From anti-racism to interracial trust: A cultural perspective

It is difficult for people from all walks of life to develop a secure sense of who they are and what their place is in the larger scheme of things in society. Rapid economic and technological change has ensured that many traditional certainties are no longer valid today.

The purely instrumental values of economic rationalism have elevated competition and self-interest as major values to live by. This has created an ethical void in the cultural centre of our society: values such as equality and justice are no longer universally seen as indispensable assets of a good society. In such a context, it is hard for people to be sensitive to the moral calls of anti-racism. Many people either dismiss such calls as not moral but moralistic (witness support for the government's tough and inhumane anti-refugee stance), or they feel, rightly or wrongly, that they themselves are having it tough, so why should they express tolerance towards others?

Racism today is no longer the same as it was twenty years ago. Indeed, the very gains we have made through the processes of reconciliation and multiculturalism have also, paradoxically, produced a cultural atmosphere where there is more resistance to the duty to be tolerant today then in the 1970s and 80s.

A social consensus over what kind of society we would like to live in is much harder to achieve now. Instead we have a profoundly divided, fractious society governed all too often by suspicion and distrust.

It is in this precarious socio-cultural context that the value of 'tolerance' needs to be firmly defended.

The task of bridge-building - the most important of which is what we now call 'reconciliation' - has to be taken much more seriously in anti-racist educational strategies. Many educational philosophies have focused on legislating against racially biased behaviours and attitudes. It also tends to be seen as of benefit only to the non-white victims of racism, just as multiculturalism has been presented as applicable only to people of NESB.

One of the most important tasks ahead is to overcome this particularism and to find a universal justification for the need of tolerance and for respect for difference. This is why an emphasis on bridge-building is important. Bridge-building can be a unifying and empowering cultural process, where cultural difference and prevailing power relations are critically interrogated and through which a shared sense of civic identity is developed, a shared sense of ownership of the society as a whole.

Interracial trust should not be conflated with the much-maligned idea of racial 'harmony.' Establishing trust does not mean the erasure of difficult differences and the denial of race privilege. On the contrary, it can only be achieved through an honest acknowledgement of it and through a working through of those difficult differences.

Trust is a difficult thing to achieve in a world dominated by mistrust. It is the 'leap of faith' in overcoming divisions and hostilities, and it is the medium through which practical reconciliation can emerge. In their preparedness to engage in this process, indigenous people have given us the gift of their trust, and it is up to us, non-indigenous Australians, to earn their trust.

At the same time, those of us who are so frequently at the receiving end of racisms should be willing to place trust in the goodwill and best intentions of many white Australians to work together towards change, however difficult this may be and despite their many inevitable mistakes and blindnesses. It is that kind of mutual generosity and ethical care of the other that we need to encourage in our struggle against racism, to overturn the 'hardening of hearts' in Australian public opinion.