16 - Race at Work within Social Policy

Summary

Introduction

Race is the foundation of invasion and colonial rule in Australia, and is enshrined in laws and social policy. The edict of terra nullius (land belonging to no one) legitimized state violence and a British legal framework to take possession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands. In the Australian settler- colonial context, racial literacy in social policy requires an understanding of patriarchal white sovereignty, which is, ‘a regime of power that derives from the illegal act of possession and is most acutely manifested in the form of the Crown and the judiciary, but it is also evident in everyday cultural practices and spaces’ (Moreton- Robinson, 2015: 35). Patriarchal white sovereignty grants white people a sense of social belonging through ownership of property and resources, cultural power and socioeconomic authority. The logic of ownership is established by enforcing racial differences, even while social policies and laws promote individual equality, as conferred through citizenship (Moreton- Robinson, 2015: 52).

Policy makers and academics rarely give critical attention to the processes and politics of the production of policy documents, instead focusing on what the document says. This is one way to maintain racial silence, since each step of policy creation – particularly the production of documents – presents an opportunity to address, or ignore, race. This chapter raises the question of which agents and actors conduct each step of the process and how. How do race relations impact how and when policies are negotiated? I present an analysis of the ways poor racial literacy across the policy cycle weakens the potential for social transformation, particularly in drafting strategies that seek to implement anti- racism.

Racial literacy exposes how race is used to structure ‘social, economic and political relations’ so groups in power retain their dominance (Guinier, 2004: 114). Race is used to normalize white supremacy by taking attention away from the unequal distribution of power and resources and creating division. Racial literacy can be defined as a way to learn about race, and act on racial inequality (Guinier, 2004: 115). This requires an understanding of how social context shapes how we think, talk and act on race; the role of social forces that impact our ability to make change (agency), such as institutional and environmental factors; and the interplay between race and other forms of social stratification, such as class, geography and gender (Guinier, 2004: 115).