Overcoming racism as a barrier to community development

Introduction THIS CHAPTER EXAMINES racism as a longstanding phenomenon that hampers development in Aboriginal communities. After considering the nature of racism and its impact on community development, the chapter considers the prevalence of racism against Aboriginal people. It then outlines effective anti-racism approaches, including historical attempts in relation to Aboriginal Australians, before concluding with possible future directions for pursuing anti-racism and community development. Racism and community development Racism encompasses unfair and preventable disparities in resources, power, opportunities or capacities along ethnic, racial, religious or cultural lines. The enaction of racism may occur via cognitive beliefs (e.g. stereotypes), feelings (e.g. anxiety) or practices/behaviours that are discriminatory (e.g. disparate treatment). Although not mutually exclusive, racism can be conceptualised in three ways: internalised, interpersonal and systemic. Internalised racism entails viewing one’s own ethnic/racial group as inferior or considering one or more other ethnic/racial groups as superior (Paradies et al. 2009). As the name suggests, interpersonal racism occurs in exchanges between individuals (e.g. racist talk). Interpersonal racism can be intraracial or interracial. That is, racism can occur between people from within the same racial group (i.e. intraracial racism between two Aboriginal people) or between people of difference racial groups (i.e. interracial racism involving an Aboriginal person and a non-Aboriginal person). In Aboriginal communities, intraracial racism is also known as ‘lateral violence’ (Dudgeon, Garvey and Pickett 2000). Also referred to as institutional or organisational racism, systemic racism can pertain to a range of practices, policies or processes that transpire at the extra-individual level (e.g. unnecessary contact, and poor outcomes in, the criminal justice system for Aboriginal people) (Berman and Paradies 2010). Both interpersonal and systemic racism can be unwitting and unintentional. Although often overt, contemporary racism can also be subtle, covert and ambiguous. For example, there can be inappropriate assumptions and questioning about identity (Gair, Miles, Savage and Zuchowski 2014; Mander, Cohen and Pooley 2015) as well as non-verbal embodied feelings of being ‘out of place’ in spaces of whiteness (Lobo 2014).