I see that Keith Windschuttle has turned his attention to the White Australia policy which, not surprisingly, he defends as a “rational and, in a number of ways, progressive, product of its times”. Although the story is somewhat garbled, it seems likely that WIndschuttle’s defence is that White Australia was not premised on racial superiority, but on the doctrine of “separate but equal” treatment used in the case of Plessy vs Ferguson to defend the Jim Crow laws of the American South and, in its Afrikaans form, as the theoretical basis for apartheid (separate development).
I feel sorry for anyone who defended Windschuttle’s earlier campaign defending the treatment of Tasmanian Aborigines on the assumption that he was an honest seeker after historical truth, rather than, as is now clear, a consistent apologist for racism, happy to use racist arguments in support of his cause. I’d welcome comments from anyone honest enough to retract their previous support for Windschuttle.
I’ll also be happy to publish comments from anyone seeking to use quibbles about the definition of “racism” to claim that a policy that openly defined itself in terms of skin colour was, in some sense, not racist. However, if you want to make such a claim, be aware that it has previously been made by the defenders of Jim Crow and apartheid, and don’t whinge when you get lumped in with them.
John Quiggin 
OK, John, thanks for the opportunity. I’m not going to defend Keith Windschuttle’s book, because I haven’t read it. However, it seems you are happy to attack it without doing so – if you have in fact read the book, there is no indication of that in your post.
I do take issue, though, with your analysis of the article in the Australian. You say that “it seems likely that WIndschuttle’s defence is that White Australia was not premised on racial superiority, but on the doctrine of “separate but equal” treatment used in the case of Plessy vs Ferguson to defend the Jim Crow laws of the American South and, in its Afrikaans form, as the theoretical basis for apartheid (separate development).” What the article actually says is that “Windschuttle’s thesis is that until the 1950s Australian historians held a much more benign view of the purposes and origins of the policy than they do today. They saw it as an attempt by politicians to preserve social harmony, and by a fledgling trade union movement to keep cheap labour out of the country.” Further, the article sums up the policy by saying that it “aimed to restrict non-European migration by requiring all immigrants to pass a dictation test in a European language”. Any number of educated Indians or West Indians would have had no difficulty in passing such a test.
As for the quote you attribute to Windschuttle (which doesn’t appear in the article you referenced)that the policy was a “rational and, in a number of ways, progressive, product of its times”, that is certainly an arguable interpretation of it. The thesis that substantial immigration of people from very different ethnic or cultural backgrounds is likely to lead to social unrest hasn’t exactly been discredited in recent times. I need only to mention Toxteth and Brixton in the UK, and the current difficulties a number of European countries are experiencing with their Muslim minorities, to make that clear.
You also claim that the policy “openly defined itself in terms of skin colour”. While I am in no doubt that the policy was and is commonly referred to as the White Australia Policy, that is a different matter from it being officially designated as such. Do you have any source for that claim?
Finally, although I am sure that some (perhaps many) of those in favour of the White Australia Policy were racist (and no doubt some of them are still with us and are still racist) this does not mean that the architects of the policy were, nor does it mean that those in government who supported it subsequently all were. Nor does it mean that Keith Windschuttle is. If you are going to malign someone with the racist tag, I think you are going to have to present more substantive evidence than you have so far.
what Alex said.
I might add that I do think at times Windschuttle goes over the top like the very people he criticises and who criticise him.
Modern Australian racist groups like the Australian Nationalist Movement, the White Pride Coalition and the Patriotic Youth League also argue in favour of a “separate but equal” races. I wonder if Windschuttle will put his money where his mouth is and pay the membership fee?
Further to my last post, if the quotes attributed to them in Henry Reynolds’ book North of Capricorn are accurate, it would seem that at least our first four prime ministers (Barton, Deakin, Watson and Reid) were in fact racist. See this review of Reynolds’ book
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/26/1064083186575.html
However, it seems that Windschuttle set out to write his own review of Reynolds’ book, but ended up writing his own. So there may be a little more to it than that.
Alex,
You have to be a member of the KKK (or such) to be racist?
Most racists don’t consider themselves as such, their thinking and writing on the topic being rationalisation of underlying emotional responses. If you’ve heard Windschuttle speak, as opposed to reading him, you’ll get my drift.
As for your “european language” point, remember that Gaelic is a european language — a point not lost on our immigration department in the 1950s.
PS, lest anyone think I am being precious by qualifying my reference to Henry Reynolds’ quotes from our first four Prime Ministers, he does not have an unblemished track record in this respect. See “Historian admits misquoting Governor Arthur over Aboriginal Attacks”
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/29/1038386313878.html
As a further comment, it is helpful to think a bit about how history should be approached. I found Helen Irving’s comments in the SMH collection of articles, “Footnotes to a War” helpful (link at the bottom of this post).
To quote Helen, “Whose perspective, then, should be conveyed? This is the first of the real battles in the “history wars”. Should readers know how it felt to be an Aborigine going about daily life, only to see their world turned upside down by British settlers? Or should we understand the officials who made the decisions about settlement? Or the convicts, or the wives? Should the historian base their choice on a scale of sympathy for the subjects of history?
“We should try to understand all, and condemn none. The historian’s proper role is to step into the shoes of the past, to explain what people thought they were doing. Historians should approach their material with an open mind. They should not start by asking: what would I have done? It is absurd to chastise the past for failing to live up to our standards. The historian’s function, as Carr concluded, “is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present”.”
Oops, forgot the link. Here it is
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/15/1071336875054.html
Alan, I don’t think you have to be a member of the KKK to be a racist. Nor is it particularly sensible for you to suggest that I might think this. My point is simply that if Pr Q wants to label Keith Windschuttle as a racist, he ought to muster more substantive evidence than he has in his original post. Hardly that controversial, I would have thought.
To be strictly accurate, Pr Q doesn’t label Windschuttle as a racist, merely as “a consistent apologist for racism, happy to use racist arguments in support of his cause”. However, my substantive point still stands.
Alan, re your reference to the use of a test in Gaelic as a tool by the immigration department to weed out those they saw as undesirable applicants, this was clearly racist in many instances. (In others, those seen as “undesirable” may have been white, but considered inappropriate immigrants for other reasons). The test per se was not racist, its application frequently was.
Without finding out precisely what KW thinks about white Australia and racism I cannot form an opinion about this issue. However if he has got hold of the wrong end of the stick on this issue that will not mean that people need to revise their opinion of anything else he has done.
He has written usefully about the corruption of historical studies in The Killing of History. His work on Tasmania was mainly concerned with correcting errors in scholarship and was not a defence of any crimes that were committed against the indegenous population. Under the malign influence of the late David Stove he completely screwed up on the philosophy of science and condemned Karl Popper as an irrationlalist, practicallyl a capital offence in my view:) And so it goes, you have to take each issue on its own merits.
As for regarding apartheid in South African as a separate but equal strategy, give me a break! Bill Hutt wrote a comprehesive account of the origins, evolution and approaching end game of the South African situation up to 1964. There was nothing equal or even workable about the idea of consigning the blacks to their own autonomous homelands. The white economy would have collapsed without black labour and the blacks would have been crammed into a non-viable fraction of the land area. The situation evolved through an unholy alliance of white trade unions (to keep the black labourers in their place) and religious-racist Africaaners (to keep all the blacks and coloured folk in their place). Much of Hutt’s booklet on this topic is on line in the Revivalist Four section of my website.
If I recall correctly, from what I have heard on ABC radio a few years ago, the dictation test was administered rather strictly on Asians. The “any European language” was based on the choice of the Immigration officer, and not the choice of the person being tested. So you could be pulled up and be asked to dictate in French, German or any European language.
Apparently, the test only failed a minority of Asians in it’s first year of inception, until the officers were taught the intent of the test. In the subsequent years, Asians weren’t so lucky, and most failed and were deported.
Alex,
By asking “You have to be a member of the KKK (or such) to be racist?” I did not accuse anyone, you included.
The trouble with any debate about racism is that lots of nice decent luke-warm racists consider the charge to be one rung lower than one of murder.
Ironically, those who identify racism in its luke-warm (but socially pervasive and thus harmful) form then get labelled by luke-warm racists as policially correct zealots when all they are doing is perceiving a mild culturally-induced phobia and/or over-zealous concern for the nation’s reputation
in otherwise mostly estimable individuals.
Then there’s a third kind of luke-ward racism well identified by the longest-lasting rationale (also Windschuttle’s I gather) for the white Australia policy — the one which maintained that racism was a necessary means to a socio-ecomonic end.
Some would maintain that this third kind of racism is not racism at all because it just happens to be a particular means to a socio-ecomonic end morally indistinguishable from some other kind of injurious means. Sorry, but I don’t buy it.
Big problem of conflation of motives and effects has seeped into this discussion.
The Constitution instituted the so-called “race power” granting Parliament power to make laws with respect to: “The people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws.”
This provision was overtly and proudly racist in conception.
The Immigration Act of 1901, which introduced the Dictation Test was covertly but proudly racist in conception. The linguistic test replaced a possibly preferred “colour swatch” test (not its real name) because the British Government objected to the explicit racist sentiments dominant in its southern dominion. The British were at that time negotiating a treaty with the Imperial Japanese government. Overtly racist principles expressed in legislation threatened to derail these diplomatic developments. Attorney General W. M. Hughes complied with British suggestions that he “tone it down a bit.”
Until the 1960s very few non-whites attempted to migrate to Australia. The great diaspora of the Third World had hardly started and those who did have a mind to come to Australia were probably astute enough to know that they weren’t welcome. Somewhere in the Commonwealth Year Book, which I don’t have to hand at the moment, there are statistics about the administration of the Dictation Test. My memory is that it was administered surprisingly infrequently, but with telling effect on the occasional unwelcome intending immigrant.
Therefore, Australian authorities were not required to be actively racist very often. Like everything else, cruelty requires practice.
Many who remember the 1960s may recall that the Colombo plan provided novel opportunities for the practice of racist callousness. There were several cases of Indian and Ceylonese (as the were known then) who had settled and married yet were hustled out of the country under the “race powers” provisions.
Australian official racism until the 1960s therefore lacked not motive, but opportunity,
Interestingly, the 1967 referendum that was supposed to remove constitutional racism against Aborigines did not. In fact, the amendment, supported by over 90% of perhaps only temporarily liberal-minded Australians in fact made Aborigines (those not living on commonwealth territory) subject for the first time to the still existant “race powers”,
In the early months of the first Howard Government I recall Senator Mellon, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, musing out loud in Parliament over whether it might be politic to pass special legislation under the “race powers” provision to annul certain unwelcome aspects of Native Title.
It didn’t happen, of course. It was unnecessary. The Howard Government lacked the motive but not the opportunity to find a new use for the still existant “race-powers” provision of our constitution.
The author of a book that no-one has read is condemned out of hand for his support of apartheid and Jim Crow laws therein (which may or may not be the case) on the basis of a brief ‘review’ in the SMH that looks to me to be based on a phone interview with the author rather than any analysis of the work in question. This post might be premature.
Alan, I think you raise an important issue that needs to be considered further. Is it indeed “racism” (whether of the luke warm or any other variety) to take into account the likelihood of subsequent social upheaval when considering who should and who should not be allowed to immigrate to our country? If it is, does that mean we let anybody in and then worry about dealing with the consequences later? What I’m concerned about is that it is all too easy to simply label a view you disagree with as “racism” or “latent racism” rather than presenting a substantive critique and an alternative approach.
Q — your blog articles are becoming more biased.
Somebody mentions “luck-warm” racism. Interesting comment. You missed one form of racism — affirmative action. This might be based on a recognition of previous wrongs. Or it may be based on an assumption of inferiority which needs to be compensated for. Mostly both I think. Either way — whether it is good or bad — it is racism.
And just to stir the pot some more… I will say the “unsayable”. I think there may well be differences between different races. Eeeekkk! Quickly — somebody pass me a white hood and a shotgun.
If these things are worth examining at all, which they are this time, they should be tested on the basis of the facts not the motives (except to the extent that the fact of the existence of the motives is at issue – but Windschuttle’s motives aren’t like that). You are entitled to see whether it’s worth looking deeper on the basis of the author’s track record, but you already settled that question. The reason the facts count and not the motives is, even devout liars can tell the truth if it suits them. Consider what Goebbels did with the propaganda material of Katyn.
Don’t forget that not all malice is of the same detailed nature. It is quite possible that people matched the old joke, “I’m not prejudiced, I hate everybody.” After all, much of this sort of thing was driven by fear of personal competition and the racism wasn’t colour-oriented; my mother recalled London boarding houses with signs saying “no blacks or Irish”, the point used in a Mel Brooks line in Blazing Saddles: “All right, we’ll take the chinks and we’ll take the niggers, but we won’t take the Irish.”
Also, much personal hatred is driven by people rationalising their actions to stay clean with their own consciences, not something that drives their actions to begin with. It is quite possible that Australian racism sprang from self justification once the policy’s impact was seen to fall primarily on our duskier brethren, but that it really started as a different selfish thing.
And of course many measures were adapted to work outside their original intention, the way the USA uses tax laws to achieve federal bans on cannabis. (They applied a tax but never issued any tax stamps or forms, except library reference copies, so all cannabis is illegal cannabis even though not all cannabis is illegal.) It’s entirely possible that the original laws were framed in a way that could be used for one or another thing, then administered in a racist way – that not all the architects were racist but some were taken advantage of. It certainly matches political machinations, so we can’t rule it out a priori.
The term White Australia policy was routinely used by public officials to describe the policy until 1942 when it was abandoned under British pressure because it was harming the war effort. The actual policy was repealed mainly during the 1960 with the last bits being scrapped in 1973. There are more details here
As regards prematurity, a phone interview endorsing the White Australia policy is entirely sufficient for me to condemn the person giving the interview. The fact that he has written a book on the subject is entirely irrelevant.
To clarify the point about the dictation test, its effect was to give the immigration authorities absolute power to exclude anyone they wanted, and this was exercised to exclude non-whites. Alex’s claim that ” Any number of educated Indians or West Indians would have had no difficulty in passing such a test.” suggests that he has no knowledge of even the most basic aspects of the policy.
The quote from Windschuttle defending White Australia is here/
John’s quite correct in noting that the intent of the language test was to allow officials to administer it in Basque, Gaelic or Finnish to exclude anyone at will (normally non-whites).
As to Windschuttle, even if he can demonstrate that historians had a different perspective in the 1950s, this would not be surprising. So what? His comments about elites in the 1890s are absurd and betray a total lack of historical context.
I suspect that he has become a media tart, popping up his head for more attention since his last salvo in the history wars ran out of steam.
“As regards prematurity, a phone interview endorsing the White Australia policy is entirely sufficient for me to condemn the person giving the interview. The fact that he has written a book on the subject is entirely irrelevant.”
I might agree if you had been the interviewer. But, Deborah Snow was. We haven’t heard from Windschuttle directly and no-one has read his book. All we know about is your interpretation of her interpretation. And on that point, I don’t accept that her piece allows one to reasonably conclude that Windschuttle is an admirer of the the White Australia Policy, without further qualification. I think we need some context. Far from being ‘totally irrelevant,” I think that a perusal of what he’s written might be fairly crucial in the circumstances.
No, that doesn’t link to a publicly available quotation from the SMH; it’s only accessible to subscribers.
But I would take the SMH with as large a pinch of salt as the Melbourne Age. I once caught the Age misrepresenting Howard’s views on the republic issue, editing what he really said (which I was able to confirm separately). When they repeated it a few months later and I challenged them on it, they wrote back citing their own falsification as a supporting authority, and didn’t have the grace to reply when I pointed out that the Australian had the part they had snipped out. (Oh, what was it? The Age cut Howard saying “Some people think that…” and misrepresented that he himself acknowledged that the monarchy was out of date.)
Anyhow, if I thought it was important enough to damn a man’s reputation, I wouldn’t use a quotation from a newspaper as an authority for the purpose.
Geoff, this seems a bit precious. The remarks I’ve attacked are presented as direct quotes from Windschuttle. It’s possible that Deborah Snow has got them wrong, but it seems most unlikely to me. If they are misquotes, and his book is actually a critique of the White Australia policy, no doubt we’ll find out soon enough.
If your suggestion is that I need to find out the specific grounds on which Windschuttle admires the White Australia policy, I disagree. The facts on the White Australia policy are well known, and there are no indications that Windschuttle has discovered any new ones. It was a racist policy, and defending it now is the action of a racist.
In any case, I don’t see how this differs from any other post I or other bloggers write. When I criticise, say, a Gerard Henderson column, I disregard the possibility that the subeditor changed his words in some critical fashion. On the occasions when something like this happens, I’m happy to run a correction.
“I suspect that he has become a media tart, popping up his head for more attention since his last salvo in the history wars ran out of steam.”
Possibly Mark, but the Snow piece is more likely to have been a pre-launch press interview (the publisher may well have done a press release) initiated by the SMH – whose views about Windschuttle are probably not as considered as John’s 🙂
Re Windschuttle’s defence of the WAP, I was interested to note this section in the Wikipedia article you linked to, John.
“The origin of the policy can be traced back to the 1850s when large numbers of Chinese immigrated to Australia during the gold rushes. The Anglo-Australian population resented Chinese who were undercutting white labour prices, and also disliked some Chinese cultural practises. There were several race riots. In response, the newly self-governing colonies introducing restrictions on Chinese immigration.”
Seems to me that this backs Windschuttle’s thesis that the WAP was introduced in the interests of harmony and to protect white fellas jobs.
Well – probably, Geoff – but you could argue that his writing another book (from the interview it seemed to have been done in haste) on a topic guarenteed to attract media attention has the same outcome. I thought he was labouring over the second volume of his history of how historians were wrong about dispossession…
Alex, no one’s denying that the Labour Movement in particular pushed for the White Australia policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries primarily to prevent wages being undercut. Naturally, this also intersected with Australian “nativism” and the Imperial ideology of a “white man’s country”. But Windschuttle is completely offbase with the spin he puts on it.
Do we really need another argument about terrible elites? It’s ludicrous to suggest that this ridiculously misused term had the same connotation in the 1890s or for that matter, that union leaders, sufragettes and labour journalists were equivalent to the people whom Windschuttle now thinks are “PC elites” or whatever nonsense he’s on about.
Apologies for the unmeasured tone of my contribution – Windschuttle always makes me extremely angry!
“The remarks I’ve attacked are presented as direct quotes from Windschuttle. It’s possible that Deborah Snow has got them wrong, but it seems most unlikely to me.”
JQ, that is just precisely what the Age so egregiously did in its quoting of Howard on the republic issue. From that stable’s track record, you are not entitled to give it the benefit of the doubt by supposing it is giving a true and fair, let alone complete and in context, rendering. It picks and chooses – there is clear evidence of it.
Oh, and defending something – possibly for quite unrelated reasons that weren’t connected to the original ones, or vice versa if it acquired later reasons – does not tar the defender with guilt by association. Or would you agree with Andrew Bolt that Terry Hicks’ chain of association with Osama bin Laden means that he shouldn’t be allowed a public platform? (Though I see quite other reasons why he shouldn’t, that one strikes me as farcical.)
PML, so what’s Windschuttle’s motivation in defending White Australia? I imagine we’ll start hearing about how wonderful assimilation was from him soon. I just can’t see – albeit from the information presented in the story (which I greatly doubt has misquoted him) – what contribution to historical knowledge his book could make on the strength of what he – the author – has said about it.
It really is a very weak argument to suggest that if occasionally a journalist misquotes someone, we shouldn’t discuss anything in the media until it’s verified – by whom, anyway?
And Windschuttle, in advancing what he calls his “broad agenda” is making a category error typical of the Murdoch press by eliding multiculturalism and policy towards Indigenous Australians. Maybe Janet Albrechtsen agrees? I imagine she’ll have an op-ed piece lauding his courage etc.
At least this disgraceful mob have seemingly moved on from claiming that they’re silenced by “pc police” now that they occupy so much public space in the media. So what we get instead is another dose of turgid attacks on the “60s generation”. Oh, and nonsense about elites.
How long do we have to put up with these ludicrous “culture wars”?
It’s interesting to note that Snow describes Windschuttle as a “journalist turned historian”. Windschuttle used to lecture in media studies (back when he was an evil lefty). He has never been a professional historian.
And what does his latest “contribution” say about his much lauded defence of academic standards, truth etc.
God, it would be boring if it wasn’t so offensive.
How does his crud advance the national debate one iota?
“…have seemingly moved on from claiming that they’re silenced by “pc police” ….”
Yes, there’s a refreshing silence about their claims they’re been silenced.
“So what we get instead is another dose of turgid attacks on the “60s generation”. Oh, and nonsense about elites.”
They missed on the sex and drugs back then and now they’re bitter. Yes OK, most of the rightsentelligentsia now weren’t around that then. But there’s still a distinct Stalinist puritanical streak about them – ie: “Having fun weakens our national will”.
Plus it’s so easy to blame the past when yer trying to reframe the present for what yer think the future should be.
And having a regular opinion column in the national newspaper is about elite as it gets.
I’m not equipped to debate the merits of the black armband vs. white blindfold history of Australia. However I’d just note that whenever Westerners encountered indigenous races form the early 18th century onwards, we always won, militarily, socially, economically, demographically etc. How can it hurt to be gracious about it?
“God, it would be boring if it wasn’t so offensive.”
I disagree there Mark B. It’s boring ‘cos it’s offensive.
Has Pr Q read Windschuttle’s latest book? I am betting not. Before being branded a racist his work deserves a thorough inquiry.
Windschuttle appears to be arguing in favour of the White Australia Policy (WAP), which was an immigration policy based on skin colour and is presumptively racist. Pr Q is therefore correct to state that Windschuttle cant complain too indiginantly if he gets tarred with the same brush that is used on Afrikaaners and Jim Crow.
The main defect in Pr Q criticism of Winschuttle’s politics is the usual argumentum ad hominum/ideologicum one: conflating professional with the personal and political defects. Perhaps Windschuttle is a Bad Man or supports Bad Causes. Is his work a Bad Job? Pr Q’s strictures leave us none the wiser on this score.
Windschuttle’s personality may, or may not, be nasty and he may or may not support racists. His personal character, and political views, are logically irrelevant to his professional competence. His scholarship, or lack of it, stands, or falls on its intellectual merits. Some may be interested in the moral virtues of his biography. I am interested in the intellectual value of his historiography.
Windschuttle’s latest thesis appears to be as much a critique of Multicultural Seperatism as a defence of White Australia, although Pr Q passes over this aspect without comment. The invidious and vicious “hard” Multi-Culti doctrine, propagated endlessly by foolish or roguish Pee-Cee, Po-Mo identity politicians over the past generation, is racist in everything but name. Windschuttle deserves some praise for having the courage to attack it.
A distinction needs to be made between varying claims made by Windschuttle and his supporters. Windschuttles weak argument, that there was no AUS genocide policy, was validated by the debate. Most 20th C Aborigines have benefited from contact with European settlement. It is the black-armbanders who need to acknowledge that modern AUS history is not just a post-script to genocide.
W’s strong argument, that the AUS governemnt countenanced no significant massacres of Aborigines, has been discredited. Pr Q is correct to insist that Windschuttle is apologetic for racism.
Windschuttle, I believe, was an opponent of the Apartheid regime and protested against it when the Springboks came out. That should count in his favour in any moral beauty contest.
Setting aside the pros and cons of Windschuttle it would be nice if those students who honestly investigated the political implications of ethnic differences were not automaticly denounced as “racists”. The Human Genome Project is making human ethnicity a real object of scientific study. There are times when the decent requirement for civility towards un-empowered genders, races and species veers into a form of pee-cee intimidation that chills free inquiry. Is the liberal academy going to kick out the bio-scientific baby with the socio-racist bathwater?
PS from embittered ex-Leftist to Nabakov: The sixties and seventies did produce some worthwhile cultural performance, above and beyond the sex, drugs and rock n’roll. The political estblishment of equitable treatment to people of non-White Male gender, race and species was a Good Thing.
I think the apology in this instance will need to come from John because I cannot find anyting in the Deborah Snow piece to suggest that KW is a supporter of racism. His major point appears to be that the white Australia policy was not introduced on specifically racist grounds and the generation of ’68 has “read back” to insert virulent and widespread racism into the mix of motivations for the policy.
“Windschuttle, I believe, was an opponent of the Apartheid regime and protested against it when the Springboks came out. That should count in his favour in any moral beauty contest.”
Without ever giving a clear account of himself, Windschuttle has repudiated his leftist past. In the absence of any clear statement, it’s a fair assumption that whatever he believed on any issue before about 1990, he believes the opposite now.
Hand in hand with the desire to protect jobs went the fear of people who were not like us. Rhetoric aside, anyone on the street – in any country – is still potentially a racist now. Any minute now, you or I might face a moral choice and fail the test. Great, isn’t it….
There is a tension between wanting to recognise the full humanity of past generations – as opposed to condemning them – and needing to reject what we now correctly see as the emblems of their self-justified fear.
That tension is best resolved by recognising the banality and omnipresence of evil, alongside the good in all of us, always.
I’m fascinated by the repeated suggestion that no one should comment on Windschuttle before reading his book. The debate over White Australia is an old one, and the points raised by Windschuttle have all been debated many times before. It is well established that, while economic motives were relevant, racism was the dominant factor in promoting the White Australia policy, as the name indicates.
Windschuttle has an established track record (since 1990) as an apologist for racism in all its forms. As far as premature judgement goes, I’d suggest that everyone should think very carefully before defending him.
“I’m fascinated by the repeated suggestion that no one should comment on Windschuttle before reading his book.”
I’m equally fascinated by your insistence that you can rule unequivocally on the inherent wickedness of his entire thesis on the basis of a few hundred words from a third party – who, almost certainly, hasn’t read the book either. It’s not your comment that disturbs me, John, it’s the conclusions that you’re drawing on pretty insubstantial evidence. It’s not a practice that I would have anticipated from you.
Geoff, I regularly comment on statements reported in the papers, and so, I expect, do you. Are you seriously suggesting that we shouldn’t do this until we have made a complete examination of the record of the person in question, including their published works?
How does the fact that the statement refers to a newly-published book change things? If Howard makes a statement alluding to a government report restating long-held positions, do we have to read the report before responding?
Of course, it’s possible that the report is 100 per cent wrong, and that Windschuttle’s book is actually a denunciation of the White Australia policy. If so, I will be the first to apologise to him. Is this the kind of possibility you are concerned about?
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
— Aesop – “The Wolf and the Lamb”
The morality of racism is all about the concept “Not in My Backyard.” History tells us that white man failed to be tolerant of strangers, especially black strangers, in his old and new backyard…
The communists used to illustrate how badly the American capitalists treated the black people, but failed to treat gypsies as human beings.
No one knows more about the absurdity behind the idea of the so-called superiority of the white man as Ghandi and Mandela. So the kind of possibility I am concerned about the one Ghandi shuffled to us so forcefully:
When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.
– Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
-Karl Popper
It’s not the act of commenting that concerns me, it’s the sweeping scope of the denunciation therein on the basis of near zero analysis of what he’s actually proposing. It certainly seems that he’s offering a challenge to conventional understandings of the White Australia Policy but whether or not that’s intrinsically ‘racist,’ can’t reasonably be gleaned from what’s on offer. But…it’s a balmy Sunday afternoon and I’m sounding like a broken record; we’ll obviously have to agree to diagree on this.
we’ll obviously have to agree to diagree on this.
Hey not so fast. I mean this exchange has only gone on for a few hundred words at most. Is that really enough to sustain a statement of such sweeping scope as this? I think you and John need to sit down for an intensive series of talks — I’d say two to three months should be enough to begin to get a sense of the other person’s position. 😉
Jack Strocchi wrote “W’s strong argument, that the AUS governemnt countenanced no significant massacres of Aborigines, has been discredited” .
Governor Stirling led the troops that massacred between 30 and 70 defenceless people at Pinjarra in 1834. What part of his role in the Government of W.A. are you querying?
Mr Quiggen: you seen to know very little about the so-called White Australia Policy. But here’s something to test your well worn synapses: can you provide us with numerical information on the ethnicity of arrivals from the early 1900s up to the 1960s or early 1970s? They are available, but I don’t see why I should bother doing work you should have done before shooting your mouth off. You probably won’t be interested in what they show – because of the challenge they pose for your ridiculous thesis – but they’re interesting nonetheless.
Oh, to have been taught at university by an independent thinker such as you. An independent mind is something to relish, no? Unfortunately you’re is as closed as they come. UQ must be proud.
Mark Bahnisch – who also hails from Queensland I see – makes note that Windschuttle is not a professional historian. Oh dear me. That just won’t do, will it? Not at all. What next? Historians pretending to be journalists? Economists writing on racism? Where will it end?
Alex,
You ask —
“Is it indeed “racism” (whether of the luke warm or any other variety) to take into account the likelihood of subsequent social upheaval when considering who should and who should not be allowed to immigrate to our country?”
Yes of course it is. Absent racism, fears of “subsequent social upheaval” would be largely illusory. The authors of the White Australia Policy knew themselves for the racists they were. They just weren’t ashamed of it and in denial.
As a prominent modern racist once said —
“I sympathise fundamentally with those Australians who are insulted when told we have a racist and bigoted past”
FWIW, here’s what the man himself says, in the promo page on his own blog:
The White Australia Policy
(Race and shame in the Australian history wars)
Many historians today argue that its immigration policy was once so shamefully racist that Australia was almost an international pariah, like South Africa under apartheid.
This book shows these claims are so exaggerated they lack all credibility. Australia is not, and never has been, the racist country its academic historians have condemned.
(Technicolor) yawn.
Australia was almost an international pariah
I don’t think anyone has ever claimed that. In the hey-day of the White Australia Policy, most countries were racist. We fit right in.
In the hey-day of the White Australia Policy, most countries were racist. We fit right in.”
I suspect that’s pretty much going to be Windschuttle’s case, Robert. Along with his (oft expressed) view that some historians continue to impute a singular, worst case scenario in respect of the Australian experience that ignores the international context of the time.
The idea that you have to have read a book in order to condemn it is just silly. I’m guessing no contributor to this forum has read Mein Kampf. Then none of us should condemn it, right/ Maybe Hitler just had a bad press.
As for Windschuttle, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck ….