issue 1 09 - APS Member Groups - Australian Psychological Society

Multiculturalism and Whiteness27who is weak, barbaric and backward (Said,1979).Although the “white Australia policy”has been replaced with policy ofmulticulturalism, Australian identity continuesto reflect colonial ideologies and discourseswhilst heterogeneous social and culturallandscape of Australia is downplayed innationalistic discourses (Green et al., 2007;Green & Sonn, 2005; Moran, 2007). Australianidentity is defined by dominant white versionsof reality, despite alternative discourses, asthey hold and have access to “social, cultural,economic, political and symbolicpower” (Moran, 2007, p. 211). Although thishas created a sense of belongingness andinclusion into Australia’s landscape for ‘nonwhites’ it has not challenged the dominantposition of the white cultural hegemony(Moran, 2007; Hage, 1998, 2003).In Australia whiteness is covert.Standfield (2007) explains that the replacementof the white Australia policy, the adoption ofmulticultural policies, and the referendum actsas a discursive break from a history of racismand the beginning of benign racism. Theseforms of remembrance and the showing of the‘goodwill’ of white Australians supports thebenign racism, which is built on foundations ofstructural inequality that centres whiteAustralians as the true citizens of the nation.Multiculturalism obscures whiteness(Hage, 1998) and there is a denial ofdominance, but dominance is maintained dueto the normativity of whiteness (Green et al.,2007; Hage, 1998; Moran, 2007). This form of‘repression’ is one of the mechanisms bywhich racial hierarchies and systems ofknowledge are reproduced (Hage, 1998;Moran, 2007; Riggs, 2007a). In Australia,where whiteness is expressed in symbolicforms and as cultural racism, it is necessary todeconstruct our society’s discourses that shapesubjectivities (Green & Sonn, 2005). One wayto do this is to look through the livedexperiences of ethnic minority groups, a keyobjective of critical race theory (Ladson-Billings, 2003).Ethnic minority groups not only recognisetheir own position in race relations but also thedominant group’s position, who may be blind totheir privileged and normative position and whoare generally oblivious to the effects of racismor the significance of race relations ofAustralian society (Fisher & Sonn, 2007;Frankenberg, 1993; Ladson-Billings, 2003;Moran, 2007). We suggest that we can look intothe dynamics of dominance and privilegethrough the lived experiences of people whooccupy liminal spaces (Ladson-Billings, 2003).To this end we explore dynamics of inclusionand exclusion using the lens of whiteness. Wedo this by examining discourses used by secondgeneration Cypriot Turkish to construct theiridentity and how these discourses contribute tothe reproduction of whiteness.Methods and Data AnalysisTen Cypriot Turkish participants fromMelbourne were interviewed in 2006 abouttheir identity and sense of belongingness. Theparticipants were recruited through thenetworks of the first author who identifies asCypriot Turkish. Four of the participants weremen and six were women. All of theparticipants were born in Australia other thanJulide who came to Australia at the age of three.They all identified as Muslims. It was aninteractive form of interviewing where theinterviewee and the interviewer were bothidentified as collaborators and co-constructersof knowledge (Burgess-Limerick & Burgess-Limerick, 1998; Burr, 1995).Discursive analysis was used to explorethe relationship between society and individualexperience and unveil discourses that create andsustain patterns of privilege, power and ofinequality (Burr, 1995; Collins, 2004; Karim,1997). The particular approach employed wasthe ‘power and subjectivity’ approachdeveloped by Parker (1992). In line with theaim and the theoretical orientation of theresearch this approach is concerned with powerrelations, experiences, and subjectivity, whichis multiple, contradictory, fluid, and contextThe Australian Community Psychologist Volume 21 No 1 June 2009