Nineteenth century Western ideas about Indigenous Australians were shaped by theories of ' race '. Define and discuss such theories, how they affected colonialist concepts of Indigenous subjectivity, and their contemporary manifestations.

Résumé du document

Racism is an ongoing process: some of the old ideas of the 19th century are still there, though most of them have evolved, but racism, whatever its form, has not disappeared. Defining racism is challenging, as it is a dynamic process. I based my essay on the definition I found the most relevant: racism is made of "beliefs, statements and acts which make certain ethnic groups inferior on the basis that they do not belong to the culture of origin of the dominant ethnic group within the state apparatus." This definition is interesting because it gives three components of racism ("beliefs, statements and acts"), which sum up very well my essay structure. Racism was born out of beliefs ? often made up to justify colonisation and dispossession ? in the 18th and 19th century.

Extraits

[...] Morris quotes an Aboriginal woman in his article: a whitefella does something wrong, he's wrong, (but) if a blackfella does something wrong, we're all wrong”.[26] I think this attitude is extremely common and provides the basis for institutional racism. Another attitude, though perhaps more controversial and more used by the élite than the masses, is the revision of history. I said it was controversial because, as far as Indigenous history is concerned, it is difficult to have many accounts of what happened. [...]

[...] It argues that human beings are not initially equal, they are characterised by significant biological differences that make some of them superior to other ones and vice versa. The idea of polygenesis was first implied by Jean Lamarck in Philosophie zoologique, in 1809, a book that “first called into question the generally accepted Biblical view of creation as a hands-on single event.”[7] Publications on this issue in the early nineteenth century were quite rare, given the fear of the religious community and authorities, but they began to inspire scientists, and biological differences between groups became more and more accepted. [...]

[...] (ed.) Melbourne : Black Inc. [...]

[...] Aboriginality was determined by blood quotient, hence the designation of Aboriginal people by words referring to their percentage of Aboriginal blood: quadroons, octoroons, half-castes, etc.[19] The more black they were, the more Aboriginal blood they had, the least rights they were granted. This attitude went on till the 1960s. It was a dangerous attitude, as it led to the idea that Aboriginal blood could be diluted with white blood, in the hope that Aborigines would eventually die out. Directly inspired by eugenics, this belief led to assimilation policies from the 1930s, the most famous being the forced removal of Aboriginal children, in order to incorporate them into the white society, and provoke the extinction of Aboriginal culture and people. [...]

[...] It is obvious that those theories were shaped to justify acts and ideas linked to colonisation, and I will study the specific case of Australia to demonstrate that. A growing secularism and nationalism can explain the shift to a more aggressive racism in Europe in the mid nineteenth century.[11] However, the most important push factor towards this new racism was the imperialistic wave that dominated Europe in the late 19th century.[12] In Australia, the harsh realities of settlement also played a part in the shift from an idealised vision of Aborigines, to the one of an inferior race to be exterminated.[13] The new sciences that accompanied the development of social darwinism mainly anthropology and phrenology, the study of skulls did not precede or lead to race theories, they were rather moulded to fit in with the dominant racial ideas. [...]