Beyond White Guilt: The Real Challenge for Black-White Relations in Australia

Abstract

Sarah Maddison, Beyond White Guilt: The Real Challenge for Black-White Relations in Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2011)The title of this book is enigmatic and enticing. What is the space that is 'beyond white guilt'? What could be the 'real' challenge for black-white relations? I was intrigued to know what Sarah Maddison has to say about this.As I see it, the argument that Maddison puts forward is that the failure of non-Indigenous Australians to acknowledge our collective guilt over the appalling treatment Aboriginal people have endured since first colonisation by Europeans leaves us caught in a deadlock that stifles any attempts at reconciliation, let alone allows us to redress the lack of basic human rights Indigenous people still struggle against (cf. the Northern Territory Intervention).Her argument is a very good one; however some of her premises, in my opinion, are flawed. For Maddison, our refusal to either acknowledge past abuses, whether deliberate or caused through ignorance, or our denial that they happened (just as for Holocaust deniers), leaves us in limbo, without a way forward. This she sees as the reason why so many past government policies on Indigenous issues have failed. However, this premise is based on the assumption that the general population has a full understanding of what the past abuses were, which I think, for the majority, is not the case. Despite the achievements of the reconciliation movement and Sorry Day bridge walks around the country, many Australians go about their daily lives never having met an Aboriginal person and, in large part due to past government policies of segregation, assimilation and silence, do not give Indigenous issues a second thought. The majority of my own Australian history students are shocked to learn of the history of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in this country.Indeed, most Australians rely on historians to inform them about our past, but how are they to do this when historians don't even agree? Maddison is diplomatically non-committal when discussing what we know as 'The History Wars', but she nevertheless neglects to recognise that the general electorate must be confused when some historians (Reynolds, Manne, Boyce, Ryan et al) demonstrate that there was an orchestrated war by early settlers against Tasmanian Aboriginal people that is denied by other prominent historians (Windschuttle, Blainey, Brunton et al). Presumably Maddison would consider these latter historians deniers of the true facts and hence of the collective guilt, but this is not spelled out, perhaps again diplomatically, in the hope of achieving some sort of mediation. Even so, if historians who have the skills and resources to access the raw materials needed to shed light on 'the truth' can't agree on what that is, then how can the public?All historians know that the past is highly interpretive. There are many valid versions of the past, so shouldn't Windschuttle be entitled to his view? This is not to say that I agree with Windschuttle; quite the contrary. From the more than twenty years I have worked in the field of Indigenous studies, I am convinced we are guilty of nothing short of genocide, as defined by the United Nations, and as espoused by Maddison. …