Daily Dialectic

Racism against the Indigenous peoples of Australia will be analysed through an existentialist lens. More specifically, the phenomenon will be articulated as being a dialectical moment within an attempted realisation of the Australian colonial project. In this analysis, it will be argued that present racism is, at least in part, both the consequence of a prior exploitation of Indigenous peoples, and the antecedent of a possibly subsequent exploitation of Indigenous peoples. Insofar as this is the case, it becomes obvious that racism, as a practico-inert statute, signifies a realisation of the colonizers’ interests, at the expense of Indigenous interests.

This understanding of racism will then be concretely demonstrated through an analysis of Indigenous Australian stolen wages: past exploitation led directly to present traumas and poverty cycles, which then become the impetus for racist practices, ultimately becoming manifest as restrictions placed upon future Indigenous Australian actions (exigencies). What this example will serve to demonstrate is how colonial racism in Australia seems to operate in a dialectically circular fashion.