The Aboriginal industry has the power to swiftly dismiss the critical opinions of non-Aboriginal people as ignorant, paternalistic or racist. This leaves Aboriginal dissenters best positioned to critically engage with Aboriginal identity politics, which in turn creates an urgent need for the Aboriginal industry to suppress dissenting Aboriginal opinion by other means. A number of responses to my article provided useful examples of the kinds of suppressing arguments that the Aboriginal industry puts forward in order to silence and dismiss dissent from within. The silencing of Aboriginal dissenters is centred on the “legitimacy” and “authenticity” of the Aboriginal speaker, rather than the quality of the speaker’s reasoning and expression. Silencing arguments also point to the speaker’s unsavoury character, which is evident through the offensive nature of his or her ideas, as well as through his or her apparent pandering to a “racist” enemy force. None of these silencing approaches are unique to Aboriginal race politics; they appear in some form wherever the politics of identity take precedence over constructive political debate.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 23:54:44 +0000
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