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 
Geoff, if that’s Windschuttle’s line then I don’t know who he’s arguing against. I certainly haven’t read anyone “black armband” historian who thinks Australia was uniquely racist. They tend to point out that such racism is inherent in the colonial project, and as such there is no material difference between our experience and that of other colonial nations.
From the brief comments reported by the Herald, though, Windschuttle appears to be going further. It sounds like he will go on to argue that because racism was acceptable at the time, there is no scope for historians to criticise the policy on the basis of its racism.
In any event, I’m looking forward to reading Windschuttle’s book. I hope to find a copy in the library this week (I’m not going to pay for it…).
This debate is like every other debate that tackles the subject of race: it reeks of bad faith. One therefore must go through the ball-busting business of “deconstructing “various sub-texts in order to tease out the truth.
Windschuttle is not an out and out racist in the political sense of making a general argument for white supremacy, supporting a revival of a race-based immigration policy or advocating a regime of domestic apartheid. In fact he takes the opposite point of view on each and every one of these positions, so far as I am aware.
Windschuttles arguments appear to lend aid and comfort to actual and existing racists. That may make Windschuttle a “fellow traveller” with racists, or vice-versa. If that is his aim then he deserves to be bagged.
Anti-Windschuttle includes some anti-racists (eg Pr Q) and some a pro-racist band who advocate crypto-tribal seperatism, flying under the flag of “multiculturalism” ( eg the Theophanoids).
OTOH, if Windschuttle wants to bag multicultural seperatists then I am with him all the way. This push is utterly toxic to AUS civil society under conditions of post-modernity and globalisation. Integration of minority citizens into mainstream society is not a moral luxury. It is a moral necessity which has become, literally, a matter of life or death to both indigenes and immigrants.
Fighting hardcore nativists (inter-national racists) and multi-cultis (intra-national racists) in the USE, USA & AUS is ten times more important than a rancorous debate over the morality of an obscure immigration policy whose law has been a dead letter for 40+ years. Those not yet old enough to be called aging baby boomers can be forgiven for scratching their heads at the use of ideological venues for what seem to be sociological squabbles.
Spiros at December 5, 2004 04:23 PM does not exactly break the world record for invocation of Godwins Law:
I make that 47 comments before Hitler was used. Still, that means Guido must now play catch-up to get back on the scoreboard.
Amen to all that, Jack. And Spiros, if all Hitler had ever done was written Mein Kampf, perhaps your argument would have had some legs.
Ok, IRA, I’ll amend my statement. Windschuttle has an Honours degree in history. Usually one needs a PhD or a research degree of some sort in order to qualify as an academic historian. I imagine he earns money from his writing, and it’s on history, so maybe he should be recognised as a professional historian.
That still doesn’t mean that anything he says cannot be challenged.
Alex, you make no sense. Mein Kampf stands alone as a racist book. It doesn’t need to be validated by Hitler’s later actions.
But I digress. It’s probably against blogging rules to post the same comment twice, but here is what I just posted on John R Word subject. (It probably belongs here anyway.)
Here is an extract from what Wikipedia has to say about the origins of the White Australia Policy
” The main rationale of the policy was to keep Australia racially pure. “I am prepared to do all that is necessary to ensure that Australia shall be free for all time from the contamination and the degrading influence of inferior races.” (Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, 12th Sept 1901 p.4845) The trade unions and their political party, the Labor Party, was the driving force for White Australia. Chris Watson, the leader of the Labour Party stated that “The objection I have to the mixing of these coloured people with the white people of Australia – although I admit it is to a large extent tinged with considerations of an industrial nature – lies…in the possibility and probability of racial contamination.” It was widely believed that racial purity was essential for social and political stability. “The unity of Australia is nothing, if that does not imply a united race. A united race not only means that its members can intermix, intermarry and associate without degradation on either side, but implies one inspired by the same ideas…” (Alfred Deakin, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, 12 September 1901, p.4807) ”
And from the same article, this is what our first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton had to say:
“The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman.”
Source for the above quotes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy
Barton, Deakin, Watson: these weren’t fringe characters. They were all Prime Ministers at or shortly after Federation. Our national leaders, the architects of the WAP, didn’t mince their words. They spoke of the need to avoid racial “contamination” and “degradation” which would result from mixing the races.
So tell us again, Mr Windschuttle, how the WAP was not based on notions on racial superiority.
Jack, if you find Hitler analogies so offensive, here is another. I haven’t read any of Lyndon LaRouche’s books. But I can make a judgment about their contents. How? By reading about them from reputable sources.
I haven’t read the Bible either, come to think of it, but I have a pretty good idea of what’s in that book, too.
Alan, racism has nothing to do with fears of being swamped by immigrants as such. History is full of examples where real swamping occurred or came close, and in many of these cases there was little or no racial difference. I’ll give some examples, leaving Palestine out in case anyone argues that Jews and Palestinians are materially different racially:-
– Goths coming into the Roman Empire when fleeing the Huns.
– Uskoks fleeing the Turks and turning to piracy and brigandage to support themselves in the fringes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
– Zulus et al entering areas occupied by other Bantu groups in southern Africa.
– US settlers in the Oregon territory (leading to the loss of area formerly under the Hudson’s Bay Company).
– Pontics and other Greeks displaced by the “exchange of minorities” in the 1920s, ending up a local majority in many areas with an existing culture that wasn’t a melting pot (think of the loss of respect for the class structure and rise of socialism in Euboea).
– “Ausis”, i.e. former East Germans, heading west in hopes of a better life in former West Germany.
I don’t think you can seriously argue that all these disturbances were accompanied by a racial element, or even that all similar cases were racial even when thre was a racial difference to begin with. For instance, racial fears in Fiji arose out of the flooding, they did not precede it, and the similar fears of Indian coolie labour in Queensland were genuinely matched by the ramifications of Indian immigration in similar areas elsewhere in the British Empire such as Mauritius and the Caribbean (particularly British Guiana). The question of whether the fears were racist had no bearing on whether they were well founded, at any rate in the Indian coolie cases.
MB, I neither know nor care what Windschuttle’s own motives are, and I suggest that the facts of White Australia have far more relevance – anything else is to condemn the argument according to its author. And no, I am not suggesting that we do that to Fairfax publications, or that we should abstain from using them, merely that we shouldn’t rest a whole condemnation on such a flimsy foundation. After all, I spotted the Ages error over Howard by referring to independent media sources. I should look up the references sometime, so anyone interested can see for themselves in hard copy libraries.
“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.”
That’s an inane comparison. For the umpteenth time, it’s not about ‘reading the book’ per se. It’s about having some reasonable evidence base upon which to base one’s critique – other than a couple of hundred words of some else’s once-over-lightly interpretation of a fairly major issue.
Looking at all the posts so far, it is evident that the original architects of the WAP had racist views and also that racist motives were a significant part of their reason for introducing the legislation. This, however, is a different issue from whether the legislation itself was desirable at the time. And this again is a different issue from whether the legislation was frequently applied in racist ways at the time or subsequently. Whether it is racist *now* to defend the legislators’ actions *then* is yet another issue. A lot of the confusion so far seems to derive from conflating these different aspects of the question. JQ’s original post set the tone, imho.
Alex – you have come a long since your first comment above – but don’t stop yet. Keith Windschuttle is running an agenda here – motives unknown and we all have our theories – but, whichever way, his history is propaganda designed for present day purposes.
That’s why it’s in the media. That’s why we are talking about it now. This is not dull dry history for the eyes of academy only. This is social agitprop. It is poison.
If the White Australia policy may have been rational and progressive once – then there’s no reason to assume that it may not be rational and progressive once again. There are many out there who will decide on that. And Keith is starting a conversation with them.
I will second wbb’s comments above. The racist nature and foundation of the White Australia Policy is so clear that one can only assume that people who try to make arguments to the contrary are seriously blinded to reality or are actually trying out a bit of “social agitprop”.
As someone who (reluctantly) bought the last Windschuttle tome in order to critique it (and did so, being the only person to elicit a thoroughgoing and academic, though vituperative, response from him (see Labour History and http://www.evatt.org.au), I have decided not to bother weighing into this debate. My reasons;
1) ‘white Australia policy was not racist’ is clearly an oxymoron, abundantly obvious to anybody.
2) where have the promised vols 2 and 3 of the Fabrication series gone, and why has he segued into the 1950s? Last I spoke to him he was writing volume 2, and made no mention of this book, yet he appears to have produced it in less than a year – a blinding pace, which suggests little reflection. Or perhaps we academic historians landed more hits than he admitted, and he is actually backing off.
3) his work is clearly nothing more than an anti-Reynolds crusade, and I am tired of pondering the psychological reasons for that (the historical reasons don’t generally stand up, beyond the odd misquote)
Oxygen deprivation is the only cure for Windschuttle fungus. He is definitely a media tart.
We all can indulge in not being racists at the moment, because we don’t feel threatened. But I wonder how many of us would maintain our present views if, say, half a million boat people were arriving on our shores every year, unchecked?
Ah, I see. Rejecting racism is merely “indulgence”, and not a matter of fundamental human rights.
No, you don’t see Robert. My point is that it is easy to profess being a non-racist in Australia here and now, but these professed views are not really being put to the test. You claim that being anti-racist is a matter of fundamental human rights. But what if it is your rights (or even your life) that are being threatened? Check out P.M. Lawrence’s personal recollection on the other thread.
BTW, thanks to JQ for initiating a bracing and entertaining discussion. Haven’t had so much fun in … well, several days, at least.
Oh, and a completely off-thread comment to JQ. Your datestamp has not been adjusted for daylight saving. Bloody Queenslanders – still worried about fading the curtains!
Alex, I have received credible threats from racists on the basis of anti-racist campaigning. However, I am glad that you know more about me than I do; I must have imagined those threats.
Missed my point again, Robert. If your rights (or life) were being threatened because of your race, by those of another race (as in the P.M. Lawrence anecdote I referred you to) you might become more anti-racist in one sense (ie that you would resent being persecuted for your race, as well as philosophically being opposed to it) but in other ways you might start to become racist yourself (ie by becoming opposed to your persecutors as well as the persecution).
That is a risk no matter what we’re talking about. It is certainly something that I would strive to avoid. I don’t see what your point is — that because some people succumb to racism, we should not condemn it?
No, my point is that our opinions and ideologies are shaped by the time and place in which we live. Thus it is somewhat hypocritical to claim the moral high ground on the basis that our opinions and ideologies are superior to those of people in another time or place. If we shared their milieu, we might share their opinions and ideologies too.
The white Australia policy was a policy applicable to the times. If Quiggan condemns this policy he ought to also attack the racist policies currrently practised by our neigbours up north. Malaysian domestic policy currently discriminates against Chinese. Quiggan ever written about this? Not to my knowledge he hasn’t. The left never displays any coonsistency other than ratting off about how bad Australia and the US are.
If Quiggan wants to be consistent he should have told us a long time ago what he thought about Malaysian policy (not now). Otherwise he needs to shut right up because he has no moral right to criticise Australia’s past.
“coonsistency”
In this context, Gold!
Joe, your argument is imbecilic.
John lives in Australia, so there is one reason why he might post more frequently about it than about Malaysia.
Furthermore, he is responding to an argument that was made in the press. When someone raises Malaysia’s racial policies and gains widespread media coverage, then perhaps it would be a reasonable comparison.
Jason Soon condemned the Malaysian policies a long time ago (I understand he has some connection to Malaysia, which explains his particular interest), and has condemned the White Australia Policy now.
Alex, you’re arguing against a straw man. Nobody has denied that the White Australia Policy was a product of its time. They are simply pointing out that that time was racist.
Why should this ‘historian’ rascist Windshuttle even be allowed to comment on the white Australia policy? Surely this discussion will only lead to more children being locked in detention centres and having their eyes sewn shut by the Facist Howard regime! Plus he is white so that disqualifies him from commenting because white people are not a race!
“Nobody has denied that the White Australia Policy was a product of its time. They are simply pointing out that that time was racist.” Yes, and at the same time condemning a person who attempts to understand that time on its own terms as “an apologist for racism”. Sounds like claiming the moral high ground to me.
The good professor may not have read Windschuttle’s book, but I can tell you I’m immediately turned off by his early and frequent use of the “R” word – racist/racism – the most overused, misused, corrupted linguistic dodge for the last decade. The left has cried the racism wolf day in, day out for years and honestly, I hardly hear it anymore. The concept of racism itself is useless. It’s the most open-ended, subjective, all-inclusive condemnation since “blasphemy” and IMO deserves to go the same route into disrepute. For the Professor to still be hurling it around, sound in the knowledge that just hearing the accusation of “racism” will bend anyone to his opinion, just shows how out of touch he is with an increasingly jaded public who can see with their own eyes that the left’s utopia of “absolute tolerance of everything” just does not work.
Pr. Quiggin, it is evident, does not consider himself a racist. But I know that he is, or at least a defender of racist policy. Just one example: I have it on good authority that the university department at which he works does not employ non-english-speakers – a clear example of racist discrimination. You can’t explain this racism away as a means to a productivity or workplace end. It’s racism pure and simple – just see above for many arguments supporting this. Where is your condemnation of this obvious racism, John?
Oh, now he’ll say I’m just being silly. But what you don’t realise, John, is that the left’s – and your – endless banging on about how evil and racist we all are are equally ridiculous. Anyone with any knowledge of history and any understanding of the culture of the time can easily understand how such a policy could have been implemented, and equally gratified by the proof of progress that it was, in time, undone. I haven’t read the book so I have no idea who the target market is – but I suspect, John, that it is you, who cannot listen to even one minutes’ worth of discussion about the ideas, the intentions, and even the goodwill that went into the policies of the time without putting fingers into both ears and shouting “Racist!! Racist!!”
You do yourself a discredit.
One more thing.
I absolutely deplore the use of the loaded nickname for the Migration Control Act/Migration Act of the time. It was never officially named the “White Australia Policy”, despite the popularity of the term. If you were to read a description of the act, you might find it quite obvious and uncontroversial in its exclusion of unskilled foreigners, in pretty much the same way we do today. In fact, proponents of the “Black, Racist Armband” view might be surprised to hear a quote from the Immgration Minister in 1958 stating” that Ă¢â‚¬Ëœdistinguished and highly qualified AsiansĂ¢â‚¬â„¢ might immigrate”.
“White Australia Policy”? But educated asians are welcome? Sound so racially motivated now?
Any serious debate should not use the WAP name. If we are going to discuss the policy and the times, and not the name, which of course no-one can argue against, then why don’t we instead rail against the injustice of the “Migration (Control) Act, 1850-1973”.
How about it?
James
I don’t have much trouble spotting the difference between a university’s policy of preferring English speakers to teach courses in English, and a government’s policy to exclude immigrants on the basis of their physical appearance. Do you?
James #2,
No actually, I don’t have that problem either. However, it’s totally irrelevant to the discussion.
Physical appearance has nothing to do with it. The principle method of rejection for unwanted immigrants was that they would fail a language and diction test. The rationale was living wages, social justice, and national security. Nothing about appearances, however much the left would have liked it to be as simple as that.
“the Immgration Minister in 1958 stating” that ‘distinguished and highly qualified Asians’ might immigrate”.
That may well have been the prevailing attitude in 1958, after more than half a century of race-based exclusionism.
Here is Alfred Deakin, one of the most liberal of Australians in 1901, explaining the majority party’s attitude to the proposal that Japanese might be declared honorary whites:
“I contend that the Japanese require to be excluded because of their high abilities. I quite agree … that the Japanese are the most dangerous because they most nearly approach us, and would, therefore, be our most formidable competitors. It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them dangerous to us … It is the business qualities, the business aptitude, and general capacity of these people that make them dangerous, and the fact that while they remain an element in our population, they are incapable of being assimilated.” [LaNauze, p. 279.]
What would a modern labour economist make of this economic argument?
Economics pulls one way, racist ideology pulls the opposite direction.
Racism wins.
Sounds to be in line with the prevailing protectionism.
It has nothing to do with economic protectionism. In fact it is the opposite of protectionism.
Protectionism has its origins in, and draws its justification from, mercantilism.
Mercantilism gave top priority to engrossing as much of the “valued added” elements of production and exchange as possible within the administration and purview of the metropolitan government. The idea was to increase economic activity to sustain as high a quantum of tax as possible.
To follow a consistent policy of protectionism, Australian governments would have encouraged as many highly productive economic actors as possible within its boundaries.
Exclusion of Japanese, by Deakin’s own admission, aimed at achieving the opposite result.
Great comments, Katz. You are the hands-down MVP on this thread.
I don’t have anything to add, except to reinforce Naomi’s point, which I think was particularly apposite:
“‘white Australia policy was not racist’ is clearly an oxymoron, abundantly obvious to anybody.”
Katz, what would a 1901 labour economist (assuming there was such a thing) have made of that argument? What would a 1901 labourer have made of it?
‘The principle method of rejection for unwanted immigrants was that they would fail a language and diction test’
In Gaelic? Doesn’t sound very principled to me.
Hey Katz
Instead of worrying about typos, why don’t you argue the points; or is that a little too difficult for a lefty. Isn’t the modus of a lefty like you and Quiggan to attack the person rather than the argument.
And Robert:
I would guess that you and Quiggan deplore any racism anywhere don’t you. Ever seen Quiggan deplore the Malaysians. Why not. He just wants to stick it to historians and accuse them of the most vlie things. No wonder your type is out of power and will remain so with attitudes like that.
It’s QUIGGIN
good christ. it apparently is the case that we are having a serious argument about whether something called a “white australia policy” was racist.
if windschuttle can acheive this, then no comment of his is self-evidently absurd enough not to be defended by his fans.
Hi Joe,
Why am I not surprised to find you backing White Australia? Or are you going to surprise me and denounce Windschuttle the moment I deplore Malaysia’s discrimination against ethnic Chinese?
Only one way to find out!
I deplore Malaysia’s discrimination against ethnic Chinese. Also, racism in Rwanda, Sudan, Japan and anywhere else you care to name.
Over to you!
John:
Two things:
1. If you read my comments very carefully I said you are always quick to condemn Australia past and present.
2. To prove your authenticity that your motive is not simple politics I asked if you had ever (IN THE PAST) condemned Malaysian treatment of Chinese. You haven’t.
3. Now you do, but why not in the past? Omission?
Thoughtlessness? Or expediency for now?
John there is nothing worse than a hypocrite. I am afraid you are one for these reasons:
1. You only now prepared to criticise Malaysia but not previously.
2. You have not read this book but you are prepared to accuse this man of being a racist.
I truly believe that you are a racist and a hypocrite for never attacking Malaysian policy.
You and the rest of your brianless babble are quite prepared to throw this horrid word around as though it has no meaning. You truly disgust me.
I understand that you once accused Gerry Jackson of being a Stalinist. Brookesnews is a free market E-zine. How anyone could describe the editor of Brooknews editor of being a Stalinist is…. You must live in a Parallel universe.
One last thing, I can’t critique the book because like you I have not read it.
Unlike you I would not offer an opinion unless I read it.
Please, please don’t criticise my grammar or my typos. I am not interested in that. Just stick to criticism of what I am trying to convey. Are you up to it, or ……
Hey Joe, what’s with your obsession with Malaysia?
There are lots of example of racism in the world. Why them in particular?
This stuff about Malaysia is bizarre. Why is it necessary when condemning something to condemn simultaneously everything else in the world that has similarities? Presumably, it’s a reasonable inference that if someone (like John Q) is opposed to racism in Australia they oppose racism everywhere.
It really is a very silly debating tactic.
Oh – and snuh, I couldn’t agree more.
Joe, please list every policy from anywhere around the world that you have criticised. We will then offer examples of repugnant policies that you have not yet condemned. Because you will not have condemned them before being asked to do so, we will call you a racist and a hypocrite. If you refuse to do so, then we will just call you a hypocrite.
Hey Spiro:
My point about Malaysia in fact is a good one, if you had thought about it.
1. It’s right on our doorstep. And we all know how Quiggan loves talking about the region.
2. The racism practised there is the law of the land- it has legal protection.
It is interesting how Quiggan and his braindead babble are always at the front of the line in accusing others of the most vile things. Racism is a serious accusation. Publicily accusing a scholar like Windshuttle of such a vile thing is beyond argument. It is nothing other than vile putrid crap which shows Quiggan to be nothing other than the second rate mind.
At the very least countries like the US and Australia are capable of righting wrongs from the past which makes us not perfect but the very best of what humanity can offer.
Second rate minds like Quiggan don’t see that and second rate minds like Quiggan citicise a piece of scholarship without reading it.
Mark:
You said:
it’s a reasonable inference that if someone (like John Q) is opposed to racism in Australia they oppose racism everywhere.
Ah, no it’s not a reasonable inference. We can’t read anyone’s mind ( unless you are a babble head who thinks so). I can only go with the facts.
I have never seen Quiggan criticise legaiised racism in Malaysia. I can only imply from that he thought it was ok until now when it only suits him.
In another lengthy comment, Joe hasn’t taken up my invitation to denounce Windschuttle’s apologies for racism, nor has he so far had the guts to endorse them openly. Why am I not surprised?
Robert:
Seriously, are you retarded.
I have critised a book and it’s author of being racist. Quiggan did that.
Whats the rest of the stuff you are asking me to do with this- an accusation of racsim was levelled (see above and read it again) without any research. Am I missing something here?
John:
I haven’t read the book. NEITHER HAVE YOU.
aren’t you getting this.
It’s not up to me to provide evidence. It’s up to you. YOU accused this author of racsim. BLOODY WELL PROVE IT OR APOLOGISE. I would firstly suggest you read the BLOODY book before you level serious accusations like that.
Where the hell is your sense of scholarship.
Joe, any more abusive comments, coarse language or upper caps and you’ll be barred.
You seem to forget that this forthcoming book isn’t Windschuttle’s only publication. Go up to the next post (the R-word) and check over the fold for the kinds of things I am complaining about.