise, one can see how the imaginary of a White nation is more an exercise in management of those racialised as non-White, as opposed to actually maintaining a ‘truly’
White populace (i.e. expelling all subjects that were deemed racially inferior). It is through this dominant ideological frame of this time period that the Asian subject became, in a way, a rallying point around which White nationhood coalesced. It came to symbolise, as a constant reminder, the threat of invasion posed to a new outpost of civilised Whiteness/ Europeanness in an untamed land, one (regionally) surrounded by the colonised masses. This ideological 63
frame, then, constructed Asian-ness (whether identified phenotypically and/or culturally) as a
marker of perpetual foreignness.
Multicultural Australia (1970s – Current): Asian Taste with a White Face
The dismantling of the White Australia policy in the 1960s and the subsequent passing
of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), as suggested by many scholars (i.e. Ang, 1996;
Hage 1998; Kizekova, 2013), demonstrated the nation’s self-professed desire to disown its
racist historical exclusion of difference to an inclusionary one of diversity, embodied in the
rhetoric of multiculturalism. In this section, I partly examine the reasons behind this political
shift. Indeed, the idea that multiculturalism arose as a result of a sudden rise in White moral
consciousness has been critiqued as a romanticised and disingenuous notion. Take for instance
Hage’s (1998) notion of White multiculturalism, seen as representative of the liberal
multiculturalist era. This form of (prescribed) multiculturalism afforded White Australia the ability to redefine how the inclusion of ethno-cultural and racialised difference could still be
managed under a dominant and essentialised White culture. Additionally, further implications
of multiculturalism as an intentional reconstruction of the nation’s image for socio-political
and economic relations and its commodifying effect on (Asian) racialisation, what can be seen
as the neoliberal multiculturalist era, will also be explored. Whilst I discuss these two periods
separately for conceptual purposes, note that there will be significant overlap.
Liberal Multiculturalism (1970s – mid 1990s). Following the post-WW2 period, the
need for the nation to build up its numbers if it were to survive as a settler-society fuelled
imperatives for wider immigration policies (Stratton & Ang, 1994). The White nation-building
mechanism was forced to expand its definition of who could be racialised as White when it
was realised that British (that is, ethnically Anglo-Celtic) migrants were in short supply.
Northern/ Western Europeans were preferred initially, then gradually the definition of
Whiteness had to expand to include the ‘not exactly White but White-enough’ Southern 64
Europeans. “White ethnics”, explain Stratton and Ang (1994), “were thought to be
assimilationable (sic) into the national culture, while coloured races were not” (p. 145).
However, the maintenance of a White Australia was soon to be susceptible to internal and
external forces, requiring a transition to its current multicultural form. It is Ang’s (1996)
contention that:
The driving force behind the change has been primarily economic, relating to Australia’s recent realization that it should exploit its geographical closeness to the booming ‘dragons’ and ‘tigers’ of the Asian region more aggressively (p. 38). Beyond political and economic factors, the inclination to present a more inclusive international
face drew more upon the moral sphere. In particular, the changing scientific developments and
ideas about biological human races in Western thought and the atrocities of Nazism committed
due to a belief in White racial superiority made Western societies, and therefore Australia’s
race-based policies, morally difficult to sustain (cf. Goldberg, 2006). This period of intense
change and development can be characterised by a deep incongruence in policy and practice.
The desire to connect politically and economically with Asia became a point of unease within
its racialised nationhood within the dominant White imaginary. On the one hand, it had to re-
assess the potential economic benefits of Australia’s geographic location to the Asian region.
On the other hand, it simultaneously needed to manage its colonial anxieties of a possible
‘Asianisation’ of the nation through an active rejection of its cultural influence (Perera &
Pugliese, 1997; Walker, 2002). This can be seen as a modern rehashing of the fear of the
Yellow Peril which seems have an unmitigated place within White colonial anxieties, given its
continued re-occurrence throughout Western European history; a kind of rippling effect of anti-
Asian racism throughout the ages. It survives in its contemporary Australian form through discussions regarding the compatibility of ‘Asian values’ (Perera & Pugliese, 1997; Walker,
2002) and the possibility of an internal threat to social cohesion (Walker, 2002). 65
The gradual dismantling of the White Australia policy in the mid-1960s, and the institutionalisation of a multicultural Australia in 1973 as official government policy
(Kizekova, 2013) can therefore be viewed as a strategy of containment of cultural difference.
The need to alleviate White anxiety could theoretically be achieved through positioning Whites as arbiters of acceptance given the drastic changes in its racialised and ethno-cultural demographic. The authority here is Hage’s (1998) White Nation thesis, which argues that in
White multiculturalism, ostensible valuing of migrant cultures exists for the benefit of the dominant White culture, which seeks to reshape itself as accepting and tolerant. This rhetoric of toleration has been debated by multiple scholars (i.e. Ang, 1996; Hage, 1998; Goldberg,
2006; Balint, 2010), highlighting the relations of power implicit in such an ideology. The dominant White group are expected to tolerate the difference of the racialised non-White populations, which empowers them with the same sense of power it takes to commit to intolerance. Goldberg (2006), in problematising the denial of racism in within contemporary
European discourse, explains a similar view of the discourse of toleration, and is worth quoting at length:
Tolerance expresses these denials directly. Acknowledging begrudged presence as desire of willed absence. The refusal of equality – of standing, of access, of outcome – in the name of an ecumenical largesse, a hostile generosity. Tolerance is always expressed towards the tolerated, I have argued elsewhere, from the tolerating agent’s position of power. I have the power and position to tolerate you. I am active; you the tolerated passive, powerless to effect me in my tolerating… (p. 338). This form of toleration has significantly impacted the valuation of Asian Australian communities since the state institutionalisation of multiculturalism as official policy. As Ang
(1996) describes, “this does not mean that people of diverse ‘Asian’ origins living in Australia are no longer constructed as other to the Australian self but… that the status of that otherness has changed” (p. 38). 66
Seen through the above, Asians are valued in Australia’s multiculturalism era by virtue of their racialised otherness, to be tolerated by the dominant White culture. Sleeter and Grant (1999) has described this form of ‘liberal power-evasive’ multiculturalism as representative of the
‘four f’s’; fairs, festivals, food and folk tales. Within this conceptualisation, ‘culture’ is reified against a normalised backdrop of Whiteness (i.e. ‘normal’ food as opposed to ‘Asian’ food), and subsequently essentialised through narrow and clichéd understandings. Additionally, cultural diversity is also celebrated through an understanding of ‘culture’ reduced to folkloric practices (i.e. Chinese New Year ‘Lion Dance’ celebrations), the superficiality of which speaks to its ‘power-evasiveness’. That is, difference is appreciated insofar as it remains on the
periphery of, whilst still being dominated by, Whiteness. Closely connected to the fetishisation
of difference is the idea of commodification. This concept can be best explored alongside a
period of economic development highlighted by ‘the rise of China’ discourse (Ang, 2016). It
is one where Australia’s national identity is tied up with its economic and political interests
(Kizekova, 2013). Ang (2016) argues that Australia’s commodification of its Chinatowns in
the 1980s (in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne) as an exotic symbol of multiculturalism
has been attributed to an adjustment of the nation’s image for the purposes of fostering
economic developments and stronger political ties with China. It is this strong focus on the
political utilisation of Asian-ness for economical profitability that marks the rise of a more
contemporary form of Asian racialisation.
Neoliberal Multiculturalism (1990s – Current). The liberal multiculturalist era can
be marked, inter alia, by the discourse of toleration between the White Australian subject and its racialised other. The neoliberal era, however, can be seen as much more about
(economical/fiscal) benefits that could be gained from this ostensible act of tolerance bestowed upon Asians (and other racialised groups). It is particularly salient to introduce a shift in the zeitgeist of this period since it impacts the way in which Asians became racialised through the 67
neoliberal framework of economic instrumentalisation. The orientalising of Chinese culture as an economic resource, for instance, is an example of how non-White cultures become commodified, as an expression of multiculturalism. Zong (2016) describes this treatment of difference as “a fetishised object to be performed, hailed, savoured, but ultimately repulsed and spat out undigested” (p. 245).
One of the main reasons for the shift in multiculturalist ideology can be attributed to the higher numbers of skilled Asian migration to the Australian continent. Instead of being marked by predominantly political refugee migration as in the liberal multiculturalist era, migration from the mid-90s were marked by highly skilled Asian professionals (Stratton, 2009). This factor drastically altered the perception of Asian racialisation within the dominant imaginary. If
Asians in the White Australia era were seen as the threatening other, in the liberal multicultural era they are the accepted other, then in the neoliberal era they can be seen as the profitable/ instrumentalised other. It is important to note that the presentation of this view of Australian multiculturalism is not to ignore the positive impact it has on non-White communities, especially when accounting for their social, economic, and political attainments in comparison to that of the White Australia era. Rather, it is to highlight that what remains a constant across shifting zeitgeists is a dominating White national imaginary, wherein the Asian subject materialises more as foreign object, in service to a White nation.
Further, academic commentators have begun to theorise upon another major shift in the socio- political sphere, one marked by the dynamics of transnationalism and globalisation. Identities now appear to be unlimited by the boundaries of the nation-state, and can be articulated on terms of shared ethnicity or religion transnationally. It is a period that has seen a rise in both covert and overt forms of White nationalist rhetoric in the political discourse (Elliot, 2018), moving Australia (and other predominantly White Western nation-states) into a ‘post- multicultural’ era (Joppke, 2004). Other commentators such as Kymlicka (2010) has argued 68
that the backlash against multiculturalism as state policy is specifically about immigrant
multiculturalism, rather than against historic minorities. In this sense, and specific to this project, a rising fear of an inevitable ‘Asian’ (i.e. Chinese) politico-economical takeover (cf.
Ang, 2016) amongst sections of the White populace in Australian has arguably fostered a
veneer of hostility toward this racialised group, increasing expressions of anti-Asian sentiment.
The various societal transformations through Australian historicity and constructions of Asian-
ness have, through their institutionalisation, contributed to dominant constructions of the
contemporary Asian Australian subject. As I describe below, these racist ideologies embedded
into the fabric of contemporary Australian society creates a particularly racist milieu for Asian
Australians to navigate.
Contemporary Experiences of Racism towards Asian Australians
Despite the rhetoric surrounding tolerance in the contemporary era, recent research suggests that experiences with racism are salient occurrences for Asian Australians contemporarily. Johnson, Terry, and Louis (2005) have shown, for instance that anti-Asian
‘prejudice’ and ‘sentiment’ exist amongst White Australians, especially amongst those who felt that their “superior status position is insecure”, viewing Asian Australians as a threat. This anxiety surrounding ‘Asians’ has similarly been demonstrated through the use of focus groups in Fozdar’s (2016) study. She found that common understandings of Australians regarding international relations politics tended to evoke orientalist representations of ‘us’ (Western/
White/ good) versus ‘them’ (Asia/ non-Whites/ bad), where, as the author comments on the tone of the discussions in the focus groups, “the sense of fear and anxiety [of Asia] is palpable”
(p. 799). What is interesting is the implicit construction, amongst participants, of Australia as a Caucasian or White country, which highlights the contemporary salience of the White national imaginary (cf. Hage, 1998). It is a notion that arguably contributes to the general “fear of cultural and racial loss [that] clearly underlies some of the concerns expressed” (Fozdar, 69
2016, p. 801) by members of the focus groups. The construction of Australia as a White nation seems to have significant consequences for Asian Australians who, marked by their phenotypical characteristics, are relegated to realm of the ‘other’ (Tan, 2006).
In Hollero’s (2007) study of the racialisation experiences of Asian Australians, she found that her participants experienced racism because they were perceived and recognised as ‘Asian’ and therefore not ‘Australian’, because the “White-centric standard [is still] used as norm” (p. 91) in Australia. For Hollero’s (2007) participants, physical characteristics (such as skin colour and phenotype), along with accent, were markers of their difference. Eye-shape in particular has been shown to garner overt acts of racial harassment for Asian Australians contemporarily
(Mellor, 2004; Hollero, 2007). Hollero’s (2007) participants also discussed accent as a barrier in job interviews, where (non- ‘Australian’) accented English acted as a marker of difference, in this case having serious consequences to occupational advancement. Booth, Leigh and
Varganova (2010), for instance, demonstrated that job applicants in Australia with ‘Chinese- sounding’ names were less likely to receive call-backs from potential employers as compared to applicants with Anglo-sounding names. Within the Australian construction industry,
Loosemore and Chau (2002) found that overt (they use the term ‘blatant’) racialised discrimination was still prevalent against their Asian operatives, despite scholarship having suggested that racism tends to be of a much more covert nature contemporarily (see also Seet
& Paradies, 2018). Of the 141 Asian participants, a significant 61% reported experiencing
“some form of racist intimidation (harassment) at work” (Loosemore & Chau, p. 96).
Regardless of whether experiences of racism have undergone a more subtle and covert transformation to the ‘new racism’ (i.e. Dunn, Forrest, Burnley, & McDonald, 2004; Ang,
2016) or remain ‘blatant’ and overt in nature (Loosemore & Chau, 2002; Mellor, 2004; Hollero,
2007), these studies demonstrate the need to recognise that racism is a continuous and ongoing experience for many subjects marked as Asian in Australia. 70
What limited scholarship exists highlights the disturbing reality faced by many Asian
Australians, a reality often invalidated through the wider society’s denial of racism
(Augoustinos & Every, 2007; see also Seet & Paradies, 2018), effectively rendering critical engagement with the issue more difficult to sustain. So far, I have demonstrated the racialised structures in which members of the research site materialise within. This racialised social structure, as demonstrated in this section, does seem to effect at least interpersonal forms of racism, as directed towards Asian Australians. Given the salience of racism as an effect of this structure, in the next section, I turn to examining other main channels through which racist ideology may be perpetuated.
The Channels That Shape Our Racialised Realities: Perpetuating White Supremacist
Ideology
Stuart Hall (1986) highlighted Antonio Gramsci’s relevance in understanding IR, arguing that he “helps us to understand one of the most common, least explained features of
‘racism’: the ‘subjection’ of the victims of racism to the mystifications of the very racist ideologies which imprison and define them” (p. 27). As such, Gramsci’s (1971) concept of hegemony, understood as a form of power exercised by those in the ruling class who are able to maintain their dominance through the consent of the subjugated classes, seems particularly relevant to a study of IR. The term was originally used by Gramsci to explain the domination of capital in Western industrialised societies through ideological transmission. I understand ideology to be any “set of claims… [that] conceal or mask social contradictions on behalf of the dominant class or group… and therefore are often also packages of symbols, ideas, images, and theories through which people experience their relation to each other and the world” (Held,
1980, p. 186). Thus, in this thesis, I utilise the term hegemonic ideology to refer to an imparted worldview by the dominant power structure, one which aims to coerce racialised subjects to willingly consent to a subordinated position within a racialised (national) order (cf. Hage, 71
1998). Following Hall (1986) and Held (1980), this utilisation of the notion of (racialised) ideology is materialist in thrust, thus connecting the ideological to a structural foundation. That is, to recall Bonilla-Silva’s (1996) structural theory of racism discussed in the previous chapter, racism is seen as an ideological component of a larger structure, seen as a racialised social system. As such, in the following section, I examine the primary channels through which racist hegemonic ideological frameworks tend to be transmitted, focusing on constructions of the
Asian in Western societies. These will be organised into three main categories, modelled after
Sue’s (2003) “three channels that shape our racial realities” (p. 81); namely; through the media, schooling and education, and peer and social groups.
Ideology in the Media
There are multiple forms in which the media can take, with popular outlets being television, cinema, and magazines (Bonilla-Silva, 2011) and in addition, the internet. Ideology in the media can be understood through Horkheimer and Adorno’s concept of culture industry, arguing that culture within a capitalist system does not arise from the masses, rather, it is produced by a structure that “integrates consumers from above” (Held, 1980, p. 91).
Representing the view of the Frankfurt school, Held (1980) writes that “capitalism creates conditions of dependence on the powerful” (p. 93) and those in power “employ economic, political and cultural means to defend the status quo”. Thus, aspects of culture, in this case pertaining to mass media, “become co-opted and transformed into modes of controlling individual consciousness” (p. 90). Discussing the use of media forms in colonising the mind of the Antillean native, Fanon (1967) seemed to be aware of the inherent racialised ideology when he wrote that magazines in the Antilles were “put together by white men for little white men”
(p. 146). Australian films have also been implicated in research that demonstrates the ideological portrayal of the foundational myth of White autochthony, embodied in the narratives that are demonstrative of a racialised hierarchy with White men at the apex 72
(Williams, 2009; Smaill, 2013). In this section, I briefly explore depictions of Asians in cinema and pornography, due to their particular influence in Western culture (Lee, 2001; Lehman,
2006; Dines, 2010; Bonilla-Silva, 2011). Given the global domination of North American media (McPhail, 2010), and thus its relative influence within contemporary Australian society,
I draw upon extant scholarship from within the North American context.
This section explores the normative nature of Whiteness in Western society as it appears in the
North American film industry, which dominates the global stage (McPhail, 2010), and its racialised and racist representation of the Asian. In discussing racialised imagery in film, Dyer
(2005) describes how Whites tend to be non-racialised, taken as the standard and representative of being ‘just human’. For instance, Bonilla-Silva (2011) points out that whilst it is generally understood in dialogue when we refer to a ‘Black movie’ (usually in reference to a film with a predominance of Black cast members), rarely do we refer to movies as ‘White movies’, which in reality are characteristic of most Hollywood films. Dyer (2005) points out the imbalance of power inherent in such a representation; “the claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of humanity. Raced people can’t do that – they can only speak for their race” (p.
10). Dyer’s point has particular salience here, especially given the consistent stereotypical representations of Asians in the North American film industry. Lee’s (2001) study exploring the careers of Asian American actors and their experiences with the structural racism that dominates the North American film industry is particular useful here. She found that both women and men experienced a limitation in the roles that were available to them, albeit with significant differences between the genders. Across the US film, television, and theatre industries, roles available to Asian Americans tend to be stereotypically racialised for males in particular, with slightly more diversity and frequency of roles for women. Male participants in the study reported having auditioned for roles as “Korean grocers, gangsters, immigrants, computer geeks, kung fu experts and foreign businessmen” (Lee, 2001, p. 179). Lee also 73
highlights that lead roles for Asian men are usually designated to martial art films with foreign
Asian talent typically reprising these roles, whereas roles as romantic leads are seemingly non- existent. In Murphy’s (2005) analysis of Asian representation in contemporary Hollywood films, he finds that even when Asian men star in leading roles and are paired off with (White)
Western women, they are portrayed “in relationships that are almost always chaste” and typically depicted as “innocent or asexual” (p. 16). The stereotypical portrayal of Asians has a well recorded history within this industry. Lu and Wong (2013) catalogued the Western media’s representations of Asians, such as ‘Dr. Fu Manchu’ (1913 – to date), the effeminate
Chinese villain and embodiment of the Yellow Peril bent on destroying Western civilisation, the asexual nerd ‘Long Duk Dong’ in Sixteen Candles (1984), and more recently, effeminate
Chinese gangster ‘Leslie Chow’ with heavily stereotyped accent in The Hangover (2009).
Continuously reproduced in contemporary forms, the stereotypes tend to depict Asian males as the epitome of the perpetual foreigner and the embodiment of the non-White Western other.
They are constructed as a threat and defiler of White morality, and perhaps most saliently, as antithetical to hegemonic standards of White Western masculinity (Lu & Wong, 2013).
For Asian women, the industry still seems to require them playing the orientalist stereotype of an exotic and sexually available racialised body. This has taken the form of an orientalised prostitute, with other significantly variable and less stereotypical roles such as a “mother, teacher, [and] professional executive” (Lee, 2001, p. 180). Mok (1998) has also highlighted a recurrent theme in the film industry in which Asian women are paired with White Western men in sexually explicit roles, but never with Asian men. The utilisation of Asian women in representations of modern orientalist fantasies has been similarly linked to other areas of Asian representation in the film industry. Murphy (2005) has shown that Asian roles are always typically written as unnaturalised foreigners, with roles representing Westerners usually 74
reserved for Whites. He demonstrates that even when films attempt a unification of binaried
cultures (i.e. East and West), the role is often represented by White males:
These movies represent Hollywood imperialist conventions in the appropriation of Asian cultural motifs, the subjugation of the Asian to the Western in the narrative, the depiction of whites as masters of Asian cultural forms, and the presentation of the white body as representative of the West (Murphy, 2005, p. 21). The above also captures the phenomenon of ‘whitewashing’ in film, a term which refers to the
practice of casting Whites in roles meant for racialised subjects, or where a script is simply
rewritten for Whites to assume the lead. Although the stereotypical portrayals of Asians and
the whitewashing of roles in the North American film industry tend to be justified on the basis
of relatability and marketability of characters in films (Lee, 2001), the conceptualisation of
Whiteness as a form of racialised power, presented above, suggests an alternative explanation.
It is one in which a racialised social structure serves to re-perpetuate hegemonic Whiteness in film in order to maintain its ideological dominance. As it will subsequently be shown, such a
strategy is pervasive even in the sexual realm, as I examine racialisation and racism within
Western forms of pornography.
Recent research suggests the relevance of explicit pornographic material in shaping Western
cultural norms (Lehman, 2006; Dines, 2010; Braithwaite, Coulson, Keddington, & Fincham,
2015). As a popular media form, it is relevant to briefly examine the dominant ideological
content proliferated. This is all the more concerning with research demonstrating the highly
racialised and racist nature of Western pornographic material (Bernardi, 2006; 2007; Dines,
2010; Zhou & Paul, 2016). It is one which tends to portray “children, women, and people of
color in the service of a pornographic articulation of whiteness” with “the white man at the
center or apex of pleasure and power” (Bernardi, 2007, p. 117). Unsurprisingly then, depictions
of Asians within the Western pornographic paradigm reveal strong elements of sexualised
racism. Bernardi’s (2006) analysis of cinematic pornography in the US revealed that “we are 75
more likely to see white penises penetrating young Asian mouths, vaginas and anuses than
Asian penises penetrating anything Asian” (p. 236). In Dines’ (2010) analysis of the
intersectionality between gender and racialised oppression in Western forms of pornography,
she finds Asian-ness paralleled to White patriarchal understandings of femininity. That is, the
feminisation of Asian-ness marks the stereotypical roles available for Asian women, who are
required to perform an inherent submissiveness in character. Particularly, it is their
subservience in sexual desire to White men, who symbolically represent the racialised
hegemonic standard of masculinity. Researchers have also addressed the racialised
terminology often applied to non-White pornographic actors and actresses in terms of their
genitalia. Although White pornographic actors and actresses are also reduced to their genitalia,
their Whiteness tends to be normalised in the racist pornographic world, remaining invisible
(Dines, 2010). For example, an Asian female performer would be referred to in terms of her
genitalia and her racialisation, such as, in vulgar pornographic terms, “Tiny Asian Twats”,
“Petite Asian Pussy”, “Oriental Exotics” and “Fortune Pussy” (Bernardi, 2006, p. 236). Dines’
(2010) analysis demonstrates how feminised terms like ‘small’ and ‘tight’ are popularly used
to refer to women’s genitalia (especially Asian women), in contrast with sexually demonising
the animalistic Black man, inscribing terms like “monster” (p. 101) and “big black cock” (p.
111) to their racialised genitalia. Both stereotypes mentioned have longstanding histories of
racism dating back to European racialised thought during the colonial era (see Fanon, 1967, p.
170; Said, 2003, p. 186-187). Asian women are served up as a product of sexual orientalism primarily intended for White male consumption, often having their own specialised category in pornography (Bernardi, 2006; Zhou & Paul, 2016). This speaks to a legacy of European colonialism that interpellated the Asian (female) body with exotification (Bernardi, 2006;
Dines, 2010). In contrast, Asian men, by virtue of their feminised racialisation, hardly ever appear in Western heterosexual pornography (Bernardi, 2006) and when they do, fill 76
subordinated roles as inexperienced asexual subalterns that need to be taught hegemonic
standards of masculinity (Dines, 2010). Being represented only by their racialised genitalia, the
reduction of Asians to demeaning racialised stereotypes in Western pornography sexualises
and normalises their dehumanisation, contributing to their subordination within Western society.
Subordinated positioning of racialised and racist roles in cinema and pornography serve to further dehumanise Asians, reaffirm the racialised and gendered hierarchy, and ultimately
perpetuate the valorisation of Whiteness. The proliferation of racialised ideology through
Western media is troubling given its immense influence on the culture industry, suggesting its
potential relevance in contributing to the internalisation of hegemonic ideology amongst Asian
Australians.
Ideology and Pedagogy
Much of the research literature in the area of education demonstrates the importance of
recognising White supremacist ideologies as a foundational myth to the ostensibly purported
‘colour-blind’ meritocratic system in White-settler societies (i.e. Hickling-Hudson & Ahlquist,
2003; Brooks, Arnold, & Brooks, 2013; Bonilla-Silva, 2014; Walton, Priest, & Paradies, 2014;
Baber, 2015). Although this is an essential aspect of education to address, given the privilege
that such a system affords to Whites over other racialised groups, I am more concerned in this
section on how these ideologies are utilised to construct dominating epistemologies, ones which are can be transmitted and internalised by racialised subjects.
A typical form of White supremacist ideological transmission within educational pedagogies involves the valorisation of an oft-homogenised Western European cultural contribution to contemporary civilisation over others. This has required the invocation of what has been termed scientific racisms to fuel the belief in White racialised superiority (Fanon, 1967; Blue, 1999; 77
Sue 2003; Freire, 2005). G. Stanley Hall, ‘father of child psychology’, lends an example to this
point, having stated that “Africans, Indians and Chinese were members of adolescent races and
in a stage of incomplete development” (quoted in Sue, 2003, p. 84). Indoctrination through
education have been utilised through European colonisation as a tried and tested tool of
perpetuating White supremacist ideologies. For instance, Fanon’s (1967) analysis of colonial
schooling practices demonstrated the socialising of young Black Antillean children to “identify
with the explorer, the bringer of civilization, the white man who carries truth to savages – an all-white truth” (p. 147). Young children are particularly susceptible in this sense, as demonstrated by the Clark (1939; 1940; 1950) doll experiments and similar other studies investigating racialised ‘preferences’ for Whiteness amongst non-White children in Western
societies (Jordan & Hernandez-Reif, 2009; Shutts, Kinzler, Katz, Tredoux, & Spelke, 2011;
Corenblum & Armstrong, 2012). British colonialism in Australia also utilised enforced
schooling practices to inculcate the local Aborigines communities into adopting a Eurocentric
Weltanschauung (cf. Smith, 1999).
Perhaps influenced by globalised forces, the lessened forms of overt scientific racisms in
contemporary Western pedagogic models still bears traces of White supremacist ideology,
albeit covertly in its metamorphosis. For instance, philosopher Charles Mills (1997) argues that
Western political thought and theory have been dominated by White supremacist ideology for
over two thousand years. He explains that the overwhelming hegemonic dominance of
Whiteness in academia is not accidental for “it reflects the fact that standard textbooks and
courses have for the most part been written and designed by whites, who take their racial
privilege so much for granted that they do not even see it as political, as a form of domination”
(p. 1). That is, he is explaining the racialised structures through which Whiteness gains its
legitimacy as a relational superiority to other racialised groups, one maintained and reproduced
through pedagogical socialisation practices. It seems that amongst White postcolonial settler- 78
societies (i.e. CANZUS nations), the assertion of a racialised White epistemology as a universal
quality is widespread and normalised. The important point to note here is that certain forms of
knowledge are not necessarily objectively racial in nature (i.e. the concept of gravity), but that
White civilisational discourse ‘colonises’ these forms of knowledge as wholly owned
subsidiaries of Whiteness (i.e. democracy). Such an act simultaneously particularises or ignores
completely the existing knowledges derived from other racialised ethno-cultural groups (Bazin,
1993; Ahlquist, 2000; Sleeter, 2001; Hickling-Hudson & Ahlquist, 2003; Baber, 2015). One
need not look further than the contemporary Western academy, wherein many scholarly
disciplines tend to limit their perceptual scope around European/ Western forms of scholarship,
rarely reaching beyond its ethnocentric boundaries. For instance, it would be rarity for the work
of Ibn Khaldun, a 14th century North-African historiographer and philosopher to be utilised in
Western scholarship (Şenturk & Nizamuddin, 2008; McCorriston, 2013) even though his work in the Muqaddimah demonstrate the earliest examples of, inter alia, modern sociology and anthropology.
An example of how a dominant White/Eurocentric lens can impact racialised subjects is demonstrated in Endo’s (2012) study on the North American educational system with Japanese
American students as participants. The study found that Asian Americans as a whole were largely excluded from the cultural diversity aims of the schooling system. Participants reported that Asian culture was represented in stereotypical orientalist fashion, with studies of Asia (as a geographical and cartographic locale) being conflated with Asian American experiences.
Attributable to the White racialised frame through which the curriculum is taught, the author explains that “U.S. K-12 schools continue to teach about Asian Americans in ways that reinforce the cultural exoticism-pathology binary and images of Asian racial sameness” (p. 14).
This study problematises the pathologising of a homogenised Asian culture when taught from 79
a Eurocentric viewpoint, and raises the significance of the various ways in which White
supremacist ideology become implicitly transmitted through pedagogic practices.
In the case of Australia, the institutionalisation of a Eurocentric educational curriculum
continues to be problematic for a nation attempting to represent itself as multicultural
(Hickling-Hudson & Ahquist, 2003; Plevitz, 2007; Henderson & Jetnikoff, 2013). Scholarship
in this area tend to situate research within Aboriginal communities, with evidence indicating
that the Eurocentrism of Australian pedagogy have significantly contributed to the low school-
completion rates in Indigenous communities (Hickling-Hudson & Ahquist, 2003; Plevitz,
2007). As a corollary dynamic, Hickling-Hudson and Ahquist (2003) point out that students from racialised communities who “succeed in the predominant Anglocentric educational paths will probably be severed from their culture and community of origin” (p. 83). In this context, the authors argue that the continued and gradual eradication of Indigenous cultural knowledges is inversely related to the maintenance of White supremacist ideology. That a particular dominant narrative seeks to be reproduced within the educational system speaks to the engendering and maintenance of White nation-building (cf. Hage, 1998), through the ‘proving’ of White autochthony (Garbutt, 2006). Understanding the naturalising of Whiteness to
Australian nationhood through ideological means correlates with Jensen’s (2008) observation that Whites maintain their settler status in contemporary Australian society whilst migrant statuses are relinquished to Asians and other racialised folks. Indeed, the Australian curriculum, especially concerning its historicity and subsequent embedment in educational institutions tends to focus solely on European contributions whilst ignoring or denigrating the significance of non-Whites in its formation (see for example, Choo, 1995; Liu & Pechenkina, 2016). It seems in vying for the moral virtue of sovereign claims to the nation, its pedagogical practices reflect a corollary aim of maintaining a colonial gaze of imperial antiquity. Yet it is one that displaces Aboriginal sovereignty, and reinscribes Asians and other non-Whites as perpetually 80
foreign. Importantly, I read here the potential for Asian Australians, amongst other racialised individuals, to internalise their own alienation from the dominant narratives in the construction of Australian nationhood.
Ideology and Social Groups
In this section, I am concerned with the transmission of ideology through the social construction of knowledge, both vertically (from parents) and horizontally (amongst peers). I demonstrate the significance social groups play in the perpetuation and maintenance of White supremacist ideology. In doing so, I examine the replication of prejudicial behaviour toward own-group members, through the maintenance and perpetuation of White supremacist frames, via intergenerational and intragroup dynamics.
Parents have integral roles in the socialisation processes of their children, imparting values and norms to “prepare youth to become socially competent members of the wider society” (Tran &
Lee, 2010, p. 170). Given the undercurrents of White supremacist ideology in contemporary
Western society however, these normative values tend to embody aspects of Eurocentric racism
(along with sexism and classism; Parmer, Arnold, Natt, & Janson, 2004; Mason, 2015). Studies in racial-ethnic socialisation practices demonstrate that vertically transmitted messages from parents teach children the “nature of ethnic and racial status as it relates to personal and group identity”, along with understanding their racialised “position in the social hierarchy” (Tran &
Lee, 2010, p. 169; see also Degner & Dalege, 2013; Juang et al., 2016). As a potential form of transmission of racialised ideology, the dynamics involved in parental socialisation has important considerations for studying IR. Although this section discusses only an overview of the racial-ethnic socialisation literature, it is important to highlight a distinction in terminology.
According to Juang et al. (2016), the process of racial socialisation involves the ways in which parents teach and prepare their children in regard to their perceived position of their racial group in society’s hierarchy. This is done so as to prepare one’s children for the expectations 81
or challenges associated for the racialised within a racialised social structure. This is not to be confused with cultural or ethnic socialisation, which refers more to intergenerational transmission of “cultural practices, traditions, and history” (p. 417).
Mason (2015) highlights the significance of parental (or vertical) influence amongst children for the purposes of the current study. She found that parents sometimes devalue aspects of their ethnic/racialised group or culture in order to acculturate to the dominant culture’s values, and transmit this internalised ideology to their children. Mason’s central thesis explained how the effects of chattel slavery have been transmitted down through the generations to impact the lives of Black Americans today. She argues that maladaptive coping strategies, untreated psychopathology, and intergenerational behavioural modelling (synonymous here to parental modelling) have been intricately included as part of African American culture. A similar concept exists within the Native American communities, describing the historical trauma born out of European colonialism, oppression, and genocide of the native population existing today as a soul wound (Duran & Duran, 1995). The concept of lateral violence is utilised amongst
Aboriginal communities in Australia and Canada in explaining how the imitation of oppressive behaviours have been “passed down generation after generation until it is difficult to even make the connection between the activities of the oppressor and the identities of the oppressed”
(Bulman & Hayes, 2011, p. 21; see also Goodleaf & Gabriel, 2009). Whilst research in the field of racial/ethnic socialisation have theoretical application across all racialised groups in the North American context (Cokley, 2007), understanding that sociohistorical constructions between racialised groups often have different trajectories has important implications for the current study. This means that members of specific racialised groups will have experiences that are unique to that particular form of racialisation (cf. Delgado & Stefancic, 2012).
For instance, Asian Americans are importantly distinguished from other racialised groups through such factors as “historical context, reasons for migration, refugee status, distinct 82
cultural values and traditions, language, [and] phenotype” (Gartner, Kiang, & Supple, 2014, p.
1716). This translates to more Asian American-specific racial-ethnic socialisation processes that address, as Juang and colleagues (2016) explain, “discrimination by speaking English without an accent, maintaining transnational ties to family in Asia, socializing children to understand that parents have made important sacrifices to come to the U.S., and facilitating integration into the mainstream culture” (p. 418). In accounting for these differences, the authors developed an Asian American parental racial-ethnic socialisation scale. It is a measure which, inter alia, accounted for both explicit and implicit forms of socialisation. Although their preliminary findings did not capture the implicit socialisation processes of Asian Americans, the authors importantly point out that along with explicit socialisation processes “such as directly discussing racist events with children” (p. 419), the practice of parental modelling (as an example of implicit socialisation) is a significant factor in the development of racialised biases and attitudes in their children. Several studies have demonstrated the significance of vertical transmission of White supremacist ideology amongst Asian subjects in predominant
White Western societies. For example, an Asian American teacher in Kohli’s (2014) study recalled that her father instilled in her a belief of White cultural superiority. This was embodied in his message to work and study hard so that she may, one day, be “one of them (Whites)” (p.
379), which subsequently led to her perpetuating similar ideas within the classroom context.
Similarly, a participant in Pyke’s (2010a) group interview with Vietnamese Americans recalled that his parents would directly warm him against associating with other Asians. These examples demonstrate the salience of accounting for vertical transmission of racist ideology for the current study.
Along with one’s parents, peer group (or horizontal) influence also constitutes another important aspect in an individual’s socialisation process (Sue, 2003; Tomé, Matos, Simões,
Camacho, & AlvesDiniz, 2012), and therefore as a poignant catalyst for racialised ideology. 83
Sociological research in this area, especially as they apply to Asian Americans will be helpful
in determining how these intragroup dynamics operate in practice. Schwalbe and colleagues
(2000) consolidated and presented the dynamics that frequently occur in the reproduction and
maintenance of inequality. The authors highlighted a relevant intragroup dynamic that occur
amongst subordinated groups, which they term defensive othering. It is defined as “identity
work done by those seeking membership in a dominant group, or by those seeking to deflect
the stigma they experience as members of a subordinate group” (p. 425). When applied to a
racialised context, racialised subjects in Western societies who engage in defensive othering
replicate inequality in seeking acceptance from the dominant White group. Building upon this
work, Pyke and Dang (2003) introduce what they term intraethnic othering, to specifically
describe how Asian Americans participate in acts of distancing from other co-ethnics. This is done as an attempt to deflect stigma associated with perceived negative and racialised stereotypes. By marking other co-ethnics stereotypically as either too Asian or inversely, too
White, participants demarcated what was appropriate behaviour (dress codes, spoken language etc.) for Asian Americans. Nguyen (2016) has pointed out that the criteria by which one’s racialised authenticity is ‘proven’ is often predominantly defined by the dominant White culture. This is especially so in the Australian multicultural era, wherein racialised culture becomes commodified within the dominant White national imaginary. It is because these standards are subsequently performed and regulated by the racialised themselves, that the significance of a horizontal transmission of racist ideology is highlighted.
The literature suggests the importance of accounting for how vertical and horizontal forms of socialisation act as catalysts for the transmission of White supremacist ideology. They shape racialised and racist perceptions and beliefs amongst the racialised themselves, thereby contributing to how IR manifests. Interestingly, Sue (2003) highlights that a frequently occurring theme in the social construction of knowledge that pertain to racialisation, ethnicity, 84
and ethno-cultures in the North American context reflects the belief of the inferiority of non-
Whites. Given the similarities in racialised social structures of North American and Australian societies (Stratton & Ang, 1994), there is reason to suggest that socialisation processes of racialised subjects may be similarly impacted within contemporary Australian society.
Having identified three primary channels through which White supremacist ideologies are transmitted, I now turn to review the extant literature to demonstrate the how this dominating epistemology may impact racialised subjects and communities. In the next section, I take a specific focus on those racialised as Asians in predominantly White Western societies. For ease of reference, I simply utilised the racialised term ‘Asian’ when referring to this group.
IR Amongst Asians in Western Societies
Due to the scarcity of studies on IR amongst Asian Australians, I draw on scholarship within the North American context that examines how IR manifests within Asian American communities. I suggest that the parity between Australian and North American societies as
predominantly White postcolonial settler-societies (Stratton & Ang, 1994), and the similar
types of racism and prejudice faced by those racialised as Asians in both social contexts (i.e.
Liang, Li, & Kim, 2004; Johnson et al., 2005; Qin, Way, & Rana, 2008) renders the North
American scholarship significant to the current study. However, to account for the differences
in social context, I engage a more selective presentation of the effects of IR on Asians within
the extant literature. This is influenced by the historical and contemporary racialised
understandings of Asians within the Australian context that I have examined in an earlier
section.
I utilise this oeuvre to build a foundational understanding of the relationship between IR and
those racialised as Asians for the purposes of the current study. As such, I examine literature
on IR as experienced by Asians and how they manifest as a “complex composition of affective, 85
behavioral and cognitive distortions” (Bailey, Williams, & Favors, 2014, p. 146). I summarise
the literature on the relationship between IR and Asians into four sub-sections for ease of
categorisation: 1) Impact on acculturation and ethnic identity development, 2) internalising
White norms of attractiveness, 3) impact on romantic/sexual relationships, and 4) Internalising colour-blind racial ideology (CBRI).
Impact on Acculturation and Ethnic Identity Development
In White Western societal contexts, studies have linked high acculturation amongst
Asians, or over-identification with a racialised White culture, to lowered psychological well- being (Shin, 1994; Leong & Chou, 1994; Yeh & Huang, 1996; David & Okazaki, 2006; Chae
& Foley, 2010). Whilst there is a difference between the concepts of acculturation and ethnic identity (Farver, Narang & Bhadha, 2002), these frameworks overlap within ethnic identity research (Phinney, 1990). I therefore present these fields of work simultaneously to demonstrate how IR can negatively impact the ethnic identity concept of Asians.
Acculturation here is defined as how racialised subjects “adapt to the dominant culture and the associated changes in their beliefs, values and behavior that result from contact with the new culture” (Farver et al., 2002, p. 338). According to psychologist John Berry (1997), whilst the multiple forms of acculturative strategies1 differ between individuals, with some marking more
psychological adjustment than others (Berry, 1997), one’s acculturative strategy can be affected by hegemonic ideology. Berry suggests that non-dominant racialised groups are susceptible to acculturative stress. That is, they can be impacted by dominant ideologies within the society of settlement, whether communicated subtly (ideologically) or overtly through
1 John Berry’s (1997) acculturation scheme is a model that represents four primary types of acculturative strategies. The integration strategy defines a person who strives to maintain both their culture of origin and relationships within the dominant culture; the separation strategy relies upon valuing the culture of origin whilst rejecting the dominant culture; the assimilation strategy is characteristic of a person who strives to belong to the dominant culture and rejects their culture of origin; and finally, the marginalisation strategy is utilised in the event where an individual does not affiliate with either cultures. 86
experiencing interpersonal racism. This is particularly relevant to the current study as it occurs
within the context of White multiculturalism (cf. Hage, 1998). Since Whites constitute the
dominant racialised group within Australia, they have the economic, social, and political clout
to define and impose their reality upon the racialised. Following Berry (1997), once the
assimilationist paradigm that valorises a particular White Australian nationhood is internalised,
this ideologically held belief may lead Asian Australians to not only value assimilation into the
dominant White culture, but to do so at the expense of their own ethnic identity development.
Ethnic identity can be understood as “a psychological construct referring to how individuals
relate their ethnic background to their self-concept” (Chen, LePhuoc, Guzman, Rude, & Dodd,
2006, p. 462). Importantly, research demonstrates that Asian ethnic identity development can
be affected by racism-related stress (Yeh & Huang, 1996; Liang et al., 2004; David & Okazaki,
2006). As Millan and Alvarez (2014) observe, “one of the consistent themes across all models of racial identity is the description of a stage in which individuals reject their racial group,
conform to dominant white values and norms, and deny the significance of racism” (p. 177).
As such, one can see the correlation here with issues of acculturation, and the ideological
susceptibility for racialised groups and individuals within a White dominant culture. This is
exemplified, for example, in Sue and Sue’s (1971) ethnic identity model for Chinese-
Americans’ Marginal Person and Kim’s (1981) Asian American Identity Development
Model’s stage of White Identification. Both describe an Asian subject who experiences a negative impact on their self-esteem and identity due to racialised discrimination and
realisation of their (inferiorised) difference. This leads to a desire to relinquish their Asian-ness and to identify with the dominant White culture. Yeh and Huang (1996) specifically identify the feeling of shame in one’s racialised culture as a reason for such a dislocation in Asian
American racialised identity. As such, identifying with dominant White culture can significantly impact how racialised identities are formed. As Nguyen (2016) points out, for the 87
racialised, no action or behaviour is unmarked as the dominant racialised group defines not
only what is White but (mis)appropriates racialised cultures as hypostatised, monolithic
categories. This has important implications for the current study given the tendency that the
ideology of Australian multiculturalism has to “essentialise and fetishise ethnicity” (Ang, 2016,
p. 262).
Internalising White Norms of Attractiveness
In this section, I review the literature on how IR impacts the perceptions of racialised attractiveness amongst Asians. Internalising Eurocentric standards of attractiveness for Asian
Americans have been linked to negative self-concept and body-image (Mok, 1998; Mintz &
Kashubeck, 1999; Lau, Lum, Chronister, & Forrest, 2006; Frederick, Kelly, Latner, Sandhu, &
Tsong, 2016), especially in women. For Asian men, this often takes the form of the perceived inability to acquire White hegemonic masculinised norms.
Frederick et al.’s (2016) study demonstrated that compared with White Americans, Asian
American women reported lower appearance evaluation. Although researchers have cautioned that negative body-image and face-image in Asian American women may not be wholly attributed to exposure to White ideals of beauty (see for example Elfving-Hwang & Park, 2016 for a similar issue within the Australian context), there is evidence to suggest that Eurocentric standards can have significant impact on subjects’ self-concept. For instance, Mintz and
Kashubeck (1999) highlighted that, in their study, Asian American women “reported both lower self-esteem and less satisfaction with their arms, breasts, height, eyes and face” (p. 792), when compared with their White counterparts. Similarly, Lau et al. (2006) linked high levels of acculturation to White culture, that is, internalisation of White supremacist ideology, to body dissatisfaction amongst Asian American women. Significantly, they suggest a correlation between media influence and body image, which has relevance in hypothesising similar impact on Asian Australians for the current study. Likewise, skin colour has been an issue directly 88
linked to IR, particularly amongst Filipino Americans. For instance, Decena (2014) found that
multiple participants in her study desired lighter skin, attributable to the colonial mentality of
their parents who in some cases, would recommend the use of skin-lightening products. Lighter
skin and other physical features often attributed to Europeans seemed to symbolise a higher
potential for upward mobility. It is a condition that can be attributed to the history of Spanish
and American colonialism in the Philippines, where many “had to adapt and take on colonial
values in order to stay alive” (p. 62). The internalisation of lighter skin preference, embodied
in the concept of colourism (Jones, 2000) has also been linked to other previously Spanish
controlled colonies, such as Mexico (Montalvo, 2005) and other parts of Latin America
(Montalvo, 2009).
Yet another area that has particular salience for Asian American women is the prevalence of cosmetic blepharoplasties. Mok (1998) has linked the internalisation of White standards of attractiveness to Asian Americans undergoing cosmetic surgery to alter aspects of their phenotype. She highlights that the emergence of an Asian subculture of dissatisfaction with their phenotypical features has become pervasive enough so as to encourage some cosmetic surgeons to “advertise themselves as specializing in ‘Asian eye’ surgery” (p. 6). A canvassing of the surgical literature on blepharoplasty clearly demonstrate an acknowledgement in the medical field that, as one article puts it, “in contrast with Caucasian blepharoplasty, which is usually done for rejuvenation purposes, eyelid surgery for Asians is mainly done for cosmetic reasons” (Suhk, Kiranantawat, & Nguyen, 2015). Disturbingly, these issues are almost always framed from as an issue of cosmetics, one which avoids the discourse of racialisation and structural White supremacy altogether. As Munzer (2011) points out, there seems to be “tap- dancing around an appropriate interpretation of what the ophthalmic plastic surgeon is trying to accomplish for the patient” (p. 251). He offers significant theorisation on the reasons for
Asian utilisation of blepharoplasty, the most relevant being what he terms aesthetic oppression, 89
or internalising a desire to look less Asian and/or more. In recognising the pervasiveness of
White standards of attractiveness in the North American globalised media (McPhail, 2010; Lau et al., 2006; Frederick et al., 2016), it is possible that these effects may have manifested amongst Asian Australian women as well.
Studies demonstrate that Asian men are similarly affected by a White standard of attractiveness, especially concerning self-perceptions of racialised masculinities. According to
Chen (1999), hegemonic masculinity “refers to masculinities that are chiefly, though not exclusively, associated with men located in the uppermost reaches of a society’s ascriptive hierarchies” (p. 587). Lu and Wong add that it refers to “practices that signify the dominant and most endorsed forms of masculinity… including heterosexual, white norms” (p. 346). They highlight that this standard tends to be defined against other racialised masculinities in the
North American context, but unlike the hyper-masculine stereotypes of African Americans and
Latino Americans, Asian Americans tend to be stereotyped as lacking in (hegemonic) masculinity. Similarly, as Eglash (2002) traces the polarised forms of European “primitivist racism” (ascribing animalistic traits to racialised group) and “orientalist racism” (exoticising a racialised group as incapable of human emotion, or a more akin to a spiritual essence), he argues that these dehumanised categories are embodied stereotypes of Black and Asian men.
He writes:
Thus exists the stereotype of Africans as oversexual and Asians as undersexual, with ‘whiteness’ portrayed as the perfect balance between these two extremes. Given these associations, it is no coincidence that many Americans have a stereotype of Asians as nerds and of African Americans as anti-nerd hipsters (Eglash, 2002, p. 52). Chen’s (1999) study on Asian American males demonstrated that some participants strived to achieve hegemonic notions of masculinity by emulating perceived White norms such as enrolling in athletics and adopting an aggressive personality. Lu and Wong (2013) identified that Asian American men strived to embody a characteristic of ‘toughness’, defining their 90
masculinity by how much courage, confidence, and dominance they could emulate. These
translated to pursuing athletic activities, being able have strong alcohol tolerance, having a
(relative) larger body size, restricting emotionality, and exhibiting heteronormative sexuality
such as dating frequently. Whilst these actions are not objectively racialised in nature, it is the
perception of these activities racialised as White that demonstrates the Asian male desire to
embody a White masculinity. The authors hypothesise the correlation between “media
preferences for Eurocentric aesthetics” and how “racialized images maintain marginality and
promote inferior body consciousness” (p. 364). Studies have demonstrated that the pressure
associated with attaining hegemonic White masculinity amongst Asian males in western
society can lead to stressful experiences, negatively impacting self-concept and psychological
wellbeing (Chua & Fujino, 1999; Lu & Wong, 2013; Wong, Tsai, Liu, Zhu, & Wei, 2014). As
Lu and Wong (2013) argue, “media images of Asian American men as scrawny, small-penised
(sic), and hairless-bodied” contributed to an undermining in positive body image. This is further problematised with research suggesting that the impact of Asian female preferences for dating White males (see next section) have a detrimental impact on Asian male masculinities, heightening feelings of emasculation amongst Asian males (Mok, 1998; Chua & Fujino, 1999;
Lu & Wong, 2013).
Chua and Fujino (1999) argue that Asian American masculinities have historically been
racialised through several factors that set them apart as the other of White male masculinity.
These factors have been documented through “immigration policies, labor practices, and media
images” (p. 393) which serve to exclude Asian American males from the wider North American
societies (see also Tsunokai, McGrath, & Kavanagh, 2014). Further, the authors assert that
anti-Asian sentiment perpetuated through the fear of the Yellow Peril, and the threat that Asian
males posed to White women served to further demonise and categorise them as sexually
undesirable. In a general overview of stereotypes against Asian males in the North American 91
context, Chen (1999) writes that they are “seen as socially unskilled, grossly unathletic, and sexually unattractive when younger but publicly inhibited and privately despotic when older”
(p. 590). The treatment of Asian American males historically bears striking similarity to the historical treatment of Asians in the foundation of the Australian nation-state, discussed at length in an earlier section. The ideological threat that the Asian presence posed to White
Australia (Perera & Pugliese, 1997; Walker, 2002), anti-miscegenation legislation placed upon
Asian-Aboriginal unions (Choo, 1995; Balint, 2012), and the demonisation of Asian men as potential rapists of White women (Walker, 2005) all demonstrate a potential in similar racialisation of Asian Australian male masculinity. Given its historicity in Western culture, there is evidence to suggest that Asian Australian men are susceptible to internalise the racialised standards of hegemonic masculinity.
Impact on Relationships: Racialising Romantic Preferences
I focus here on the manifestation of IR that impacts racialised subjects’ racialised romantic preferences. In particular, I focus on what Nemoto (2006) has explained as “desires that Asian American women have for white hegemonic masculinity” which she attributes to
“the combination of cultural stereotypes of Asian and Asian American women” that have
“created a mutual attraction between Asian American women and white men” (p. 50). I address this via two interrelated dynamics: namely, the fetishisation of Asian women, and the glorification of White male masculinity amongst Asian women. Additionally, I review what sparse literature exists regarding romantic preferences within the Asian-White binary in
Australian scholarship (which is specifically focused on queer male relations) to understand racialised and sexualised dynamics amongst Asian Australian men’s preferences for pursuing
White men as potential romantic/sexual partners.
Beyond their fetishisation as sexualised oriental bodies (Nemoto, 2006), the desirability of
Asian women in Western culture stems from a patriarchal paternalism that, as Mok (1999) 92
argues, classifies Asian women “as less of a threat to society” (p. 106) than Asian men,
allowing them to be more accepted by the dominant mainstream. In contrasting parity, Ang
(1996) highlights how the image of a submissive and exotic Asian woman is considerably
invested in national consciousness of Australian multicultural society. For her, the image represents both a feminisation of an Asian or oriental cultural essence, and therefore its subsequent manageability and acceptability, simultaneously. These racialised parallels
between the North American and Australian societies are a useful contextualisation for the
studies discussed in this section.
Weiss (1970) conducted one of the earliest studies that addressed what seemed like an increase
in dating between Chinese American women and Caucasian men. The author suggested that the selective racialised preferences exhibited by Chinese American women were due to the internalising of racialised (as White) values and behaviours that were dominant in the dating paradigm at the time. The promulgation of racialised and racist beliefs, such as the sexual inadequacy of Chinese men and more seemingly ‘positive’ stereotypes attributed to Chinese females that perpetuated their sexual desirability, were thought to also contribute to this dating pattern. In the author’s own words, “Chinese American females, born and reared in a predominantly Caucasian society and subject to the propagandizing influences of American mass media, either consciously or subconsciously accept many American racial stereotypes and further act upon the assumption that they have some validity” (p. 276). This theorisation has since had some cogency in the research field. Mok’s (1999) research on Asian women, for
example, found that in the same societal context, perceptions of White men as more physically attractive then Asian men were correlated with higher assimilation to Eurocentric cultural norms. More recently, Nemoto (2006) identified four prevalent factors that contributed to
Asian American racialised preferences for White men: 93
(1) The narcissistic gaze (being the object of racialised and sexualised desire as a result of
an orientalised objectification of their ‘Asian-ness’)
(2) Attaining middle-class status
(3) Attaining material security
(4) Reverence for egalitarian knighthood (glorifying White male masculinity through their
perceived embodiment of Western civility and gendered equality)
Note in the above the pairing of a racialised Whiteness with upward mobility in (2) and (3).
This suggests that the nature of racialised social inequalities in North American societies contribute to Asian American women internalising notions of White superiority. This supposition is further supported by Chow (2000) who found that Asian American spousal preferences were impacted by perceived “unequal statuses along a major dimension [of] race”
(p. 25). Schwalbe and colleagues (2000) have documented this as an adaptation strategy of subordinated groups known as trading power for patronage whereby the subordinated groups and individuals accept their subordinated status in attempts to “derive compensatory benefits from relationship with members of the dominant group” (p. 426). The correlation between racialisation and romantic/sexual preferences is significant within the postcolonial scholarship.
It was Fanon (1967) who discussed the racialised (colonial) implications inherent within relationships involving women of colour and White men:
In this chapter devoted to the relations between the woman of color and the European, it is our problem to ascertain to what extent authentic love will remain unattainable before one has purged oneself of that feeling of inferiority or… that overcompensation, which seem to be the indices of the black Weltanschauung (p. 42). More recent studies demonstrate the contemporary relevance of internalised White hegemonic standards of masculinity for Asian American women (i.e. Nemoto, 2006; see also Pyke, 2010a).
This effect has similarly been studied in online dating preferences which tends to “highlight norms and behaviors that are reflective of a racial hierarchy where Whites are often viewed as 94
being the most desirable” (Tsunokai et al., 2014, p. 799). This study on the preferences of
online dating for Asian Americans revealed, inter alia, that Asian American women are more
willing to date Whites whilst expressing less desire to date their Asian male counterparts. The
authors have attributed this to the impact of social institutions and psychological factors such
as standards of attractiveness, which suggests that Asian American women have internalised
hegemonic White male masculinity standards, leading to the devaluation of Asian male
masculinities.
Online dating preferences within the gay community have also been studied within Australian
scholarship in specific regards to anti-Asian sentiment expressed by White Australian men in
their online profiles (Riggs, 2013). The study found the coding of racist attitudes towards Asian
men as a matter of personal ‘preference’. More specifically, the conceptualisation of Asian men
as lacking in hegemonic masculinity, and therefore seen as not ‘real men’, were most prevalent.
Riggs (2013) catalogued typical statements which act as personal advertisements on the online
dating profiles of White Australian males that explicitly signify not only a racialised non-
preference for Asian men, (i.e. “NO!! Asians, nothing against you but you’re not my cup of
tea/preference”; p. 774), but more specifically the belief that Asian men are not ‘real men’ (i.e.
“Looking for anything…but no Asians/fems2; p. 775). The treatment of Asian-ness within the
racialised dynamics of romantic preferences seems to suggest first, a homogenisation of all
Asians as a monolithic and hypostatised category, devoid of any measure of intragroup
diversity. Second, the feminised representation of Asians as a racialised category is representative of an act of racialised subordination (to that which is White/Western) through gendered subordination, as mobilised from a Western patriarchal standpoint. It is one where the femininised is subordinated to that which is masculinised, and racialisation intersects with
2 The utilisation of the shorthand ‘fem’ from Riggs’ (2013) study translates to ‘feminine’ or ‘effeminate’ (see also Ayres, 1999, p. 4 for his personal experience with gay personal classifieds that utilise the same terminology). 95
a gendered dimension. Subsequently, these feminised characteristics are essentialised to all
within the homogenised and subordinated category, defining the very essence of what an Asian
subject constitutes.
Importantly, the literature demonstrates that such prejudicial and racist attitudes in romantic
preferences can have negative impact on Asian Australian men (as it relates here) within the
queer community (Ayres, 1999; Chuang, 1999; Leong, 2002; Riggs, 2013). Han (2006),
himself identifying as a queer Asian Australian man, has proposed conceptualising racialised
desire as capital in order to understand how “whiteness claims possession of the standards by
which we measure queer male desirability, and so, we as queer Asian men are always racialised
as non-white queer men who both desire queer white men and are undesirable for queer white
men” (p. 2). These dynamics are important to understanding IR amongst gay Asian Australian
men. Ayres (1999) explains that this standard is constructed via political acts of representation
of the ideal body for the gay male (or masculinity in general), “through photographs, films or
live shows”, which he argues “defines in a social sense what is deemed to be desirable” (p. 91).
Here then, under this standard, the Asian (Australian) man is excluded, much to his detriment.
Beyond being subsumed under the White control of desire as capital (Han, 2006) and thus
desiring White men as romantic/sexual partners, gay Asian Australian men also experience an
inability to be attracted to other Asian men (Ayres, 1999; Chuang, 1999; Leong, 2002; Han,
2006). Closely related, Chuang (1999) described how he developed a low sense of self-worth
in relation to the constant affirmation of his sexual (un)desirability in discovering that he, by
virtue of being an Asian man, was therefore considered unattractive on the fact of his
racialisation. This feeling of romantic/sexual undesirability seems to have a general salience amongst other gay Asian Australian men, as Ayres states, “according to the predominant rules of Caucasian Western sexual attraction, being Chinese was actually a distinctive sexual category in a racial hierarchy” (quoted in Leong, 2002, p. 4). 96
Leong (2002), commenting on the similarities between some relationships involving Asian
women and White men, and gay Asian males with White men, states that “these relationships often involve an older white male, economic dependence by a younger ‘Asian’, an assumed cultural, intellectual and social inferiority of the Asian partner, and, finally alienation of the
Asian partner from his own culture” (p. 80). If understood through Fanon’s proposition, quoted above, then the manifestation of an inferiority complex within Asian women and gay Asian men’s racialised romantic preferences has significance within the current study.
Internalising Colour-Blind Racial Ideology (CBRI)
The CBRI harbours the “idea that race and racism do not matter and furthermore do not play important roles in the current social and economic climate” (Kohatsu, Victoria, Lau,
Flores, & Salazar, 2011, p. 63). In this sense, this ideological framework is, at least within
(White) Western societal contexts, a form and function of White supremacist ideology. On a structural level, this is so because racialised groups and/or individuals’ “economically successful stories are set forth to illustrate the parity and equality of the American system”, which as Chou (2008) explains, “is only significant for White America’s nation-building” (p.
226), and I add, in other settler-colonial societies where Whites are the dominant racialised group. In this section, then, I examine the implications of an internalised CBRI amongst racialised groups and individuals to highlight its potential relevance for the current study.
Within North American societies, colour-blind racial attitudes are often expressed through two
pervasive and interconnected ideological frames. The first, termed (1) the myth of the
meritocracy or myth of the melting pot, entails the belief that everyone has an equal chance to
succeed in society regardless of race (Sue, 2003). The second, referred to as (2) the myth of the
model minority, is defined by a belief that suggests Asian Americans have achieved equal
socio-economic parity with Whites, and that they do not face any racism or discrimination
(Chou, 2008; Yoo, Burrola, & Steger, 2010). They are interconnected because (2) bolsters (1) 97
by positioning Asians as an exemplar (homogeneous) racialised group who have ostensibly succeeded in society, thereby disqualifying arguments that identify the existence of racialised structural barriers. It achieves this by conferring a status of ‘honorary Whiteness’ to racialised groups and individuals who accept “the fundamental values and goals of the dominant white culture” (Stratton, 2009, p. 22). Kohatsu and colleagues (2011) have highlighted that (2) has a two-fold effect, in that it is “often used to legitimize the denigration and negative stereotyping of other racial minorities as well as to gloss over the racial experiences of Asians” (p. 63). The authors argue that individuals who have internalised CBRI tend to believe that social problems are derived from a lack of personal effort on the part of the racialised subject, rather than as a result of structural barriers within a racialised social structure. It is in this sense that the CBRI becomes crucial for the current study, to understand one of the main ways in which the phenomenon of IR impacts upon the racialised. Indeed, Millan and Alvarez (2014) have suggested that internalising belief systems that deny or minimise the existence of racism may perhaps be the most damaging to Asian Americans as it causes them to “deny the very existence of the oppression of which they are the target” (p. 177).
Although the internalisation of CBRI in other racialised groups within the North American context predominantly correlate with negative psychological wellbeing (Neville, Lilly, Duran,
Lee, & Browne, 2000; Neville, Awad, Brooks, Flores, & Bluemel, 2013), studies on Asian
Americans have unexpectedly revealed both negative and positive results. For instance, Chen and colleagues (2006) indicated that some Asian Americans with internalised CBRI experienced less racism-related stress, suggesting that more research needs to be done to validate the significance of such an adaptive strategy. The authors suggest the possibility that internalising CBRI (1) have led some Asian Americans to feel like they would “benefit the most by accepting dominant white standards and not making a fuss about racial issues” (p.
471). Yoo and colleagues (2010) highlighted that inherent within (2) is a disregard for the 98
heterogeneity of ethno-cultural groups racialised as Asian. This is especially concerning given
the various level of academic and socio-economic achievements between these groups.
Likewise, the CBRI fails to account for the existence of a ‘bamboo ceiling’, a racialised term which suggests invisible barriers for Asian American career advancement and upward mobility often attributed to workplace bias and race-based discrimination (Goyette, 2015). Yoo and colleagues (2010) also point out that (2) tends to be constrictive on Asian American identity construction, especially if they internalise a limited nature of educational and vocational options available to them. Failing to meet these standards may also be cause for negative psychological impact amongst Asian Americans. Further, evidence suggests that these myths have also contributed to the feminised stereotype of Asians as nerds and geeks (Eglash, 2002;
Qin et al., 2008), amongst other stereotypes that suggest an increase in anti-Asian sentiment from other racialised groups (Kohatsu et al., 2011). It is in this sense that the CBRI can be seen as an ideological frame that bolsters White supremacist ideology. It does this through invisibilising its ideological (and therefore social, political, and economic) dominance via the creation of social conditions that cause racialised groups to compete with each other for the status of the model minority.
Indicating similarities within Australian society, Stratton (2009) describes the ideological conveyance of ‘honorary White’ status to Asian Australians who have assimilated to the dominant White/Anglo-Celtic racialised norms. Typical markers often include communicating primarily in English and doing so with a typical, racialised-as-White, Australian accent. This suggests the relevance of the CBRI framework for the current study, given the existence of racialised structural barriers within contemporary Australian society. Despite the common
Australian idiom that suggests ‘a fair go’ for all Australians (Kizekova, 2013), studies have strongly suggested that racialised barriers do in fact exist. For example, the influential study conducted by Booth and colleagues (2010) demonstrate that hiring practices within Australian 99
society are significantly racialised (and racist). By creating fictional résumés with a variation
of racialised names sent out to White Australian employers the researchers found that, inter
alia, applicants with Chinese/Asian-sounding names needed to submit 68% more applications
than their White counterparts in order to receive call-backs for an interview. These results indicate the significance of racialised structural barriers to the upward social mobility of Asian
Australians (and other racialised groups). As such, the importance that the CBRI has in understanding how IR may manifest for this particular group concerns the potential for negative psychological impact upon Asian Australian subjects. In having internalised CBRI, the encountering of implicit racialised barriers towards upward social (i.e. occupational) mobility may lead one to (mis)appropriate blame. Instead of recognising the potential for a wider racialised structural privileging of Whites, one may appropriate an individualised deficit of one’s racialised self.
Conclusion
Attending to a socio-historical examination of Asian racialisation within White Western thought has demonstrated how and why the Asian subject figures as alien within the White imaginary. This applies to White conceptualisations of the Australian national space, through which the Asian bears an honorary White status. This is so particularly as a largely assimilated racialised group in the contemporary era, at least where politico-economic considerations are concerned. Revealingly, however, to be honorary White is to simultaneously not be White, revealing the ideological framework through which Asian-ness gains its inclusionary exclusion. The (tenuous) acceptance of a homogenised cultural Asian-ness within the current politico-economic zeitgeist, and the contemporary salience of anti-Asian racism reveals a tension between a White Australian ideological desire for, and simultaneous fear of, the racialised Asian other. Recognising the existence of this incongruence within the dominant racialised ideological frames of contemporary Australian society will be important for the 100
current study. It may help in understanding the impact of structural White supremacist ideology
upon Asian Australian subjects, particularly in how its internalisation may manifest within their
lived experiences.
Utilising the North American literature to demonstrate how IR manifests within Asian
American communities has suggested the significance that White supremacist ideology has in being able to shape subjects’ ontological and epistemological racialised frames of reference.
Importantly, I have also demonstrated the potential significance for key social channels within contemporary Australian society that similarly communicate White supremacist ideologies to
racialised subjects, through its embedding within societal structures. This has been useful in
illustrating the significance of taking the phenomenon of IR seriously for examining the
racialised experiences of Asian Australian groups and individuals. The historical legacy of
Asian racialisation leaves their legacies, not disappearing but rather fixing itself on the bodies
of these subjects contemporarily. To capture this, it seemed that interviews would be beneficial
to find out about how Asian Australian subjects experience their own racialisation within the
current zeitgeist. This is especially so since studies about how Australia views Asians, both
internally and abroad, have prevalence (see Walker, 2019 for recent example). How
(geographical) Asia views Australia in the past and present, especially economically and
politically, also exists (cf. Broinoswki, 2011). What lacks is how Asian Australians view the
social context within which they are situated. It is here that IR may start to gain salience as a
concept to helpfully understand this lacuna.
As such, armed with a foundational understanding of the relationship between the phenomenon
of IR and a racialised Asian essence, I devote the next chapter to explicate a proposed approach
towards studying the significance of the concept of IR in understanding the racialised
experiences of Asian Australians. 101
Chapter 4: Methodology
In the previous chapter, I traced how Asian racialisation within the Australian context contributed to the contemporary socio-historical formation of Asian Australian subjectivities.
Because this exercise in historicity indicated that a number of factors (i.e. cultural,
geographical, gendered, biological etc.) intersected and contributed toward the racialisation of
Asians, I therefore utilised an interactive constructionist approach (cf. Hochman, 2017) to understand the dynamics of racialisation. This became useful for a study that was focused generally on the phenomenon of IR, and on its relationship more specifically with Asian
Australians. Additionally, the design of this study utilised some aspects of the Critical Race
Theory (CRT) framework, specifically those that allowed an examination of how racism is internalised by racialised communities and subjects. These perspectives shaped the methodological considerations of the study, which I detail in this chapter. To have met the research objectives, as explicated below, I constructed the study through qualitative means, one with a specific narrative research design. I conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with participants to generate useful and rich data that helped elucidate answers to the research questions.
The primary objective of the current study was to interrogate the concept of IR to ascertain its utility in understanding racialised experiences within the contemporary zeitgeist. As such, I asked:
In what ways is the concept of internalised racism (IR) helpful in understanding the social experiences of racism, glimpsed through the lived experience of 1.5 and 2nd generation Australians of East and South East Asian ethnicity, in contemporary Australian society? By taking the group racialised as Asian Australians as my research site, the intent of this project
was explicated as a two-fold objective:
1. To utilise the concept IR to understand lived experiences of racialised subjects. 102
2. To interrogate the concept itself for better applicability within the contemporary
zeitgeist.
In particular, the study was interested in addressing the following:
1. Given the current scholarly understanding of racism as a structural phenomenon, what
does the concept of IR tell us about how Asian Australian subjects are positioned
within it?
2. How can the concept of IR, with its origins in the field of psychology as an
individualised phenomenon, be understood usefully within a sociological context?
As the aim of the study was to gain a more insightful and in-depth understanding of how IR may manifest within the lived experiences of Asian Australians, and thus not to generalise the findings as representative of any particular population, the utilisation of a qualitative methodology was therefore appropriate (cf. Marshall, 1996; Etikan, Musa, & Alkassim, 2016).
This is because, as Marshall (1996) puts it, such methodologies can “provide illumination and understanding of complex psychosocial issues” (p. 522). Despite the research literature on
Asian Americans that have been, in part, utilised to construct a preliminary understanding of the phenomenon in the local context (see Chapter 3), such studies have not been conducted amongst Asian Australians. So, although utilisation of the North American literature elucidated the dynamics of IR in operation and helped suggest the potential effects of the phenomenon as it may apply to Asian Australians, it would be erroneous to examine the phenomenon locally by relying on existing quantitative measures. For instance, although both the Internalization of
Asian American Stereotypes Scale (IAASS; Shen, Wang, & Swanson, 2011) and the recently constructed Internalized Racism in Asian Americans Scale (IRAAS; Choi, Israel, & Maeda,
2017) have demonstrated high internal consistency, reliability, and initial validity, they are, as the names suggest, based on North American-specific demographics and research. Similarly, 103
the Colonial Mentality Scale (David & Okazaki, 2006) quantitatively measures internalised
colonialism, as a form of IR, amongst Filipino Americans in particular. This is evidenced by
such items in the questionnaire as “I find persons who have bridged noses (like Whites) as
more attractive than persons with Filipino (flat) noses” (p. 245).
Because research on the relationship between IR and Asian Australians is currently in its
nascent stage within Australian scholarship, there is a need to account for the different factors
that may have shaped their subjectivities. To counteract the potential homogenisation of such
a racialised category, I decided upon qualitatively addressing the research questions to best
answer the research objectives. After all, the most appropriate method required is one that can
potentially best answer the research questions; as Etikan and colleagues (2016) write,
“qualitative methods are for the most part, intended to achieve depth of understanding” (p. 3),
which, given the gap in the Australian literature, is precisely what was needed.
I expand more thoroughly on all methods of the study’s design in this chapter, demonstrating
relevance in addressing the research objectives. I first begin with detailing my framework for
understanding the dynamics of racialisation and racism, to set the conceptual field clear from
the onset. I draw upon and discuss the applicability of Hochman’s (2017) interactive
constructionist approach to racialisation in conjunction with aspects of the CRT framework.
Second, I thoroughly explain the process of recruitment, including both practical and theoretical considerations for the most suitable participants. Third, I utilise the extant literature to justify the methods that I had selected, through which I generated the data. This section includes the development of an interview protocol for transparency in the research process.
Fourth, I describe the analysis process in-depth, detailing each of the stages of coding and thematic construction of the participant narratives. I demonstrate how I built upon the raw data to eventually formalise it into thematic chapters. Finally, I discuss how it was through the 104
methodological design of the study, overall, that I managed to maintain the trustworthiness of the data.
Racialisation and the Construction of Racialised Knowledge
In this section I explicate an interactive constructionist approach to the study of racialisation and racism. I also integrate this anti-realist perspective on race with some tenets of the CRT framework to articulate the ontological and epistemological assumptions that were relevant to the conduct of this study. Because aspects of the CRT framework were useful in the design and conceptualisation of the study, I allocate space to justifying the claims made within this framework.
As detailed in the previous chapter, I placed importance on understanding how, inter alia, socio-historical, and political factors have contributed to the racialisation of Asian Australians.
This shapes how they materialise in social space, and how they are therefore recognised and understood in contemporary Australian society. As explicated in Chapter 2, I understand the concept of race to describe a biological kind that does not refer to anything in reality (i.e. it is a failed concept). This anti-realist (simpliciter) perspective on race therefore cannot take, conceptually speaking, any form of race as a reality. As such, it was for intellectual consistency that I adopted an interactive constructionist approach, which was also significant in understanding factors that shape how Asian Australian subjects perceive themselves.
Hochman’s (2017) development of this approach can be understood as a theory of racialisation, one that consists of an amalgamation of factors such as “administrative, biological, cultural, economic, geographic, gendered, historical, lingual, phenomenological, political, psychological, religious, social, and so on” (p. 80). Yet whilst “none of these interactants are
‘racial’”, as he explains, “together, in interaction, they can produce racialization” (p. 80). 105
This was especially important to understanding how racialisation occurs within the current research context. As Riggs and Augoustinos (2005) have explained that, in Australia, “bodies come to matter precisely as markers of race that are used to shore up the colonising project.
Bodies must thus be invested with race as a prerequisite for intelligibility within a nation that is founded upon racial[ised] difference as its source of legitimation” (p. 473). Through an interactive constructionist approach, I understood that contemporary forms of racialisation are a product of both past and present factors, ones that are in constant interaction. Thus, it can be seen as a highly dynamic and volatile process. Likewise, this understanding of racialisation fits within a wider conceptual schema through which the current study took place. That is, interactive constructionism was utilised to explain the general ontological and epistemological considerations that have shaped the methodological design of this project. I understood notions of reality and knowledge to also be interactively constructed on the intersection of a wide array of factors. This ontological perspective was congruent with my emphasis on dominant circulating racialised and racist (i.e. White supremacist) ideological frames within contemporary Australian society. This can be seen as the dominant racialised reality. However,
I also took the perspective that realities in general can, through reiteration, congeal over time to form seemingly objective truths. That is, these realities become habitualised within social subjects, glimpsed through their worldviews, actions, behaviours, and beliefs.
And yet, the sedimentation of habit (i.e. actions, behaviours, worldviews etc.) should not be viewed as a finality without the possibility for change. Australian race philosopher Helen Ngo
(2016) differentiates between, and holds the view of, habit as “a more general bodily orientation” (p. 8) – what she terms habituated, rather than purely as a repetitive action or gesture – what she terms habitual. Ngo effectively aligns the subject’s responsibility with their own actions, highlighting the participatory role in the embedment of, in this case, racist stereotypes and attitudes within one’s own bodily repertoire. She discusses this through the 106
term acquired orientation, a phenomenon that occurs neither overtly consciously, nor
completely non-consciously. For Ngo, habits (i.e. habituation) on the part of the subject is
understood as a learnt ability. In other words, current perceptions of racialisation, or other
realities more generally, can be unlearnt, or within the sociological vernacular, deconstructed.
By understanding the social world to be a product of various interacting factors as part of a
dynamic process, its fluidity suggested the need for an interpretive frame through which one
can come to ‘know’ this ever-shifting situation. As such, I relied on the historical works
described in the previous chapter that describe the factors involved in producing Asian
racialisation within contemporary Australian society. I utilised this as part of a wider
interpretive schema to identify the elements of hegemonic racialised ideology that may have
been internalised by Asian Australian subjects.
In the next section, I explain the participant selection procedure in detail, drawing on the
appropriate literature to demonstrate how this aspect of the methodological framework was
designed.
Participants
Original designs of the study began early on in the life of the project (around the 8th of
May 2017). After significant structural changes and reiterations to the methodological design,
I applied for ethics approval on the 9th of April 2019. On the 25th of May 2019, I received
approval for the study (ID: 1851338.1) from the Human Ethics Advisory Group (HEAG) of
the University of Melbourne. It was soon after that I began my recruitment of participants.
Participant selection criteria were generated through a priori sampling (Gentles, Charles,
Ploeg, & McKibbon, 2015), drawing substantially on the existing literature to inform the study
regarding which type of participants would potentially be most valuable towards answering the research questions. In this section, I discuss participant selection criteria in detail. I begin first with a brief digression on the importance of adhering to decolonised terminology for the 107
purposes of this study, especially in regard to the nominal significance of Asian Australians as the research site.
Towards Decolonised Terminology: Thoughts on Asian Australian Subjectivity
Discussing the racialisation of an Asian subjectivity in contemporary Australian society required significant clarification given the tendency for notions of racialisation, ethnicity, and culture to be hypostatised and essentialised (Ang, 2014). For instance, according to the census
(ABS, 2016), people of North-East, South-East, South, and Central Asian backgrounds stand at approximately 16.3% of the total Australian populace. A vast majority ethnically represent groups of Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, and Filipino Australians. As such, this racialised grouping has the potential to further minimise the wealth and extent of experiences in the lives of individual members of this group. Sakai’s (2000) argument here is relevant as it amplifies the concern of utilising racialised terms of reference. He addresses the colonial relationship inherent between the identities implied in the terms the West and Asia. Sakai states that utilisation of these terms would only serve to reinforce an understanding of an imaginary distinctive uniqueness that the West purportedly embodies, and the subsequent negative mirror image it projects onto its idea of Asia. He explains that “except for the fact that it points to a certain assemblage of regions and peoples that have been objectified by and subjugated to the
West, there is nothing common in many parts of Asia” (p. 792-793). Given the increasingly arbitrary use of the terms the West and Asia, which tend to be “independent of geography, race, ethnic culture, or nationality” (p. 801), I took the term Asian under academic scrutiny in order to parse out a decolonised meaning.
Ang (1993) suggests that discourses of ethnicity amongst racialised communities occur insofar as subjects attempted to maintain their cultural identity. She terms this a strategy of self- ethnicisation, an effect exacerbated within the politicised aspect of the Australian multiculturalist era. Since the national institutionalisation of multiculturalism, cultural pluralist 108
ideology has reinforced a dominant essentialist notion of racialised identity (i.e. Asian culture).
More specifically, communities become predominantly defined by their ethnic categorisation
(i.e. Filipino or Chinese culture), where what they are defines how they act, as opposed to the other way around (Zong, 2016). Counter to this dominant perspective, I deployed the concept of identity, or more specifically identification, as a malleable and fluid construct (Hall, 1996;
Bauman, 2001). It is one which “does not signal that stable core of the self” (Hall, 1996, p. 17) but is rather a non-essentialised notion, often employed politically. Ien Ang’s (1993; 1994) discussion on Chinese identity as a malleable construct applies in this regard. As she puts it,
“there is no such thing as a primordial Chinese identity, but that it is always fabricated… more important is the fact that this identity can be asserted, politicized and mobilized for different purposes” (Ang, 1994, p. 76). This method of deploying essentialist categories is often attributed to Gayatri Spivak’s (1987) suggestion to make “strategic use of positivist essentialism” (p. 205, original emphasis), as a temporary social formulation for the purposes of gaining political salience.
Whilst this popular method of deploying essentialist categories may be effective in discussing issues that concern racialised communities, I argue that it still risks giving the impression that, at least within the political sphere, groups can be understood as essentialised. Further, this would also assume that political and other apolitical spheres do not intersect for the racialised subject. As such, deciding when one’s racialised subjectivity is essentialised or fluid is not clearly delineated. The dynamic of racialisation, through an interactive constructionist lens, may offer some clarity in this regard. The utilisation of the term Asian Australians, at least scholastically, should be utilised in a reactionary sense to the racialised social structure through which they gain social meaning. Engaging in a discussion about racialised and racist dynamics requires the language of racialisation; that is, the very utilisation of the term Asian Australians already brings one into the sphere of racialised discourse. This is, of course, necessary for the 109
current study. Under an anti-realist perspective on race, I reject any essentialist notion of race, even ones for political motivations. Instead, I maintain the view that the term Asian Australian
(or any other racialised term of reference) is always, as Stuart Hall (1996) puts it, “under erasure” (p. 15). Through this non-essentialist understanding of Asian Australians, I deployed the racialised term in reaction to a racialising force, recognising the diverse set of ethnicised backgrounds and varying levels of acculturation amongst individual subjects from this racialised group.
Selection Strategy and Procedure
Based on the above understanding of the racialised category of Asian Australians, homogenous sampling as the primary selection strategy was utilised (cf. Creswell, 2014, p.
208). Etikan and colleagues (2016) define this as “a form of sampling [that] focuses on candidates who share similar traits or specific characteristics” (p. 3). As such, participants were selected based on their self-identification with the specified criteria 1.5 and 2nd generation
Asian Australian of East and Southeast Asian descent. I explain this selection criteria thoroughly below. As a secondary selection strategy, I utilised a convenient sampling strategy.
This is “a type of nonprobability… sampling where members of the target population that meet certain practical criteria, such as easy accessibility, geographical proximity, availability at a given time, or the willingness to participate are included for the purpose of the study” (Etikan et al., 2016, p. 2). Whilst this risked reducing the diversity of the sample, I utilised it within the context of a relatively large lacunae within the scholarship on the relationship between IR and
Asian Australians, where I sustained an exploratory focus (although, see limitations section).
Thus, the conduct of the selection strategies was executed through the utilisation of research participation notices (see Appendix A) posted on notice boards around a large urban university in Victoria, Australia, which advertised for participants. Electronic advertisements were also posted on social media websites with the approval of administrators. I, as primary researcher, 110
listed direct contact details on the notices. The main aim was to select participants that could
potentially provide rich and informative data to help better answer the research questions (cf.
Etikan et al., 2016). I was contacted directly, either via email or work phone, by participants
who wished to participate.
Upon expressing interest in participation, participants were sent an electronic version of a plain
language statement and consent form (PLSCF; see Appendix B) via email. This document
detailed the scope of the research project and what was required from participation. Potential
participants were encouraged to clarify any areas they wished to enquire about, in order to
make an informed decision to participate. Those who responded positively were required to
acknowledge and sign the PLSCF before participation in the interviews. Email correspondence were the primary form of communication between researcher and participant in organising meeting times, although sometimes electronic texts were utilised. This was useful in setting up meeting times and locations, which were either on the university campus, or else in a public venue. This was part of the methodological design of the study to account for the safety and convenience for both researcher and participants. Selection was relatively uncomplicated, as I selected the first 17 participants that I came into contact with who had read and signed the
PLSCF.
Number of Participants
Qualitative researchers have commonly suggested the concept of data saturation
(Marshall, 1996; Mason, 2010; Gentles et al., 2015) to be useful in deciding upon the number of participants. The concept is defined as “a point of informational redundancy where additional data collection contributes little or nothing new to the study” (Gentles et al., 2015, p. 1781). It is utilised to differentiate it from the concept of theoretical saturation, which is largely performed within a grounded theory methodology and therefore concerned with the development of concepts within, and for, theoretical construction (Gentles et al., 2015). Within 111
qualitative research methodologies, it is common that the sample size be relatively much smaller than within a quantitative research paradigm, a difference that can be attributed to considerations of utility. I draw on Marshall (1996) to suggest a benefit of studying (relatively) smaller samples, highlighting the erroneous “misapprehension that generalizability is the ultimate goal of all good research” (p. 523). He advises that “an appropriate sample size for a qualitative study is one that adequately answers the research question” and that “in practice, the number of required subjects usually becomes obvious as the study progresses” (p. 523).
However, researchers like Mason (2010) have highlighted that such an approach can be difficult to implement especially when specification of the amount of participants is required a priori to data collection/generation. As an example, this can be encountered when submitting applications for review by ethics committees, or when proposing research methodologies in a
PhD study. Yet another issue raised regarding the concept of data saturation concerns the quality of the data gathered/generated, which does not necessarily equate with the frequency of interviews. As Mason argues, “there could be an argument, for example, which suggests that ten interviews, conducted by an experienced interviewer will elicit richer data than 50 interviews by an inexperienced or novice interviewer” (p. 14). This suggests that the more experienced the researcher, the more critical they may be in interpreting and analysing the data.
Acknowledging these limitations of data saturation, Mason analysed 560 PhD studies and found a mean average of 31 participants. 20 and 30 participants were the most common sample sizes utilised, with one interview being conducted per participant.
Guided by the concept of data saturation as presented above, I recruited a total of 17 participants, conducting 3 interviews each. For considerations of availability, one participant could only be present for 2 interviews, bringing the total amount of interviews conducted to
50. Whilst I conducted all interviews as the primary researcher, I responded to the issue of interviewer expertise and its correlation with the quality of data generation by having access to 112
two experienced academic supervisors. Advice was provided for both the overview of data
generation and considerations toward saturation of the data through analysis.
Participant Demographics
Drawing on the research literature, participant selection was controlled along the
dimensions of racialisation, generational status, and gender. Subsequently, other dimensions
affected by the selection strategy and procedures (described above) will be briefly addressed,
along with any limitations.
Racialisation. Through an interactive constructionist lens, the specific context within which Asian racialisation occurs becomes significant. I therefore understood the racialised category of Asian Australian in conjunction with its conventional understanding within contemporary Australian society (Stratton, 2009). It is one that tends to recognise and categorise racialised groups by their phenotypical characteristics (Nosek et al., 2007). As such, it is primarily along the phenotypical dimension, as a marker of racialisation, that some
Australians are classified as Asian. As Ang (2000) writes, “Whereas in Britain the term ‘Asian’ implicitly and explicitly refers to South Asians, in Australia they key referent for Asianness is arguably East Asian, perhaps more specifically Chinese” (p. xxiii). This is important in the context of how racism is experienced by specific racialised groups. As biological factors (i.e. phenotype) also contribute to forms of racialisation for racialised groups and individuals
(Hochman, 2017), specific forms of (interpersonal) racism are experienced by racialised groups. This would, theoretically, contribute to a unique set of racist experiences for members of this group, and by extension, a unique set of experiences generated with its internalisation.
As phenotype seems to be a discriminating factor in racialisation, ‘Chinese-looking Asians’ would have more similar experiences of racism within-group, relatively, to say ‘Indian-looking
Asians’. Whilst these terms, at least from a sociological perspective, may be considered somewhat vulgar, they are utilised here to demonstrate the current racialised climate that was 113
considered when dealing with racialised social subjects and how contemporary forms of
racialisation shaped their experiences. For example, a ‘Chinese-looking Asian’ may have to
contend with the chink or slanty-eyes derogation which would not be intelligible within this
particular racialised context in its application to ‘Indian-looking Asians’. As it applies to the
current study then, specifying the racialised criteria of Australians of East and Southeast Asian descent was designed towards attempting to best represent the referent ‘Asian’ as it materialises
within the contemporary Australian context.
Generational Status. The study focused on 1.5 and 2nd generation Asian Australians.
1.5 generation refers to those who were not born, but were primarily raised in Australia since
childhood. 2nd generation refers to those born and raised in Australia to migrant parents. This
is because as a concept, IR refers to an internalisation of dominant ideologies that circulate
within society, and thus one’s acculturated point of reference to the society is a highly relevant
factor. Thus, differing from recent migrants, and drawing on Zhou’s (1999) important work on
Asian American children’s socio-cultural development, 1.5 generation Asian Australians may be “prone to evaluate themselves or to be evaluated by others by the standards of their new country” (p. 2), and, for 2nd generation Asian Australians, by (possibly) differing standards than
that of their parents.
Gender. Participants were controlled for gender in order to examine any potential differences in experiences. This was informed by the literature which suggests differing gender-based stereotypes amongst Asians in contemporary Western societies (i.e. Mok, 1998;
Chen, 1999; Mintz & Kashubeck, 1999; Lee, 2001; Lu & Wong, 2013), and recent research which suggests that males experience more overt racism than females (Greene, Way, & Pahl,
2006; Mission Australia, 2016). As such, I recruited 8 males and 9 female participants for the study. 114
Limitations to Selection Process. Based on the sampling procedure, there were several limitations that concerned the participant demographics. For instance, all participants recruited have some form of tertiary background. There may also be little variation between the socio- economic status of participants and their families, with a vast majority of participants raised in working-class (parents without tertiary education) families. Another significant limitation of the selection procedure concerned advertising specifically for Asian Australian participants.
This would fail to recruit any Australians of Asian descent who dis-identify with such a term, whether for political reasons or, perhaps more concerningly, as a consequence of IR. Although the primary sampling strategy (notices around a university campus) may have this limitation, the utilisation of opportunistic sampling did act as a potential remedy, at least in the case of one participant. M02, for instance, found it difficult to identify with the term Asian Australian, which was connected to his post-racial view of Australian society wherein everyone was simply
‘Australian’. His experiences are discussed more fully in Chapter 5.
In the next section, I explain how I generated data with participants who were recruited based on the above criteria.
Data Generation
To generate the data, I constructed the study with a narrative-based inquiry research design. This became significant toward understanding how participants encountered and navigated racism and manifestations of IR within their lived experiences. This was enabled through the conduct of three in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with each participant (two in the case of one participant). Together, these methodological tools helped to encourage participants’ construction of their own narratives. This contributed to the facilitation of a richer, more detailed reconstruction of their lived experiences. In the following section, I expand upon these methodological tools for generating the data. I demonstrate how they were suitable in meeting the objectives of the current study. I explicate the construction of a 115
preliminary semi-structured interview guide, along with considering the impact that my own
relation and subjectivity to the research topic may have had on the interview process.
Usefulness of the Narrative
Sandelowski (1991) states that in narrative research, the concept of truth is a matter of
internal coherence, of logical consistency, and of narrative probability. It is based on an
understanding of context and historicity, and that when told, stories are in effect being
recreated from memory. Thus, in a sense, human beings are constantly engaged in fictions of telling and listening to stories. The author argues, however, that these are not opposed to the idea of (positivistic/ objective) truth within the narrative paradigm. Rather, they should be seen as “truthful fictions”, that are interpretive forms of “the making out of what happened and the making up of what something means” (p. 165). Similarly, Schwandt (2007) explains that “the
very act of generating evidence or identifying something as evidence is itself an interpretation”
(p. 11). This suggests that the understanding of human experience does not exist without first
situating (and generating) meaning within context (see also Mishler, 1986). This interpretive
process is therefore subject to the influence of the interpreter’s value system. These prejudices
can, however, be understood as inevitable conditions of experiencing and understanding
phenomena (Koch, 2006). Under this view, the act of establishing truth necessarily entails an
intersubjective aspect which accounts for the narrator’s beliefs and points of view, and cannot
be separated from it. What is important then, is for the researcher to be explicit with their
interpretive schema, be reflexive and acknowledge their biases, and draw upon their values in
order to “make research meaningful” (Koch, 2006, p. 92). In this sense, I relied on the extant
literature (see Chapter 3) in understanding the context within which the current research was
conducted (i.e. contemporary Australian society as a racialised social structure), along with my
understanding of the sampled demographic (i.e. Asian Australian subjects). 116
Parr (2010) cautions narrative researchers from adhering to a romanticised notion of narrative-
based inquiry, one that purports to directly connect the researcher with the participant’s
experiences. Rather, in engaging in a dialogue, meaning is co-constructed between researcher and participant (Mishler, 1986). As Connelly and Clandinin (1990) explain, “when one engages in narrative inquiry the process becomes even more complex, for, as researchers, we become part of the process. The two narratives of participant and researcher become, in part, a shared narrative construction and reconstruction through the inquiry” (p. 5). This, then, can be seen as a strength of the methodological tool. For instance, Sandelowski (1991) has suggested that, by focusing on the “discontinuities between story and experience” (p. 162), the researcher is required to first understand the story presented, and how it is generated, before it is transformed into data (via interpretive means). This differs from the analytical techniques which purely emphasise the extraction of information. Indeed, this allowed for more apprehension of nuance within the totality of a participant’s reconstruction of their experiences.
However, I did find it important to note that with racialisation and racism being the predominant theme discussed with participants, narratives that reconstruct accounts of racism
(including IR) could induce a sense of shame within the subject (Watt-Jones, 2002). Although
this was mitigated through the study design which purposefully took the participants’ lead on
what they felt comfortable discussing, it was the specific benefits of the narrative inquiry
method for the current study that highlighted its applicability for the research design. For
instance, Delgado (1989) suggests that the act of sharing and examining one’s narratives allows
a raising of critical consciousness (i.e. meta-understandings of racialisation and structural
racism). Despite the risks, he argues that narrative inquiry can therefore also be beneficial to
the racialised subject. Delgado maintains a perspective on the healing capabilities of stories. In
his own words, he suggests that “far from deepening the despair of the oppressed, [stories] lead
to healing, liberation, [and positive] mental health” (p. 2437). Participant M03, for instance, 117
reflected this by acknowledging that the interviews were “therapeutic in way”, experiencing
them as “sort of a sounding board” for him to discuss his experiences of racism.
For the above to have functioned as intended, however, narratives had to be allocated the time
through which richer experiences could be captured. I describe this aspect of the research
design next.
Process and Procedure: Utilising Semi-Structured Interviews
Data was generated through the utilisation of in-depth, phenomenological-based
interviewing. Congruent with the narrative-based inquiry research design, interviews were an appropriate methodological tool as, according to Seidman (2006), it allows the researcher to prioritise having “the participant reconstruct his or her experience within the topic under study”
(p. 15). As such, it is a suitable method of gaining insight into important social issues, such as examining the effects of racialisation and racism. It does this through the subjective experience of those whose lives reflect those issues by “making meaning through language” (p. 14). In this sense, several aspects of the research design built upon this foundation to help maximise the efficacy of the data generation process. Utilising, for instance, open-ended questions within the interview process allowed a richer data source, as participants’ narratives gained more depth through revision and elaboration of responses.
Kallio, Pietilä, Johnson, and Kangasniemi (2016) found that, in particular, it was semi-
structured interviews that “proved to be both versatile and flexible” where its “structure can be
varied depending on the study purpose and research questions” (p. 2955). Echoing the extant
literature, they suggest that utilising a flexible interview structure better enabled researcher-
participant reciprocity for meaningful exchange, such as through the use of follow-up questions. Seidman (2006) stresses similar importance, stating that “although the interviewer comes to each interview with a basic question that establishes the purpose and focus of the 118
interview, it is in response to what the participant says that the interviewer follows up, asks for
clarification, seeks concrete details, and requests stories” (p. 81). The ability to enable a
facilitative space for in-depth generation of personal narratives would be absent in a more rigid
interview structure.
Connelly and Clandinin (1990) highlight that the generation of meaning within narrative-
inquiry based research requires a collaboration between researcher and participant that involves
mutual storytelling. They advise that narrative-based research entails a collaborative effort, requiring the establishment of a good working relationship between researcher and participant.
Mishler (1986) additionally points out the importance of a dialogue between researcher and participant in the co-construction of meaning. To strengthen the design of the study, I therefore incorporated the three-interview series (Schuman, 1982). It is based upon the understanding that the meaning of participants’ actions (i.e. speech) can only be effectively extrapolated within a contextualised understanding of their narrative. This would therefore be more likely established through the conduct of multiple interviews per participant. Further, I adopted a non- directive stance (that is, only directive in the sense that the agreed topic of conversation was issues of race) during the conduct of interviews to be congruent with the open-ended design.
All participants were thus allocated three separate interviews of 60 to 90mins each, depending on their preference and availability. The scheduled interviews were primarily conducted in pre-
booked onsite interview rooms, or else in public spaces (i.e. restaurants, parks). I allowed
participants to suggest their preferred meeting place to account for their comfort. I audio
recorded and transcribed all interviews directly after each session. Field notes were also utilised
in recording my observations and reflections during the interviews, which helped supplement
the audio recordings and transcripts as part of the data generation process. Each subsequent
interview was spaced at least a week apart from the previous session in order to allow adequate
time for interview preparation. This included the transcribing of recordings, analysing and 119
synthesising notes, and preparing key follow-up questions that I thought could help build themes to answer the research questions. For purposes of maintaining confidentiality, I de-
identified all identifiable information in the transcripts through coding or the utilisation of
pseudonyms. I utilised the letter ‘M’ (male) or ‘F’ (female) to refer to participants’ gender
identification, with an arbitrary number assigned to differentiate between individual participant
data sets (i.e. electronic audio recording file, transcripts, and observation notes). As such, data
was de-identified early on in the research process.
In the next section, I explicate the constructed interview protocol for the purposes of
demonstrating transparency in the research process.
Interview Protocol
Construction of the interview protocol was informed by Kallio and colleagues (2016)
on developing a semi-structured interview guide. The authors recommended a five-phase
procedure that would contribute “to the trustworthiness of the semi-structured interview as a qualitative research method” (p. 2961). As the fifth phase refers to the presentation of the protocol for transparency, which I do here, I explicate the first four phases below.
The first two phases involved identifying and acquiring a foundational understanding of the phenomenon to be studied “based on previous knowledge” (p. 2959). I achieved this by reviewing the academic literature on IR (see Chapter 2), race scholarship that focused on
Asians Australians, along with reviewing the scholarship on Asian Americans’ experiences with racism to help enrich the study by broaching gaps in the Australian literature (see Chapter
3). These areas thus formed the “conceptual basis for the interview” (Kallio et al., 2016, p.
2959). Building upon this conceptual understanding, I moved into the third phase, which concerned the formulation of the preliminary semi-structured interview guide proper. The authors define this tool as “a list of questions which directs conversation towards the research 120
topic during the interview” (p. 2960). As the intention here was to maximise participants’ ability to generate richer narratives for the current study, I designed the questions to be participant-oriented, open-ended, and flexible in structure. As such, it was often that the following interview protocol acted more as a guide, then as a mandatory list of questions. More often than not, I took the participants’ lead depending on what aspects of the overarching topic they were interested in discussing. I adapted Schuman’s (1982) three-interview model in structuring this interview protocol and provide a brief description of each interview template below.
1) The first set of interviews focused on exploring how participants’ may have reconciled
their racialised identity with their national identity, so as to reveal any racialised
understandings that may underpin the construction of Asian subjectivities (cf. Pyke &
Dang, 2003). I designed this focus with the aims of generating discussion in direct
reference to examining how IR manifested for Asian Australian subjects. Focusing
initially on relatively less affectively-saturated topics helped to smooth the transition to
more emotional and in-depth issues. As intended, establishing better researcher-
participant rapport helped to facilitate participants’ reconstruction of their life
experiences with racism, whether in an interpersonal sense or otherwise. In this sense,
I was guided by Hipolito-Delgado’s (2010) hypotheses that suggested how one’s
experiences with (interpersonal) racism may contribute to their internalisation of racist
ideology. Given the nature of the issue and its potential to cause emotional distress
(Kohli, 2014), I planned for some open-ended questions to shift the focus towards a
third party. For instance, in offering participants the option of talking about a friend’s
experiences with racism instead of their own helped to displace the emotional affect
associated with the topic for some participants. This still enabled a dialogue that
generated data for the research topic. The following are examples of open-ended 121
questions that were utilised in the initial session, to facilitate a more general discussion
and engagement with the research topic.
a) “What does it mean to you to be Asian?”
b) “What does it mean to you to be Australian?”
c) “What would you say is, if there is in fact one, a typical experience for an ‘Asian’
in Australia?”
d) “Could you tell me about a time where being Asian has affected how you/ a friend
of yours was treated?”
2) The second set of interviews aimed to focus on specific incidences or experiences that
were brought up by the participants in their previous interview, so as to encourage a
more detailed narrative of aforementioned events. I designed this with the
understanding that the examination of experiences in detail can allow a more
contextualised understanding of factors leading up to and after the event, so as to
generate data for a richer narrative (Seidman, 2006; Creswell, 2014). For example, I
followed up on F08’s recounting of her White childhood acquaintance remarks upon
the ‘small’ size of her breasts. In doing so, I was able to understand that the salience of
its lasting impact upon F08 was because of her own essentialised pairing of ‘small’
breasts, as a negative characteristic, to her Vietnamese ethnic makeup. Questions in this
set of interviews aimed at promoting discussions surrounding the salience of particular
racialised and racist hegemonic ideologies, given its salience for studying IR (Trieu &
Lee, 2018). I did this through targeting participants’ knowledge about racialised
stereotypes of Asians, since extant literature has demonstrated that internalisation of
racialised stereotypes amongst Asian Americans, about themselves, can lead to self-
stereotyping (Shen et al., 2011). Some sample questions were: 122
a) “I noticed last session that you were interested/ hesitant when speaking about X. I
wonder if you would be comfortable elaborating a little more about that event?”
b) “What are some stereotypes about Asians that you may have heard?”
c) “Do you believe any of them (stereotypes) to be true?”
3) The third set of interviews aimed to generate further insight into the experiences by
encouraging the participant to reflect on the meaning of the previously discussed issues.
It was therefore incumbent on previously discussed topics so as to gain a deeper
appreciation of issues presented. This included, through the use of follow-up questions
which I planned between sessions, gaining any pertinent background information that
could elucidate nuanced understandings of events within the narratives. For instance,
F08 wondered if her childhood experience correlated with her recent cosmetic
mammoplasty. I utilised questions that targeted participants’ reflexive emotional and
cognitive responses to their previously presented narratives. Importantly, as this was
intended to be the final interview session for participants, the use of closing questions
was appropriate. Some questions were:
a) “If you had a chance to review the last transcripts from the previous sessions, what
thoughts/emotions occurred for you?’ or “What were some of the
thoughts/emotions that you experienced during the event?”
b) “How did you perceive the event/s at the time? In what ways has hindsight altered
your perspective?”
c) “I wonder if there was anything that you would like to add/ clarify before we finish
up?”
123
To conduct a preliminary test as part of the fourth phase, I utilised the internal testing method.
It refers to “the evaluation of the preliminary interview guide in collaboration with the investigators in the research team” (Kallio et al., 2016, p. 2960). I achieved this through re- reading the proposed interview guide, removing/altering any potentially leading/ biased questions. As it was difficult to determine how much my underlying assumptions did affect the questions I asked during the interviews, I relied on the existing scholarly literature to facilitate the exploration of manifestations of IR (see Chapter 3).
However, because researcher bias is an important ethical issue for the study’s design, I consider how my own subjectivity and positionality may have affected the interview process in the next section.
Researcher Positionality
Because impacts of racism including IR were, and in some ways continue to be, a significant aspect within my lived experiences, I briefly consider my own relation toward the research topic. Whilst I do not intend this reflexivity to suggest the eventual outcome of a truly objective perspectivism, I want to foreground the assumptions that may be borne by my own racialised experiences. Indeed, Singaporean Malay and Singaporean Chinese ethno-cultural histories, written on my body, took different meanings in different contexts as I was raised in various regions both overseas and various states within Australia. These myriads of experiences have shaped my perspectivism on issues of racialisation and racism. In this section, I consider how racialised aspects of my subjectivity positioned me in relation to the topic of the study. I utilise the terms insider (sharing some quality or characteristic that is indicative on one’s
‘membership’ within the sample group) and outsider (having no significant ties to the group being studied) to discuss researcher positionality, and focus in particular on how the two interrelate. 124
I am in agreeance with feminist scholar Haney (1996) who challenges the static insider/outsider research dichotomy, arguing that all forms of research relationships can constitute both components. She explains that the status of the researcher is constantly negotiated throughout the process of data generation. She drew on her own research experience to explain how her position in the field varied situationally. As she put it, “socially situating our knowledge claims is not always feasible, or even particularly useful, in practice. In my work, it would have entailed presenting a still life of continually shifting relations” (p. 776). Indeed, whilst I may have been identified as an insider based on racialisation, there were clearly instances where I gained an outsider status. For instance, I noticed a clear difference in the level of engagement with my female participants compared to their male counterparts, when discussing topics that had a gendered focus (i.e. racialised heterosexual dating). As such, I approached each participant assuming that they would communicate experiences that I would not immediately be familiar with, nor did I assume to completely understand an experience even if it did seem familiar.
The effect of being recognised phenotypically by participants as an Asian Australian could qualify as an insider aspect of the study, at least as far as dynamics of racialisation are concerned. In this sense, I was cautioned by Smith (1999) here, who warns against the fallacy of the researcher to adopt what she calls the official insider voice. It is one that takes for granted one’s own views and experiences as representative of the entire community/ group. Not only was my racialisation indicative of a familiarity with participants, but my own relationship with the IR could have acted as a potential bias to the follow-up questions I asked within interviews.
Smith (1999) helpfully advises the need of the researcher to be additionally reflexive and critical, which is especially important when accounting for the power dynamic inherent in a researcher-researched relationship. As the sole interviewer, however, it seems that my racialisation did inevitably play an important (and, it seems, useful) role within the research 125
process. For example, and in his own words, M04’s comfort in discussing Asian-specific racism was shaped by his perspective that, “it’s really good what you’re doing… it’s good to see an Asian person doing it… because … I feel like… the domain is for some reason dominated by White perspectives”. This is perhaps due to the assumed (on behalf of the participants) congruence in understanding issues of Asian-specific racism, along with other experiences that stemmed solely from our (perceived) shared unique racialisation. Building upon this, I utilised Kohli’s (2014) concept of reciprocal vulnerability which describes the researcher’s ability to share their own “personal experiences with oppression to establish collective and mutual trust” (p. 373). Through her own investigation of the phenomenon of IR with participants, Kohli discovered the importance of mutual trust between researcher and participant, particularly because discussing IR can generate feelings of guilt, shame, or regret.
I found that sharing personal experiences with participants (especially when they would ask me) helped to build rapport.
Finally, I draw on Dahlberg (2006) to understand that it is impossible for researchers to completely separate themselves and their personal experiences from influencing the generated data. To deal with this, she introduced the concept of bridling, which suggests the ability of the researcher to “slacken the firm intentional threads that tie us to the world” (p. 8), much like a rider’s ability to adjust the reins of a horse during horseback riding. Bridling was a useful tool here, as a reminder to restrain my own pre-understandings and pre-conceived beliefs about the subject matter, to be “actively waiting for the phenomenon and its meanings to show itself”
(Dahlberg, 2006, p. 8). This was especially important when attempting to facilitate an openness in research to gain rich and in-depth narratives. For instance, whilst the literature demonstrates the relationship between Asian cosmetic blepharoplasties and the internalisation of a
Eurocentric standard of (ocular) attractiveness (Mok, 1998), I bridled this pre-conceived understanding in my interview with F02. In doing so, I was able to understand that F02 did 126
not experience the act as wanting to adopt a White aesthetic, although she was conscious of
this dominant understanding.
After the data was generated and recorded in notes and transcripts, I emailed each participant
a compiled version of their transcripts with basic de-identification of potential identifiable
information. It was part of the research design for the trustworthiness of the data, and to
maintain confidentiality, that participants would be given the opportunity to read through their
own transcripts. Suggested edits pertained to sections of the transcripts that in hindsight, were
too unique to the participants lived experiences to be entirely de-identifiable. These were omitted completely from the data. Additionally, this allowed participants to vet the transcripts, often updating their data by adding or clarifying information within the generated data.
Although preliminary analysis of the data did occur throughout the data generation process, it was only after participants acknowledged that the transcripts captured their narratives accurately, did I proceed to properly analyse the data. I explain this thoroughly in the next section.
Data Analysis
As primary researcher, I listened to all audio recordings and transcribed the data directly after each interview. Participant files were kept electronically and password-protected.
Participant-specific filing was utilised to compile and organise the data, which consisted of researcher field notes (in a SOAP format; Cameron & turtle-song, 2002), interview transcripts from each session, and signed consent forms. The analysis of the data generated within the interviews can be seen as occurring in two separate stages. The first is the preliminary exploratory analysis, conducted both during, and between, interviews. The second can be termed the analysis proper, where I engage in an inductive coding process through which themes emerged. I expand upon these areas below. 127
Stage 1: Preliminary Exploratory Analysis
Preliminary exploratory analysis (cf. Creswell, 2014) of the data occurred both during
and between interviews through the recording of field notes. The SOAP format is a tool utilised
in counselling psychology to best capture the content of sessions with clientele, and to critically
assess the issues they raise (Cameron & turtle-song, 2002). I decided to transpose this format
for the purposes of the study to record my observations and thoughts from the interviews. This
is due to my experience in the psychological field having familiarity with utilising this medium
before, and because it allowed me to focus on four main areas that were helpful to both the
recording of interviews, and to the preliminary analysis of the data (see Appendix C). In
particular, (1) I noted the major topics discussed by the participants as the primary focus, often recorded summarily utilising direct quotes. These often thematically represented the discussion
within each interview. (2) I also noted my observations of the participants, particularly their body language and affect in relation to the catalogued content in (1). (3) In reviewing (1) and
(2), I then utilised the extant literature to interpret the data for potential manifestations of IR. I also took note of the potential similarities across participant narratives. For example, I noted that many participants identified binge drinking, party culture, and extra-marital and other relationship-based sexual activity as markers of Whiteness. (4) Last, I utilised my notes in (3) to note further plans for the next interview. This included follow-up questions or topics of
interest that had potential for answering the research questions. Preliminary analysis not only
allowed early identification of important threads for further examination, but also to develop
early codes. This was beneficial to the next stage of analysis.
Stage 2: Analysis Proper
Analysis proper occurred after the conduct of all interviews. With a total of 50
interviews conducted with 17 participants, I limited the amount of codes utilised so as to keep
the analysis of data manageable. I coded the data for manifestations of IR from the transcripts 128
manually utilising the comments function in Microsoft Word, preferring the lean coding method (cf. Creswell, 2014). This was an especially important aspect of the research design, one that ultimately aimed to re-construct the narratives into overarching themes. Many of the codes were identified in Stage 1, as recorded in the field notes. Importantly, this process was revised and repeated across all transcripts until the codes were manageable in number (around
5-7 per transcript). I then constructed the themes out of the coding process. Before explaining this process in more depth, I briefly articulate the methods for analysing potential manifestations of IR within the narratives. This was particularly important to meet the first aim of the study, in interrogating the usefulness of the concept of IR as understood in the extant literature.
Interrogating the CRT Framework. Examining the phenomenon of IR through how
Asian Australians may experience its manifestations required a comprehensive attuning to how
the dynamics of racialisation, racism, and power interplay within contemporary Australian
society. As such, some central tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) became useful
assumptions through which I could examine the phenomenon of IR. I draw here on the work of Delgado and Stefancic (2012) to explicate these tenets, demonstrating its applicability for the purposes of the current study. I also highlight where I substituted aspects of the framework as required for analysing how racist ideology is internalised.
CRT was developed in the 1970s by lawyers, activists, and legal scholars in the North
American context, after recognising an impediment in progress for racialised groups since the
civil rights movement in the 1960s. These professionals were unified in their commitment to
form strategies toward combating the societal injustices that prevented the improvement of
civil liberties in a system that accorded privileges based on positioning in a racialised hierarchy.
CRT’s ability for a structural focus on racism is congruent with the conceptualisation of
contemporary Australian society as a racialised social structure. More specifically, the 129
institutionalisation of White supremacist ideologies as part of the dominant racialised
framework rendered CRT’s framework applicable to the current study. This is attributable to
Australia’s British colonial history and status as a settler-colony (Stratton & Ang, 1994), along
with how people of ethnically British and Irish heritage (amongst others of ethnically Western
European stock) have been racialised and identified as White (Hage, 1998). Whilst differences
do exist in the racialisation of Whiteness between North American and Australian societies, I
suggest that the dominant valuation of White Eurocentric and Anglophonic cultural norms, shared through British colonialism in the Australian context, allows a congruent application of some of CRT’s central tenets.
In particular, CRT within the Australian context differs from historically salient events in the
North American context, such as Black slavery and constitutional-based frameworks of social justice and equality. An effective Australian CRT framework necessitates accounting for the dispossession of land of the Indigenous communities by the British, and the institutionalisation of racist migration policies, predominantly directed towards Asians (see Chapter 3).
Understanding how White supremacist ideology is internalised by racialised subjects within the contemporary zeitgeist must therefore be held against this unique sociohistorical backdrop.
Yet the significance of differing sociohistorical trajectories of a society is not merely a theoretical point. Recognising this, as I have demonstrated in Chapter 3, allows for a specific contextualisation of the dynamism of societal changes. Seen through the interactive constructionist framework described above, these major cultural shifts (i.e. social, economic, political etc.) significantly impact the racialisation of Asians in the contemporary era.
Importantly, this perspective also allows recognition of the dynamism of the process of how racism is internalised.
Below I explicate the four tenets of the CRT framework which were useful for the study. They can be viewed as aspects of the conceptual framework through which I understood issues of 130
racialisation, racism, power, and how these dynamics interact within contemporary Australian society.
(1) The ubiquity/normality of racism thesis alludes to its commonality within the lived
experiences of racialised groups and individuals. This is reflective of how the racialised
social structure of a society induces within all interactions between social subjects a
racialised/racist dimension (Bonilla-Silva, 1996), however salient this dimension may
be to each interaction. However, the institutionalisation of racist ideology and its
proliferation can render its manifestations invisible (cf. Sue, 2003). This understanding
of the normalcy of racism (i.e. racist ideology) was a crucial part of my interpretive
lens, especially when it came to the analysis of data. That is, whether or not it was
foregrounded in the retelling or even consciously acknowledged by participants in this
study, it was through this tenet that I understood the dynamics of racialisation and
racism to be in effect.
(2) The interest convergence thesis suggests two interconnected notions. First, large
segments of society will have less interest in the eradication of racist structures because
members of the racialised majority (i.e. Whites) will have a personal/group stake in
maintaining their racialised dominance/power (social, economic, political,
psychological etc.). Second, because of this, and especially so within Western liberal
democratic systems, change only occurs when there is an interest on the part of White
elites, which (temporarily) overlaps with the interests of racialised groups. This tenet
was useful for critically understanding aspects of Australian historicity that pertain to
dynamics of racism and racialisation (see Chapter 3). For instance, Hage’s (1998)
explanation of White multiculturalism and the economisation of the (racialised)
diversity initiative is an example of the convergence of interests between White elites
(economic gain) and non-dominant racialised groups (tentative national belonging). 131
(3) The differential racialisation thesis refers to the way the groups of people are racialised
differently within society. How they are racialised is the dynamic product of, inter alia,
political, economic, cultural, biological, and socio-historical factors, and how they
interact (Hochman, 2017). As such, this tenet suggests that different racialised groups
will experience racism in different ways. Whilst the interactive construction of these
racialised groups alludes to the intra-group/subjective heterogeneity, the tenet is
suggestive of the need to adopt a temporarily essentialised view (during analysis) of
these groups in order to examine any unique effects of racialisation and racism. For
example, whilst groups racialised as Asian Australians and Aboriginal Australians both
have documented historical and contemporary experiences with racism, their overall
racialised experiences within Australian society would arguably be different due to their
unique forms of racialisation. For example, within the dominant White imaginary, the
Aboriginal is imagined as representing a constant challenge, and source of colonial
anxiety, to White claims to sovereignty and racialised nationhood (Riggs &
Augoustinos, 2005). Asians, on the other hand, are sometimes imagined as
embodiments of the Yellow Peril, an unmanageable, numerous, and culturally-alien
racialised other that represent an ever-present and imminent threat to White nationhood
(Walker, 2005).
(4) The intersectionality and/or anti-essentialism theses are twin concepts alluding to the
multiple intersecting social dimensions inherent within any subjectivity. As such, whilst
a subjectivity can be racialised, it also may intersect with other, inter alia, classed, or
gendered dimensions. It is possible, for example, for an upper-middle class homosexual
Asian male to experience an intersectionality in oppression, based on sexual orientation
and racial categorisation, but perhaps privilege based on his gender and class affiliation.
This tenet was important for interpretation of the participants’ narratives, especially in 132
critically identifying manifestations of IR. It suggested the need to account for a wider
understanding of the participants’ narratives and seek for alternative explanations
where applicable. For instance, Elfving-Hwang and Park (2016) have argued that acts
of cosmetic blepharoplasty amongst Asian Australians may not only be attributed to a
desire to adopt a Eurocentric aesthetic.
The four theses of the CRT explicated above were easily applied within the context of the
current study to help frame issues of racialisation and racism. I subsequently discuss why I
chose not to utilise the additional two tenets, and how I made the necessary adaptations for the
purposes of the study.
(5) CRT’s social construction thesis holds that race is a social construction. I was unable to
utilise this tenet, as part of my research framework, as it is incongruent with my anti-realist
simpliciter perspective on race. That is, I understand ‘race’ as having no basis in reality,
whether as a biological or social kind. As such, it is for intellectual consistency that I instead
adopted an interactive constructionist perspective on how groups are racialised (instead of
being ‘raced’; see Chapter 2). This does not alter the perspective that racialised groups (instead
of the social constructionist view of social races) are indeed constructed socially (at least in
part), but it does help to clarify the conceptual schema regarding the (non)reality race. Under
this view, the racialisation of Asian Australians is attributed to a wider range of factors of which
socio-historical constructions are a part (see Chapter 3). For instance, interactive constructionism recognises that biological factors (i.e. phenotype) also play a part in a group’s racialisation, despite not being indicative of any actual human biological race.
(6) The voice-of-colour thesis holds that unique (subordinated) structural positioning of
racialised groups and subjects afford them a better perspective to speak about the effects of
racism. It can be understood as a version of feminist standpoint epistemologies (cf. McCorkel 133
& Myers, 2003), one applied to a racialised context. The argument is as follows. Because of
one’s relationally unique experiences of being structurally positioned in a subordinated level
of a (racialised) social order, one would (theoretically) develop a unique (racialised)
perspectivism. This ‘standpoint’ could then potentially act as a counter-narrative to the
dominant constructions and (racialised) ordering of the social world. This conferring of
automatic ‘expert’ status to racialised subjects when examining issues of racialisation and
racism is one of the most debated topics amongst proponents of CRT themselves (Delgado &
Stefancic, 2012). A well-known critique of this issue within legal scholarship came from law
professor and civil rights scholar Randall Kennedy (1989) who took issue with what he called
the racial distinctiveness thesis, arguing that such a perspective served an essentialist view. He
questioned the veracity of claims made by prominent figures in the CRT movement such as
Derrick Bell (1982) and Mari Matsuda (1987), who have in their own work argued that
racialised subjects are better positioned (than Whites) to recognise and speak to racialised
conditions of North American societies. More recently, Warren and Sue (2011) have directly
addressed issues with what they term “the myth of standpoint epistemologies” (p. 48), arguing
that it contributes to Whites’ low understanding of race and racial issues (racial literacy) within
the Latin American context. The authors also argue that because many non-Whites have low racial literacy despite experiencing the effects of racism, the efficacy of standpoint epistemologies are rendered moot. In sum, the argument here goes that because racialised subjects cannot always give a comprehensive account of what it means to be structurally subjugated (one wonders if there is a correct answer), that therefore there is nothing particularly unique about their viewpoint. Because of the contemporary salience of this debate surrounding the voice-of-colour thesis, I address how I substituted a different understanding for the purposes of this study. 134
The concept of IR tells us that racist ideology can, and often does, impact the racialised subject
on a sub-conscious level (Speight, 2007). This means that one may not immediately recognise
that one is, in fact, structurally subjugated. With this understanding, there is no guarantee that
racialised subjects would know that they are experiencing a form of racialisation, nor that their racialisation positions them as subordinated within a racialised structure. Indeed, some racialised subjects who may have internalised CBRI may adopt a post-racial perspectivism of
society, whereby they believe that racism does not exist entirely (Bonilla-Silva, 2014). As such,
I utilised what can be seen as a ‘weaker’ version of the voice-of-colour thesis. It is based on my understanding that examining how IR may manifest within the lived experiences of Asian
Australians is best captured by members of this group as a primary data source. This is due to
their (relatively) unique racialised positioning within the racialised social structure (cf. Bonilla-
Silva, 1996) that comes along with its unique forms of racialisation (see Chapter 3). I do not,
however, take the view that racialised subjects would necessarily have any insight into meta-
understandings of the nature of racialisation or racist treatment within a racialised social
system, and are certainly not natural experts on what it means to have internalised racist
ideology of the dominant group. Nor do I support the ‘stronger’ claim that Whites (or members
of other racialised groups) cannot learn to understand these experiences, if only vicariously.
Indeed, narrativised forms of one’s lived experiences differs from being able to contextualise
it within a racialised social structure. The latter is more an interpretive task better suited to the
race scholar, a role which I have taken up through this project. With this understanding of
racialised standpoints, individual subjects’ level of racial literacy has no bearing on their unique
perspective. Indeed, in understanding the heterogeneity within this racialised group, I expected
that experiences with racialisation, racism, and levels of racial literacy would differ between
individual subjects. 135
The methodological tools presented above were not only helpful in informing aspects of the current study design (i.e. participant recruitment), but to provide the basic assumptions that I adopted whilst analysing the generated data.
Analysing for IR in the Data. The framework presented above formed the significant assumptions that influenced my interpretivist lens when analysing the data. Further, I was informed by literature on how Asians were racialised within Australian historicity, supplemented by the literature on Asian Americans and their relationship with IR (see Chapter
3). It was through this literature that I was able to capture racialisation-specific elements within the narratives, ones that I would have otherwise overlooked. For instance, I understood F08’s desire to augment the size of her breasts as related to racialised and racist considerations (at least partly) because of, inter alia, Mintz and Kashubeck’s (1999) study. The authors had suggested how Asian women are more likely to have lowered body and face concept then their
White counterparts, a dynamic that seemed to apply to F08. However, I was cautioned by Kohli
(2014) who advised that the ever-changing nature of a person’s beliefs, worldviews, and self- perception makes it “problematic to pathologize someone as embodying internalized racism”
(p. 370). Instead, she advised approaching the phenomenon “as something complex and fluid in its manifestation” (p. 370), suggesting the need to account for a multiplicity of interrelated factors that occur within a larger context of one’s life experiences. I achieved this through the conduct of multiple interviews with each participant, as part of the study’s design, gaining contextual and pertinent background information before identifying any potential manifestation of IR.
The literature importantly also demonstrates that IR often manifests itself without the conscious awareness of individuals, making it, as Speight (2007) asserts, “not so easy to see, to count, to measure”, and as it “does not involve one perpetrator and one corresponding victim”, it “instead has been adopted and resides in the psyche of targets” (p. 131). I therefore utilised Pyke and 136
Dang’s (2003) suggestion to analyse narratives for IR via “the subtle processes by which racial inequality shapes the way that the oppressed think of themselves and other members of their group” (p. 150). They also suggest deploying the concept of sincere fictions, adapted from Vera and Feagin (1995), as a method of identifying a (White) subject’s subconscious acceptance of hegemonic racialised ideologies. It is a concept that captures the genuinely held beliefs and rationales one has about the world, that serve to perpetuate and maintain a racialised and racist system. In particular, when applied to racialised subjects, they can uncover manifestations of
IR through identifying beliefs that specifically naturalise/ justify the subordinated positioning of one’s own racialised group. For instance, take M02’s explanation of the need for recruiters in field of business to “pigeonhole” the Asian applicants (via their identifiable names) as less likely to be suitable. According to him, this is because of his perception that, at least in relation to “Caucasians”, Asians are not taught how to construct resumes well. As such, M02 can be seen rationalising and justifying the racialised structural barriers in the hiring practices of the
Australian workforce for Asians, a group of which M02 himself is a part.
With this understanding, I demonstrate next how I coded the data in three main stages which I term initial coding, intermediate thematic construction, and formalisation of themes.
Initial Coding. After participants had responded positively to how the data was captured in the transcripts I had compiled, I began the analysis proper. I identified codes within the narratives with the intent of eventually relating them to overarching themes. Although aspects of these themes and the way in which I identified manifestations of IR was informed by the existing literature, my utilisation of codes was an inductive process. That is, I relied more on the transcribed narratives from which to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of IR. As such, this process involved re-reading the transcript (and estimate would be 3-4 times per transcript), and highlighting sections of the transcripts to allocate codes. Some examples of the terms I utilised to code aspects of the narrative were “denial/ dilution of 137
racism”, “self as anomaly”, “White racialised frame”, “intra-racialised conflict” and
“self/victim-blaming”. This reiterative process allowed me to gain a sense of familiarity which
already begun with the conduct, and transcribing, of the audio recordings. Additionally, the
assessment phase within the SOAP note format was integral in allowing me to immerse myself in each interview and ‘re-experience’ it through closer contemplation of the data. This was an arduous process of reading, re-reading, and revision of the codes to keep them manageable in number.
Intermediate Thematic Construction. The codes I had identified indicated major threads within the narratives in regard to understanding the phenomenon of IR. After revising and reviewing these codes, I then constructed the ones that seemed to overlap into 5 overarching categories. With some categories developed, I then revisited each transcript and reviewed each code in conjunction with the thematic constructs. This process helped refine the construction of themes. For instance, themes (2) and (3) – see below - were originally one theme called “attraction to markers of Whiteness”. At the end of the process, I had constructed all the codes thematically as: 1) minimisation of racism and its impacts within contemporary
Australian society; 2) adoption of Eurocentric standards of physical attractiveness; 3) attraction to White men as a racialised romantic/sexual preference; 4) defence of the racialised status quo
(i.e. through blaming oneself or one’s racialised group); and 5) individualised adaptation to racialised/racist society (racialised self-as-anomaly/ racialised self-deprecation). These themes reflected how IR had predominantly manifested in the lived experiences of participants. At this stage of the analysis process, I started to recognise how important the concept of IR was in understanding the contemporary dynamics of racialisation and maintenance of structural racism.
Formalisation of Themes. In this stage, I reflected on what the thematically constructed categorises suggested about the ways in which the concept of IR could help us understand the 138
social experiences of racism in contemporary Australian society. As such, I subsequently
utilised this categorisation of the data and formalised them within individual chapters (see
Chapters 5-8). In particular, the themes highlighted the relevance of 1) the concept of IR as
useful to understanding the limitations in participants’ resistance strategies toward racist
ideologies; 2) the phenomenon of IR as a racialised frame of reference for participants, that
can be experienced positively; 3) the concept of IR as helpful to understanding Asian
Australians’ unique structural positioning in the system; and 4) the phenomenon of IR as a
mechanism for weakening the racialised collective Will.
So far, I have explicated the aspects of the study design that facilitated participant recruitment,
generation of narratives, the analysis of this data, and its eventual formalisation into thematic
chapters. Before concluding this chapter, and as we are on the cusp of delving into the thematic
chapters themselves, I briefly turn to examining how I maintained the trustworthiness of the
data, upon which these chapters will be constructed.
Regarding Rigour
I utilised Lincoln and Guba’s (1986) criteria of establishing trustworthiness because the
current research occurred within a naturalistic paradigm of inquiry. As such, I adhere to this
framework and discuss below how I met the criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability of the data.
1. The criterion of credibility was achieved in several ways, such as through having
accurately recorded the phenomenon studied (cf. Kallio et al., 2016). I did this through
allowing participant confirmation of the transcripts to make sure that as narrators, they
were satisfied with the accuracy of their narratives. Similarly, credibility was also
achieved through engaging in a process of familiarisation with the data (cf. Lincoln & 139
Guba, 1986). I achieved this through the reading and re-reading of the transcripts, along
with listening to the audio recordings throughout the analysis procedure (see above).
2. The criterion of transferability was met through generating “thick descriptive data”
(Lincoln & Guba, 1986, p. 19) so that it may be applied by future researchers toward
varying purposes. I adhered to this through the research design. In particular, the
utilisation of the three-interview series (Schuman, 1982) facilitated richer narratives
that could account for context and background information of the participant narratives.
3. The criterion of dependability was established via an external auditing of the research
process (cf. Lincoln & Guba, 1986). I interpreted this as the ability of a study to be
replicated under similar conditions, which would contribute to the data’s dependability
(cf. Kallio et al., 2016). As such, I designed the study to demonstrate as much
transparency within the process of data generation as possible. This can be seen above
through the presentation of the preliminary semi-structured interview guide.
4. Finally, the criterion of confirmability was achieved via the utilisation of
“systematically collected literature-based and empirical previous knowledge” (cf.
Kallio et al., 2016, p. 2963). This is primarily because it can contribute to a reduction
in the researcher’s subjectivity. The elaboration upon the extant literature which shaped
my conceptual and therefore interpretivist frame in Chapters 2 and 3 were exemplary
in this regard. This in turn shaped all aspects of the methodological design of the study.
Conclusion
The numerous revisions to the design of the study became a necessity throughout the life of the project. As more literature was synthesised, I altered the methods utilised in the study to better complement each other. I frequently found literature that challenged my ontological and epistemological claims. It was by first setting the conceptual field clear, by adopting an interactive constructionist approach as an ontological consideration, and an interpretivist 140
epistemology through which I could ascertain the social world, that I could more easily select appropriate methods that were congruent with the research objectives. Ultimately, the adopting of an overarching qualitative methodology, with a narrative-based inquiry research design conducted through semi-structured interviews allowed the generation of rich data from the participants. The extant literature was immensely useful in this regard, in deciding upon the most suitable methods.
Throughout this chapter, I have demonstrated the applicability of the research design to studying how the concept of IR could help understand the lived experiences of Asian Australian subjects. This became truly apparent during the conduct of the interviews themselves. The rapport I had established with participants across the conduct of 3 interview sessions did indeed contribute to the generation of the rich descriptive data required for the purposes of the study.
The information provided by participants only grew as I continued conducting interviews, and it was not long before there was saturation in the data. As I canvassed through the transcripts and SOAP notes, I found the phenomenon and concept of IR immensely useful (and essential) in helping to explain the social experiences of racism by the participants. This was apparent through various significant areas which I subsequently formalised into thematic categories. As such, what follows is a direct result of the protocols and procedures outlined in this chapter.
Whilst each chapter utilises the generated data from participants, it is important to note that it does so in limited ways due to the nature of the work. As such, before moving forwards, I stress that each excerpt or narrativised experience can only capture a fraction of what is undoubtedly an immensely complex lived experience. Whilst the data are a part of participants’ lived experiences, they are not the participants themselves, and should be read as such. 141
Chapter 5: Of the Racialised Intermediary: Racialised Positioning, Susceptibility to
Internalising Racialised Ideology, and the Denial of Racism
This thesis is concerned with examining the usefulness of the concept of internalised racism (IR) in understanding the social experiences of racism amongst racialised subjects of
Asian backgrounds, as it may manifest in the contemporary Australian zeitgeist. Historically, the concept of IR emerged within the post-colonial period of White-dominant Western societies, specially within the academic disciplines of postcolonial and race scholarship. Over the past six decades, as I have shown in earlier chapters of this thesis, IR has been widely used in the literature to understand an integral aspect of the nature of racism (see for instance Lipsky,
1977; Pyke, 2010b). There have, however, been major critiques of the concept, both philosophical and sociological, both early on (i.e. Lukes, 2011), and more recently, as outlined by Pyke (2010b). The unsettled nature of the efficacy of the notion of IR in understanding the nature of racism is precisely the task undertaken within this thesis. The research project, upon which the thesis derives its content, is designed to consider whether or not the concept is useful in furthering our understanding of how racism operates in contemporary settler-colonies such as Australia. I attempt to explore this issue theoretically through an empirical investigation of
Australian subjects with ethnic Asian backgrounds. In particular, the project considers the dynamics and modalities of racism within the narrativised lived experiences of 1.5 and 2nd
generation Australians of East and South East Asian ethnicity. It seeks to examine what the
concept of IR can tell us about racism as a socially embedded phenomenon, specifically in
regard to how Asian Australian subjects are positioned within it.
An initial assumption underlying this study is that racism, or rather more specifically, White
supremacist ideology, is a phenomenon that is structured within Australian society. As such, it
can therefore be expected to be salient within the lived experiences of racialised subjects. This
can be highlighted further through the historicity of racialisation and racism against Asian 142
subjects as detailed in Chapter 3. To reiterate for purposes of clarity, the term White supremacist ideology is utilised in this thesis in its (sociological) scholarly variation to refer to a power structure that privileges a quality of ‘Whiteness’, however internally variated markers of this ‘Whiteness’ may be. The privileging of ‘Whiteness’ in a racialised hierarchy works to accrue more social, economic, political, and psychological benefits to social subjects that can claim recognition through having accrued its contemporary markers. Importantly, it can coexist with other power structures (i.e. gendered). It is therefore not to be confused with individuals who may claim a White racial identity, or be identified as such, who individually may not be socially, economically, politically, or psychologically privileged in comparison to other members of society. Conceptualising this doctrine as an ideology meant that it could be held by everyone; not just by an essentialised idea of a White subject (see Chapter 2). In view of this underlying premise, the question arises as to how Asian Australians may themselves think about racism, including what level of awareness they may have regarding their own narratives of social experiences in Australia. An investigation of these narratives has the potential to reveal the assumptions they may make about race and racism in Australia, the contradictions that are inherent in the discourses of intercultural living that they may deploy, and the extent to which racism may have become internalised in their thinking.
To pursue this inquiry, I apply the conceptual and methodological frameworks discussed in
Chapter 4 to the participants’ lived experiences. In particular, critically analysing their narratives can help to elucidate the micro-processes, that is, within individual subjects themselves, by which hegemonic forms of racism are maintained. In particular, and to reiterate part of the methodological design of the study, I analyse the narratives for “the subtle processes by which racial inequality shapes the way that the oppressed think of themselves and other members of their group” (Pyke & Dang, 2003, p. 150). By articulating these intra-subjective dynamics amongst Asian Australian subjectivities, this chapter will thus contribute to the 143
overall thesis objective of critically examining the potential of the concept of IR in
understanding the race-based issues. In doing so, this analysis might more broadly move us closer, as race scholars, to the potential utility and contemporary significance of the concept of
IR in understanding the social experiences of racism amongst racialised subjects.
This chapter is partitioned into four interrelated sections. In the section titled “Internalising
’Colour-Blindness’: Denying Racism and the Curtailment of the Racialised Linguistic
Register”, I discuss participants’ framing of Australian society as a ‘multicultural’ society alongside the claim that racism as a systemic form does not exist. I consider how this framing posits a cause-effect relation between these two notions, suggesting the presence of an ideologically-driven belief wherein evidence of multiculturality supposedly acts as a panacea towards systemic racism, completely eradicating the latter’s relevance to the socio-political landscape. More importantly, I discuss how this individualised perspective influences a more general worldview, one which becomes applied to explaining the positioning of other racialised subjects.
Then, in the next section, “Invisibilising the Racialised Order and the Inadvertent Allocation of Racialised Blame”, I focus on the tenuous relationship between a clear recognition, amongst the participants, of racially-charged incidences and structurally racist barriers within contemporary Australian society, alongside the belief that interpersonal or structural forms of racism are actually absent from such a society. Subsequently, in “The Racialised Positioning of Asians in Australia”, I consider the motivations of Asian Australian subjects to discursively reaffirm a vision of a post-racial society. Bringing together these interrelated dynamics, in the section titled “State of Passivity: Resilience without Resistance”, I consider how the concept of IR may still help to explain how Asian Australians are positioned within the racialised hierarchy of contemporary Australian society, and what this tells us, as race scholars, about the 144
intra-subjective processes that are at work towards the maintenance of the contemporary
racialised and racist structures of Australian society.
Internalising ‘Colour Blindness’: Denying Racism and the Curtailment of the Racialised
Linguistic Register
I begin this analysis by considering the significance of the level of awareness of
participants’ experiences with racialisation and racism, who profess a lack of personal
experience with ‘racism’, at least as they understand the term. Through the interviews, some
participants claimed to have witnessed racism affecting others but not racism directed at
themselves, some reported not having experienced or witnessed any racism, and some were
uncertain. It was difficult to triangulate and ascertain the veracity of the discussions to do with
personalised experiences of racism (i.e. racist treatment, whether overt or covert), especially
since this was not the intent of the study, nor part of its methodological design.
As such, accounting for the dynamics of IR is particularly helpful in examining the participants’
narratives. I present here an excerpt of an interview between F04, a 20-year-old Australian- born woman of Chinese descent, discussing her perceptions of being part of a minoritised group in contemporary Australia society.
Interviewer: […] Do you feel like a minority in Australia?
F04: No.
Interviewer: You don’t.
F04: No, I, I don’t […] race isn’t a um, characteristic for me, it’s just um, tsk, it’s, it’s
not indicative of anything, um, you know the amount of melanin in someone’s skin for
me, so it’s not um, uh… it doesn’t inspire me to do anything, it doesn’t inhibit me to do
anything. Um, so in Australia like I um, I guess it’s a product of being in such a 145
multicultural society as well, that I’m comfortable with most races. I mean, all races. I
don’t know why I said that. (Laughs).
F04 is clearly expressing a desire to move past the notion of race as having any salience in her
own life. This personally held belief of the nebulousness of race as a concept (i.e. “it doesn’t
inhibit me to do anything”) is directly attributed to the “product of being in such a multicultural
society”. Such a trope seems to have been derived from the common socio-historical understanding of the Australian nation-state as having a racist origin. This refers to preventing non-White immigration, which then through some moral awakening, altered its trajectory to be a more (ethno-)culturally inclusive pinnacle of Western civilisation, ushering in the multicultural era of the 1970s. This romanticised notion of Australian racialised politics is a claim that has been shown by Hage (1998), through an explanation of the structure of
Australian multiculturalism as born of a racialised nationalistic impulse, to be both theoretically and practically unsubstantiated. Hage demonstrates convincingly that, what he terms White multiculturalism, serves to reinforce rather than repudiate the existence of structural racism
and its racist (White supremacist) ideology. As such, I wondered in what ways can the
racialised subjects’ belief in a racially egalitarian and meritocratic society, and/or the denial of
racism whether in its internalised, interpersonal and/or structural forms, be understood through
the application of IR as a concept?
This form of anti-racist praxis demonstrated by both F04, that not only desires but acts as if
‘race’ is an outmoded concept (a mistake of the past) is, I suggest, misleading in the sense that it seemingly attributes the cause of racism solely to the language of race. That is, it entails the belief that semantics not only enables but supposedly causes racist motivations. And yet, as
Augoustinos and Every (2007) demonstrate, “contemporary race talk” amongst members of the dominant racialised group can involve articulating “a complex set of positions that blend egalitarian views with discriminatory ones” (p. 138). Hence, and in contrast, I concur with 146
scholars such as Bonilla-Silva (2014) who argue that the above is emblematic of what he calls
“colour-blind racism” (p. 2). It is born of an ideology, what can be termed a colour-blind racial
ideology (CBRI; see Neville, Awad, Brooks, Flores, & Bluemel, 2013), one that articulates,
inter alia, a post-racial conceptualisation of society. It is an ideology that I suggest prevents,
once internalised, a racialised subject’s utilisation of the linguistic register through which they
can appropriately capture, and perhaps offer critique of, the nuances of a racialised system and
its socio-psychological impact. Put otherwise, I suggest that the language of race is an essential
heuristic through which we can identify and study the impacts of racism in its myriad of
manifestations.
What this line of reasoning suggests is that both the divorcing of oneself from the notion of
race, and the denial of the existence of racism is emblematic of a racialised subject’s
internalisation of CBRI, and may be considered a manifestation of IR. To interrogate what
seem like elements of CBRI within the narratives of the participants in the study, it is possible
to draw on Bonilla-Silva’s (2014) “Racism without Racists” framework as a method of
understanding colour-blind racism through its various interpretive frames, which I will refer to sporadically throughout this analysis.
I turn again to F04, who has articulated above the irrelevance of the concept of race to her, discussing her visit to a White male friend in “the country”:
Interviewer: Ok, and you experienced some racism there?
F04: Um, oh… I wouldn’t say racism, but I would say that people acknowledged that
I wasn’t White.
Interviewer: Ok, in what ways did you feel that that was acknowledged?
F04: […] When I talked to people, they would ask […] I guess, in the way, in the way
that they interacted with me as if I didn’t, as if I was, like, experiencing Australian 147
culture for the first time? Um, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t like racism. […] It was just little
comments like um, you know, um, “this is a proper Aussie pie”. […] It was just side
comments […] and it wasn’t necessarily discriminatory, and no one was mean to me,
or racist or you know, it was just, um, comments […]
Against her own belief that race is an outmoded concept in contemporary multicultural
Australia, F04 explains that she did indeed experience that folks in the country were cognisant of her non-Whiteness. It is clear that F04 felt that her Asian phenotype was clearly marking her as a foreigner to this country town, if not the nation as a whole more broadly. As she put it,
“they [the locals] interacted with me as if […] I was […] experiencing Australian culture for the first time”. The recounting of a specific event regarding a waiter telling F04 that the pastry she ordered was, in fact, a “proper Aussie pie” without her asking, served to imply her non- belongingness to Australian society. This particular occurrence was arguably influenced primarily by a racialised understanding, on the part of the waiter, of national belonging, one in which the Asian phenotype was clearly a marker for ‘being foreign’. Hence, the (White) waiter was drawing on a dominant understanding of racialised belonging and nationhood, borne by racialised White supremacist ideology that naturalises Anglo-Celtic Australians as ‘real’
Australians. Although it seems unlikely from F04’s narrative that there was malice aforethought on the part of the waiter, what is important to notice is F04’s hesitancy to consider it an act of racism. They were simply, in her own expression, “just side comments”.
Seen through Bonilla-Silva’s (2014) colour-blind framework, F04 can be seen to be engaging in the “minimization of racism”, one of four typical frames that subjects utilise in interpreting information as filtered through CBRI. It “involves regarding discrimination exclusively as all out racist behavior” (p. 77), hence overlooking any other form of racism, especially in its more subtle and ambiguous expressions. As can be glimpsed in the above, F04 could not explicitly identify the waiter’s racialised perception of her, nor its basis within hegemonic White 148
supremacist ideology. This may indeed be because she has accepted the colour-blind notion that multicultural Australia could not be a racist society as an a priori foundation to her
worldview. CBRI presupposes the claim that racism itself does not or cannot exist, whether interpersonally or as a structural phenomenon (cf. Neville et al., 2013). It clearly does this by mystifying or obscuring from view the very dynamics of how racialisation operates in social space, as a way of strengthening the ideological thrust of White supremacist ideologies. In this way, CBRI can be seen as an element within wider racist (White supremacist) ideologies, with the existence of the former serving to strengthen the impact of the latter. Applying the concept of IR, F04’s denial of racism can be attributed to the inculcated CBRI within her worldview.
In elaborating this further, consider the dialogue with M02, a 33-year-old Australian man of
Filipino descent, in order to recognise how CBRI can, in fact, be internalised. The following
suggests his belief that Whiteness does not exist within contemporary Australian society as
compared to other “Western countries”, and that White or Anglo-Celtic Australians are simply
“actually Australian”:
M02: […] The thing is that Australia is very unique in the sense that you know, we
don’t have the same, you can’t apply the same definitions as you can with other Western
countries like the US or the UK, or you know, Canada or what not. Um, because the
thing is, I even personally believe that um, there’s no such thing really as a White
person here in Australia, you’re actually Australian [emphases added].
By arguing against the relevance of the racialised categorical schema of Whiteness in
application to members of the dominant racialised group, M02 can be seen attempting to
construct a non-racialised version of Australian society, paradoxically against the backdrop of
other (Anglophonic and White racially-dominant) nation-states. The comparison seems to be a
strategic way of acknowledging the discourse of race and its importance in articulating the 149
racism problematic yet relegating it elsewhere, away from “Australia”. However, this colour-
blind or post-racial understanding of Australian society sits tenuously with the inevitable observation that that there are, in fact, racialised differences in societal positions. As seen below, M02 reflects upon the differences between the dominant racialised group (i.e. Whites) and “Asians”:
M02: I would say the biggest difference would be leadership? Because I, for the life of
me, I don’t necessarily see um, Asians, at least within like, the sort of business world
as um, as um, as Asians don’t necessarily portray themselves as a strong leader visually,
or even verbally.
The projection of a (deficit) view of “Asians” as not demonstrating “strong” leadership qualities either “visually” or “verbally” is the outcome of the denial of racism, which I discuss in the next section. Important to notice here, however, is that the recognition of differences between racialised groups requires M02 to articulate, within a racialised linguistic register (i.e.
“Asians”), the idea that in comparison with White Australians, “Asians” do not tend to be visually represented in the “business world”. This may be in reference to the statistics demonstrating that 95% of ASX200 companies CEOs have Anglo or other European backgrounds (Soutphommasane, 2017). When subsequently queried as to his understanding of why he thinks this difference exists, M02 explains that Asian “cultures” tend to lack the element of “leadership nurturing”, in part attributed to their “Third World” status:
M02: […] I’ll use China for example. Or even the Philippines. Is that there’s no um,
the culture needs to be changed – there’s no sort of leadership nurturing culture […]
Whereas if you look at the way that sort of Australian [read: White] leaders, business
leaders actually lead, there’s a very strong um, mentor like, mentoring, sort of mentality
within that, and nurturing mentality and growth mentality and things like that whereas 150
um, with a lot of um, I guess um, I guess in a particular business culture in Asia, it be
– obviously because in some places still being a Third World country, it’s very dog eat
dog (emphases added).
The masking of Whiteness couched in nationalistic terms (i.e. “Australian leaders”) is apparent through M02’s comparative utilisation against his description of Asian societies through the
Chinese Filipino national contexts. This particular nationalistic framing seems to draw upon
(racialised) hegemonic understandings that conflate nation and national culture with the diasporic ethno-cultural groups who may derive their categorical identification from the former. First, he evokes the use of cartographic markers of existing Asian nation-states (i.e.
China; Philippines) as representative of an imagined homogenous Asian business culture.
Second, this uninterrogated homogenisation becomes utilised to imply a fixed influence upon the racialised groups and individuals in Western societies (i.e. “Asians”). This racialised understanding of nation-states becomes all the more apparent when we realise that, as seen earlier in this section, M02 himself explicitly articulates his invisibilised view of White subjects in Australia, stating that they simply are “Australian”.
In this way, CBRI works as a lubricant to White supremacist ideological tenets, facilitating the belief that Whites, as an essentialised category (i.e. sometimes simply racialised as
“Australians”), are comparatively more deserving of positions of power and subsequent material and psychological (i.e. national belonging) gain over their non-White counterparts.
Importantly, however, as seen above, this notion (racialised comparison of “business cultures”, in M02’s case) is paradoxically framed through a non-racialised medium. This is done by implying a racially essentialised connection between the geographic locales of Asia and the racialised group of “Asians” in the Australian context (i.e. using a deficit view of China’s national business culture as an example to explain the lack of Asian Australian leadership).
Furthermore, through such a targeting of the supposed business cultural norms of these 151
(racialised) national contexts, he articulates a deficit view of Asian individuals in Australia.
This is achieved by suggesting that their “Third World” status facilitates a cold and brutish
attitude towards others (i.e. “very dog eat dog”), which curbs the “nurturing mentality”,
supposedly characteristic of White Western nation-states (and therefore White subjects
themselves), which is assumed to be essential toward fostering good leadership. It is thus through the internalisation of CBRI that M02 inadvertently articulates, through a colour-blind register, a naturalised view that it is White Australians who are more deserving of leadership
roles in the business sector due to their (essentialised) cultural superiority, demonstrating a
manifestation of IR.
M02’s presuppositions regarding the cultural differences between “Asians” and “Australians”
(Whites) is a clear instance of what Bonilla-Silva (2014) alludes to as cultural racism, another
one of four typical interpretive frames within CBRI. As he explains, cultural racism, as a “new”
form of racism, “is a frame that relies on culturally based arguments… to explain the standing
of minorities in society” (p. 76). Whilst I hold that the categorical differences between ethno-
cultural norms, and racialised groups themselves are, in fact, distinct (at least conceptually),
the idea of cultural racism is one which highlights how recognised cultural norms become
essentialised and applied to these racialised groups indiscriminately. Seen through this lens,
M02’s internalisation of CBRI curtails his ability to engage the racialised linguistic register,
requiring him to acquire alternative explanations for the recognition of differences in societal
positioning for the racialised. Although I have argued elsewhere that a focus on cultural racism
specifically as a ‘new’ form of racism that supposedly replaces an ‘old’ biological racism is a
problematic and unnecessary distinction for race scholars to make (Seet & Paradies, 2018), the
above is nevertheless still important in understanding how euphemisms of race, such as
“nation” and “culture”, end up working to animate racialised discourses. As can be seen,
curtailment of the racialised linguistic register not only fails at negating racism, but actually 152
reinforces the strength of its ideology as it proceeds unchecked and invisibilised through
political discourse.
As demonstrated above, the internalisation of CBRI, as a form of IR, can foster both a belief
in the absence of racism, and the insignificance of the language of race itself, society amongst
racialised subjects within contemporary Australian. Seen as a complementary (and important)
mechanism to the proliferation of White supremacist ideology, espousing a denial of racism
can therefore be understood as a manifestation of IR. So far, I have demonstrated that the
internalisation of CBRI, and its subsequent manifestations, can lead to a curtailment of the
racialised linguistic register. Merely noticing the importance of the language of race to
counteract racism through its accurate identification, however, is incomplete. What, one may
ask, are the implications for us in understanding the importance of such a heuristic, one which
we now know becomes truncated for the racialised through the internalisation of CBRI? In the
next section, I turn to interrogate a logical consequence of a worldview encumbered by CBRI.
Invisibilising the Racialised Order and the Inadvertent Allocation of Racialised Blame
The denial of the existence of structural and/or interpersonal racism as a manifestation of IR, I suggest, cannot exist in isolation, and must be studied in conjunction with its effects on the racialised. The notion that the field of play, so to speak, is not only formally (legally) but informally (systemically) fair within contemporary Australian society still has to contend with, as I demonstrate from the participants’ narratives, an incongruent realisation within social reality. It is one where the societal manifestations of a seeming imbalance in the social, economic, and political power between racialised groups do, in fact, occur. I consider here the impacts of navigating such a social reality whilst adopting a CBRI worldview. For example,
M02’s explanation of the lack of Asian Australian leaders in the business sector, as alluded to in the previous section, is attributed to his understanding of a deficiency at the heart of an
“Asian culture”. He reaffirms this perspective again regarding a lack of “leadership nurturing” 153
quality amongst “Asians”, specifically as compared to White Australians who seem to possess this naturally:
M02: […] For the life of me, I don’t necessarily see um, Asians, at least within like,
the sort of business world as um, as um, as Asians don’t necessarily portray themselves
as a strong leader visually, or even verbally.
Here again, M02’s narratives seem to accurately capture this connection between the internalisation of CBRI and the subsequent denial of racism, to the inadvertent allocation of blame towards the racialised themselves.
In now recognising the presence of an internalised CBRI within M02’s worldview, the overt focus on “Asians” as the cause for their own lack of visual representation in the “business world”, can now be understood as a logical consequence within colour-blind logics.
Interviewer: […] But what are the traits that Asian Australians to you don’t seem to
have, as opposed to the White Australians?
M02: Um, I see that the sort of, there’s a lot of the much more introversion. I feel like
the, I feel like when I deal with them at work, they’re very… um… they’re in a lot of
roles where there’s not a lot of interaction. And I think that’s a personality type.
The mode of expression of this CBRI-influenced belief takes the form of a personal testimony
(i.e. “I feel like when I deal with them at work… there’s not a lot of interaction”), which
Bonilla-Silva (2014) explains as a rhetorical strategy that “provides the aura of authenticity and emotionality that only ‘firsthand’ narratives can furnish” (p. 124). M02 articulates a sincere fiction (cf. Feagin & Vera, 1995) wherein the essentialised “personality type” of “Asians” are pathologised and believed to be the cause of a comparative lack of Asian Australian business leaders. The function of such a testimonial here serves to allocate blame towards the racialised
(i.e. “Asians” themselves), and specifically away from Whites as the dominant racialised 154
group. It is in this sense that the narratives suggest M02’s internalisation of White supremacist
ideology, as he naturalises the societal benefits accrued to Whiteness and its subsequent
dominance. In doing so, he demonstrates a manifestation of IR, one in which also, as a
corollary, naturalises the normalcy of a comparative lack of Asian Australian job-applicational
success (cf. Booth, Leigh, & Varganova, 2012). This mirrors research in the North American
context where Millan and Alvarez (2014) argue that internalising belief systems that deny or
minimise the existence of racism may perhaps be the most damaging to Asian Americans as it
causes them to “deny the very existence of the oppression of which they are the target” (p.
177).
The above is suggestive that along with denying the existence of racism and/or disengaging
with the racialised linguistic register, internalisation of CBRI also prevents racialised subjects from recognising the presence of racialised structural barriers against their full immersion within the de jure meritocratic systems. M02’s excerpt demonstrates that this denial, as a natural consequence of what I have referred to as the logics of CBRI, leads racialised subjects
to inadvertently place blame upon themselves, members of their own racialised group, or other
racialised groups and individuals who have been positioned lower in the imaginary of the
racialised (national) order. I suggest that the desire to uncritically defend representatives of the
White national order (i.e. racist governmental polices or “Whites” as a whole), and the blaming
of the racialised for any ills that befall them, can both constitute manifestations of IR.
Whilst there often is at least some ambiguity in interpretive analysis, I suggest that it is difficult
to understand M02’s worldview as anything other than being encumbered by the internalisation
of White supremacist ideology (i.e. IR) and CBRI. Indeed, multiple times throughout the course
of interviews, M02 makes a point of articulating that any barrier to Asian Australians’ social
mobility is because of “a condition that they have created for themselves”, directly allocating
blame towards the racialised, and wilfully ignoring the potentiality of any racialised structural 155
barrier that may serve as an impediment. The following excerpt captures this well, where M02
articulates, through personal testimony again, how Asian Australian job applicants supposedly
tend to be inexperienced as compared to “Caucasian Australians”:
M02: […] But what I’m saying is, is that when you’re working in recruitment, and
Asian Australians have created this condition for themselves, and you’re used to I guess
the way that Caucasian Australians um, they’ve been taught the norm, you know what
I mean? They’ve been taught this is how you apply, when you’re in Australia. Whereas
Asian Australians, they’re not taught that. So when they’re applying, and then you’re
seeing tons of that come through, you know, you sort of, it’s, it’s very easy to sort of
like, when you go through thousands of résumés, it’s very easy to just like, you’ve,
you’ve got no other options other than to pigeonhole, so you know.
The final sentence in the above excerpt demonstrates M02’s (paradoxical) acknowledgement
of the negative stereotypes (and therefore racialised barriers) that work against Asian
Australians being recruited over their White counterparts in the business sector. Indeed, he
seems to be articulating his own prejudices against members of his own racialised group as a
recruiter, through his a priori belief that Asian Australians are simply not taught how to
construct résumés correctly. This is, of course, a clear manifestation of IR, known as what Pyke
and Dang (2003) have termed intra-ethnic othering. What is more interesting, however, is how
this admittance to (his own hand in) the reinforcement of the racialised and racist structures in
recruitment is casually glossed over. In doing so, M02 subsequently naturalises or justifies the
requirement for recruiters to “pigeonhole” applicants based on race, because of the sheer
amount of résumés that have to be canvassed.
Drawing upon the above, a potential way to understand the logics of CBRI is through the
following equation, as it were, for the racialised subject. It is constructed upon three premises, 156
acting as foundational beliefs influenced by IR, that act upon each other to lead to an inevitable
outcome of such a colour-blind schema. First, due to the absence of the racialised linguistic
register in which to separate nationalised from racialised forms of identity, the belief that all
Australians are simply Australians can be constructed. Second, the post-racial view engendered by CBRI constructs the belief that there is no societal racism, in any form, structural or otherwise (i.e. “not the attitude of most Australians”). Third, the ideologically- held belief shaped by CBRI cannot prevent the racialised subject from experiencing or noticing that there are clear differences in the performance of racialised groups within society, as seen with M02’s recognition of the lack of Asian Australian leaders in the business sector. The conclusion, should we follow these three premises to its logical end, leads to a primary outcome; the belief that it is therefore the racialised themselves that are to blame for not having an equal standing in the social, economic, or political domains (albeit a belief presented in non- racialised terms). Indeed, this notion that it is the racialised individuals and communities who hold primary ownership of the blame for generally stratifying in subordinated or subsidiary positions is an assertion that is presented here in terms that I necessarily have to include. This is because the truncation of the racialised linguistic register paired with the very overt observation of racialised groups generates a paradox of referentiality (identifying ‘race’ requires the language of race). This is not simply a linguistical problematic, but the very essence of the issue I have attempted to delineate. It is a configuration of premises that exist tenuously against each other, that I argue is emblematic of this particular manifestation of IR, one that a logical appraisal clearly demonstrates to be untenable within the very worldview of the subject who holds them. In short, the logics of CBRI lead one to inadvertently allocate blame towards the racialised, yet this is held in ambiguous terms that often take the form of euphemisms for race as an essentialised category (such as “culture”). It is a worldview that can be expressed as, to paraphrase Orwell, “all Australians are equal, but some Australians are 157
more equal than others”. The objective of the logics of CBRI appears here to justify a racialised national order within contemporary Australian society that has been constructed through institutionalised White supremacist ideology.
Within this conceptualisation, it is therefore possible to now see how, through the logics of
CBRI, other racialised subjects and communities also become susceptible to blame. This is so
long as the White national order can be justified, often through its (tenuous) denial. Seen below,
M02’s worldview also makes possible the allocation of blame towards the Indigenous
communities of the Northern Territory (NT), for requiring the intervention of the Australian
government:
Interviewer: […] When you are speaking about the absence of systemic racism in
Australia, are you specifically saying that this does not exist towards the Asian
community or do you mean nation-wide?
M02: I would say nation-wide. I know that there are differences in terms of how, for
example, um, the Northern Territory will um, manage and I guess mitigate um, issues
with um, Indigenous Australians, I’m very aware of that. In terms of tribes that still
war, cuz’ […] I sort of see that more as a um, sort of necessary steps for safety. But
nation-wide, I would also say that, no, it doesn’t happen.
M02 is referring above to the Australian federal government’s intervention in the NT
Indigenous communities in 2007. He reasons that it was for the safety of Indigenous
Australians themselves, due to the apparent issue of having “tribes that still war” with each other. Although M02’s understanding here is different from common public opinion which designates the apparent rampant sexual abuse and neglect of children in the NT Indigenous communities as the primary reason for requiring state-intervention (Moreton-Robinson, 2009), it works to similarly evoke the discourse of Indigenous pathology to defend the status quo. 158
Framed through CBRI, M02 is unable to recognise the post-colonising actions of the Australian
government, in suspending the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 to conduct incursions within
NT Indigenous communities, as influenced by a racialised and racist understanding. It is one that constructs (and acts upon) the archetype of a morally and culturally inferior Aborigine, which must therefore be civilised by military intervention for their own benefit. This allocation of blame can again be seen with M02 discussing the taken-for-granted understanding of
Australia as a White nation and specifically not as an Indigenous sovereignty, which he
attributes to the lacklustre efforts on the part of Indigenous leaders in acquiring more political
recognition:
M02: […] There’s no Indigenous culture initiatives here for the wider population to
participate in, besides just viewing it you know […] For example in Korea there’s a
Kim Chi making day whereas here it’s like you know, Indigenous painting day, for
example. You know what I mean? So, there’s just such a very big life for celebrating it
[…] which then can lead to a greater understanding of Indigenous cultures […]
Interviewer: Would you say that is in anyway the fault of the Australian government
for not providing these availabilities for the public?
M02: I want to say like, there are initiatives in the Northern Territory but also, we
really have to wait for the right Indigenous person or Indigenous leader to come and
take on that initiative? Because um, it’s really sort of their place […] to put that in place.
M02 appears to be attempting to shift responsibility away from the Australian government by
focusing instead on the issue of Indigenous communities not making themselves heard or being
able to rally under a worthy leader. This is reminiscent of the colour-blind interpretive frame
of abstract liberalism, whereby “ideas associated with political liberalism… and economic
liberalism (e.g., choice, individualism)” are utilised “in an abstract manner to explain racial 159
matters” (Bonilla-Silva, 2014, p. 76). Indeed, focusing on the existence of de jure racial equality (i.e. “there are initiatives in the Northern Territory”) allows M02 to place the individualised blame back upon the Indigenous communities (i.e. “we really have to wait for the right Indigenous person or Indigenous leader to come”). The CBRI-influenced worldview can be stated more simply as “it is clear that the meritocratic systems are in place to help the
Indigenous communities, so it’s their fault that they aren’t choosing to make full use of this system”. The hyper-focus on individual choice gives way to an inability to recognise structural and historical state-sanctioned racism. Seen through the abstract liberalism frame, the matter instead becomes one of personal (and paradoxically racialised communal) responsibility.
So far, I have demonstrated that the internalisation of CBRI, as a form or IR, can manifest itself through a post-racial conceptualisation and/or a belief in the non-existence of racism within contemporary Australian society. Acting as the foundations for what I have called the logics of the CBRI, these beliefs inadvertently cause the racialised subject to perpetuate blame back upon racialised individuals and communities. This seems to be done in order to justify the primacy of (an invisibilised) Whiteness within a White national order, one in which the racialised assume subordinated positions by virtue of their non-Whiteness. As seen above with
M02, his beliefs of a truly meritocratic and egalitarian playing field in job-seeking within the business sector end up naturalising his own disadvantage as an Asian Australian man. This seeming incongruity is, however, not explained simply by recognising it as a manifestation of
IR. Indeed, one can clearly see through M02’s narratives that he has accepted the inferiority of a homogenised Asian culture, one that he constructs as not fostering good leadership nor skills in successful job-application. This, however, leads to another important consideration. Why do
Asian Australians, in particular, if subordinated by such an ideological adherence, still seem to continue to participate and be invested in such a system? 160
The Racialised Positioning of Asians in Australia
I have suggested earlier that embedded within the worldviews of many racialised subjects who have internalised CBRI is often the need to deny the existence of racism. In this section, I will further elaborate on this point by explaining the importance of accounting for the positioning of Asian Australians within a racialised national order. I refer to this through the notion of the racialised intermediary, which is essential in explaining the fertile ground upon which Asian Australians, in particular, are more susceptible to internalise and perpetuate dominant racist ideology. This form of IR manifests through an inability of the Asian
Australian subject to recognise and therefore report upon personal experiences of racism.
F04: […] I recently asked my friends about like, […] do you think you’ve ever
experienced racism um, living in Australia. And I got a string of just like one-word
answers – No, no, no. Why do you ask? No, No, no. Um and they were from a variety
of um. People. Of different genders. […]
Interviewer: You’re talking about Asian Australian friends of yours? Males and
females? And all of them said that they haven’t experienced racism? Ok. They’re all
your age?
F04: Um… around my age, yup. Within like a 5 year. Or 3 year, yup.
Interviewer: Ok, all grew up in the same area, or more diverse?
F04: um… I’ll say diverse. Yeah. But it also could have just been like something that
they couldn’t be bothered talking about. Um, I certainly have very different
conversations with people about the same topic um, when it’s online and when it’s in
person.
The excerpt above displays a longer exchange between F04 and myself as interviewer, engaged in dialogue regarding the seeming lack of racist experiences reported by both her and her own 161
Asian Australian friends. This adequately captures an unexpected theme arising from the participants’ narratives regarding a seemingly genuine inability to articulate personal experiences of racism directed towards them. However, it should be noted here that beyond
M02, many male participants could articulate personalised experiences of racism, an important point about the intersection of the gender dimension to which I will return. Whilst it is indeed possible that the silence on personal experiences of racism from F04’s friendship group above has more to do with the impersonal nature of the query through social media, and that the responses may be “very different… when its online and when it’s in person”, the frequency of similar responses throughout my participants’ narratives have primed me to think about this in a different way. Because of the research site (in examining Asian Australians and their manifestations of IR), I wondered if there may be something to this racialised group in particular that contributed to their inability to personally perceive racism direct towards them, although acknowledging that it does in fact occur to other racialised subjects around them.
Whilst a vast majority of participants in this study do not deny the existence of racism outright like M02, many of them acknowledged the existence of racism, but without being able to connect it to their own personal experiences. F01, a 22-year-old Australian-born woman of
Filipino descent, demonstrates this clearly below. She explains that she was made aware of racism experienced by the racialised in contemporary Australian society by a teacher of Indian/
South Asian descent. Importantly, however, F01 herself could not identify with these experiences:
Interviewer: […] Since you’re talking about racism with your teacher, could you tell
me a time when being ‘Asian’ or being ‘Asian Australian’ for you, has affected how
you were treated or maybe a friend of yours who was Asian Australian who was
affected? 162
F01: You know I was actually thinking about – I hadn’t prepared anything, but this is
the only one that I actually did think about cuz’ I was like I don’t know if I’ve really
experienced racism […]
In this sense, F01 is not outrightly denying racism as she clearly believes it to be an existing phenomenon, albeit designated elsewhere onto others. An explanation proffered by Dunn and
Nelson (2011) suggests that because of the social sanctions placed upon those who ‘cry racism’, as it were, such as being labelled oversensitive or ungrateful, “individuals from minority groups commonly targeted by racism are sensitive to the costs of claiming discrimination, and particularly so in certain contexts, without certain supports” (p. 591). This may certainly be so in a public forum, but in a study that recruited participants based on their willingness to talk about issues or race and racism, this seems unlikely. Yet whilst Dunn and Nelson’s (2011) explanation is certainly still plausible, and without discarding it entirely, I want to suggest that there is another potential, more group-specific explanation for this seeming lack in personal experiences with racism. It is one that at the very least impacts upon Asian Australians’ understandings of racialisation and racism. This will begin by assuming that participants like
F01 are, in fact, telling the truth when they claim that they have not experienced the effects of structural racism, regardless of whether or not they actually have interpersonally.
Responses like one from M07, a 19-year-old Australian male university student with Chinese and Indian Singaporean heritage, shown below, seem to suggest the potential for another explanation that concerned the status of Asian-ness within contemporary Australian society:
M07: […] I think what people need to understand is that um, the middle class in
Australia is becoming more Asian as well. And I say that because I used to work in a
restaurant, that was extremely, extremely bourgeoisie. And I’m talking like $80 per
head. That’s how expensive this restaurant was. And I remember seeing all the people 163
that came in were, tsk, because I was like a food runner there. And I remembered that
people I would always serve are either Chinese Australian or um, White as well.
One way to think about M07’s perception that the “middle class in Australia is becoming more
Asian” is as his recognition of a racialised hierarchisation in which the ‘Asian’ is positioned as
closer to Whiteness than other racialised groups. This mirrors tropes of Asians in the North
American context as “honorary Whites’” (i.e. Kohatsu et al. 2011) or “model minorities” (i.e.
Sue, 2003), terms in which, it should be highlighted, clearly imply a standard of comparison
that occurs within a field of Whiteness. Stratton (2009) has articulated a similar notion of
Asians within the Australian context, where such terms are applied to signify a kind of
exclusionary inclusion; that is, embedded within the idea of “honorary White” is a recognition that one is never fully “Australian”, despite having assimilated and adopted White Australian middle-class values. A typical way that honorary Whiteness is bestowed by Whites unto the racialised is depicted by this excerpt from M05, a 26-year-old Australian man of Singaporean
Malay descent, through his recounting of his conversation with “White girls” in “high school”:
M05: […] For example I actually like, yeah, I just remembered in high school, some
of the White girls called me like, “man you’re the coolest Asian I’ve ever knew” […]
Interviewer: But at the time, at the time you felt it was a good thing?
M05: Yeah, I felt like it was a good thing like, yeah, I didn’t want to associate myself
with the Asians that she thinks of.
This individualisation of the particular Asian subject from the general racialised category of
Asians is a typical way in which honorary Whiteness tends to be bestowed, this time, through
M05’s supposed “coolness”. Stratton (2009) succinctly articulates this mechanism of racist
ideology as “a particular form of racism where the known person is distinguished from the
general group against which the individual is prejudiced” (p. 17). Without overlooking the 164
utility of the term as a strategy of condescension and exclusionary inclusion, I suggest that it positions Asians as second to Whites in the racialised national order of contemporary
Australian society. Stratton’s (2009) contribution to our understanding of the Asian as an assimilated, model minority within Australian society cannot be overlooked. He highlights, in particular, Australia’s skilled migration program and the subsequent commodification of higher education, which “provides the Australian state with skilled professionals in areas of need at no cost to the state” (p. 9). For Stratton, the utilisation of this as a point of migratory access by international Asian students has ultimately facilitated the image of a growing Asian
Australian middle-class. More globally, however, this seems to be amplified by the rise of
Asian capitalism (Hage, 1999). Both these dynamics may have contributed to transforming the image of the Asian as a wealthy cosmopolitan within popular culture. Kevin Kwan’s (2013)
Crazy Rich Asians novel, for example, now also a major motion picture, is emblematic of such a change. Indeed, the fact that the term “Asians” is utilised in the title, serves to signify its intended (White) Western audience. It is important to clarify that a positioning of a racialised group does not necessarily mean that all members, or even most members of this group fit the criteria. They should be viewed as stereotypical understandings through a process of racialisation that positions racialised people within an established racialised hierarchy.
Whilst this notion of the assimilated and model minority creates an image of the Asian that renders them a naturalised and tenuously accepted racialised Other, it is important to highlight the relations of power that still evoke and validate the existing White national order. Both terms, “honorary Whites” and “model minority”, imply a sense of paternalism by those who feel a sense of dominance to do the bestowing, where acceptance is bestowed upon those deemed more deserving. Hence, the notion of the model minority Asian also always occurs and can only gain salience through a form of racial triangulation. This can be colloquially understood as “if Asians can do well as a minority group, it is clearly not racism that is 165
preventing other minorities from doing well”. Hence, there is always a conditionality applied
to the bestowed status of “honorary Whiteness”, which is demonstrated above through the
notion of an exclusionary inclusion. Put more simply, to be an honorary White is to
simultaneously not be White, conjuring up the uncanny image of the “almost the same but not
quite” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 123) colonised subject. This becomes clear when we understand that
constructions of the Asian have been manoeuvred between being identified as non-Indigenous
subjects or as Asian objects when required, depending on the currency of political goals. Asians are strategically positioned either as non-Indigenous subjects, for the purposes of furthering the colonising mission through forms of epistemological violence against questions of Indigenous sovereignty (i.e. Morris, 2018, p. 634 on the Turnbull government’s negative response to the
Uluru Statement under the understanding that doing so would be “a breach of the civic principle of equality”), or as objects of a colonial gaze that needs to turn on the Asian other as perpetual foreigner and potential invader (i.e. Walker, 2005). At least within the Anglo-Asian-Aboriginal triad, this serves to place Asians beneath Whites on a racialised hierarchy, but above the
Indigenous and perhaps other racialised groups. This is what I call being racialised intermediaries.
The notion of racialised intermediaries must importantly be understood as a classification bestowed upon Asian Australians as a (loosely defined) racialised community from without.
That is, Asian Australian subjects themselves do not necessarily have to recognise this positioning as a categorical construct, but the positioning itself is nevertheless important, at least from a phenomenological (and structuralist) standpoint. For within this understanding, what participants claim as a lack of personal experiences of racism is not to say that they are not, in fact, being racialised and in that sense inferiorised within a racialised order. To be sure, being subordinated within a racialised order is to be inferiorised, but as Hage (2017) writes,
“’inferior’ can mean many things... people can classify someone or something as ‘inferior’ and 166
still think they are very loveable and cute… most patriarchal thought also sees women as
‘inferior’ while also portraying them as objects of beauty, love, and care” (p. 11). Hence, if
Asian Australians are constructed as racialised intermediaries and bear the status of model
minority at least partially, then it is possible that this would have an impact on their relations
with those in the dominant racialised group. As Hage (2017) advises, those with such a sense
of power may “yield their power more benevolently” as opposed to “the person who feels that
their power is waning who might be likely to deploy their power more cruely” (p. 47). Indeed,
on a phenomenological level, there may be no difference to the Asian Australian subject
between a genuinely egalitarian interaction with a White Australian subject, then an interaction
with a White Australian subject who is relating to her/him as an inferior but conditionally accepted model minority. This kind of benign relation to Asian Australians, perceived as the model minority and therefore paternalistically subjugated, serves to amplify what pre-existing colour-blind beliefs may be held by some Asian Australian subjects (i.e. that racism is not as prevalent or does not exist).
There seems to be some evidence within the narratives to support this contention between a racialised subject’s social positioning, its effect on the mode of relation the dominant racialised group has to the subject, and the part it plays in shaping the subject’s Weltanschauung. As alluded to above, it seems that considerations of gender have potential significance in determining the experience of racism for participants, despite the sample size of this study being too small to proffer a generalisation. Although M02’s narratives were a salient case study to illustrate how IR can manifest through the racialised subject’s explicit denial of racism and its inadvertent effects, it was, comparatively speaking, often male more than the female participants who could articulate a more explicit awareness of racist impact within society. This gendered difference may be mirrored in findings within the Mission Australia Youth Survey 167
(2016), where young men reportedly experience more race-based discrimination than young women.
F08, a 25-year-old Australian woman of Vietnamese descent, reflects this dynamic rather explicitly in discussing discrimination she feels within the business sector, in acquiring leadership positions:
F08: Yeah! In my view, ah, do I, do I think there are other Asians out that that feel
inferior? Yeah! I do.
Interviewer: Do you think that you particularly try to combat that?
F08: Yeah – oh, do I combat it? No. I think well, the thing for me is I combat more my
gender then I do me being Asian. So, I think for me I don’t go ok, I don’t think me
being Asian has anything to do with it. If you were to ask me about me being female,
I’d be like yeah. That’s another, a whole other thing. (Laughs).
F08 is clear in highlighting that her identification as an Asian subject does not seem to impact her life as much as she perceives her gender to, at least within her occupational field. This may also connect to the experiences of other female participants, who seem to only be able to articulate experiences of racism vividly experienced when young, or else as occurring to others around them. In contrast, male participants in the study tended to consider racism (both against
Asians specifically and as a structural phenomenon more generally) as pervasive and as a normality within society. Take for instance M03, a 36-year-old Australian man of Chinese-
Vietnamese descent, who remembers having racism directed towards him as characterising much of his childhood and beyond:
Interviewer: So other than the two incidences that you mentioned about getting into
physical fights, with those two guys, would you say that overt racist comments
characterised a large part of your schooling life? 168
M03: Yeah, I think it happened commonly. Um, you know, it could be something subtle
like that, I reckoned it happened consistently, whether it’s once every few weeks that
reminds you, you know, that there’s racism around or, you know, it wasn’t uncommon,
but you know, I guess I’d say luckily it wasn’t extreme violence but you know, verbally
and emotional, still violent. Right? And, and racial and harassment, that’s still violence.
Um, so, yeah, it reminds you.
M03 describes having been on the receiving end of overt and subtle forms of racism as a
“common” part of his lived experiences growing up as an Asian (male) in Australia. What is interesting is that these experiences seem to counteract the colour-blind racial frames that other subjects, as seen above, have utilised. It seems that due to the personal impact that racist experiences have had on him, M03 does not (perhaps is not able to) minimise the contemporary existence of systemic racism and racist ideology more generally. He articulates this worldview multiple times throughout the interviews, as the below partially demonstrates:
M03: Ah… I think um… I think some of the heat on um Asian, that Asians have
received from racists have been redirected to our newer migrants. So, in a way we’ve
handed the baton over to our newest and most vulnerable migrants. Um… hence why
some people might think that you know, the heat’s off. And that racism against Asians
don’t exist anymore. But you know, you only have to look at um, you know, there’s
backlash in the housing market for example, right? You have like, you know a lot of
people they blame these rich Asians. […] I don’t know much about the housing market,
but I know it’s much more complicated than that. You know, rich Asian investors for
example only account for a small percentage of housing issues, right. […] There’s an
element of racism. […] I think the heat’s more on the newer migrants. But we’ve
[Asians] got quite a ways to go before feeling accepted. 169
Although he utilises the language of acceptance, in itself a potential manifestation of IR, M03 clearly articulates a worldview that is aware of the existence of systemic racism within contemporary Australian society. Likewise, M04, a 36-year-old Australian man of Taiwanese descent, who experienced overt racism in the form of explicit racialised rejection in the gay dating scene, articulates his belief of the normalcy of racism towards Asian Australians:
M04: […] Um, I think any Asian Australian growing up in Australia would experience
some form of racism. So, yeah, and in that school, you were definitely a minority for
being Asian. So, yeah definitely, even things like what the teachers would say like,
casual off-hand remarks –
Interviewer: About?
M04: About yeah, things like, oh, “what’d you bring for lunch? Fried rice? Hahaha”,
you know, that kind of thing.
Importantly, I am not here arguing for the accuracy of the participants’ worldviews, whether in acknowledging or minimising the existence of structural racism. Neither do I have the space here to offer explanations for why it seems that males tend to experience racism more than females, although this is an area I discuss later (see Chapter 8). Rather, to reiterate, I am suggesting here a connection between one’s social positioning, its effect on the mode of relation that the dominant racialised group has to him/her, and the part it plays in shaping one’s
Weltanschauung. In the next section, I further examine how this effect of racialised positioning serves to reinforce the effects of IR amongst Asian Australians.
State of Passivity: Resilience without Resistance
How does an internalised colour-blind worldview impact the Asian Australian subject positioned as racialised intermediary? To address this question, I focus on how the positioning of the racialised intermediary engenders within the subject a higher susceptibility to internalise 170
the ideology of the dominant racialised group due to their higher investiture in the status quo,
where they materialise beneath Whites but above other racialised groups in the racialised order.
I examine this utilising Hage’s (2015) notion of the unoccupied where he distinguishes between
the dynamics of resistance and resilience, where both are necessary for combating any form of
structural oppression. The amplification of one dynamic over the other constitutes what I refer
to as a state of passivity, through which I discuss the impact of being positioned as racialised
intermediary.
The dynamic of the intermediary as a buffer between those at the top of the hierarchy, and
those below it has a long history within the dynamics of European colonisation (i.e. see Fanon,
2004 on the colonised elite, for example). This idea also forms the bulk of Malcom X’s 1963
Message to the Grassroots speech (Abagond, 2018) when he identifies the dynamics between
the ‘house Negro’ and the ‘field Negro’. For Malcolm X, the creation and positioning of the
‘house Negro’ served to position him/her as the intermediary between the master and the other
‘field Negroes’. Through their better treatment and granting of superior status by the master,
they enacted their roles as part of the mechanism of control exerted upon the larger masses of
slaves. They were also tied to the master in a way that was more ‘total’ than that of the ‘field
Negroes’, who were treated worst by far. In this sense, because the Asian is positioned as closer
to Whiteness, Asian Australians may have less of a desire than those positioned further away
from pinnacle of the White national order to alter the circumstances of their subordination.
What this means is that shedding the yoke of IR amongst Asian Australians is more difficult,
since the Asian has been constructed as having much more to lose than to gain by subverting
contemporary racialised power relations. This, I suggest, is what contributes to a state of
passivity amongst Asian Australians in regard to disrupting a dominating structural White
supremacy. It is a weakening in the ability to recognise that one is still racially subjugated because one is simultaneously positioned as superior to other non-White racialised groups. 171
With this lens, the impetus behind M02’s beliefs become clearer, one that articulates itself from
his positioning as racialised intermediary, to defend the status quo and importantly, by
implication, his own position of (tenuous) privilege within it. He vigorously attempts to
maintain the fantasy of an egalitarian and post-racial Australia, where he can materialise as an equal and fairly-treated member of society. Below, M02 demonstrates his affective investiture in the maintenance of the racialised order, even after his own denial of racism in Australian
society is deconstructed:
Interviewer: I think the scholastic evidence would show that America compared to
Australia has a much higher consciousness regarding these issues […] So in many
regards, it would almost be the reverse of what you said […]
M02: But I, I also think that you know what we really need to look at is, that they’re
really two different countries, with two different racial issues, is always going to be my
belief. You know what I mean. It’s um, um, you know, it’s, we’ve had to make very
drastic changes um, with I guess ah, like for example immigration policy and things
like that, and yes, we oppress and repress the Indigenous Australians, fine. But you
know […] we might not have had um, ah, yeah, like the slavery issues is like not the
same as that, you know – it, no hold on, I think the thing is, is that um, you know, we
the, the best sort of analogy I can give you is that my racial issues or if any in Australia,
are not the same as an Asian American. You know what I mean? So, it’s sort of hard to
make that comparison I believe [emphases added].
Stating that his perspective “is always going to be [his] belief” reveals a highly affective
investiture in a post-racial view of Australia. This construction seems to operate as a protective
factor to have certainty that Australia truly is different from other White-settler nations, and
that it is truly a meritocracy which importantly, values him as a naturalised subject. This is 172
even though he acknowledges that “we oppress and repress the Indigenous Australians” but
minimises this by referring to how this was different from slavery in the North American
context. Although the above clearly demonstrates the tensions in his worldview, the accuracy
(or lack of it) within his belief system is not the most important aspect of M02’s narrative.
Rather, what is more integral to the argument in this chapter is to recognise M02’s need to reaffirm a colour-blind worldview despite recognising a racialised and racist social reality. It
is this weakening in resistance towards the internalisation of dominant racialised ideology, and
the subsequent maintenance of the racialised national order, that I refer to as a state of passivity.
To explore the ramifications of this state of passivity, I utilise a point Hage (2015) raises in
discussing Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, what he refers to as the concept of the unoccupied. He begins by recognising aspects of agency involved in the act of resisting a dominating power, whether violently or through peaceful means. Interestingly for my purpose,
Hage highlights that the subject who only resists, that is, a subject that preoccupies itself totally with the need to continually resist, is a subject whose very space of being is saturated with the dominating power it is attempting to resist. Because a subject’s focus on resisting a dominant
power must necessarily continuously re-centre it, such a subject can never escape it, and will
ultimately be consumed by it, indeed, crippled by it. As he puts it, “[resistance] is a socially
and psychologically demanding pursuit that wears people and societies down” (p. 167). Thus,
the unoccupied is a space which is not governed by a dominating, totalising power. It is a space
that is defined more by its resilience than resistance, as a space that is enacted through what he
terms heroic normality. Hage gives an example of this heroism through a Palestinian widow
who, in the midst of Israeli occupation, and perhaps whilst also mourning the death of her
martyred husband, chooses to read “relatively apolitical children’s books and tucks them [her
children] in…”. Importantly, this “allows them to experience a sense of existence that is not
subjectively governed by the death of their father” (p. 168), and perhaps for the woman herself, 173
not governed by the death of her husband. For Hage, this creation of normality is a form of resilience, since it is “a sense of existence that is neither governed by colonialism, nor governed by resistance to colonialism” (p. 168). It is therefore possible to understand a clearer difference between resisting a dominating power, which, in a sense, means being preoccupied or consumed by it, and being resilient in the face of the same power, which, perhaps for one’s own psychical rehabilitation, allows for a space unaffected by that power.
In order for a truly effective disruption of a dominating power to be effected, both strategies of resistance and resilience need to exist in tandem with each other. Having constant vigilance toward a dominating power can, as Hage has posited, create a sense of psychological burnout amongst people and societies, to their own detriment. Likewise, an overt focus on carving out spaces of resilience without fostering the will for resistance would allow a people to be consumed by the power that seeks to dominate them. It goes without being said that the impact of White racism upon Asian Australians and Israeli colonial domination over Palestinians are vastly different and, rightly so, not to be conflated. There is, for instance, no imminent threat to Asian Australian lives, and whilst there are forms of systemic racism which are persistent and unyielding, Asian Australians still receive de jure racial equality (in the sense that at least technically, one cannot be discriminated based on racialisation). Despite these stark differences, I believe Hage’s distinction between resilience and resistance allows us to further understand the implications of IR as it manifests amongst Asian Australians.
The very presence of Asians within the Australian national space, the ability to continue to exist despite forms of discrimination such as institutionalised racist practices in hiring, and the relatively limited representation of Asians in the Australian social and political spheres that serve to maintain them as perpetual foreigners, are all examples of Asian Australian resilience in the face of a dominating White supremacist ideology. Even in the face of continued overt racialised harassment (Seet & Paradies, 2018) do Asian Australians persist, demonstrating 174
further the extent of their resilience within a racialised and racist structure. But here is where
Hage’s (2015) suggestion, that challenging systems of domination cannot only rely purely on forms of resilience (in the heroic normality sense) despite its importance for a peoples’ psychological wellbeing, helps the argument to move forward. I suggest that the continued inculcation of White supremacist ideology amongst Asian Australians, coupled with their unique positioning in the racialised national order as racialised intermediaries, contributes to slowly negate their collective Will to resist White hegemonic domination. It is fast rendering
Asian Australians complicit in a system of racial inequality. Indeed, as seen in the above excerpts, the denial of racism and, often, the assertion of the ‘fair go’ of Australian multiculturalism by Asian Australian subjects are continuously reaffirmed despite standing in opposition towards the racialised discrimination many Australians face (see for example Dunn,
Forrest, Burnley, & McDonald, 2004; and more recently Soutphommasane, 2017).
Conclusion: The Racialised Intermediary and the Maintenance of Racial Inequality
This chapter has demonstrated how the Asian Australian as racialised intermediary, by virtue of their social positioning, becomes more susceptible to internalising racialised ideology.
This weakened resistance, as a product of the relation of dominance experienced within the racialised order, manifests itself through a CBRI-influenced denial of racism and a disengagement with the racialised linguistic register. We can also recognise how being positioned as racialised intermediary contributes to the inability, at least amongst some participants, to recognise their own personal experiences with racism. This implicates Asian
Australians as complicit in maintaining the racialised national order, to which they have been given a structurally privileged positioning in relation to other non-White racialised subjects and communities.
The question I asked in framing this chapter sought to examine what the concept of IR can tell us about racism as a structurally embedded phenomenon in Australian society, specifically in 175
regard to how Asian Australian subjects are positioned within it. The notion of IR describes,
in part, an inculcated worldview that primarily serves the benefit of the dominant racialised
group in society (Pyke, 2010b), in terms of the exercising of their power (that is, in social,
economic, political, and psychological terms). In this sense, internalising the notion that racism
is either an aberration of Western liberal democratic values or in stark contrast to its principles
and therefore cannot exist, serves to primarily benefit the benefactors of a racialised and racist
(i.e. White supremacist) ideology. It does so by mystifying the generative mechanisms through
which racialised power imbalances are maintained and to obscure from view the racialised
determinants of subject positionings in different areas of social, political, and economic life.
What the above has allowed us to see is that accounting for the dynamic of IR helps
demonstrate to us, in part, how racist structures within contemporary Australian society are
maintained. By being positioned as racialised intermediaries, Asian Australians not only are
more easily subsumed into investing in a system which subordinates them, but also, and just as
importantly, do so via the continued oppression of others. This leads to the next point of
importance, the positioning of Asians as a mechanism of reinforcing White supremacist
ideology, towards the maintenance and perpetuation of racial inequality.
As a stereotype, we can easily understand that the construction of the wealthy Asian, and the
overt focus on Asian-ness as a monolith, serves to render invisible Asian subjects who do not have the cultural and fiscal capital to reap the benefits of an ‘honorary Whiteness’. These
Asians, who already experience forms of disadvantage and dis-empowerment, have their concerns silenced through the assumption that all Asians are doing well. Yet what is equally concerning, is that because Asian Australians are also constructed as recipients of racism, they
are often thought of as not-racist. Simply because Asian Australians can be seen as being
positioned as racial intermediaries, and as being recipients of racism, does not automatically
prevent them from being able to enact similar (or other) forms of racism towards the members 176
of other racialised groups. Indeed, Asian Australians, just as much as any other migrant/ settler
groups, stand to profit from the continued usurpations and colonisation of Aboriginal lands. By
being racialised intermediaries, Asian Australians who do not realise their complacency in
benefiting from a system of racialised oppression, are rendered especially complicit in the
maintenance of White supremacist ideology.
What is more important for us to account for, is that with the rise of Asian capitalism and
stratification of the global upper class, and studies of dating patterns that demonstrate frequent
coupling between Whites (often males) and Asian (often females) in Western societies (i.e.
Nemoto, 2006; Pyke, 2010a), our contemporary understanding of ‘racism’ is bound to undergo
shifts. In Brazil, for instance, despite, and in lieu of, the imaginary of itself as a ‘post-racial’
society has just taken another form of oppression often termed colourism (Hernandez, 2011).
In this sense, I suggest that so too will we have to deal with the changing face of racism in
Western societies. Indeed, debates surrounding discrimination against Muslims in Western
societies, ones that garner the utilisation of a “Muslims aren’t a race”-type response only to then proceed to exact forms of racism towards Muslims, are evidence of this change (or, rather, a rehashing of older forms of racism, see Seet & Paradies, 2018). As more Asian Australians merge into the upper rungs of Western society, and the contemporary forms racialised prejudices break down, racialisation based on current understandings of phenotypical salience may fast become an outdated mode of categorisation. Yet, as seen in other post-colonial contexts, there is no guarantee that the same templates of race-based oppression will be discontinued.
As we may now realise, it is important to consider the connection between the Asian Australian as racialised intermediary, their increased susceptibility to internalising the dominant racist ideology, and subsequent difficulty in recognising forms of IR. Despite recognising importantly that IR occurs through no fault of the racialised, we must also give credence to the 177
notion that Asian Australians can be and, I argue, are exceptionally complicit in the maintenance and perpetuation of racialised inequality in contemporary Australian society. This is not a call to shift the focus off of White racism for a turn towards examining Asian racism, or to generate the ‘everybody-is-racist-so-let’s-all-just-stop-trying-to-fight-it’ response.
Rather, it is to demonstrate that we all contribute in our own way to the maintenance of a system that, paradoxically, oppresses most of us. Indeed, whilst racialised oppression is a particularly salient aspect of the lives of the participants in this study, they co-exist alongside an articulation of gendered, classed, and sexuality-based positionalities. Whilst this thesis continues to sustain a primary focus on the dynamics of racialisation, this is done with a recognition that other categories of difference do, indeed, impact how racialisation is experienced by subjects (see
Chapter 8, for instance, on the salience of gendered and racialised positionalities in the experience of Asian racialisation). As a result, we cannot afford to disregard the other categories of difference in understanding how racist ideology becomes internalised by racialised subjects.
Overall, by arguing that Asian Australians are positioned as racialised intermediaries, thereby
highlighting their increased difficulty to recognise their own IR, it is all the more essential to
realise that complacency in a system that rewards us for ‘forgetting’ renders one increasingly
complicit in perpetuating and maintaining current forms of oppression. In contrast to thinking only about ourselves as victims of oppression, what we need to perhaps think of is how we are also oppressing others, through both states of passivity and action. This, however, whilst suggesting that the dynamics of IR does contribute in some way to the maintenance of a larger
racist system, does not tell us how it does this. To try and understand this, I therefore turn to
the participants’ narratives again, in the next chapter, to examine how IR, often studied as a
psychological phenomenon (Pyke, 2010b), can be brought within a sociological understanding. 178
Chapter 6: Serving the White Nation: Bringing Internalised Racism within a
Sociological Understanding
A version of this chapter was published in the Journal of Sociology in 2019.
In the previous chapter, I demonstrated how, through the prism of the participant narratives, the structural nature of racism within Australian society positioned Asian subjects as racialised intermediaries. I argued that the concept of internalised racism (IR) is useful in helping us to recognise how these subjects are not only passive ‘victims’ of a racialised and racist system, but how they contribute, however inadvertently, in maintaining systems of a racialised hierarchical order. This was glimpsed through the participants’ own implicit adoption of White supremacist ideological frames of reference. As such, I concluded that IR is still a viable and helpful concept and that something would be lost in abandoning it. However,
I recognised that some of the critiques of IR, especially with regards to the ways in which it is located in psychological or individualised frameworks, is a legitimate area in which to further the contemporary currency of the concept. Given the structural nature of racism (racist ideology) that is widely acknowledged by race scholars, there is an important need to consider how can the concept of IR, with its origins in the field of psychology as an individualised phenomenon, be understood usefully within a sociological context. This is important especially to highlight how whilst racialised subjects may be inadvertently complicit in maintaining these racist structures, it nevertheless pays to maintain a focus on how it is the predominating structures which cause them to do so in the first place. As such, in this chapter, I want to explore how the concept of IR can be elaborated, expanded, and revised upon so that sociological considerations can be incorporated within its purview.
I begin to explore this query through the narrativised experiences of the study’s participants and through an application of Ghassan Hage’s (1998) White Nation thesis. In doing so, I examine how current definitions of IR within the extant literature may be usefully expanded 179
upon. Analysing the data in conjunction with a generative utilisation of theory, I examine how
the racialised are susceptible to inculcating aspects of the dominant racialised (White) and
racist (White supremacist) ideology. This is particularly helpful to ascertain the possibility of
theorising IR from a sociological perspective, one which accounts for both the structure and
the individual. In doing so, I attempt to respond to a growing call amongst race scholars (i.e.
Tappan, 2006; Pyke, 2010b; and more recently, Banks & Stephens, 2018) to move beyond a
purely individualised understanding of IR as it tends to be interpreted within the psychological literature. By focusing on the ways in which the destructive impacts of racism (racist ideology) are internalised by racialised subjects and communities, my analysis has the potential to elaborate upon the structural causes of this seemingly contradictory phenomenon. In accounting for this interplay between the individualised impact of IR, and the structural nature of racism, this chapter can thus be seen as providing insight into the (erroneous) assumption that the operations of IR may not be incompatible with a sociological lens. This connects to the overarching objective of the thesis in examining the usefulness of the concept of IR to understanding contemporary structural race-based issues.
Importantly, what I embark upon here will aim not to discount the important work already being done on the dynamics of IR, but rather to build upon existing understandings. As alluded to, I do this through examining how IR manifested within the lived experiences of participants in the study, as glimpsed through their narratives. First, however, I endeavour to demonstrate how we may start to come closer to a sociological understanding of IR, through an application of Hage’s White Nation, specifically with a focus on the racialised subject.
Racialised Subordinated Positionality and the White National Order
I begin with an excerpt from an interview with M02, a 33-year-old Australian man of
Filipino descent, whom we encountered in the previous chapter, who believes that systemic racism cannot exist within a multicultural society, as the latter acts as a panacea to the former: 180
M02: I think […] people are starting to understand that for us to prosper we have to be
very well-connected with the world. And have to be very open to you know, massive
cultural exchange. Cuz’ people sort of see […] not necessarily […] positive growth
within themselves, but they see their bank accounts grow. You know what I mean, so
it’s just like […] if they make like a crap load of money being racist, ok maybe that’s a
different story. But you know, if they’re making a crap load of money just being like
open to different cultures and things like that, then yeah, I think people would want to
protect that.
More specifically, M02 thinks that the ability for “people” to “see their bank accounts grow” supposedly negates any desire for these “people” to be “racist”. More revealingly, it is the utilisation of the phrases “for us to prosper”, “see their bank accounts grow” and “making a crap load of money” regarding the nation’s desire to be culturally “open” that I think demonstrates what Hage (1998) has termed a functional conception of cultural diversity. It is one in which the benefits of a diversity of ethno-cultures that Australia has become conceptualised primarily in terms of its economic benefits. In particular, Hage (1998) describes the Keating government’s economisation of multiculturalism through their rhetoric of productive diversity in the 80s (see Cope & Kalantzis, 1997 for an excellent example). This refers to a government initiative wherein a commodified sense of ethno-multiculturalism was viewed in terms of its ability to generate fiscal capital for the state. Hage demonstrates how such a discourse can only be conceived through a White nation fantasy where it is the White subject who benefits from the inclusion of the diversity provided by the racialised. The latter are constructed more as managed objects, and perceived more in functional terms. For my purpose, what is interesting is how the construction of such a functional conception of cultural diversity can also impact the racialised subject who materialises as subordinated within this
White nation fantasy. 181
As such, I introduce here a re-reading of Hage’s (1998) White Nation thesis, specifically from
the perspective of the racialised subject. Beyond demonstrating the salience of White
supremacist ideology within the contemporary Australian context, this re-reading will help incorporate the phenomenon of IR and explicate its utility within the sociological field. As I have written elsewhere, whilst the following refers to the ‘White Australian subject’ who forms the empowered subject within this framework of Australian society, this should not be read as
“an indictment of all subjects who are racially/ethnically identified as White/Anglo-Celtic
Australians” (Seet, 2020, p. 679). Rather, “it describes a subject (or group of subjects) who, because of their ability to materialise as a White subject in national space, may relate to this space in a way that their racialisation (and the racialisation of said space)” (Seet, 2020, p. 679-
680) offers them. This relation (and inhabitation) is understood here as a White nation fantasy.
The section therefore aims to demonstrate “that the White nation fantasy is a normative discourse, not only for usage by some White subjects making sense of their lives, but also a hegemonic discourse that is designed for racialised others to accept” (Seet, 2020, p. 680).
The White Nation thesis is primarily concerned with how the White (Australian) subject
conceives of their place through the inhabiting of a White nation fantasy. It takes as its focus
group the Anglo-Celtic Australians who form the empowered subjects within this fantasy, who
conceive of themselves as spatial managers of the nation. They do so by imposing their own
(White) national order over national space and their own dominant positioning within this
order. For my purposes, I will demonstrate here how this theoretical framework can also be
applied to understanding how and why those positioned as racialised subordinates may internalise the racialised and racist dynamics of contemporary Australian society. This requires an understanding of how the national Will operates as a function of the nation-building mechanism. 182
National(ised) subjects who operate through the national Will do so with the intent of creating
a place, that is, ordering it in such a way that a sense of homeliness is achieved. The positioning
of the racialised subject/ group thus becomes a practice in domesticating their internal
imaginary of the nation. Through this imaginary, the racialised (as non-White) are positioned
in an orderly fashion so as to accrue benefits for the White subject whose sense of what Hage
terms governmental belonging empowers them to tolerate, value, and/or feel enriched by other ethno-cultures. Importantly, it is through the White nation fantasy that the White subject can conceive of others as requiring their valuation, and it is also through this imaginary that the racialised come to exist for the White subject. The sense of homeliness for this White subject is the ability to feel like they can extract value from a commodified otherness, which as implied, is conceived as more of a managed object. This is how the White national Will operates to effectively order the nation to the benefit of the White subject, who with a high sense of governmental belonging, can project their Will as the nation’s Will.
It is important to note here that the way in which White subjects conceive of their place through the White nation fantasy does not necessarily have to be relational for the national subjects that are being racialised. For instance, Hage (1998) states that “migrants and Aboriginal people”
(p. 19) do not have to conceive of their role and identity within the nation through the same
White nation fantasy. Just because they are conceived as “objects to be governed does not mean that they perceive themselves as, or act as if they are, objects” (p. 19). Interestingly for my purpose, however, Hage (1998) also states that the ability of a fantasy to continually reproduce itself signifies that part of what the fantasy tries to achieve (i.e. a White nation where the White subject reigns supreme) has to be grounded in a “practical reality” (p. 132-133). This practical lived reality by many “White managers” of the national space draw upon a “social reality where non-White Australians are clearly under-represented in the political, social and economic managerial class” (p. 132-133). This reality can sometimes be at odds with what he terms the 183
multicultural Real, which is where the racialised, within the White nation fantasy, do not
conform to their delineated roles, and “assert themselves as equally empowered national wills”
(p. 132-133). This is what the fantasy works to contain, by not only representing but actively
shaping social reality.
This allows recognition of the contestability of power blocs within the national field, that leaves
spaces for the racialised to challenge the assumed primacy of Whiteness and a White order of
the nation where they assume subordinated positions. Despite the importance of recognising
the contestability of power within this conceptualisation, however, it is this practical
engendering of the White nation fantasy that I turn towards. For the purpose of my re-reading,
I suggest that it is important to see how social reality becomes constructed by the desire of
White subjects inhabiting the White nation fantasy. It is a situation where the contestability of
a fantasy is overshadowed by its ability to impress upon the national field its imagined reality,
thereby creating it ‘in its own image’, so to speak. As I present a quote from Hage (1998) to
illustrate this social reality, note that it is also a constructed reality in which the racialised may
also draw upon for social meaning:
No matter how much it is maintained that multiculturalism reflects the ‘reality’ of Australia, the visible and public side of power remains essentially Anglo-White: politicians are mainly Anglo-White, customs officers, diplomats, police officers and judges are largely Anglo-White. At the same time, Australian myth-makers and icons, old and new, are largely Anglo-White ... What this creates for those positioned in this public space is a lasting impression that the field of power in Australia … remains above all an ‘Anglo-looking’ phenomenon (p. 190-191). More recently, Soutphommasane (2017) highlights, with more specificity, the racialised amalgamation of leadership within contemporary Australian society. He reveals, inter alia, that
95% of the ASX200 companies’ CEOs and 95% of the elected members of the Australian
parliament have either an Anglo-Celtic or other European background. It is this practical social
reality that serves to maintain the dominance of the White nation fantasy. Not only does the
analysis demonstrate a difference between a multiculturalism that White Australia possesses 184
(i.e. “has”) instead of does (i.e. “is”), but it also demonstrates the ability of the White national
Will to maintain this social reality as the dominant reality.
Racialised Inhabiting of a White Nation Fantasy and the Internalisation of Functional
Belonging
Reading White Nation from the perspective of the racialised subject who inhabits such a fantasy allows for a contextualised understanding of their subordinated positioning within contemporary Australian society. Recognising the potentiality for the racialised subject to materialise within the White nation fantasy as subordinated elements within a White national
order does not, however, allude to what this does, practically speaking, to the racialised.
How does the constructed and maintained reality of a White nation impact upon the lives of
the racialised in contemporary Australian society? I suggest that the racialised likely also
inhabit this fantasy space that has become a social reality for them, since it is a construction
that they materialise within. To be clear here, I am talking about an actual loss of Will within
some racialised subjects, not just through a White nationalist’s imaginary of such an absence,
although the two are clearly connected. As subordinated elements within this national order,
then, the racialised subject materialises through the fantasy necessarily adopting a relation to
the nation in terms of object-like functionality. It is this notion of functionality that I turn to
here, to further ascertain the rationale for why, despite their subordinated positioning, do the
racialised continue to inhabit and participate within a White nation fantasy. To do so, I utilise the participants’ narratives to examine how the racialised materialise within a White national order as functional elements to create the homely nation. Nationalised subjects who have come to conceive of their belonging primarily in terms of functionality can thus, I suggest, be seen to have internalised a White national order, and their subordinated place within it. 185
On my reading, relating to one’s racialisation as object-like functionality within national space
translates into a desire to be recognised as ‘of value’ to the White national Will. National
subjects that inhabit this space of the White nation fantasy are therefore prevented from
embodying a (governmental) Will ‘of their own’, one which would challenge their
subordinated (racialised) status. This is because, as the ideological component of the national-
building mechanism, the dominant White national Will seeks to extinguish any oppositional
Will that may pose a threat to its ability to maintain the White nation fantasy. Through this
conceptualisation, the racialised are ‘accepted’ within the national space as long as they submit
to the White national Will. It is a position within a “fantasy of White tolerance”, which Hage
(1998) explains is “a fantasy of a national order occupied by ‘dead’ ethnics – ethnics as objects of a national will” (p. 98). Notice here the conditional quality attached to their belonging to the nation, for “those who are not tolerated are precisely those who trespass beyond the spaces allotted to them and develop a will of their own” (Hage, 1998, p. 92).
With this conceptualisation, it is apt to reintroduce M02 again, quoted above. We can now realise M02 as having internalised the notion of “productive diversity”. And since the racialised do not have the luxury of choosing whether or not they will tolerate dominant cultural forms
within a White nation, M02’s unspecified references to “people” and “they” can be seen as
inadvertently signifying White national subjects who are “open to different cultures”. Hence,
M02 demonstrates the ability for the racialised to internalise their sense of belonging to the
nation in functional terms. Despite their general exclusion socially and politically (see
Soutphommasane, 2017), M02 can be seen as accepting the terms of his inclusion on an
economic basis. The adoption of a functional relation to the nation as compared to the White
national subject, imbued with governmental belonging, serves to position the racialised as
subordinated members of the national order. This can also be seen with F04, a 20-year-old
Australian woman of Chinese descent, who in the excerpt presented below attempts to 186
rationalise an incident on public transport where she was told to “go back to China.” In
attempting to portray herself as an innocent party whose verbal attack by the “Caucasian man”
was unwarranted, she inadvertently evokes a functional sense of belonging through her parents:
F04: […] I was with my sister and we got onto the tram and um, this, this old you know,
Caucasian man, who you know, had alcohol in his hand or something started just yelling
all sorts of obscenities about um, us being there physically on the tram and telling us to
get off and like, like, to go back to China and that sort of thing. […] I remember um,
not understanding what was going on, but um, feeling furious because um, you know,
we hadn’t done anything wrong, we were using public transport. Um, you know, my
parents are hardworking, you know […] (emphases added).
Feeling the need to highlight that one’s “parents are hardworking” after recounting how one was unfairly verbally accosted on public transport would seem like a non-sequitur if the conceptual lens to the quote above were to not be applied. The construction of the self as an innocent party (i.e. “we hadn’t done anything wrong”) is clearly important in demonstrating the unprovoked nature of the verbal attack by the perpetrator in the recounted incident. More importantly, however, part of this self-construction reveals the functional mode through which the racialised self is perceived, for F04. It is not only that her sense of belonging is conceived of in functional terms through her parents’ work ethic, but that she feels the need to even prove her belonging to the nation at all. It would be ludicrous to surmise that if F04’s parents weren’t
“hardworking” enough, or indeed, if she was not a citizen, that someone “yelling” at her to “go back to China” would be morally or legally acceptable. Yet what this demonstrates is the tendency of some racialised subjects within a White nation to be subsumed within the White national order, internalising their subordinated positioning within the national space. Through this conceptualisation, F04’s actions can be interpreted as orientated toward accruing and maintaining a sense of national belonging, one arbitered by Whiteness. 187
At this juncture, one may wonder why a need to belong is even an issue in the first place. It should be clear now that people materialise within social positions defined for them a priori.
Likewise, it is apparent that within a White nation, the racialised can materialise as positionally
subordinated within the White national order. This suggests how the racialised come to learn
about themselves as defined through the White nation fantasy. What it does not reveal,
however, is the racialised subjects’ stake in the system. Why, if they are indeed subordinated
within the national order and withheld more amounts of governmental belonging than their
White counterparts, do the racialised still want to participate within it, as we have seen in the
above examples?
Affective Investment in Racialised Nationalism and the Sense of Possibility
In explaining how the homely imaginary of the nation is conceived of by the nationalist,
Hage (1998) explains that such a construct of homeliness is primarily an affective one. That is, it consists of several feelings – “familiarity, security and community” (p. 40) – that are aimed to be maximised by the nationalist through the home-building mechanism. These affective dimensions are presented and discussed within White Nation in terms of how they are experienced by the White subject. Security, for instance, is derived from being able to feel, inter alia, “an absence of harmful threatening otherness” (p. 40). Interestingly, there are parallels within the research literature on IR regarding the various strategies used by the racialised to navigate the stigma associated with their racialisation (i.e. Pyke & Dang, 2003;
Nguyen, 2016). In particular, Tuan (2001) finds that one strategy utilised by their Chinese and
Japanese American participants navigating the “perpetual foreigner” stigma (that marks Asian- ness in U.S. society) was to engage in self-deprecation so as to not appear too foreign, and therefore less threatening, to “their white peers” (p. 84). This can be classified as a form of what Schwalbe and colleagues (2000) have termed defensive othering, which they define as
“identity work done by those seeking membership in a dominant group, or by those seeking to 188
deflect the stigma they experience as members of a subordinate group” (p. 425). Although the
authors apply the term to the othering of other members of the homogenised and subordinated
group, it also suggests that the othering of the racialised self by one’s own self, as it were, is an
attempt at gaining entry into the dominant group. It is also defensive, since self-deprecation
centred around one’s own racialised identification is a “reaction to an oppressive identity code
already imposed by the dominant group” (p. 425), in a historical sense. The implication here is
that although adaptive, this strategy reinforces the imaginary of a racialised hierarchy in which
the racialised subject is seen as ‘lesser’. Members of the dominant racialised group are
positioned by the racialised as the acceptors, desiring to being accepted by them. For the
racialised subject, this means an identification through a White nation fantasy, and the
submission to a White national Will.
What has been discussed so far is captured in M03, a 37-year-old man of Vietnamese and
Hakka descent, describing meeting his (White) partner’s parents for the first time captures:
M03: […] I asked her if they were going to say anything inappropriate. Oh… so she
primed them up to sort of not be inappropriate, you know, and she, I think she told her
mum not to say anything inappropriate. […] I think she told her mum, ‘don’t ask him
if he wants chopsticks at the dinner table’, things like that. So, you know, I thought it
was funny, so I brought it out during dinner. And like, when they had a fork and knife
for me, and to her mum, I said ‘oh, may I have chopsticks?’ So that was, that got a
laugh […]
Here we can see the participant’s internalisation of the White subject’s need to not feel threatened in their homely space, in order to gain acceptance and therefore confirmation of his belonging. M03 communicates a discomfort emanating from the potential recognition of his perceived foreignness, whether real or imaginary (i.e. “I asked her if they were going to say 189
anything inappropriate”). Beyond his recognition of a discomforting situation, however, is the
self-assumed responsibility to provide a remedy. This is so even though the potential for M03’s
partner’s mother to be uncomfortable was perceived, by M03 himself, to be due to her prejudiced perceptions. The issue here is not whether his partner’s mother truly harboured a belief that one’s racialised phenotype correlated to the type of cutlery preferred. Rather, even though the mother was “primed” to not make any “inappropriate” remarks (and did not) and
M03 was given “a fork and knife” (like everyone else), the underlying discomfort was still enough to make him feel the need to diffuse the tension.
This was done through requesting alternative ‘Asian-appropriate’ cutlery for himself, albeit in jest. First, as a potential explanation through the above lens, we can see the elements of functional belonging within the participant’s behaviour in believing that discomfort emanating from his otherness is his problem to resolve, thereby ‘respecting’ the White national Will operating to allow White subjects to feel comfortable in ‘their own’ spaces. Second, we can also see that the need to alleviate tension stems from a desire to demonstrate how unthreatening he actually is, despite his (racialised) difference. This inadvertently places the White subject
(represented in this sense by the mother) in the role of the acceptor. The point here is not that the participant did not have other reasons to want to be accepted (we would expect this to be so when meeting one’s potential in-laws for the first time!). Rather, it is that the conditions of acceptance bore a racialised dimension, as captured by the marker of chopsticks as metonymic of the M03’s Asian-ness. The bestowing of “a fork and knife” was thus a marker of normalcy
(i.e. Whiteness), which inadvertently ascribes a foreignness (and threatening otherness) to chopsticks. Through this metonymic ascription, Asianness was perceived as foreign and therefore threatening to the White subject’s sense of security in their homely space. By internalising these dynamics, M03 feels the need to alleviate the stigma associated with the 190
threat he presented by making a racialised joke which “got a laugh”. This is, after all, the warm inclusionary response desired by one trying to gain acceptance.
Whilst this demonstrates how the affective dimensions of the home-building mechanism for the White national subject can be internalised by some racialised subjects and performed functionally, it still does not explain why they would want to participate in the national order as subordinates. Interestingly, then, Hage (1998) describes “a sense of possibly” (p. 71) as another dimension of affect that the mechanism of home-building aims to maximise. Through this conceptualisation, it is understandable how the racialised benefit from inclusion within the
White national order, despite bearing subordinated status, and the requisite forms of
(functional) belonging. Explaining the affective benefits of nationalism, he writes that:
Nationalism becomes the means of giving one’s life a purpose, a sense of possibility (usually the possibility of social, economic or political status mobility), when no other areas of social life provide it with this purpose (p. 71). This is important as a cornerstone of why the racialised have a stake in the White nation fantasy.
Being able to claim an Australian identity – even functionally, as has been seen – gives one the ability to feel “a sense of possibility” often in terms of social mobility. In expressing that he identifies less with being “Asian” and more with being “Melbournian”, M02 can be seen conceiving of his national identity specifically through this affective dimension:
M02: [Being Melbournian] means, like, possibility and it means um, you know ah, I’m
able to be a um, to be successful if I choose to be successful because I’ve got all these
opportunities you know, but whereas if somebody were to call me Asian, it’s, it’s a little
bit hard for me to identify with that, because I don’t sort of see it as um, uh, as a lot of,
well, here’s the thing, I don’t even think like, when I speak with my, for example, like,
my Korean friends, or um, somebody that’s I guess Chinese Australian and they don’t
sort of say, you know, that we’re Asian, in that sort of, or that they don’t necessarily 191
define themselves as Asian so it’s very hard for me to even have kind of like
associations with that.
Interviewer: What does it mean to you to be Australian?
M02: Possibility. And um, opportunity um, prosperity.
It is clear here that being “Australian” gives the participant a sense of possibility and social mobility (i.e. “opportunity”; “prosperity”). The only difference between these racialised subjects and the White national subject is that in inhabiting the White nation fantasy, the former assumes a subordinated position in the national order and conceive of their role within the nation through a functional mode of belonging. This is conceptualised as being in service to the White nation to retain that accrued belonging, which as alluded to earlier, is always conditional. Indeed, it is not that the racialised are never considered Australian, it is that they are often considered as less Australian then their White counterparts. This is apparent in the above where disidentifying with being “Asian” seems important to qualify identifying as
“Australian”. Note the implicit reference to the racialised notion of what an “Australian” is – and it is certainly, for M02, not being “Asian”. Importantly, notice here how the desire to belong to a White nation, and to identify through it for a sense of possibility, can create within the racialised subject an inadvertent disidentification with their racialised group.
The strength of this affective need to feel a sense of possibility is further demonstrated by F04 who was accosted on public transport by a drunk “Caucasian man” and told to “go back to
China”. Here, she describes the need to preserve her sense of national belonging, even if that means enduring certain indignities:
Interviewer: […] Do you think that if you were to see racism without the focus on the
macro level and try to understand the reasons why the perpetrators say what they say 192
or do what they do, do you think that it would impact your sense of belonging in
Australia?
F04: Yeah absolutely! Absolutely… if I didn’t try to empathise, if I didn’t try to justify
what they were doing because of their circumstance or their bringing up (sic) or you
know, um that would have a massive toll on me because um, then I could feel that I
deserve and believe in the comments that they’re saying [emphases added].
At least implicitly, F04 can be seen to be acknowledging the temporariness of her national belonging. More interestingly, however, she demonstrates how this conditionality is in direct correlation with the ability of the White subject to feel empowered to tell her to “go back to
China”. Through inhabiting the White nation fantasy, the racialised subject’s submission to the
White national Will gives the White subject not only the power to grant acceptance, but also, as seen with F04, the power for its removal. Within this understanding, she can be seen as attempting to remove the intentionality of the perpetrator in telling her “to go back to China”, for she would feel affected by the comment if she did indeed “believe in the comments that they’re saying”. Through this, however, F04 inadvertently demonstrates a willingness to accept being accosted by other White subjects as a ‘natural’ part of social existence. This is done, paradoxically, in order to retain being able to feel a sense of Australian-ness. Therefore, it is
through the incentive of being granted national belonging and the sense of possibility that
comes along with it, that the racialised may come to accept their subordinated place within a
White nation.
Materialising within a White nation fantasy inadvertently renders the racialised subject
conceiving of their belonging in terms of functionality. Perhaps to retain a sense of social
mobility and possibility, they are prepared to ‘serve’ the White nation, as it were, to retain this
sense of belonging. This process forms a fertile ground for internalisation of racist ideology 193
because racialised subjects identify with the Australian national space through a
conceptualisation that is a priori racialised. This amounts to, as seen above, identifying through
a racialised (as White) understanding of Australian nationalism, which serves to maintain a
subordinated understanding of their racialised selves within the national space. It is a
submission to the White national Will and often to its archetypal representative in the form of
the White governmental subject, that alludes to a more sociological understanding of how IR
manifests.
I suggest that this particular conceptualisation of IR moves race scholars closer to a sociological
understanding of the phenomenon. Accounting for IR through a sociological lens allows us to
build upon the existing definitions of IR, especially as it tends to be understood within the
predominating psychological literature. As such, in the next section, I utilise what has been
discussed above to examine the possible limitations within current understandings of IR.
Addressing the Limitations in Current Understandings of IR
Here I utilise two seemingly polarised examples from the study to illustrate the difference between the subjective affective relations to the manifestation of IR. The first is
M06, a 31-year-old Australian man of Hong Kong-Chinese and Singaporean-Chinese
parentage, describing how he desired to be a “normal Australian” when he was younger. This
norm was equated with being “Caucasian” or “White Australian”:
M06: […] I definitely um, when I was younger, I certainly wanted to be… just
considered, like, a normal Australian or, basically, it was a Caucasian Australian. Um,
and I definitely rejected the Asian part of my heritage, um. But I, I’m not sure that it
was because of, like, explicit racism or whether it was something more implicit or
insidious or invisible than that. 194
Interviewer: How young would you say that you had these feelings? What was your,
perhaps, earliest memories of wanting to just be Caucasian?
M06: Mm… very early, like… probably, primary school. I think uh… yeah, I guess it
played out in several ways, which was – basically a refusal to um, speak Chinese at
home. Or Cantonese at home. Um, so I would always reply in English, um, very
resistant to the language […] and I guess part of that was this sense that I don’t want
to, you know, I’m, I’m not, I don’t really want to be considered Asian or whatever. I
just wanted to be Australian, or White Australian like, you know, it’s hard to say how
I conceptualised that at the time. But certainly, that was a pretty strong dynamic.
With language acting as a marker of Asian-ness for M06, and him not wanting to be
“considered Asian” by being “very resistant to” speaking “Chinese… or Cantonese at home”,
the participant is expressing the common understanding of IR as “feelings of … disgust and
disrespect for one’s race and/ or oneself (Pyke, 2010b, p. 553).” Similarly, M06 can be seen to have internalised the notion that Whiteness marked the standard of normalcy, if not superiority over the “Asian part of [his] heritage”, which he subsequently “rejected”. Although the participant expresses uncertainty as to why he felt the desire to be “Caucasian”, one can see how this mirrors the common definition of IR which suggests the individual’s “inculcation of the racist…ideologies perpetuated by the White dominant society (Pyke, 2010b, p. 553).” This is a common example, within the extant literature, of how IR may manifest (i.e. Trieu & Lee,
2018). As shall be seen in the next example, however, internalising one’s Asian-ness as defined by “the White dominant society” may not always engender such a negative view towards the racialised self or group. 195
M08, a 34-year-old man of Chinese-Malaysian descent, can be seen below describing how the shift in his relation to his own racialisation, led him to move to China to learn Mandarin. He remembers this as a way to counteract feeling “not Asian enough”:
M08: Yeah, so [learning Mandarin is] what I went to China to do. […] I went from one
extreme to wanting so badly to be White and being, being bullied for being Asian, all
that stuff. […] Um, and then going the other direction where it’s like, well now I’m not
Asian enough, like I did all this, this eradicating, like this sort of internal genocide and
then now this is not what you [Whites] want, so I was like, well, I have to learn how to
speak Chinese. Um. So, I went to China and I studied […] so bloody hard, like, I did
everything in class and everything outside of class because I felt like my entire
personhood depended on this. I needed to come back to Australia and be the best
fucking Asian that all my White friends ever seen, you know.
Despite having experienced the inferiorisation of his Asian-ness in the past, M08 changed his perspective to desiring to learn Mandarin, even travelling to China and spending time there to acquire this linguistic ability. Importantly, this ability to learn Mandarin acts as a point of racialised difference from his “White friends”, marking him as “Asian”. The issue here is that, in using extant conceptualisations of the phenomenon, it is not possible to locate a manifestation of IR since it is difficult to see how M08 feels any “self-doubt, disrespect or disgust” for either himself or his racialised group, at least not anymore. If anything, it seems to be giving him a sense of pride (i.e. “I needed to come back to Australia and be the best fucking
Asian”). And if such a classification, whereby racialised language was seen as desirable by
Whites, is indeed bequeathed by the dominant group, it is difficult to see why this would even constitute a problematic. It is here, then, that a sociological utilisation of IR can begin to reveal itself. I want to suggest that relating to one’s Asian racialisation, whether with positive or 196
negative affect, is less important than how it marks a general subordination to a ‘White’
(multicultural) ideal, and the White (cosmopolitan) subject that often represents it.
M08 explains how he used to “want so badly to be White” after being bullied for being Asian, to more recently going to China so that he could learn how to speak Mandarin so as to impress his White friends. This excerpt clearly demonstrates how, regardless of his ‘negative’ or
‘positive’ experience of his racialisation, it is the need for approval from his White friends that determined how he affectively felt about his racialisation. After all, it was the desire to be “the best fucking Asian” (i.e. an authentic Asian) that his “White friends [had] ever seen” that fuelled the participant’s move to China to learn Mandarin. It is therefore possible to notice here why the ability the learning of a racialised language (i.e. Mandarin) for M08 is ascribed such a positive value. In the former example, it is clear that M06 is demonstrating an internalised inferiority whereas in the latter, M08 can be seen internalising a sense of pride (or superiority) about his particular racialisation. Yet these two cases are not so oppositional as they first appear. In the earlier example, M06 wanting to be “Caucasian” can be read as the expression of both a desire and inability to acquire acceptance, that is, from Whites. It is because he perceived his racialisation as being detrimental to this goal, that he developed a negative relation towards it. On the other hand, M08, who has ‘pride’ in his difference, has already been granted acceptance through the approval bestowed upon him by his “White friends” because of his racialised difference. Yet, what is more revealing is how his value as an authentic racialised subject (i.e. an ‘Asian’ subject should be able to speak an ‘Asian’ language) is determined by his White friends’ appraisal of him. The internalisation of M08’s functionality to a White nation, through which he desired belonging, is clearly apparent as he expresses that his “entire personhood depended on this”, that is, on the ability to serve the White nation as a functional element (linguistically, in this case). M08 can be seen internalising a functional relation to his racialisation, in order to be bestowed acceptance and belonging. 197
The above suggests that, embedded between the polarised examples, is how such a constructed
difference invisibilises the same internalised valuation of the White subject by the racialised.
Beyond simply experience and/or relating to their racialisation negatively or positively, both
examples demonstrate the racialised subject’s positioning of Whites as arbiters of acceptance.
Therefore, what this analysis suggests is how IR is emblematic of the racialised subject’s
general submission or subordination, subconsciously or otherwise, to the Will of the dominant
(White) group.
Conclusion
I have demonstrated how the racialised subject can materialise within a White nation,
adopting a subordinated relation to it in terms of functionality. This is done so as to maintain a
sense of belonging to the nation, through which they can affectively feel a sense of possibility
as it translates to social mobility. The functional quality of the racialised subject’s subordinated
positioning, however, requires a submission to the White national Will and often to the White
national subject as its archetypal representative.
As seen above, what similarly occurs in both M06’s refraining from speaking Cantonese at
home, ashamed of his racialisation, and M08’s desire to learn Mandarin, proud of his
racialisation, is their need to feel like they belong. Beyond this affective requirement, however,
what is more important for expanding upon a sociological understanding of IR is how the
racialised internalise a structural positioning of Whites as the arbiters of acceptance, and the
granters of belonging. In both cases then, more important than how they experience it, is how
the racialised are relating to their racialisation more as subordinated functional objects to a
White national Will.
Overall, the above examples suggest the direction that our understanding of IR, as race scholars, should shift towards. One’s racialisation may certainly cause one distress, disgust, 198
and disrespect to one’s race and/or oneself – this much we already know. What this chapter has hopefully allowed us to see is that internalising the racist ideology of the White dominant group can foster a multiplicity of reactions within the racialised subject, not only negative ones. This reveals the insidiousness of the phenomenon of IR, that cannot solely be identified through focusing on a subject’s negative affect in relation to their racialisation. It also suggests that the current definitions of IR need to shift from a sole focus on the negative affect that is generated by the phenomenon, to a more general understanding of IR as the racialised subject/ group’s submission to a dominant, and in this particular case, national racialised Will.
Chapter 5 demonstrated the feasibility and utility of retaining the concept of IR. In particular, it showed us the importance of accounting for the dynamics of IR as an integral mechanism in the maintenance of structural racism within contemporary Australian society. Subsequently,
Chapter 6 demonstrated that in order to retain it, the concept of IR needed to be updated and expanded upon to include its sociological dimensions. This demonstrated that earlier iterations of the concept did not work enough with both individual and social dynamics. Doing so, inter alia, allowed us to recognise how some racialised subjects can internalise their own subordinated place within a racialised conceptualisation of Australian national space without any conscious awareness. As such, given the importance of this concept in understanding race- based issues, it is troubling that there seems to be a general hesitancy within contemporary race scholarship toward the study of this phenomenon (Pyke, 2010b). In the next chapter, I endeavour to utilise what has been found in the previous two chapters to interrogate the implications of this renewed understanding of IR for race scholarship and anti-racist praxis.
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Chapter 7: Surviving the Survival Narrative: Internalised Racism and the (Political)
Limitations of Resistance
A version of this chapter was published in the Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal in 2020, and an extended version was published with the Journal of Sociology in 2021.
Using theoretical reflections and the data collected, I have interrogated the concept of internalised racism (IR) in the previous chapters and shown that, despite various critiques mounted against it, it is nevertheless a concept worthy of retaining. Recognising that some of the critiques are plausible, however, I have acknowledged the need for updating the concept to render it more applicable to the contemporary context, in order to understand race-based issues.
In particular, the previous chapter demonstrated the complexity of the phenomenon, and highlighted the need to broaden its analytical parameters. As such, I argued for a rearticulation of the concept beyond the concept’s psychological component, by broadening it to include a sociological dimension. As such, in having established a rearticulated form of the concept of
IR to be contemporarily salient, effective, and useful in understanding race-based issues, I want to examine if this approach may unsettle some of the assumptions that have been made by anti- racist activists. Given my analysis and expanded understanding of IR which looks at issues to do with a structural and hegemonic character, in this chapter I want to interrogate its implications for the scholarly practices of anti-racism, especially those that focus on the politics of resistance. As will be demonstrated, scholarship beholden to what is known as the grand narrative of resistance (Pyke, 2010b) seems to inadvertently play an identity politics that may not be altogether useful given the character of racism I have presented.
Below, I describe the historical aetiology of scholarship that focuses on resistance by racialised subjects towards racist structures, and its connection with a politicisation (and inadvertent essentialisation) of racialised identity. Then, drawing on the participant data, I examine how the racialised subjects in the study experience limitations in their resistance strategies, 200
demonstrating how the dynamics of resistance may not be such a straightforward process. In
highlighting potential limitations in anti-racist praxis by sustaining a hyper-focus on resistance within contemporary race scholarship, I then further this line of argumentation with an interrogation of the theoretical underpinnings of the grand narrative of resistance.
The Racialised Resistor: On the Politicisation of Racialised Identity
As a concept, IR was first utilised to discuss the individualised impact of racism upon
Black Americans, which involved, according to Lipsky (1977), the “turning upon ourselves, upon our families, and upon our own people [because of] the distress patterns that result from the racism and oppression of the majority society” (p. 145). Since then, IR has been primarily studied within the field of psychology, where it has evolved to explore a similar effect of racism upon other racialised groups across national contexts (i.e. Padilla, 2001; Pyke & Dang, 2003;
Seet, 2019). However, whilst having some contemporary currency within race scholarship, the concept of IR and the philosophical foundations upon which it rests are not without significant criticisms. Philosophically, for instance, the notion of false consciousness (Lukács, 1971
[1968]) upon which the concept of IR rests has been critiqued for the assumption it makes.
That superior knowledge and privileged access to a higher moral truth is, in fact, possible by an external source, has been a source of debate (Lukes, 2011). This complexity also extends beyond a philosophical critique to that which sociologist Karen Pyke (2010b) has referred to as consideration of the ‘politics of knowledge’ (p. 552).
In this chapter, I want to focus on this particular critique of the concept of IR, one which we can understand as a critique of utility. This refers to the potential utilisation of the concept to
allocate racialised subjects blame for the (self) perpetuation of a racist structure. Because the
concept of IR highlights the potential for racialised subjects to not resist, or sometimes
inadvertently contribute to maintaining a racialised and racist structure (cf. Speight, 2007), its
very conceptualisation is fraught with difficulties for a particular essentialised view of the 201
racialised subject. Pyke (2010b) highlights this as the construction and politicisation of
racialised identity, which she attributes to the infiltration of ‘identity politics’ within
sociological race scholarship. This frame, according to Pyke, is a politically-driven perspective
amongst some scholars, one that implicitly evokes the notion of authentic experience of
oppression amongst the racialised. That is, to be a member of a racialised group is to
simultaneously also know what it means to be oppressed, to supposedly have first-hand experience and conscious knowledge of systems of oppression, and to ultimately utilise such knowledge “to forge resistance” (p. 562). She argues that the fixation on resistance within race scholarship can be traced to the political events of the 60s-70s where “organized struggle seemed capable of bringing great change in society, such as the end of Jim Crow and the war in Vietnam” (p. 560). Because of the inability to “sustain grand narratives of revolution, insurgency, and emancipation” by the end of the 70s, theorists turned towards the “everyday forms of resistance” (p. 560) in order to maintain this political stance. Pyke suggests that such narratives which are constructed (and articulated) through a political register tend to reduce
“the agency of the subjugated… to resistance: to act is to resist” (p. 562). Writing from outside the academy, Douglas Murray (2018) notes that politicisation of social identities in predominantly Anglophonic Western societies, such as race, are often essentially paired with a political ideology. One where “you are only a member of a recognized minority group so long as you accept the specific grievances, political grievances and resulting electoral platforms that other people have worked out for you” (p. 154). He gives an example of widespread social commentary declaring musician Kanye West’s ‘no longer Black’ for supporting for the Trump administration.
The ‘voice-of-colour’ thesis, as a core tenet of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework is an apt example to illustrate the above argument as it manifests scholastically. As a racialised form of feminist standpoint of epistemologies, the voice-of-colour thesis purports that 202
“minority status… brings with it a presumed competence to speak about race and racism”
(Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 10). With the principle of charity in place, it is clear that this
theoretical orientation embodies a politically-required essentialism as a show of strength and resistance amongst the racialised. Such a notion has, of course, been contested within the field of CRT itself for its uninterrogated simplicity in application (see Kennedy, 1989, for instance), and recently by Paradies’ (2018) more general critique of the efficacy of standpoint theories in the contemporary ‘post-truth’ zeitgeist. Beyond the intellectual veracity of such a stance, however, it is nevertheless understandable that those with such political proclivities would find the concept of IR concerning, to say the least, given that it is through such a concept that one understands hegemonic racialised domination as relying on the complicity of the racialised. As such, Pyke (2010b) argues that scholarship generated through what she terms the grand narrative of resistance is often reflective more of the political orientation of the theorist than the actual nature of structural forms of oppression, and that such a political stance “forecloses attention to complicity, accommodation, and the maintenance and reproduction of domination”
(p. 560) amongst the racialised. She does, importantly, maintain that recognising the effects of
IR amongst the racialised should not be viewed as a point of blame, but rather as an inherent part of any hegemonic form of domination.
Whilst the notion of blame itself may not be entirely useful in conceptualising the effects of racism on the racialised specifically and upon the society in which it manifests more generally, however, the notion of IR does importantly have to contend with its potential misunderstandings and subsequent misuses. In particular, it is important to maintain a focus on the dynamics of causation; that it is the structures of racism which cause IR amongst racialised subjects. I have in the previous chapter, for instance, demonstrated how we can study the effects of IR upon the psychological dimension (i.e. the individual), whilst still maintaining a focus on the sociological dimension (i.e. the generative structures of society). Seen through the above 203
lens, this critique – the idea of potential ‘victim blaming’ – connects the notion of IR and its study to the notion of resistance.
I want to interrogate this notion of resistance, its salience as a political tool, and its impact on the study of racist ideology and its effects upon racialised individuals and communities. Pyke
(2010b) calls for race sociologists to take the concept of IR more seriously and adapt it from its original utilisation in the psychological field of study. As such, this chapter can also be seen as my own attempt at furthering her work. To do so, viewed through the prism of the participant’s narratives, I examine the tensions between what seem like acts of resistance, yet paradoxically, also complicity within racist structures.
It is apparent within the participants’ narratives’ that there exists both the desire to resist hegemonic White supremacist ideology, what I term the will-to-resist, and also the difficulties that seems to be generated by the adopting of such a position. As I elaborate below, these difficulties can take a form of conscious renouncing, whereby an acknowledgement of the desire to relinquish embedded forms of IR is met with what seems like a habitualisation of racist habits. Ngo’s (2016) separation between the cognitive and somatic forms of racist habits can offer a clarity here. Another difficulty lies in participants’ inadvertent complicity with the racist structures they are attempting to resist. Chen’s (1999) elaboration on strategies of resistance which unintentionally contribute to the perpetuation of racism is useful here. I then outline a third limitation in resistance which highlights the racialised subjects denial of racism whether in its interpersonal and/or structural forms, what I term non-resistance.
Conscious Renouncing
The first difficulty in resisting the internalisation of racist ideology for some of the participants is what I term conscious renouncing. It refers to those who seem to have achieved what Trieu and Lee (2018) refer to as critical consciousness. The difficulty realised here is in 204
still having to contend with what seems like the sedimentation of a racist habit. That is,
racialised subjects who attempt to resist hegemonic racist ideology here end up being confronted by a feeling of embeddedness. Because of this, Helen Ngo’s (2016) theory of racist bodily habituation will be fitting as a conceptual tool through which such a dynamic can be understood. Although written specifically about Whites’ inculcation of racist bodily habits, the theoretical essence seems transposable to examining this aspect of IR amongst the racialised.
Not only does conscious renouncing involve a recognition that one has inculcated aspects of a
White supremacist framework, but also a recognition of the difficulty involved in divorcing
themselves from it. The latter can also involve the racialised subject believing that they are, in
fact, contributing to the maintenance of racist structures. Discussing his experience within the nightclub scene when he was younger, M05, a 26-year-old Australian man of Singaporean
Malay and Chinese descent, remembers feeling “intimidated” by what he refers to as “pure
Aussie” women, referring in particular to those he identifies as “White” and “blonde”.
Interviewer: Did you ever feel as if that was hanging over your head when you were
trying to date? The stereotypes against Asian males in particular.
M05: No actually I wanted to prove it wrong. Um, at the start, I did, I did feel a bit you
know, intimidated to go up and approach a White person. In fact, like, I could approach
any other race like, African, even the, the European Australians [Australians of South
and Eastern European descent – AS] but not the pure Aussies… but after a while, you
just don’t give a shit (Laughs). Yeah. But at the start you do feel a bit intimidated like,
oh, shit she’s like you know White, she’s blonde, yeah.
Interviewer: So, you would go and try to pick up these women? 205
M05: […] You just wanna like… and I dunno why but in, in ah, um the minorities’
heads in Australia, it’s like, whenever you see a minority with a White girl you feel like
“Damn, man!” It’s like, “this guy is a good playa!” (Laughs).
The emphasis placed on feeling the need to congratulate other racialised men for dating a
“White girl” seems to signify an internalised notion of hegemonic White femininity, embodied in the archetypal White Australian female, as bearing higher racialised and sexual capital. This
highlights the presence of dominant racialised and racist ideology, wherein White women are
perceived as relationally of higher value than “any other race” of women. Whilst he confesses
his desire to move past this racialised attraction, he still recognises having an embedded sense
of wanting to congratulate “minority” men for acquiring a “White girl”. I suggest that this
residual or lingering effect of M05’s manifestation of IR demonstrates the difficulty in
conscious renouncing of White supremacist ideology. After all, the standard of attractiveness
internalised by M05 is one in which phenotypical racialisation seems the primary indicator of
sexual desire; it is the quality of blondeness and “pure Aussie”-ness that he specifically
mentions. A similar dynamic can be recognised within this excerpt from M06, a 31-year-old
Australian man of Hong Kong-Chinese and Singaporean-Chinese parentage, describing his
specific racialised attraction towards “Caucasian people”.
M06: Mmm… tsk, well if we start with sexuality, I would say its […] still the case. No
matter what I think of cognitively, [I’m] still much more attracted to Caucasian people
than Asians. That’s not something I like at all. In fact, I really, really despise that fact.
But um, you know, it feels like, it feels like something that is extremely difficult if not
impossible to change. It feels hardwired in me, even though I, I think it’s because of
socialisation, but again. Socialised so deeply that it feels hardwired. 206
M06 is explicit with recognising an incongruity between what he thinks “cognitively”, as compared to the bodily impulses that seem to govern his attraction. It is a tension he realises occurring between what seem like a bodily habit of desire, where he is “much more attracted to Caucasian people than Asians”, yet recognising that such a habituation is derived within a framework of White supremacy, one in which he wants to relinquish. The tension that appears above describe an incongruence between cognition and somatic response, the latter of which feels difficult to remove from one’s bodily repertoire, as indicated by M06’s feeling of White- preference/ Asian-aversion in attraction as “hardwired”. It is here that Ngo’s (2016) perspective may help illuminate the difficulty experienced by these participants.
Ngo’s (2016) theory synthesises the issue of racist sedimentation (i.e. feeling the difficulty of renouncing bodily habituations of racism), along with a recognition of agency on the part of the subject to counteract this feeling that it is “hardwired”. Ngo (2016) locates agency within the idea of habituated racist somatic (i.e. bodily) responses in an individual, cultivating an understanding that there is “uptake involved in such racist orientations” (p. 8). That is, the idea that one participates in the habituation of one’s own racist bodily responses allows a recognition of responsibility on the part of the racist actor, or more specifically, for my purpose, the racialised subject who has internalised aspects of a White supremacist ideology. For Ngo, habits are both (in a narrower sense) habitual, involving repetition and sedimentation, and are also (in a wider sense) habituated, describing a bodily orientation towards such racist habits in the form of gestures or responses (i.e. racialised desire). Recognising the latter allows her (and us) to ask, how do these racist bodily responses become embedded in one’s reactionary bodily repertoire in the first place? To answer this, Ngo makes use of the concept of an acquired orientation, what signifies recognition of the responsibility on the part of the racist actor to have engaged and participated in repetitive racist gestures over time that have, indeed, been sedimented within their bodily repertoire. This sedimentation, however, is a narrow focus on 207
what a racist bodily habit is. For Ngo, it is the acquisition of multiple reiterations of racist habits performed by the subject, incorporating racism into the very fabric of their bodily repertoire, that has given the body a kind of racist disposition. As she explains, “such racist seeing speaks to an underlying perceptual orientation; one inhabits this mode of racialized perception” (p. 13). Referring to racialised perception as one of the racist bodily gestures that can be acquired by the actor, Ngo writes that “the rigid insistence of a perception-then-response logic obscures the way in which our processes of perception are themselves developed throughout embodied and lived experiences” (p. 9). Put simply, the very idea of racialised difference and how it is marked (visually) is a priori conditional to our perception of, and thereby reaction to, racialised others. The internalisation of this same dynamic would therefore explain how participants above perceive both Whites and co-ethnics.
So how does this theoretical perspective help us understand the difficulty involved in conscious renouncing of IR for the racialised subject? Although Ngo’s argument of racist bodily habits aimed to locate responsibility upon the (White) racist actor, I instead focus on her concept of acquired orientation to demonstrate the difficulty in the cognitive/somatic incongruence displayed above. Of course, it is important to note that the ‘split’ here between the cognitive and the somatic is more for conceptual purposes, rather than actually arguing for an understanding of mind and body as non-overlapping magisteria. Ngo’s argument demonstrates that a critical consciousness-raising of the mind is only a partial aspect within the will-to-resist.
That is, conceptually speaking, there needs to also be a critical consciousness-raising of the body. And herein lies the difficulty. One can clearly have a critical consciousness of the cognitive kind but fail to allow this to impact critical consciousness of the somatic kind.
Utilising this conceptual frame, take F03, a 21-year-old woman with a Chinese and European heritage, explaining a change in her solely have a racialised preference for White men: 208
F03: […] I don’t want to, like, touch […] White men, but I still want them to think that
I’m hot. I want them to want to be with me even though I don’t want to be with them.
This excerpt can be read through Ngo’s concept of acquired orientation. It suggests that the
body is habitualised through repetition, suggesting that one participates in the inculcation of
one’s racist bodily habits. F03 can be seen as communicating her seemingly contradictory
desires. On the one hand, she expresses a desire to not want to date White men. Yet on the
other, she wants them to desire her. Interpreted through the Ngo’s perspective, F03 can be seen
having cultivated critical consciousness of the cognitive kind. This can be seen in her stated desire to not date White men in particular, the specific attraction of which she views as her inculcated sense of White patriarchal supremacist ideology. Yet, in expressing that she still wants them to desire her, F03 can be seen as demonstrating her uncultivated critical conscious of the somatic kind. This does not only indicate the habituation of racist desire within F03’s bodily repertoire but suggests that she still engages in repetition of the habit, thereby contributing to the sedimentation of her racist desire.
Participants here can be seen to demonstrate the difficulty in acquiring both the will-to-resist of the cognitive and somatic kinds. What Ngo’s perspective has shown is that racist bodily habits, or IR in the participants’ case, can be resisted, and are not totalising despite feeling sedimented. Of course, the argument here is not to highlight how the racialised have simply overlooked an area of resistance, rendering them even more culpable in the maintenance of racist structures. On the contrary, it is to demonstrate the difficulty inherent in the act of resisting, especially when the dynamics of habituation are taken into consideration.
Inadvertent Complicity
This section demonstrates a second kind of difficulty in resisting racist ideology that is similar to, yet differing from, the dynamic of conscious renouncing seen above. It is similar in 209
that it contains a conscious apprehension, by the racialised subject, of the need to relinquish
aspects of White supremacist ideology that they have inculcated, through which they recognise
that they are devalued. Yet, it differs from it in that the subject may not recognise, or be aware
of, how their resistance strategy paradoxically reproduces the racist ideology they intended to
resist. I term this the limitation of inadvertent complicity.
This is evident in part of an interview with M08, a 34-year-old man of Chinese-Malaysian descent. In the excerpt below, he can be seen reacting to a conversation with a platonic (White) girlfriend regarding his attractiveness. M08 recounts of how it “pained her” to be able to see him as attractive, a situation he remembers as prompting his own reflection:
M08: […] Am I unattractive or is it because I’m Asian? […] One of the ways that I
sought to address that was just to become like, really beefcake. So, as soon as I finished
high school, I, um, yeah like, my first year out of high school I just joined the gym.
M08’s will-to-resist is demonstrated here through his own individualised response to feeling a lack in masculinity, one which led him to join the gym and become “really beefcake”, that is, to gain more muscle mass. Note that it is not important here whether or not M08’s female friend did indeed have this perspective, but rather, to focus on the fact that M08 interpreted it as being so. I suggest that M08 devalued his own masculinity by drawing on the hegemonic discourse surrounding racialised masculinity in White Western-dominant societies, a standard within which Asian men tended to be relegated to a lower rung (cf. Chen, 1999). This is evident in the connection M08 makes between being Asian and being unattractive, as the two potential reasons he believes to be undesirable by his female friend. This alludes to the fact that the standard of masculinity he subscribes to does bear a racialised component. Hence, M08’s intention to gain more muscle mass may be a reaction to disproving the stereotypical notion 210
that all Asian men are ‘less’ masculine, demonstrating an act of resistance. Yet, it is here that
a limitation within this strategy of resistance can also be seen.
That one feels the need to constantly represent a more positive understanding of an otherwise
stigmatised identity category, as a racialised subject, is understandable from a sociological perspective (cf. Schwalbe et al., 2000). Conceived through a White supremacist frame for instance, M08’s Asian subjectivity may be felt to be saturated with an inferiorised meaning, one in which he has to contend with daily in society. Yet as Chen (1999) points out in his study on the impact of ideas of hegemonic masculinity upon Asian American men, although one can
engage in several strategies to relinquish the stigma of their inferiorised racialisation, most of
these strategies are inadvertently complicit with hegemonic ideals. The strategy of
“compensation”, for instance, wherein one is “aware of the negative stereotypes about [one]self
and consciously tries to undermine them by conforming par excellence to the hegemonic ideal”
(Chen, 1999, p. 592), seems relevant here. By attending the gym to gain muscle mass
(something he did, in fact, achieve), M08 is inadvertently accepting first, that a supposed
homogenous Asian male body lacks the required marker of masculinity that is present to the
dominant form of hegemonic (White) masculinity he desires (i.e. Asian men as essentially
lacking muscle mass). Second, he is also demonstrating an implicit acknowledgment that larger
muscle mass is, in fact, a marker of a superior standard of masculinity.
Another aspect of the participants’ narratives that could be understood as communicating a
form of resistance towards White supremacist ideology, albeit still inadvertently perpetuating
and maintaining racist structures, is the desire to specifically be “half”. Take for instance F02,
a 27-year-old Australian woman of Chinese-Singaporean heritage, who remembers perceiving what she terms “halfies” as “attractive”: 211
F02: Mmm… I guess sometimes especially when I moved to Melbourne, I saw being
Asian as a negative thing? Like, I don’t know, a lot of times I found myself wishing
that, ‘Fuck! Why wasn’t I just half?’
Interviewer: A half-White?
F02: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always used to look at halfies and think like, they were always
like, attractive?
At least when she was younger, F02 desired to embody what she terms “halfies”, which in her
usage, specifically signifies a person with mixed ‘Chinese-looking’ phenotype (i.e. Asian) and
ethnic Western European phenotype (i.e. White). One could read into this a form of resistance,
in that F02 does not want to be White, but to utilise its markers to her advantage in navigating
a space saturated with White supremacist ideology. Yet, it is important to notice that the logic
of hybridisation as a strategy of resistance relies on a visual register that is not only racialised,
but one that is also sexualised – that is, as a form of attraction. This register takes phenotypical
traits as communicating something essential about the epidermalised subject. Indeed, F06, a
46-year-old Australian woman with an Anglo Australian father and Chinese-Malaysian mother
seen earlier, gives weight to this notion with her specific racialised amalgamation, and the
effect of her phenotype in a predominantly “Chinese” setting on her sense of “Eurasian” self:
F06: […] I have a very positive Eurasian identity. And that’s because I grew up around
the Chinese. […] I’m lucky, it’s good being half-Chinese. You know. Chinese
considered me more attractive because I was half-White, I had a nose-bridge and I have
large eyes. […] I was positioned as more beautiful and more clever (sic) […] because
I was Eurasian.
If F06’s recounting is to be believed, then the dynamic that occurs within Asian/ Chinese communities wherein “half-White” people were considered superior may have some relevance 212
in explaining F02’s desire to embody a ‘half-Whiteness’. That is, F06 demonstrates that the widespread internalisation of White/ Eurocentric supremacist ideology amongst her Chinese community, acted both as a form of difference and higher social capital accrued to her. In her case, this difference concerns both physicality (i.e. “more beautiful”) and intelligence (i.e.
“more clever”). This difference, the “half-White” in particular, was not treated as a deficit but glorified instead. Yet this alone does not seem to explain why it is the emphasis on White hybridisation, as opposed to notions of White purity, that is foregrounded by the above participants.
To answer this, a more complex understanding of the dynamics of White/ Eurocentric supremacist ideology must be introduced, one which will help to highlight elements of IR embedded in such a desire. The construction of Whiteness and its connection with (and through) European colonisation must be accounted for here, especially when dealing with the colonised other as an object of both fear and desire (Bhabha, 1994). McKinley’s (2008) explanation of representations of Maori women and the colonial construction of “primitive female” as objects of sexual desire can help understand the participants’ desire to embody a
“half-Asian-ness”. Commenting on common artwork produced during European colonisation,
McKinley (2008) writes:
While postcards and pictures serve as ethnographic representations, others project images of fantasy and desire, promiscuity and eroticism, exotic and alluring. I have argued elsewhere that most of the women found in the fantasy pictures were ‘hybrids’, that is the products of mixed racial relationships. The pictures feature women with a physical appearance of large eyes, flowing dark hair, light coloured skin, aquiline nose, oval jaw, and a sweet, passive and vulnerable gaze. The women in the pictures are not chosen for their ‘Maoriness’ but for their conformity to a particular European taste in female representation—a fine boned facial structure and the pale skin contrast with her Otherness of dark hair, eyes and native costume (p. 963).
The above is suggestive of the resolution to a colonial fear and desire of the racialised Other.
It is seen through the representation of a European, and I would add, (heterosexual) male “taste” in female representation, which embodies this part familiar, part exotic quality. I suggest that 213
White hybridisation as a form of attractiveness, seen amongst the participants above, could be
read as an internalisation of this particular racialised standard of sexualised attractiveness. It is one that, at least as an originary construction, was through a White/ European (colonial) male’s racialised gaze. Seen through this postcolonial dynamic of sexual racism, it is possible to read into the desire for being half-White as a manifestation of IR. This renders racialised subjects inadvertently complicit with the racialised (and gendered) representations of (female) attractiveness through a White supremacist framework. Whilst this suggests the difficulty of resisting hegemonic ideology through its subconscious inculcation amongst racialised subjects, it also raises an interesting consideration regarding the racialisation of the arbitrary markers of attractiveness. This is especially so when they implicitly valorise an ethnic European/ White aesthetic through the acquisition of desirable body parts.
Is it possible to divorce the markers of attractiveness, arbitrary as they are, from signifying
Whiteness as a construct of coloniality/ racist ideology? That is, do markers of attractiveness always have to be racialised and more specifically, racialised as White? It seems like the narratives demonstrate, at least in part, that a simple answer to this is no. That, is, qualities of attractiveness and Whiteness, insofar as it conjures up the image of an Anglo-Celtic/ other ethnic European subject, do not have to be synonymous. Indeed, M05’s discussion of his desire to be seen as attractive was due to the fact that he felt desirable, with no considerations to racialisation as a factor impacting his feelings of being attractive:
M05: […] Yeah, but nah, I actually never felt bad about myself. I just, I actually felt
good that’s why I was like “Why can’t White women approach me for once?”
(Laughs). So, no I don’t feel bad about myself.
Interviewer: (Laughs) Ok but, did that [being an Asian man – AS] have anything to
do with you being obsessed about the gym? 214
M05: No. It [going to the gym] was just because I had never been with a White woman.
[…] It’s pretty silly, but yeah.
Racialisation did not factor into M05’s own perception of himself, in that he did not see himself
through a lens that devalued his racialised self. For example, M05 did not apply common
strategies of condescension to himself (i.e. he was not ‘attractive for an Asian’) but simply
thought he was an attractive man and desired to be recognised in this fashion. Whilst he still
viewed the acquisition of White women as the ultimate confirmation of his physical
attractiveness, his perception of his own attractiveness was divorced from any hegemonic
notions of race, and more specifically, notions of hegemonic White masculinity. Whilst
separating markers of attractiveness from Whiteness is clearly possible, at least partially, I
suggest that it would be careless to sustain a hyper-focus on this dynamic which only accounts
for a narrow impact of IR upon the racialised. Indeed, whilst M05 divorced muscular bodies
from their hegemonic racialisation as non-Asian (he did not think this trait to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Whiteness), he still recognised its salience for the acquisition of White women in
particular.
This is evident in part of an interview discussing F02’s recent blepharoplasty, and her intention
to acquire more surgical enhancements cosmetically. F02’s desire for attractiveness was also,
according to her, divorced from any desire to “look White”, referring to markers that signify
the common image of an Anglo-Celtic or Western European body.
F02: Yeah! I mean I guess definitely, the nose probably like cuz’, oh, I wouldn’t even
say that White people have nice noses though. I just honestly think like Asian people
do it because they want like a higher bridge. And like more like a pointier nose or
whatever. But I don’t think like necessarily White people have that nose. Like it’s not 215
like I think like oohh that girl has a really nice nose. Like you know, I wouldn’t go to a
plastic surgeon and be like “Hey, give me Delta Goodrem’s nose”.
One could read into the above, and I suggest should see an element of the will-to-resist. This takes the form of (perhaps subconsciously) identifying the archetype of the dominant standard of beauty, in this case the stereotyped White/ Eurocentric female body, and choosing not to conform to this particular image, whatever that may be for this particular participant. F02 wants a specific kind of nose, described only through the non-specific comparative term
“higher bridge”. She chooses to divorce this characteristic from the White archetypal body that she has identified as the standardised norm of attractiveness, wilfully supplanting the power of the body part from the dominant imaginary of the constructed White body itself. In this sense, she resists, and resists well.
However, with closer examination, such lengths gone to acquire supposedly non-racialised
(non-White/ Eurocentric) markers that speak to her sense of attractiveness cannot fully be removed from identifying the presence of an internalised (covert) racism. It is one, that in F02’s case, insidiously shields the racialised component that animates certain preferred body types and types of body parts, whilst operating as if her own body, an “Asian” body, can never attain such features without invasive cosmetic procedures such as the blepharoplasty and rhinoplasty.
This makes sense, of course, when one realises that racialised groups are partially constructed upon shared phenotypical differences. As race philosopher Adam Hochman (2014) writes, “it is a misconception that anti-realists about biological race believe that ‘race’ is totally uncorrelated with any biological difference: we just believe that it does not capture very much biological difference, and that it does not capture that difference very well” (p. 81). For instance, eye shape is often a marker of inferiorised Asian-ness in contemporary Australian society (Hollero, 2007), that could very well be correlated with Asian (cosmetic) blepharoplasty. What is therefore the more important sociological focus here is recognising the 216
framework of attractiveness through which these body parts derive their value. I suggest that
what has been seen so far in this section demonstrates how the will-to-resist White supremacist
ideology, such as in F02’s case, can still inadvertently, and covertly, perpetuate such structures.
The desire for a “higher” nose-bridge seems to implicitly take, as its reference, a White/
Eurocentric standard of attractiveness which includes archetypal features of the ethnic
European phenotype. Importantly, it is a standard which F02 is explicitly trying divorce herself from, and indeed believes she does (i.e. “I wouldn’t go to a plastic surgeon and be like ’Hey, give me Delta Goodrem’s nose’”).
The above suggests that strategies of resistance, whether in compensating for one’s perceived lack in (hegemonic) masculinity, attempting to navigate racialised spaces through embodying racialised ambiguity, or in divorcing markers of attractiveness from signifying Whiteness, can still render one inadvertently complicit in maintaining racist, or more specifically, White supremacist structures.
Non-Resistance
Beyond the conscious renouncing where one recognises the difficulty of habituated
White supremacist ideology, or inadvertent complicity with racist structures, a much more general limitation of studies with a hyper-focus on resistance can be glimpsed from the participants’ narratives. This can be seen as a blind-spot, as it were, of resistance-focused scholarship, since, as I will demonstrate, there are instances where the racialised simply do not attempt to resist hegemonic racist ideology. I simply term this the limitation a form of non-
resistance.
The limitation discussed here can be understood as such; if one cannot or will not recognise
the existence of a problematic, one cannot be expected to develop an effective resistance
towards it. Although the content here has been afforded much more depth in Chapter 5, it is 217
worth reiterating here briefly as it further highlights the limitations inherent within grand
resistance narratives. Recall M02, a 33-year-old Australian man of Filipino descent, who can
here be seen expressing a post-racial view of contemporary Australian society:
M02: […] For me growing up in Melbourne and Melbourne sort of being […] a very
big cultural hub, racism as a systematic form […] doesn’t necessarily exist. […] I feel
there’s no actual um, systems in place that really stops an Asian Australian, specifically,
from pursuing um, opportunities. […] I think a lot of the […] incidences that people
would sort of deem racist or be called racist is really, I would almost call it, incidental
or almost um, an isolated incident. Because it’s not the attitude of most Australians.
I utilise this excerpt here to illustrate that M02, and others who embody this particular
manifestation of IR, clearly do not recognise a problematic of racism. The matter of resistance
toward racism, whether in its individual, interpersonal, or structural forms is therefore rendered
moot in cases such as this. Some may argue that, in regard to racism’s existence, the act of
sublimation can be seen as a resistance strategy towards the psychological impact of racism.
There certainly seems to be truth to this, at least for M02, who may not want to mar his sense
of belonging to his imaginary of the Australian nation, something that the recognition of the
existence of anti-Asian sentiment certainly would effect. However, such arguments would also
require the positioning of one’s notion of resistance as an individualised response to
interpersonal racism (i.e. what I have termed the will-to-resist), as opposed to one with any awareness of structural racism. Hence, it would certainly be a strategy of resistance that is limited in scope given that a denial of racism would ultimately contribute to its unchecked perpetuation.
The three categories of conscious renouncing, inadvertent complicity, and non-resistance explicated above do not only highlight the limitations within acts of resistance for racialised 218
subjects. I submit that it is also reflective of the difficulty in sustaining a grand narrative of resistance (cf. Pyke, 2010b), whereby to be racialised subject, as a politicised identity, is to therefore also, as an a priori, resist racism. Resistance strategies, whilst potentially useful at
the individual level, can and in the above cases, do contain an element of complicity at a
structural level. At least within this study, the participants’ narratives demonstrate that
resistance is not always a given dynamic, and when present, not always effective. As such, if
the raison d'être of contemporary race scholarship is to altogether dismantle racist structures,
or at least begin to weaken its impact upon the racialised, then foreclosing the issue of IR
through the hyper-focus on resistance seems counterintuitive to anti-racist efforts. In following
this line of argumentation, I identify the problem within contemporary scholarship that sustains
a hyper-focus on resistance in the next section.
IR and the Grand Narrative of Resistance
In a recent study of a small rural town called Wilcannia in rural NSW, Australia, built
in the mid to late 19th Century on Barkindji country, Forsyth and Gavranovic (2017) set out to
examine how the local Indigenous communities have survived the effects of settler-colonial capitalism and its “logic of elimination” (Wolfe, 2006). For the authors, ordinary ‘resistance’ is too simplistic a term to describe the mechanism of Indigenous survival. They see it as reflective of an ad hoc measure to colonialism that does not account for what they view as a structure of survival. They write that their study has identified not only the “themes of creative cultural and economic adaptation in Wilcannia’s history”, but also interpret this as evidence of
“a more coherent, systematic and subversive logic at work in Barkindji engagements with the settler economy” (p. 3). They offer, as a counter to the logic of elimination paradigm, the notion of the Barkindji’s “logic of survival”. They interpret this as part of a Barkindji worldview, that is, a “structural dimension of Barkindji society that, like capitalism and settler colonialism, fundamentally shaped the colonial encounter” (p. 11). This logic of survival allowed the 219
Barkindji and their descendants to continuously have “incorporated the things they found
themselves doing after invasion into these highly flexible structures, turning the very weapons
of invasion into the tools of survival” (p. 11). The authors give several examples of this
Barkindji ingenuity, often injecting into their analysis the ambiguity inherent within
postcolonial discourse.
The authors capture this logic of survival within the phrase “the bush is there to nurture you”,
a philosophical perspective that allowed the Barkindji to adapt to changing circumstances in
the land. It is this mechanism of survival that allowed the Barkindji, according to the authors,
to subvert the colonial system. This could be seen in the “humpy settlements” which were on
the outskirts of the Wilcannia, where the Barkindji utilised materials “constructed literally from
the debris of settler society” to form their accommodation. To this, the authors write that:
In the Barkindji space which segregation inevitably (yet quite incidentally, and even inconveniently) produced, the Barkindji found a life-giving opportunity. Segregation too, it turned out, could be there to nurture you (p. 19). It is unclear from the description whether or not Forsyth and Gavranovic intended this particular philosophy of adaptation to be unique specifically to the Barkindji, or more generally to Australian Aboriginal cultural groups. Although the authors do write that “[a]sserting this logic of survival does not, however, essentialise Barkindji culture” (p. 19), it is difficult to understand how a non-essentialised view of the Barkindji would explain the authors’ argument of an underlying structure that the Barkindji have all been inculcated with, even contemporarily. This would also seem to contradict what seem like more essentialist statements such as “[t]he remarkable response of the Barkindji was rooted … in a recognisably Indigenous stance to the world” (p. 19). More concerningly, however, I suggest that the authors’ framing of the segregationist colonial structure of apartheid as also a method of Barkindji subversion is problematic. Indeed, if “segregation too, it turned out, could be there to nurture you”, then it is not clear what is so negative about the material impact of colonisation upon the Barkindji. 220
In contrast, take Fanon (2004 [1961]), in his influential Wretched of the Earth, who similarly
discusses the issue of colonial “segregation” that Forsyth and Gavranovic (2017) utilise to
demonstrate the adaptational quality of the Barkindji. Fanon’s focus, however, is on the
destructive dynamics of colonialism upon the colonised, worth quoting at length:
This compartmentalized world, this world divided in two, is inhabited by different species. The singularity of the colonial context lies in the fact that economic reality, inequality, and enormous disparities in lifestyles never manage to mask the human reality. Looking at the immediacies of the colonial context, it is clear that what divides this world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to (p. 5). Fanon articulates something incredibly similar to the apartheid structure that Forsyth and
Gavranovic (2017) describe in the colonial paradigm of Wilcannia and its humpy settlements.
Yet his focus is on the overt discrepancies within the apartheid structure of colonialism, one
that constantly seeks to, and indeed does supplant the colonised, at least materially. This
illustrates how a hyper-focus on resistance may, at least to some degree, foreclose the issue of oppressive structures and their impacts upon the subjugated prematurely. To this, some may argue that that scholarship like Fanon’s, and Forsyth and Gavranovic’s, are aimed at different purposes. The former problematises the structural nature of colonisation and the intent of the colonisers to appropriate resources, imperially or otherwise. The latter has a micro-level focus,
whereby the strengths and ingenuity of colonised, racialised, or other oppressed groups are
foregrounded, that are demonstrative of what Homi Bhabha (1994) has termed a third space of
genuine poesis.
One of the most common narratives within the study of what I refer to as “resistance” in recent
scholarship concerns the notion of subversion. Homi Bhabha’s (1994) collection of essays in
his Location of Culture is perhaps exemplary in this regard. Bhabha’s work has implications
for the study of (colonised) resistance, via his emphasis on ambivalence within the postcolonial
discourse. For instance, Bhabha discusses his reading of the work of poet Adrienne Rich, and
her self-positioning within what Bhabha describes as the “interstices… of… national and 221
international histories and geographies”, which, according to him, emphasises (and facilitates)
“the importance of historical and cultural re-visioning”. He then utilises this to argue what
becomes his main position for his work:
If we look at the relation of cultures in this way then we see them as part of a complex process of ‘minoritarian’ modernity, not simply a polarity of majority and minority, the center and the periphery. Rich does not merely string together the woes of the ‘wretched of the earth’; she turns the abjection of modern history into the productive and creative history of the minority as a social agent. Out of a spirit of resistance and forbearance emerges the minoritarian will to live, to make, to introduce the act of poesis into the imagined life of the migrant or the minority as part of civic and civil society (p. xx, original emphases). The above simplifies an understanding of Bhabha’s positioning on the postcolonial discourse.
Bhabha seems to argue for a refrain from fixity, to abstain from the polarised categorical
distinctions which he believes discursively maintains power relations, and for a focus on “a
spirit of resistance and forbearance” amongst the minoritised populations of society. Here,
within what Bhabha terms the Third Space which suspends any illusory notion of originary
identity, is where truly creative, unitary and non-static, ‘new’ identities can emerge. As such,
it is such a reading of the postcolonial discourse that exemplifies his injection of a sense of
ambivalence within common understandings of coloniser-colonised relations. This is again
captured in Bhabha’s consideration of the temporal and the spatial dimensions of cultural
poesis, connected to his notion of hybridity:
The borderline work of culture demands an encounter with ‘newness’ that is not part of the continuum of past and present. It creates a sense of the new as an insurgent act of cultural translation. Such art does not merely recall the past as social cause or aesthetic precedent; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present. The ‘past-present’ becomes part of necessity, not the nostalgia, of living (p. 10, emphasis added). “Newness” or rather, uniqueness, is generated from this in-between or liminal space that seems to exist outside spatial-temporal considerations. The implication is that the translation of cultural difference that occurs in the liminal spaces are outside the paradigms of oppression, 222
where Bhabha argues that the oppressed can remake themselves, the colonised culture, and the colonial culture. This refers to what Bhabha terms hybridity, both of cultures and of identities.
It is within this glorification of survival of the colonised groups within an oppressive paradigm, then, that I want to problematise this idea of genuine poesis. Feminist media and cultural studies scholar Angela McRobbie (2009), in commenting on the work of de Certeau (who argues in a similar vein to Bhabha regarding the everyday subversive functions of ‘ordinary’ people), questions the utility of these particular narratives of resistance. In particular, she interrogates their efficacy within a capitalist system of consumerism. She recalls feminist scholarship that engaged in “celebratory connections with ordinary women”, who “created their own, now seemingly autonomous pleasures and rituals of enjoyable femininity from the goods made available by consumer culture” (p. 3). Here, McRobbie questions the validity of discursivity as an act of subversion (i.e. “the meanings of the goods and values”) within a hegemonic system of dominance (capitalist patriarchy, in this case). For the subjugated, a discursive re- interpretation of meanings of their structural positioning within an oppressive system distracts from the absence of any structural changes; the affective dimension may perhaps be altered, but one’s position remains a position of structural subjugation. This has important consequences for understanding the tension between resistance as an individualised act (i.e. the will-to-resist), as seen in the participants’ narratives, and its impact upon the structures that each act is supposedly subverting. If this is so, it is concerning that contemporary scholarship places more emphasis on narratives of racialised resistance and survival, especially when it seems to be so at the cost of a wider and deeper understanding of racism and its impacts. Indeed, as the data demonstrates, it is not always the case that racialised subjects succeed in resisting, or sometimes even recognise the need to resist in the first place. 223
Conclusion
Taken together, I suggest that in utilising the revised and rearticulated notion of IR discussed in the previous chapter, it is possible to see how an overt focus on resistance within
race (and postcolonial) scholarship serves to bulwark the ability of scholars to examine the full extent of the impact of racism upon the racialised in all its reaches. It does this through a premature foreclosure of the problematic. A particular concerning area, of course, is the foreclosure on the phenomenon of IR and how it contributes to the maintenance of racist structures. If hegemonic dominance depends upon dynamics of consent and complicity amongst subjugated groups and individuals, then any study of racialised oppression will be incomplete without attention ascribed to how the racialised, through the dynamics of IR, help perpetuate and maintain the racialised system. As such, focusing on the limitations within the acts of resistance has demonstrated two things. It is in part a notion that can acknowledge the agentic will-to-resist of the racialised to be able to offer a bulwark against a racist structure that aims to be totalising. Yet it also allows an understanding which moves beyond the overt strengths-based focus of how the racialised resist and resist well, to recognising that resistance can, and indeed within this study, does, remain a problematic enterprise that is not without its own challenges for the racialised.
Given the above, I still maintain that resistance scholarship is of import to recognise the strengths that reside within racialised communities in the face of their racialisation, and as such commendable in its humanising efforts. However, an essentialist framework that understands all racialised subjects as either experts on their racialisation, and/or in a state of always resisting is one derived from a politicised view of racialised identity, may blind us to the more insidious impacts of racism. Race scholars would do well, then, to bridle their political aims when approaching the realm of intellectual inquiry, or risk inadvertently silencing the deeper meaning to be heard when the “voices-of-colour” speak. 224
This chapter has demonstrated the wider implications in race-related research for retaining the concept of IR. In particular, it suggests how the concept of IR, in its reiterated form, disrupts the traditional hyper-focus on resistance in contemporary race scholarship. It articulates a necessary refocusing for anti-racist praxis within scholarly and activist circles, one that warns
against the inadvertent essentialisation of racialised subjects through a politicisation of
racialised identity, and a foreclosure of the racism problematic. In the next chapter, I revisit the
specific focus group of the study to apply this understanding of IR that includes both
psychological and sociological concerns. In applying the concept to Asian Australians, I extend
my interrogation of what IR as a phenomenon does, practically speaking, to individual
racialised subjects themselves, one that is articulated against a wider structural perspective.
225
Chapter 8: Divide and Conquer: Gendered Division within the Process of Internalising
Racist Ideology
A version of this chapter was published as part of a special issue in the Journal of Intercultural
Studies in 2020.
In the previous chapter, I argued that the concept of internalised racism (IR), if appropriately revised and rearticulated, can still be useful for anti-racist praxis. I suggested, however, that traditional approaches to such praxis often involved a hyper-focus on the dynamics of resistance within the lived experiences. This risked invisibilising the more subtle impacts of racism upon the racialised. I argued furthermore against the inadvertent essentialisation of racialised subjects that has become common within certain forms of anti- racism scholarship (i.e. Forsyth & Gavranovic, 2017). In this chapter, I utilise a rearticulated understanding of IR as having both sociological and psychological dynamics to examine how
Asian Australian subjects can simultaneously be impacted both individually as racialised subjects, as well as structurally as a racialised group.
To reiterate, I have argued that, in its rearticulated form, the concept of IR can now be understood as the racialised subject’s internalisation of a functional mode of national (or other spatialised) belonging, one which necessitates a submission to the White national (or other spatialised) Will, and often to its representative, the White governmental subject, placed in the role of bestowing/rejecting belonging (see Chapter 6). With the use of the data, I now elaborate upon the logic of IR, through what has been termed the salience of racialised romantic (and I add, sexual) preferences (cf. Pyke, 2010a) amongst racialised individuals in contemporary
Australian society. Because of its salience as a recurring theme in all of the participants’ narratives, I focus on the salience of racialised romantic preferences for White Western men amongst the Asian female and same-sex attracted Asian male participants. 226
Yet, as I have already shown, such an examination cannot be reduced to the level of the individual. I am not suggesting that relationships which bear this racialised amalgamation are in and of themselves constitutive of a problematic, moral, or otherwise. Indeed, even if the unequal relations of power along gendered and racialised dimensions were to be conclusively proved as a reason for the frequency of this union, it would not be prescribing an abstaining from these forms of interracial dating. That is, any more than the inherent power imbalances between males and females in contemporary Western society should serve to problematise heterosexual dating patterns. Rather, I maintain that the discussion of IR needs to be contextually understood, held against the racialised and gendered milieu of contemporary
Australian society. In this way, I am working towards a more plausible and encompassing explanation of racialised romantic preferences, one that accounts for both subject and structure.
Engendering Nationalism: Patriarchal Nation-Building of the White Nation
F04: I think it’s far more frequent – I was talking about this last night actually um, I
think in my experience, you see much more Chinese women with Caucasian men, than
Chinese men with Caucasian women.
F05: […] I sometimes see, and my mum always says like, she doesn’t know why but
she just observes that like um, her friends’ kids, like the boys seem to marry Asian girls
and then the girls seem to marry White men. But I don’t know why that is.
Despite the social taboo constructed against being seen as ‘a racist’ within contemporary
Australian society (cf. Hage, 2002), there still exists a space for people to comfortably express racialisation as one of the characteristics of their desired partner, without it being seen as an expression of racist sentiment (Robinson, 2015). Fortunately, the dynamics of racialised attraction has not altogether gone unnoticed as an unproblematic phenomenon. That racialisation is simply another social dimension upon which people can develop an attraction 227
towards another person has been problematised within the post-colonial and race scholarship.
Frantz Fanon (1967), in his influential Black Skins, White Masks, devotes a significant amount of his thesis to consider issues arising from the racialised attraction between the “woman of colour and the white man” (p. 41) and its inverse. More recently, Zheng (2016) argues for why the phenomenon of having yellow fever, that is, where White Western men exclusively have a romantic/sexual preference for pursuing Asian women as romantic/sexual partners, is a
“morally objectionable” act because of the unfair psychological impact it places on the
racialised partner. The following chapter, however, lies beyond the discussion on the moral
implications of power imbalances within racialised attraction, and romantic/sexual
relationships. Rather, it attends to a more structural understanding of these dynamics, one in which the revised and rearticulated concept of IR aims to help illuminate. What I am suggesting
is that such phenomena must be contextually understood and thus held against the racialised
and gendered milieu of contemporary Australian society.
As such, what the above excerpts suggest is the perceived prevalence of AFWM couplings.
Even if only anecdotally recognised as a social phenomenon, this may indicate structuralised dynamics that contribute to their potential frequency within contemporary Australian society.
Although, for my purpose, the veracity of the frequency of AFWM couplings are not a necessary variable, I demonstrate that for the study’s participants, such a dynamic remains a salient feature in their lived experiences. To do so, I utilise Hage’s (1996; 1998) conceptualisation of nation-building, focusing on its gendered dynamics. In explaining that every nation-building mechanism involves a dual mode of dealing with otherness, which can be conceptualised through the gendered notions of fatherland and motherland building, Hage
(1996) writes that:
The national imaginary emerges an interrelated two-levelled, gendered construction: a fatherland, conceived as a wilful active national body constituting the imaginary space of governmental and sovereign belonging, and a motherland, conceived as an ordered 228
and pleasing space constituting the imaginary space of functional and homely belonging (p. 476-77). This conceptualisation suggests that through the desire to create the homely White nation, the
White governmental subject needs to vacillate between two relational modes of dealing with
racialised otherness. Hage (1996) theorises that the racist violence-mode of engaging with the
other who is “constructed symbolically as a counter(national) will” (p. 479) can be seen as a
concern of fatherland building. It recognises a potential racialised other’s counter-Will
threatening its sovereignty over the national space. In contrast, the tolerance-mode of dealing
with the racialised other, constructed as “a different bodily presence, but a bodily presence
nevertheless” (p. 479), is therefore a part of motherland building. It deals with the Will-less and un-threatening racialised objects by positioning them within the homely national body and
‘domesticating’ them to serve the White governmental subject. Hage’s (1998) point is that both modes should not be seen as the mechanisms of two different forms of nation-building but rather as the outcome of different considerations within the same nation-building schema. To be clear, it is only once the White national Will, in the context of Australian society, is satisfied that its Will reigns supreme, “secure in its domination of the nation” (p. 110) and in its access to otherness within this space, can it adopt a more benevolent relation to otherness. Although this may sometimes involve the actual extermination of racialised otherness, this should not be seen as an end in itself, but rather, as a means to an end. What the White national Will aims to achieve is the removal of any potential counter-Wills that may challenge its ability to construct and order the nation to how it sees fit.
How does the function of the White (Australian) national Will diminish any potential counter-
Wills that may challenge its sovereignty over the national space? To do so, it is important to
consider how the gendered conceptualisation of a nation locates within its traditional gendered
representatives, men and women, the same split in their national functions. As a patriarchal
construction, it is, traditionally speaking, (White) men who represent the national Will 229
(governmental national subject), whilst (White) women represent the nation’s ‘body’
(functional national object). This is important because first, we can see that the White national
Will is not only racialised but gendered; it is a White patriarchal national Will that works to
engender and sustain the White nation fantasy. Second, and more importantly, its impulse to
both gain access to otherness of the motherland and incapacitate the potential racialised
counter-Will becomes refracted through a gendered prism where it is racialised women who come to symbolically represent the bodily/ functional element of this otherness, and therefore racialised men who come to symbolically represent the potential counter-Will. Hence, on my reading, securing its dominance necessitates the White patriarchal national Will to engage two
(simultaneous) strategic plays of power. First, it must secure access to the racialised female element – a symbolic penetration of the motherland’s other, signifying a form of colonial appropriation of, and access to, the racialised body/function. Second, as a corollary, the national Will engenders an emasculation of the racialised male element – a symbolic castration of the phallic signifier of the counter-Will. It is important to highlight that both dynamics aim at a subordination of the racialised other within national space through feminisation, as
conceived through patriarchal discourse. I suggest that it is the internalisation of this gendered
mode of functionality, and a submission to the White patriarchal Will may help to explain the
racialised romantic and/or sexual preferences of Asian Australians.
In the next section, I utilise the above lens to examine how inhabiting the White nation fantasy
impacts how the Asian female and gay Asian male participants in the study may develop and
express their specific racialised romantic and/or sexual preferences.
Internalising Gendered Functional Belonging: The Desire of White (Patriarchal)
Approval
The point of this chapter, to reiterate, is not in claiming that all Asian Australian
women, nor the Asian Australian women who happen to be romantically or sexually involved 230
with White Australian/ Western men necessarily inhabit, whether consciously or
subconsciously, a White nation fantasy. It is true that just because racialised subjects are
conceived as “objects to be governed” within a White nation fantasy, “does not mean that they
perceive themselves as, or act as if they are, objects” (Hage, 1998, p. 19). It is also equally true
that just because Asian Australian women may be conceived of as the bodily/functional
element of a racialised collective (i.e. the Asian other) and positioned to “service the needs of
the domesticator” (Hage, 1996, p. 479) within a White nation fantasy does not mean they have
to conceive of themselves as feminised functional elements submitting to the White patriarchal
national Will. The dynamic between White governmental subject and the racialised other is not
necessarily a relational one. It is not a necessary dynamic, but as will be demonstrated, the
narratives of the participants demonstrate that it can in fact occur. And it is this particular group
that I turn my attention to, for the purposes of understanding how IR can manifest. I focus here
on the Asian female and gay Asian male participants who express, either overtly or
inadvertently, their romantic and/or sexual preferences specifically for White Western men.
It is interesting to consider that despite being a non-representative sample, of the eight female
participants, seven of them were dating or have predominantly been romantically and/or
sexually involved with White men at the time of interviews. This is despite the randomised
recruitment procedures as outlined in the methodology (see Chapter 4). Although a less
common occurrence, some participants expressed such preferences in an overt and explicit
way. This can be seen with F02, a 27-year-old woman of Chinese-Singaporean heritage, expressing her romantic preference, at least when she “was younger”, for dating or marrying a
“White person”:
F02: […] When I was younger, yeah. I remember always telling my mum that I
would only date a White person. That I would, like, only marry a White person. 231
F02 can be seen recounting her thoughts on racialised romantic preferences and relegating them
to a time past (she believes that they are not so rigid anymore). There are, however, participants
who maintain their racialised preference contemporarily. Take for instance, F06, a 46-year-old
Australian woman with an Anglo father and Chinese-Malaysian mother who is explicit with her (physical) preferences for “White men”:
F06: I have physical preferences as well. And they do tend to be for White men. I mean,
I don’t know exactly why that is.
As stated earlier, although these examples demonstrate an overt preference for White Western men, this was a less common occurrence. Rather, most participants’ racialised romantic/sexual preferences for White Western men were recognised through extended dialogue and follow-up interviews. Because of the nature of a personalised narrative and the complexity of each individual participant’s lived experiences, there is plausibility to any of the participants’ rationalisations regarding what may seem like romantic/sexual preference for White Western men. It is also, however, equally plausible that there are underlying structural causes that are impacting upon these participants’ romantic preferences which seem to be emblematic of a manifestation of IR. In the excerpt below, F06 can be seen clarifying why she may prefer White
Western men, locating intellectualism, a characteristic she values in both herself and her potential romantic partners, as being a predominant quality in the White men she has met whilst dating:
F06: I suppose I always got a long quite well with White men. The thing is I have
always moved in much more intellectual White male sets. So perhaps my, my liking for
White Western men comes from the sort of White Western men that I was meeting.
Here, F06 seemingly focuses on a non-racialised characteristic of intellectualism in men as the
main motivator of her romantic preferences. This can be seen as a discursive strategy which 232
obstructs from view the implicit pairing of intellectualism, a non-racialised characteristic, with it being a primary quality of White Western men. Hence, while ostensibly moving past a racialised register, F06 may be in actual fact expressing a racialised preference, albeit through non-racialised terms. Instead of a phenotypical preference for (a homogenised and valorised)
White male masculinity, she subsumes the non-racialised characteristic of being an intellectual implicitly within a racialised register and positions it as a quality that becomes a metonymic representation of White Western men. This allows her to locate her romantic preferences as ostensibly not race-based (to herself and others), whilst still pursuing White Western men as romantic partners in praxis.
Responses demonstrating a non-conscious primary attraction towards White Western men may reveal the taboo often associated in contemporary Australian society with being seen as “racist”
(Hage, 2002). Maintaining an image of one’s moral goodness requires a reframing of a racialised preference, often relegating them to seemingly non-raced determinants such as the presence of a preferred intellectualism. This is not an anomaly in the narratives of participants.
Take for instance, F05, a 28-year-old woman of Indonesian-Chinese descent, describing how having predominantly dated White Western men were more to do with her “interests” in activities that were, as she puts it, “White dominant”. For her, it was more about exposure than a specific racialised preference:
Interviewer: […] Let’s go back to your dating preferences. Now from when you
were younger until now, have you primarily been dating White men?
F05: Mm… mainly. Yeah.
Interviewer: There were variances?
F05: […] I’ve had like yeah, everyone’s just really different and it’s what they bring
in. Like the morals and the values are the same, and your interests? But then again 233
like I feel like my interests are very White dominant so it’s hard like. Like it’s hard
but like I guess the people that you’re exposed to and the people that you’re around,
will mainly be White […] (emphases added).
Her lack of exposure to non-White men, and more specifically, a frequent exposure to White
Western men is how F05 rationalises her dating preferences. What can be seen here is an
ambiguity, in that it is plausible that F05’s dating history has been shaped by her immersion in
“White dominant” activities, at least on a subjective level. This kind of ambiguity can also be
seen with F04, a 20-year-old woman of Chinese descent, when she explains how her dating
choices have not been consciously based on factors of racialisation.
F04: […] I haven’t actively chosen to date Asian or White, it’s just been a matter of
personality or attraction, um, but maybe there are um, elements of that attraction that
have, um, you know, they very well um, could and I would imagine that there would
be elements of attraction that have developed as um, a result of Western media. Who
doesn’t portray um, you know, Asian men as you know, um, strong, um, strong
characters.
Interviewer: But you’ve dated Asian men? […]
F04: I’ve dated more European, […] more Caucasian men.
For F04, it was not consciously based on whether her partner was “Asian or White”, but rather
“a matter of personality or attraction”. She then does, however, go on to say that such
“attraction” was, at least to some extent, informed by the “Western media”. F04’s view that
Asian men are not often portrayed as “strong characters” in these media forms inadvertently alludes to her perception of White Western men as the very “strong characters” which ultimately shape the “elements of attraction” for her. This is of course exemplified by the fact that she has dated “more Caucasian men”. Taken together, I suggest that the salience of White 234
Western men in romantic and/or sexual preferences of these female participants may suggest the existence of a structural factor that works beyond the sphere of consciousness for the participants. To attend to this, the above conceptualisation of Asian Australians inhabiting a
White nation fantasy will be usefully applied here.
It seems fitting here to reiterate that through this conceptualisation, the concept of IR highlights the racialised subject’s internalisation of a functional mode of national belonging, one which necessitates a submission to the White (patriarchal) national Will, and often to its representative, the White governmental (male) subject, placed in the role of bestowing/rejecting belonging. The following excerpt from F03, a 21-year-old woman with a
Chinese Australian father and White Australian mother, helpfully illustrates how such functional subordination manifests within the romantic/sexual sphere. Although she specifies being same-sex attracted, F03 reflects upon a past of dating White men specifically as a necessary stage for her to “gain her self-worth”.
F03: […] two years ago, I just dated like a lot of really ugly White men because […] I
just think it’s like, and again I think this is [what] a lot of my friends [think] as well
[…] I think especially if you’re […] just not validated by White men when you’re
younger, and then when you grow up, I think you’re like, I have to have this. And […]
I just personally know that I put a lot of my self-worth in like being validated by White
men, and having White men be like you’re beautiful and attractive and desirable […]
Interviewer: So, you think it was a necessary stage for you?
F03: Yeah, I think it was like, like I mean I would rather just have not gone through
that, but like, yeah, I think it was like, it was like, a really important path, like, part of
me to gain my self-worth when I was 18 or 19. And, like, feeling, like, a person that
had worth was having White men, like, sexually validate me. 235
Even as someone who is same-sex attracted, F03 still desires a heterosexual relation wherein
the “White men” she dates can “sexually validate” her. In particular, F03’s desire for White
men to think that she is “beautiful and attractive and desirable” may be a desire for acceptance,
or rather bestowed belonging, as expressed through a romantic/ sexual register. Indeed, the
very relevance of the individuality of each of the “White men” F03 has dated is stripped of
significance as she divulges dating “a lot of really ugly White men”, a claim that signifies even
the irrelevance of physical attractiveness in her romantic/ sexual preferences. For her, it is
purely on the basis of their ability to embody White male masculinity that signifies to her a
person worthy of granting her belonging (romantically and sexually, in this case). I suggest that
F03’s desire for specific validation of her self-worth (that is, her very subjectivity) from someone who is both White and male reflects the internalisation of a functional subordination to the White patriarchal national Will, and specifically here, its White male representative.
Even though she now only dates women, F03 recognises the internalised functional subordination that remains, still constructing a sense of herself as dependent upon White men as the arbiters of acceptance and belonging:
F03: I just think it is like hard because again I, like, think Asian women have agency
and, like, they’re complex or whatever, I do think that it is, like, really difficult to, like,
separate yourself from wanting to be validated by White men? [...] Like, dating women
– and I only became comfortable doing that when I was, like, I could have a White man
if I wanted to. Like, I like needed that security to be able to say, like, no, I don’t want
that (emphases added).
Only through being able to feel a sense of belonging as bestowed specifically by White men
did she feel confident to be able to express her own sexual preferences in dating women.
Understood through the concept of IR, this demonstrates the racialised subject’s submission to
a White patriarchal national Will and, specifically, to its representative in the form of the White 236
Western male, as expressed through a romantic/sexual register. F03, through her need for
acceptance, or in the romantic/sexual register, to be desired, by the White patriarchal national
Will, in turn creates the conditions for the desiring of the White male subject. That is, it is a
desire for belonging, a desire to be desired by that which is a priori deemed as worthy of
bestowing this acceptance/ desirability. It is this dynamic which is particularly important in
understanding how racialised romantic/sexual preferences can be seen as a manifestation of IR.
Through the gendered conceptualisation of the White nation, I suggest that the above examples
demonstrate an aspect of the White national Will in operation. As part of the engendering of
the White national order, the above mirrors the dominant Will’s securing of access to the
female/feminised element of the racialised other as internalised by these racialised subjects.
The manifestation of IR here is the gendered functional subordination to the White national
order, as (relatively) Will-less subjects requiring approval from those higher up in the national
order, expressed through a romantic/sexual register.
Whilst the above focused on heterosexual relations (i.e. AFWM), the following demonstrates
how the above conceptualisation also offers an explanation for the similar dynamic found
within same-sex relationships amongst Asian men. This can be seen with M06, a 31-year-old man of Hong Kong-Chinese and Singapore-Chinese parentage, as he discusses his tendency to
“almost exclusively” prefer “White guys”, at least when he was younger:
Interviewer: You say more attracted? So, you were still attracted to some Asian men?
M06: Uh… rarely. But like, every single crush that I had in high school or whatever
were without, you know, they were all uh, Caucasian people. Um, mostly the same in
university too, so, yeah, probably in high school it was almost exclusively White guys.
Yep. 237
He then proceeds to explain how he still finds it difficult to resist being “much more attracted
to Caucasian people than Asians”, despite expressing great disdain with the inability to find
members of his own racialised group desirable:
M06: Mmm… tsk, well if we start with sexuality, I would say its […] still the case. No
matter what I think of cognitively, that um, still much more attracted to Caucasian
people than Asians. That’s not something I like at all. In fact, I really, really […] despise
that fact. But […] it feels like something that is extremely difficult if not impossible to
change. It feels hardwired in me […]
M06’s experiences with being primarily attracted to White men within gay dating are mirrored by M04, a 36-year-old Australian man of Taiwanese descent, who can be seen, in these two excerpts, recounting a similar attraction to White men:
M04: […] You thought that being gay was the thing that bound you all together and
they weren’t; that should have been the overriding issue that connected us. But then
within that group, there’s this whole other, you know, microcosm of, hierarchy and
yeah, desirability, race. […] It just felt natural for me at the time, when I was coming
out, when I wanted to meet someone, I wanted to get a White boyfriend. I didn’t even
think of it very critically at the time, I didn’t even think about race issues, I think.
M04: [..] I feel like, um, the sum of my experiences based on the whole, you know,
being attracted to White people, being not attracted to Asians, and having maybe grown
past that phase, that sort of, um, when um, when that was mentioned, that sort of period
of my life, sort of comes more into focus. It may remind me of how I felt, and how I
still feel.
Both M06 and M04’s experiences mirrors what Ayres (1999) describes as the invisibilisation of the Asian man from his own fantasies, and specifically, as he explains somewhat 238
polemically, having “sexual daydreams … populated by handsome Caucasian men with lean,
hard Caucasian bodies” (p. 91).
More recently, a study on same-sex (both gay and lesbian) racialised preferences in online
dating in the North American context find that amongst all racialised groups including Whites,
“racial self-exclusion is most striking among minority Asian gays, who overwhelmingly prefer
Whites, suggesting that, like Asian heterosexual women, Asian gays internalize negative
stereotypes of themselves as less masculine or desirable while White men are ideal” (Rafalow,
Feliciano, & Robnett, 2017, p. 317). Mirroring these findings, I suggest that what is shared in common between the racialised romantic/sexual preferences for both groups is their inhabiting of the White nation fantasy, and the subsequent feminisation and submission to the White patriarchal national Will. As seen above, this often also entails a subordination to the dominant
Will’s archetypal representative as embodied within the White Western male, thereby granting them, White men, the ability to bestow (national) acceptance/ belonging, or, as expressed here within a romantic/sexual register, desirability.
The racialised romantic/sexual preference specifically for White Western men amongst both
Asian women and gay Asian men within the contemporary Australian context alone does not,
of course, in and of itself constitute a manifestation of IR. As such, in the next section, I
examine this racialised preference in tandem with its supporting corollary; the inadvertent
expression of a racialised aversion specifically towards Asian men.
Internalising Racialised Aversion: The Symbolic Eradication of the Racialised Counter-
Will
Within the White nation fantasy, it is a homogenised racialised otherness that often
becomes constructed as potential threats both within and without the national space. The threat
of a racialised counter-Will is often constructed in terms of a penetrative transgression that 239
occurs in the gendered conceptualisation of the sacred feminine/woman/national body. It is an
act which signifies the existence of an opposing Will that operates without consideration for
the sovereignty of the dominant Will and must therefore be eliminated. Eriksen (2017), for
instance, explains how there is a conflation of the invasion of a nation by a foreign other, within
(ethno)nationalist discourse, with the defilement of the “daughters of the nation” by a racialised
male other. Although miscegenation has always represented a defilement of some ‘pure’
(racialised) originary in racist discourse (Balint, 2012), it is, in line with the gendered conceptualisation of nation-building, the ‘defilement’ of women by a racialised male other that constitutes the aberration. Within this conceptualisation, it is perhaps Asian men who are
constructed as representatives of the Will of the Asian other, and hence, in need of
extermination. As I provide excerpts from the participant’s narratives to illustrate how this
dynamic is internalised, it is important to remember that “such an extermination does not have
to be physical and can be symbolic”, for, as Hage (1996) explains, “its main goal is not physical
extermination as such but the extermination of the other's capacity to be a counterwill” (p. 482).
In this section, the participants’ specific aversion, romantically/sexually speaking, to Asian men are examined. This dynamic is embodied by an excerpt from F02 who can be seen expressing her confessed inability to date Asian men:
F02: […] All I remember was saying to my mum like “eww”, like “Asian men are
gross, I would never date an Asian guy”.
These explicit expressions of a racialised aversion to Asian men, however, were less common than rationalisations for why their tendencies to not date Asian men were actually not racially biased. Yet despite this attempt at negating a racialised register, participants can still be seen describing their aversion towards Asian men specifically as a racialised aversion. Take F06 for instance, who expressed a specific physical preference for White Western men earlier. For her, 240
not only is the characteristic of being “intellectual” a characteristic to be found predominantly
in White Western men, but specifically not to be found in Asian men:
F06: I think I sort of saw Asian men as not intellectual [...] And generally, the men who
find me attractive were generally intellectual men and they were generally intellectual
Western men. And I did not meet intellectual Asian men.
Likewise, she also attributes what she saw as a lack of “practical grounded-ness” as being
emblematic of Asian men, which contributed to her view of them as “emasculated”, especially
compared to White men:
F06: […] I did find this sort of bit of naivety, bit of like lack of life skills, there was a
sort of practical grounded-ness that perhaps I’m used to with White guys in Australia
that Asian men didn’t seem to have? And perhaps that made them seem, a bit, you
know, emasculated in comparison to, to ah, White men.
The above can be seen as F06’s further need to proffer a rationalisation for why her romantic
aversion is not really a racialised aversion, but rather one based on characteristics or other non-
physical attributes. What may be seen in the above excerpts is F06 engaging in the discursive
strategy of positioning not being intellectual, along with “naivety” and “lack of life skills” –
what would otherwise be non-racialised descriptors – as metonymic characteristics that mark
the emasculated Asian man. For F07, a 46-year-old woman with a Chinese-Australian father
and a White-European mother, the (complete) lack of Asian men in her dating history was more to do with “the social context” she tends to find herself in, than any specific racialised bias:
F07: No, I don’t think there’s an aversion [to Asian men]. I don’t think it’s like I go,
um, no, don’t even see you, you’re out of the game. I just wonder if, oh, oh, I’m gonna
say something that’s just gonna sound terrible probably, I just, no I just don’t know that
I’ve met a lot of men in that like, in, in the circles and in the social context that I’m 241
in…. And so that and that might have been something that was unconsciously
intentional or maybe even consciously intentional at one stage. But unconsciously
intentional – I do always worry that it’s like dating my brother (Laughs).
In describing the “worry” evoked from the thought of dating Asian men, F07 explains that it
may feel like dating her own brother. This suggests that at least part of the lack of Asian men
in F07’s dating history was not solely attributed to factors of circumstance, such as lack of
available Asian men in her immediate social circles. Rather, what it does seem to suggest is
that there are intentional factors to disassociate herself from some perceived stigma of being
romantically involved with a sibling. Again, however, there is a general disassociation from
racialisation being a factor in her romantic preferences. This effect is also evident in F08, a
25-year-old Australian woman of Vietnamese descent, who describes how “boring” dating
Asian men is for her, compared to non-Asian men:
F08: […] I dated an Asian man and I dated a non-Asian man, and then I used the
comparison to say well, perhaps dating someone who’s Vietnamese, or Chinese is too
close to home for me.
Interviewer: Uh huh. When you say too close to home –
F08: Too close to home as in too familiar and it gets boring for me very quickly.
Taken together, what the above demonstrate are the sheer variations in rationalisations for the aversion to Asian men as romantic/sexual partners amongst the participants (i.e. un-intellectual, naïve, incestuous etc.). I suggest here for a reading of these subjective explanations more as flexible explanations for what seems, more generally, to be an a priori underlying racialised aversion towards Asian male masculinity. This may be indicative of a structural dynamic that contributes to the aversion towards Asian men, however subconscious. That is, the individualised rationalisations for each particular aversion may be viewed collectively as a 242
manifestation of IR amongst these participants. It is appropriate here, however, to recall Kohli’s
(2014) suggestion of approaching IR “as something complex and fluid in its manifestation” (p.
370), and to account for a multiplicity of interrelated factors that occur within a larger context of one’s life experiences. In this context, it is important to appreciate that Asian women’s aversion to Asian men may also draw upon their intimate (perhaps Westernised) understanding of patriarchal elements embedded within various Asian cultures. As such, a nuanced understanding of how Asian women may attempt to navigate this complex interplay of two forms of patriarchy needs to be accounted for, even as we recognise that such a strategy may,
and as can be seen in this chapter, can occur through a potential festishisation of Whiteness.
In the previous section, I demonstrated how the dominant Will operates to secure access to the feminised functional element of the racialised other. Here, as a corollary dynamic, it is the dominant Will’s symbolic castration of the Asian male, as emblematic of the racialised other’s counter-Will, being symbolically exterminated. Through this conceptualisation, the participants’ narratives presented in this section demonstrate the internalisation of this latter dynamic. It is where the Asian male is simultaneously marked, within the White nation- building imaginary, as the bearer of a threatening masculine counter-Will, and as a Will that is incapacitated. Framed within a psychoanalytical register, the symbolic extermination of a racialised counter-Will, as located within Asian men, symbolises a castration of the threatening phallic signifier of a foreign other.
This is seen in F08 disclosing the other factors that were impacting her specific aversion to
Asian men. She explained it in terms of Asian men lacking in “masculinity”, along with other perceived traits and characteristics that contributed to the un-desirability of Asian men:
F08: […] Let’s talk about masculinity first. So, I think generally, I’ve held the
perception that Asian men are not as bulk-built (sic) as other races. So, they’re either 243
um, if I were to stereotype, I’d be like yes, they’re tall but they’re more on the skinnier
side. Whereas someone else would be, of another race, would be on the mus- muscly –
what’s the word?
Interviewer: Muscular?
F08: Muscular (Laughs). Um, so that’s that element. I think the second thing is ah,
size? Penis size? I think again there it is generalised that Asian guys are smaller? Um,
in terms of beyond that? I don’t know if this is the case, it’s just the first thing that came
into my head, I’m like do I think Asian guys are more, are, what’s the word, not – a bit
more frigid in bed?
The connection between muscle mass as a marker of hegemonic masculinity and the male desirability can be seen in the above excerpt. Interestingly, F08 specify characteristics that mark an inferiorised Asian male masculinity, such as a “smaller” penis size (presumably compared to an invisibilised White hegemonic standard of what a penis size should be), and being “frigid”, that is, sexually inexperienced and unadventurous. Both of these, it seems, need to be understood through a sexualised register. In this regard, the literature on Asians in
Western pornography (see Dines, 2010, for instance), discussed in Chapter 3, offers some
insight into dominant circulating sexualised ideologies that may, indeed, be internalised by
participants. By being represented only by their racialised genitalia, the reduction of Asians
(men, in this case) to demeaning racialised stereotypes (i.e. as asexual subalterns), normalises
their dehumanisation, contributing to their structural (sexualised) subordination within Western
society.
Indeed, as seen here, the sexual connotations involved in the mechanics of patriarchal nation-
building discourse can translate to the sexual realm, in which Asian men become literal 244
representatives of inferior sexual partners. Indeed, F08 explicitly makes the generalised claim
that there is a specific racialised component to the “ideal sex partner”:
F08: […] If you were to go, ideal sex partner – it’s not Asian men.
Taken together, what the above demonstrates is the internalisation, amongst the Asian female participants, of a particular aspect of White nation-building involving the symbolic castration of the counter-Will. In particular, it shows how this internalised dynamic manifests as a romantic/sexual heterosexual relation through the narratives of the female participants. Within a structural conceptualisation of racism, however, it is important to understanding how Asian men may be impacted by the same racialised and racist frame. As such, I next examine how the same dynamic may also be internalised by Asian men.
I demonstrated in the previous section how IR manifested for gay Asian Australian men via their specific racialised romantic/sexual preference for White Western men and the tendency to be invisible within their own sexual/ romantic fantasies. Here, the same internalised racialised inferiority seem to be more explicit amongst straight Asian men, perceiving themselves with a general un-desirability in the romantic/sexual realm. This could be attributed either directly to the internalisation of the dominant Will’s need to symbolically exterminate the counter-Will, or a secondary effect from others (including Asian women and other gay
Asian men) to position Asian men as a general racialised romantic/sexual un-desirable, or both.
This is demonstrated by M08, a 34-year-old man of Chinese-Malaysian descent, as he recounts the ambiguity raised (for him) of whether racialisation factored into his perceived un- desirability, through a conversation with a female friend:
M08: […] And I remember she said um, she said, um, no I think you’re attractive or
something like that, but it just pained her so much to say it. And I remember it sort of
registered to me and I was like, am I unattractive or is it because I’m Asian? […] One 245
of the ways that I sought to address that was just to become like, really beefcake. So,
as soon as I finished high school, […] I just joined the gym. […] I was very unhealthy
in the head. […] I was eating 6 times a day, like all day –
Interviewer: To beef up?
M08: To beef up. But um, I was deeply, deeply unhappy if I wasn’t gaining. Um, when
I looked in the mirror, I hated what I saw. Like I was just, too fucking skinny. I hate this
reflection, staring back at me. […] My heaviest was 84 kilos and I remember, at that
point I was still really unhappy with my gains (emphases added).
It is not important to here ascertain whether M08 truly was attractive or not to his female friend
but rather to see how he is clearly aware of how racialisation works against Asian men in the
romantic/sexual sphere. Seen through the above conceptualisation, M08 internalising his own
racialised inferiority may be connected to the internalisation of the nation-building
mechanism’s aim to symbolically exterminate the counter-Will as located within the male
element of the Asian other. Additionally, implicit in the excerpt is the pairing of bodily
physique as a marker of inferiorised Asian male masculinity, defined as lack (i.e. “I was just,
too fucking skinny”). This is evident as he decided to become “really beefcake”, that is, going
to the gym and eating a lot to gain muscle mass, a period of his life which he characterised as
being “very unhealthy in the head”. This self-perceived lack is similarly demonstrated by M03,
a 37-year-old man of Vietnamese and Hakka descent, who explains how the stereotypes against
Asian men (specifically about having small penises) have impacted him negatively:
M03: [...] I’d be lying if I said hearing those stereotypes over and over again, wouldn’t
affect your psyche and confidence. So, you know, I’d say, yeah it does have an impact
on your self-esteem and your… and you know maybe, takes a while, takes a bit of 246
courage and bravery to date someone and to get to that next level of intimacy, right?
[…]
It is through the stereotypes that, at least for M03, the inferiorised notion of the Asian male, as
an effect of the dominant Will’s symbolic extermination of the racialised counter-Will,
becomes internalised. Interestingly, M03 mentions the stereotype of the “small penis” as an
attribute and often metonymic of Asian men, as particularly influential in impacting his
confidence whilst dating and attaining “that next level of intimacy” with a sexual partner.
Indeed, through patriarchal discourse, the utilisation of the comparative terminology “small”
works to feminise and subordinate Asian men through the symbolic castration of the phallic
signifier as representative of the racialised counter-Will. Smallness here does not only refer to physical size relative to an invisibilised standard, but rather relies on an implied understanding of what its size connotes in the form of an inferior sexual organ, perhaps one less virile and ineffectual. This was seen earlier with F08 drawing, inter alia, on the stereotype of the “small penis” in relation to Asian men whilst characterising them specifically as un-ideal sexual partners. What the above demonstrates, then, is how the same dynamic of White nation- building, that aims to exterminate the racialised counter-Will, can also be internalised by Asian men, manifesting as a perceived lack and devaluation of the self in (at least) the romantic/sexual sphere.
Beyond the differing impact of internalised White supremacy upon differing gendered and sexuality positionalities, what has been presented so far helps us gain insight into a key function of IR. Much in the same way as it fractures the racialised self, I examine, in the next section, how IR seemingly works to also fracture a racialised community from within. 247
Divide and Conquer: IR’s Fracturing of the Subject and Community
So far, conceptualising IR as the racialised subject’s inhabiting of a White nation
fantasy demonstrates how they can become functionally positioned within the White national
order. Here, the ability to grant, and therefore withdraw, national belonging and acceptance is
given to the White governmental subject, marking the racialised subject’s subordination to the
dominant national Will. Further, in incorporating the gendered conceptualisation of the White
national building mechanism, I have shown how it is the White patriarchal national Will, in
maintaining its sovereignty over national space, that must work to eliminate any potential
racialised counter-Will. I have demonstrated how both dynamics – securing access to the
racialised other’s ‘body’ as a feminised functional element and to exterminate the racialised other’s Will symbolically through a symbolic castration simultaneously – can be internalised
by Asian women and men, with differing impacts.
Earlier I explained that the participants’ narratives demonstrated a general variability in the
negative stereotypes associated with Asian men, that contributed to their undesirability in the
romantic/sexual realm. I explained that this suggested an a priori perception of the inferiority
of Asian maleness and could therefore be viewed as a collective manifestation of IR. Below, I interrogate this dynamic between Asian women and men. I do so by examining what seem like gendered accusations between them, which in the narratives that follow, revolve around the same notion of romantic/sexual preferences. Take for instance, F09, an 18-year-old woman of
Korean heritage, who can be seen justifying her racialised romantic preference for White
Western men through the construction of Asian men as traditionalists and therefore not a good fit for such a “strong-headed” woman as her:
F09: […] If I ever do get married […] I’d probably marry a White guy […] because
[…] oh god, Asian guys, they have certain expectations for who they date. […] They
want basically a female Asian who’s not nearly as strong-headed as me. They want 248
more, uh – there’s lots of videos on it on YouTube – they want more uh, they want that
pretty Asian, and they don’t have, they’re not really that ambitious with their careers,
they want kids, the want to get married, stuff like that. I’m literally the complete
opposite of that. […] And I was thinking yeah, I don’t necessarily want to date an Asian
guy.
The notion of the traditional Asian male who has “certain expectations” of Asian women in the form of wanting a partner that is not “strong-headed”, or not “ambitious with their careers”, or wants children and “to get married”, is emblematic of what Karen Pyke (2010a) has alluded to as a constructed notion of an ethnic patriarchy. For whatever patriarchal quality that may exist within a supposed Asian culture, whether verified by “videos… on YouTube” or otherwise, I believe what the above demonstrates is more specifically the utilisation of the notion of ethnic patriarchy so as to justify one’s racialised dating preference for White Western men. Rather than a problematisation of gendered imbalances in power in one’s particular ethno-cultural community with an intent for constructive change, it instead becomes weaponised as a way to further inferiorise, this time in a moral sense, Asian men as a whole and the supposed Asian culture they represent. It mirrors what Pyke (2010a) has termed as Asian women’s glorification of White Western masculinity, an effect of IR which inadvertently also obscures the patriarchal dynamics inherent within White Western culture. As can be seen in the above, this is particularly valorised here through the supposed naturalised egalitarianism of White Western men, made all the more salient through the contrast with a backward and inferior Asian culture, and the Asian male who, through patriarchal nation-building discourse, represents its collective
Will.
Importantly, for what I am examining here, it is important to note that the utilisation of the notion of ethnic patriarchy inadvertently interpellate all Asian men as the primary causal agent for their lack of romantic/sexual desirability. This, as can be expected, becomes a point of 249
intracommunal tension as Asian men become overdetermined through a negative stereotype as unreconstructed sexists and, by extension, moral inferiors of their White male counterparts. As
M08 ponders upon the reasons for the frequency of AFWM couples, it is clear that idea of
Asian/ ethnic patriarchy circulates hegemonically as he recognises the need to justify how he, along with his friends, do not fit within this mould:
M08: I believe it [Asian women having an aversion to Asian men] has absolutely
nothing to do with patriarchy. […] How many of them [Asian women] have actually
seriously dated Asian men? And how many of them have found that all the Asian men
that they’ve dated have been unbearably um, misogynistic? Like you know, I’m an
Asian guy, and I have plenty of Asian guy friends. And I would like to think that I know
them pretty well. And none of them are like that.
Beyond the impact of the ethnic patriarch stereotype upon Asian men, I suggest that what the above demonstrates is also the tendency of Asian men to locate their overdetermined racialised and racist stereotypes as caused by Asian women’s characterisation of them. The critical form in which accusations of ethnic patriarchy are often delivered generates the focus of blame, by
Asian men, back unto Asian women (i.e. “How many of them have actually seriously dated
Asian men?”). This creates a conflict between Asian men and women which, I suggest, operates to veil the hegemonic influence of the White nation fantasy within these discourses, which is thereby continually reinforced through its invisibilisation. It is this dynamic that demonstrates how IR can divide a community, fracturing it here upon a gendered dimension.
One of the impacts of IR upon the racialised self, as seen particularly with M08’s perception of himself as “too fucking skinny” and “hating” himself when he “looked in the mirror”, is the introduction of a racialised incongruence. That is, the internalisation of racism here can be seen as fracturing M08’s perception of himself. The idea of a “too skinny” body attributed to his 250
Asian maleness only makes sense if framed through a racialised standard of hegemonic masculinity, one which creates the sense of what his ideal self should resemble. The incongruence occurs at the moment of reflection, where his racialisation becomes viewed as a deficit, constitutive of a lack. Here, much like the internal fracturing of the self, IR may also work to internally fracture the racialised community from within. This operates as an overall effect of the dominant national Will’s aim to incapacitate an othered collective Will through a strategic ‘divide and conquer’ manoeuvre.
Importantly, I suggest that this dynamic serves to weaken intracommunal cohesion and the ability for any effective collective resistance against hegemonic ideological dominance. This is seen within an excerpt from F03 who understands the “aggressive and violent” reaction of some Asian men to AFWM couples, as the Asian male entitlement to women:
F03: I mean [Asian men are] just a bit sad because people don’t want to date them. I
think there’s a lot of those stereotypes of them being nerdy and like, awkward and like,
just like not attractive… just like yeah, just like not desirable. […] A lot of Asian men
do get very, get quite like aggressive and violent about like why aren’t Asian women
dating me. Like why are they dating White men. And I’m like, they don’t owe you
anything… um, like yeah. But I think they feel sad.
Interviewer: […] Where do you think that comes out of?
F03: Just like male entitlement? Just like male desire to be fucked and feel that that’s
really important? I also think that they like weaponise racial politics against Asian
women because they like, they’re like you don’t want to date me because like, you hate
your own race and because you’re like a racist and try to like weaponise that against
Asian women. 251
Despite recognition of her Asian male friends who “feel sad” about the fact that “people don’t want to date them”, F03 frames it as an issue where Asian women “don’t owe [Asian men] anything”, and thus locates the blame within “male entitlement” as it corresponds to an (Asian)
“male desire to be fucked”. This particular excerpt was chosen to represent a recurring rationalisation amongst the participants in the study, which demonstrates its particular hegemonic quality. Indeed, M08 can be seen responding to a similar point (without prompting), demonstrating his awareness of the accusation towards Asian men. It is clear from this excerpt that he is, as I have been describing, directing the focus of his response specifically towards
Asian women:
M08: […] I really resent the idea that um, I feel like Asian women owe me something
just because they’re Asian, or that because we are of the same ethnicity or that they’re
like our female counterparts, you know, that they are my birth right or whatever, right?
I don’t like that idea and that’s what really bothers me when people throw that on me,
because I do not feel that way. Um, but that’s one of the things that Asian women say.
That’s why I feel like they haven’t actually asked any Asian men (emphases added).
M08 is expressing his intention to clarify what he views as misassumptions that he feels overdetermines him as an Asian male. However, in doing so, he can be seen locating the need for action within the generalised and polarised construction of “Asian women”. This same construction and positioning of “Asian women” as an oppositional faction against “Asian men” can be seen more explicitly within M04’s excerpt provided below. He does this through highlighting the gendered difference in romantic/ sexual desirability between Asian men and women, ascribing to the latter a relative “privilege” with having “such a big dating pool”. Asian men, on the other hand, are seen as “lucky to be getting any sort of attention at all”: 252
M04: […] The Asian […] feminists that I know, that’s one thing that […] they’re really
passionate about? Kind of find that fetishisation […] of Asian females? But from an
Asian male perspective it’s […] almost like it’s a bit rich for you to be complaining
about something like that in a way? Because from an Asian male perspective we’re
lucky to be getting any sort of attention at all. […] And ultimately, for a lot of Asian
females who do date White guys, they will say things like oh, I always have to make
sure that in their dating history, it’s not just been with Asian females […] and […] from
my perspective I think that’s a very privileged choice that you have. That you have such
a big dating pool, even amongst the White population, that you can screen out all the
ones that have fetishes for Asian women, and only choose to date the ones that don’t
have that history […] whereas for the Asian man […] it’s like, you’re at opposite ends
of the spectrum here. […] From a male perspective, that choice is a privilege in itself.
[…] It’s almost like you’re hitting us when we’re down by not supporting, or not
understanding how […] it should feel (emphases added).
Here, the polarisation between Asian women’s high romantic/sexual desirability, and Asian men’s lack of it, becomes constructed as relationally oppositional where each group occupies
“opposite ends of the spectrum”. Through this specific construction between the two, a connection is seemingly established where Asian women are made responsible for Asian men’s lack of desirability. Here, Asian women’s problematisation of their own “fetishisation” by other men inadvertently generates a dismissal and becomes seen as an expression of “privilege” instead of a problem of structural racism in and of itself. It is with Asian women that M04 locates the source of ills for Asian men, specifically constructing them as “hitting [Asian men] when [they are] down”, through their lack of support “or understanding”. Not only are the two groups seen as oppositional, but one is constructed as directly contributing to the misery of the other, turning happenstance into intentionality. This, I suggest, may be indicative of how IR 253
can work to fracture the community from within, via the gendered polarisation of subjects’ racialised romantic and/or sexual preferences and desirability. Seen though the above lens, this may be emblematic of the weakening of the racialised counter-Will as part of the White nation- building mechanism. Indeed, the very types of ‘debates’ that depend upon homogenous constructions of Asian women/ men already interpellate each individual Asian man and woman into a such a conflict where they assume opposing sides. This dynamic can be read sociologically as symptoms of a collective ethnic Will being dismantled, which is the very objective of a White national Will that requires the stamping out of a potential threat to its sovereignty over national space.
Conclusion
Applying the revised and rearticulated concept of IR, discussed in Chapter 6, to understand the racialised romantic preferences of the participants demonstrates the connection between how Asian Australians are impacted both individually and structurally by racist ideology. The analysis of the data points to not only how IR can impact the individual subject in shaping their racialised romantic and/or sexual desire and aversion, but also, more importantly, how this dynamic operates as both an effect and cause of wider structural sexualised/ gendered racism. Made possible with a focus on the sociological aspect of the phenomenon of IR, interrogation of the narratives suggests that gendered divisions between women and men can foster divisive opposition within the racialised community, and is thus illustrative of the internal fracturing of intracommunal cohesion. Further, this discussion may also uniquely contribute to further the critique of the model minority myth. This term refers to a perception based on how Asians in Western societies have ostensibly achieved socio- economic parity with the dominant racialised group and/or have achieved middle-class assimilation (Stratton, 2009), which then supposedly renders them impervious to racism.
Although repetitive, literature here (see Chapter 3) importantly critiques the myth for falsely 254
homogenising Asians in Western societies, and on the psychological harms it may have (Chou,
2008; Yoo, Burrola, & Steger, 2010). As such, this chapter may highlight a new avenue of research for which to focus on the impact of structural racism on Asians in Western societies as it impacts romantic/sexual development, to further the critique of the model minority myth.
This observation highlights one of the specific ways through which IR operates to further reinforce structural racism through its impact upon racialised subjects. As such, although the research site focused on Asian Australians, the notion of intracommunal fracturing is one that has potential applicability beyond this specific racialised context. Building upon the previous chapter, this chapter illustrates the potential that a revised understanding of IR has upon efforts of anti-racist praxis. Maintaining the concept’s significance contemporarily helps to problematise a politically-constructed false Manicheanism between perpetrators of racism and its victims, at least when it comes to understanding how racist structures are maintained. My analysis has shown that the very persistence of racism depends on the racialised to internalise their structural positionality, thereby contributing to the perpetuation of its ideological frames of reference. The concept of IR is thus useful in showing how dividing a structurally subordinated group from within enables racism to continue to remain a contemporarily salient dynamic within Australian society.
In the next chapter, I conclude this thesis by thinking through the implications that a revised understanding of IR has for race scholars and anti-racist activists.
255
Chapter 9: Recovering the Concept of IR
Insights from the Research
This thesis was contextualised within the contemporary zeitgeist, one that, in part,
reflects the changing demographic composition of Australia (ABS, 2016), and the widespread
recognition of its multicultural, and/or multi-racial/ethnic fabric. Despite this, Australia is still
a space in which structural racism continues to exist. Whilst a major focus within the academic
literature has been on combating White privilege and racialised discrimination in the social and
political spheres of life as a form of anti-racist praxis, in this thesis I examined the concept of internalised racism (IR). I did so in order to explore its potential in understanding the continuing persistence of racism in Australian society. I considered, for instance, to what extent the concept of IR may be helpful in explaining the structure of racist ideological dominance in
Australia. That is, how might the concept of IR have contemporary salience and utility for understanding race-based issues that continue to plague Australian society?
In this thesis, I thus examined the significance of the concept of IR through the lived experiences of a subset of the Australian populace, namely the social experiences of racism of
1.5 and 2nd generation Australians of East and South East Asian ethnicity. The research
underlying this thesis was motivated and constructed through the interaction of several factors.
First, I drew upon a personal biography (for someone recognised as Asian Australian) for a phenomenological sense of racism, one that allowed a constant refocusing of the issue at hand throughout the life of the research. Second, I canvassed, strived to understand, and compiled what key existing literature there was on the subject matter, thereby forming the foundational assumptions upon which the research was built. Third, I utilised these assumptions to analyse the participant data, focusing on how the phenomenon of racism may have been salient in their lived experiences. With these factors in place, several key insights were made apparent through 256
the life of the project, emerging from the analysis of both the extant literature and the generated
data. These culminated in the arriving at four major insights.
First, analysis demonstrated that structures of racism in Australian society, as it is experienced
by Asian Australians, are also maintained from within. In particular, not only by those who,
from a structural perspective, stand to benefit most from the system, but also by those who
benefit to a lesser degree in relational comparison. The difference in structural positioning of
racialised groups also seem to matter, in that where one fits in a hierarchical organisation within
the dominant White national imaginary does affect how one relates to, experiences, and interprets the effects of societal racism. The data demonstrates this through a focus on Asian
Australian subjects, often positioned as racialised intermediaries between the dominant White group and other non-White racialised groups, such as Indigenous Australians. At least for participants, their alleged lack of experiences of racism, or an expressed desire to dilute interpersonal acts of racism personally experienced, can be attributed to their ability, at least in the dominant imaginary, to derive many more advantages from the current system.
Second, racialised subjects, positioned as they are within the societal structures of a racialised hierarchy, do not necessarily (by default) possess the epistemological tools to understand, interpret, and/ or even recognise the racialised social context in which they presumably inhabit.
This is directly in contradiction to the critical race tradition of race scholarship which holds the
‘voice-of-colour’ thesis, in which racialised subjects are seen as having “a presumed competence to speak about race and racism” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 10), as a key tenet of its philosophical underpinnings. This means that traditional utilisation of counter-narratives built upon a standpoint epistemology, as a stratagem of anti-racist praxis, may require revision.
Indeed, the concept of IR articulates the problem of standpoint epistemologies, especially when encompassing a non-essentialised view of racialised subjects, not all of which will have identical perspectives on issues of race, racialisation, and racism. 257
Third, a closer observation of the widespread and common anti-racist tropes within scholarship draws attention to its foundation and its ideological origins. Often developed from within a political stance that is mobilised by an identitarian politics, the grand narrative of survival tradition in contemporary race scholarship is one that seems to further essentialise racialised subjects. Of course, having racialisation paired with a political ideology may indeed bear some necessary strategic quality for political aims. However, when manifesting within forms of scholarship, it seems to falter especially when it inadvertently reifies the idea of a racialised subject who always resists, and one that is always aware of an oppressive racialised and racist structure it is beholden to. Such a conceptualisation limits the ability of anti-racist scholars (and activists, subsequently) to identify and effectively mobilise against all effects of structural racism, such as the need to address the damaging impacts of IR upon racialised groups and individuals.
Fourth, that the above, taken collectively, demonstrates how the original concept of IR was limited because of its location predominantly in the psychological field. Expanding its capacity to account for the sociological dimension helps, inter alia, negate some of the critiques mounted against the concept. It does so by shifting the focus off the individual racialised subject for perpetuating racism, to frame it instead as an inevitable effect of an ideological adherence toward racist structures that are generated and sustained by it. Whilst the psychological dimension is immensely useful, incorporating a sociological understanding of
the phenomenon as part of the mechanism of structural racism also helps to highlight how
integral the phenomenon of IR is to the continued existence of racism in the contemporary
zeitgeist. Additionally, this also gives credence to the sociological notion of racialised
privilege, whereby racialised subjects who are beholden to a White supremacist ideology
inadvertently position Whites as superior to themselves and thus perhaps more deserving of
social, political, economic, and psychological resources. 258
With these insights, it might therefore still be possible to recover a notion of IR that could help
us understand the race-based issues that plague the contemporary zeitgeist, albeit in a revised
and rearticulated capacity. As I have written elsewhere, the concept of “IR can now be
understood as the racialised subject’s internalisation of a functional mode of national (or other
spatialised) belonging, one which necessitates a submission to the White national (or other
spatialised) Will, and often to its representative, the White governmental subject, placed in the
role of bestowing/rejecting belonging” (Seet, 2020, p. 678). For example, the usefulness of the
concept was illustrated in the previous chapter, demonstrating its applied efficacy in attempting
to understand the complexities of interracial/cultural dating and relationships within the Asian
Australian community. With this in mind, I next consider how the revised and rearticulated
concept of IR has the potential to be helpfully illustrative in considering the logic of anti-racism
initiatives in other areas.
Illustrating the Utility of the Concept
The focus in the previous chapter on racialised romantic and/or sexual preferences in
Asian Australian dating patterns was selected primarily for its thematic salience in the
generated data. In this final section, however, I devote some thought to other race-related
issues, and how the revised and rearticulated concept of IR may potentially help further our
understanding of these topics in the scholarly community. In particular, I consider the concept’s
utility in the arena of counselling psychology, upon its usefulness for understanding
decolonising initiatives in the education curriculum, on its more general benefit as a tool of
interdisciplinary analysis and anti-racist praxis, and finally, on orientating ourselves towards alternative futures.
First, it is perhaps prudent to begin with recognising the strong developments of the concept of
IR within the psychological field. Given the recognised salience of structural racism, it is important that ‘multicultural’ counselling psychological practice in Australia account for IR as 259
a phenomenon when working with clients with a non-White racialised background. This would
begin to equip mental health professionals to be able to deal with manifestations of IR as a
contributor to psychological wellbeing. The impact of IR upon the psyche of racialised
individuals has, of course been well-established within the North American literature (i.e.
David, 2014). The significance of the revised and rearticulated concept of IR can be
demonstrably effective in praxis here when building an initial formulation of the client’s
presenting issue. Practitioners might assess if aspects of a client’s worldview, for instance,
renders subliminal the existence of interpersonal racism. Understanding the reasons behind
why a client may require such a belief structure – a post-racial society for preservation of
feelings of national belonging – can be beneficial to the therapeutic relationship. It may help
both client and therapist gain insight into possible feelings of racialised inferiority as part of
the precipitating event/s that may have led to the client’s seeking of therapy.
Second, there seems to also be important utility of the concept within the field of education. In
particular, the concept of IR may be helpful in furthering the efforts to decolonise the Australian educational curriculum (cf. Rudolph & Brown, 2017). The concept helps to highlight that work must also be done to account for potential manifestations of IR amongst non-White educators, for the former strategy to be effective. Seen as the transmitters of knowledge, the mode in which teachers educate and confer information to students can have significant impact upon their learning. Kohli (2014) cautions that “if teachers of color experience internalized racism, they can unknowingly replicate racial[ised] hierarchies within schools” (p. 368). As such, diversifying teaching staff along ethno-cultural lines may indeed be an important goal, but it is not in itself a guarantee of a decolonised pedagogical model.
Third, and more generally, what the above demonstrates is how the concept of IR lends aid to the debates between individual and structural concerns, or in scholarly terms, between the psychological and the sociological realms. By recognising these interdisciplinary overlaps, and 260
accounting for an interplay of these dynamics, the concept allows for discussion of multi- levelled potential solutions. Whilst the racist structures undoubtedly impact upon the ethno- cultural groups and individuals in a myriad of harmful ways – to take heightened physically and verbally violent acts of, at times, unpoliced racism against Asians in the COVID-19 era as just one poignant example – the concept of IR highlights the ability of the racialised individual to simultaneously recognise how they may be complicit in a system, through embodying its racist beliefs. In Australia, deferring to Whites as the arbiters of national belonging, implicitly or otherwise, only serves to further subjugate oneself to structural abuses. It serves to ostracise oneself from acquiring social, economic, and political representation, legal justice, and psychological wellbeing. As such, although structural in origin, subjugation can be self- sustaining. And if it is self-sustaining, at least to a degree, then it can be rehabilitated in some way by the self and community. Reflecting upon, and working to relinquish any implicit beliefs one may have of Whites as biologically, psychologically, culturally, politically, and/or perhaps more saliently today, morally superior in racialised essence, is a form of anti-racist praxis every racialised subject can engage in.
Last, beyond situating the utility of the concept in the temporal present, there may also be significant applicability of the concept in determining pathways to alternative futures. In this sense, I draw on Paradies’ (2020) recent call to (re)orientate ourselves toward an ex-modern future. It is a tentative resolution derived from the recognition of the insurmountable problems that are an ongoing product of a globalised modernity, inextricably a product of a colonial project, typified by Paradies as the problem of debt, property, institutions, and nation-states.
Whilst the potential utility of the concept of IR discussed above are contextualised within the project of modernity itself, as such constitutive of epistemological considerations on how to think outside existing forms of knowledge production, they very much serve to continue the project of modernity (albeit one supposedly more ‘egalitarian’ in outcome). As such, we can 261
also consider how questions of an ontological nature can be addressed by the concept of IR.
That is, in what ways does an imposition of worldviews, beliefs, and values by a dominating
(i.e. colonising) force unto the racialised/colonised other, suggest the significance of how modes of being are also imposed? Hage’s (2017) theory of generalised domestication highlights how, at least within the West (but, I would add, not limited to it), the dominant ontological predisposition toward the racialised other, and to nature, can be characterised by a particular unquestioned relation of instrumentality. If an ex-modern future is to be seriously considered, the concept of IR may afford us a lens by which to identify how colonising ontological predispositions of instrumentality and domestication are transmitted, embodied, and re-perpetuated by racialised/colonised subjects themselves. If colonisation can and does radically transform its subjects’ ontological relationality, part of the imposition may cause them to internalise and therefore be beholden to the values of modernity, furthering the colonial project. In this sense, the concept of IR may allow us to analyse how these values are inculcated, the forms in which they manifest, and their value for the colonised subject, which may be important considerations if the project of modernity is to be halted, diminished, or altogether dismantled.
Conclusion
In the opening of this thesis, I discussed my personal motivations for embarking on such a project. I made use of Hage’s (2009) observation that racism has the power to cause an internal fracturing of the racialised subject’s psyche, what can now be seen as reflected within the concept of IR. As such, this project has afforded the much-required moments of clarity that helped to facilitate a kind of psychic reconstitution of the self. More importantly, however, this motivation has also led to scholarly gain. The major insights that have been afforded by such a sustained intellectual engagement with the phenomenon of IR have reified its utilisation for the contemporary zeitgeist. The examples provided above are but a fraction of its potential 262
utility in unmasking the veil of racism in our societies. Whilst such an endeavour will be fraught with difficulties in the intellectual sphere and in terms of its social and political praxis, recognising and taking seriously the impact of IR, as part of the mechanism in the maintenance of racism, brings us closer to supplanting it of its power over us all.
263
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Appendices
Appendix A: Participation Notice
298
Appendix B: Plain Language Statement and Consent Form (PLSCF)
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Appendix C: Example of SOAP Notes
Participant M04 SOAP Notes; 1st Interview
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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne
Author/s: Seet, Adam Zhi Qiang
Title: An Examination of the Significance of the Concept of Internalised Racism in the Contemporary Australian Zeitgeist
Date: 2020
Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/267636
File Description: Final thesis file
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