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White Australia policy: philosophical underpinnings « Previous | |Next »
September 23, 2005

I notice that OnLine Opinion has published a defence of Andrew Fraser's right to publish his article, and a condemnation of Deakin University for refusing to publish the article in the Deakin Law Review because they received a legal threat. It is good to see classic liberal principles being upheld by National Forum. If Australia is to be open liberal society, then we ought not suppress a discussion and debate of the nature of racial differences. When the managerial administrators of our corporate universities do so, this suggests that the subject of racial differences is a taboo one.

Graham Young at Ambit Gambit says that:

Having read Fraser's piece there're a few points that stand out. First, it is a transparently slight piece that doesn't stand much scrutiny. In terms of public debate, that doesn't matter. Better to point this out in public than to have it go underground. Fortunately, Deakin's refusal to publish has given it more publicity than if it had been published, so there is in a way less, not more, censorship.

Alas, Graham gives us no argument is provided for the judgement Fraser's article is a transparently slight piece that doesn't stand much scrutiny.' All that is offered is the judgement that the article is a polemic. Graham however, does go to question the dubious arguments applied by some of the critics of Fraser. Rightly so, because some of the criticism is polemical, and evades engaging with Fraser's arguments that support the philosophical underpinnings of one nation conservatism.

Is Fraser's article a transparently slight piece that doesn't stand much scrutiny? Is it a polemic? Is it poor quality as most commentators are asserting. One way to assess this is to see how the argument for the biological account of racial differences stacks up.

In the previous entry on Andrew Fraser and the White Australia policy I noted that Fraser said that the time is clearly ripe for a courageous and well-informed reappraisal of the White Australia Policy and the decision to dismantle it. He was going to do this by consider some recent texts on the topic. Fraser adds:

Unfortunately, racial realists, concerned to bring common sense to contemporary Australian debates over race and immigration, will be disappointed with two recent books on the White Australia Policy. Both promise much but deliver little because of their authors' determined refusal to take race seriously.

One of the texts considered by Fraser is Keith Windshuttle's recent text (2005) The White Australia Policy.

Fraser says that in this text Windshuttle:

"... sets out to refute the orthodox leftist charge that the immigration legislation enacted shortly after Federation was "racist". On the formal level that is easily done since the Immigration Restriction Act, 1901 ... did not explicitly prohibit non-white immigration. Instead, prospective immigrants were required to pass a dictation test by writing out 50 words in any European language selected by immigration officials. But, because both the intent and the practical effect of the dictation test were to sharply limit coloured immigration, Australia was open to attack from progressives around the world and, especially during the Cold War, from newly assertive post-colonial regimes in Asia and Africa.

Fraser then points to a flaw in Windshutte's account: He says that Windschuttle's rehabilitation of the White Australia Policy is premised on a familiar, if pernicious, tenet of neo-conservatism:
Supposedly, Australia's national identity is "based on a civic patriotism," thereby fostering "loyalty to Australia's liberal democratic political institutions rather than to race or ethnicity." He contends that the White Australia Policy, far from being the reactionary spawn of an irredeemably racist nation, grew out of a long-established, progressive program aiming "to extend both the freedom and the dignity of labour."...opposition to Asian immigration was not grounded in fears of "racial contamination." Rather, politicians were concerned both to protect the standard of living of Australian workers and to prevent the emergence of "a racially-based political underclass" that would undermine Australia's egalitarian democracy...Windschuttle portrays their leaders as proto-Boasian anthropologists ....convinced that race is a nothing more than a social construct.... Windschuttle insists, mainstream Australians have never subscribed to biological theories of race. Influenced instead by the universalistic principles of both evangelical Christianity and the Scottish Enlightenment, they have refused to treat white Europeans as superior and other races as innately and permanently inferior. This, then, is the crux of Windschuttle's argument...

I haven't read Windschuttle's text, and so I do not know how well Fraser has interpreted him. Let's accept that the interpretation us plausible. Windshuttle's argument downplays the position that racism and xenophobia were driving forces in the campaign to restrict non-white immigration into Australia. As I understand the Australian left has traditionally defended the position that Windshuttle is trying to displace.

Fraser raises a key issue: is racism a social construct or is it biologically determined? Fraser rejects the egalitarian position that race is only skin deep, as he contends that racial differences are real, (ie., biologically grounded) and not just social constructs. This is the standard nature culture issue and it should be raised with respect to race.

One can ask where does the left stand on this? I presume that the Australian Left pretty much stands on the cultural construct side of the issue, rather than on the biological determinist side. Thus Humphrey McQueen, in reviewing Windshuttle's book concurs wiith Windshuttle. He says:

On the key question, he is politically correct, that is to say, scientifically accurate. There are no such divisions in nature as races. Or, more precisely, differences in appearance are so slim in terms of genetic makeup as not to constitute meaningful categories. This much Windschuttle acknowledges as one more plank of his own anti-racism. Having recognised the non-existence of race, he accepts that racism is nonetheless possible.

Is the issue as open and shut as Windshuttle and McQueen assert? Some argument is required, is it not? If the culture versus nature issue is a debate we keep on having around sexuality (eg., masculinity and fenminity), then why not have a debate on this around race, given its historical importance in Australian history?

Raising this issue gives Fraser's article greater weight than 'slight' ie., not standing much scrutiny, as claimed by Graham Young. This article is no polemic. It is a sifting through the White Australia policy issue from an unusual perspective, even though it also utilizes polemical language and deploys rhetorical tropes.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 04:46 PM | | Comments (0)
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