White Privilege - in Australia

In Australia

White privilege in Australia parallels the pattern of dominance seen elsewhere in colonialism. Indigenous Australians were excluded from the process of creating the Australian Federation, and its early laws restricted the freedoms for people of colour. Indigenous people were governed by an "Aborigines Protection Board" as a separate class of citizens. Indigenous Australians report feeling discriminated against, for example by shopkeepers and real estate agents. News media are geared towards white people and their interests. White neighborhoods are identified as "good quality", while "ethnic" neighborhoods may become stigmatized, degraded, and neglected.

White people are seen presumptively as "Australian", and as prototypical citizens. Indeed, a major part of white Australian privilege is the ability to be in Australia itself, while excluding non-white outsiders.

Indigenous Australians are welcomed to participate in a "multiculturalism" that celebrates their stories and artwork—however, they are not allowed to challenge the authority of white society, or the narrative of European colonizers as peaceful settlers. Thus, white privilege in Australia involves the ability to define the limits of what can be included in a "multicultural" society. Indigenous Studies in Australian Universities remains controlled by white people, hires many white professors, and does not always embrace political changes that benefit indigenous people or respect their sovereignty.

For Australian whites, another aspect of privilege is the ability to identify with a global diaspora of other white people in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. This privilege contrasts with the enforced separation of Indigenous Australians from other indigenous peoples in southeast Asia. Global political issues such as climate change are framed in terms of white actors and effects on white countries.

White privilege varies across places and situations. Ray Minniecon, director of Crossroads Aboriginal Ministries, described the city of Sydney specifically as "the most alien and inhospitable place of all to Aboriginal culture and people." Although people of colour live in Sidney, whites have presumptive control over urban planning—the ability to decide who lives where and when a poor neighborhood is gentrified. At the other end of the spectrum, anti-racist white Australians working with Indigenous people may experience their privilege as painful "stigma".

Studies of white privilege in Australia have increased since the late 1990s, with several books published on the history of how whiteness became a dominant identity. Aileen Moreton-Robinson's Talkin' Up to the White Woman is a critique of unexamined white privilege in the Australian feminist movement. The Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association formed in 2005 to study racial privilege and promote respect for Indigenous sovereignties; it publishes an online journal called Critical Race and Whiteness Studies.