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IN YOUR FACE: Racialised Practices in a Diverse Community

Racism is a fact of life in the multiracial and multiethnic community of Darwin, but for some Darwinians the popular narrative of Darwin as a laidback and tolerant community, also holds true. This seems to encapsulate the paradox of universalism versus particularism that Wallerstein (1991) argues, is philosophically unsustainable. This thesis sets out to explore this seemingly oppositional perspective in the local community of Darwin juxtaposed against a broader national debate that appears to favour universalism (Kahn 2001). A detailed socio-historical investigation of Darwin serves as a basis to examine contemporary practice. It is evident that past conceptualisations of race, ethnicity and culture inform contemporary discursive practices in a variety of ways. Older narratives are interrupted by more recent stories that pit the notion of globalisation against the notion of nationhood, of ethnic equality against hierarchies of civilisation, and finally, unmasks the myth of racial purity. This study demonstrates that indeed, the ways racialised practices are revealed through talk, is replete with paradox, built as they are on competing narratives. This study does not focus on the more overt forms of racist practice. Rather, it emphasises the normality of everyday talk, experience and practice. In common parlance, the majority of people would deny they are racist (Dunn 2003) and are resistant to it as an idea, so if there is to be dialogue, the nature of racism as understood in the vernacular, requires redefining. In this study, the notion of racialised practice is invoked, not as a euphemism for broad cultural practices, but as a distinct and separate concept. Racialised practices reinscribe the notion of visible markers of difference, such as skin colour, into a discourse that has privileged notions of culture for the last twenty years. Foucaults interpretive analytics acts as a methodological tool in this exercise, but his themes of social practices, played out as relations of power, are also important. Exclusionary practices are considered against inclusionary practices, forming a dynamic through which an examination is made of the everyday experiences of research participants lives in Darwin. This is possible because the research participants come from a wide range of backgrounds  locally born Darwinians and incomers; Anglo and Celtic Australians, interracial Australians and Indigenous Australians; recent arrivals and those who migrated several decades earlier. The voices of youth and children also inform this analysis. Discussions with fifty-four participants were conducted in semi- structured, informal interviews with many of the youth and children electing to be interviewed in pairs. It seems impossible to shake off racialised practices, as echoes of a past imaginary influence current practice. Younger research participants articulate a sensitivity not seen in some of the older participants, so perhaps there is potential to imagine a distant future where the colour of a persons skin is simply that, with no socially inscribed meaning attached. Not yet though, not yet.