Racism and Resentment:
Public Opinion and the Voice

Promotional image credited to Hulton Archive / Getty Images via Thoughtco.com

Hello 

Thank you for tuning in to the sixth webinar of our 2024 series, Critical Public Conversations: Sovereignty and Solidarity: Redefining belonging in so-called Australia.

Ray Foxworth presents research on racism and resentment in relation to voter opposition to the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum. This research set out to explain this opposition from the perspective of Indigenous politics. Commenting on his collaboration with Carew Boulding, Ray explained the survey design and how it drew upon new research on settler attitudes in the United States and Canada, work done by another co-project partner, Edana Beauvais. Two aims of the research were to further examine the concept of Indigenous resentment and understand how perceptions of Indigenous division influenced opposition to the Voice. Ray clarifies the concept of Indigenous resentment is, effectively, racism rooted in hostile attitudes towards Indigenous peoples in their land claims and their languages which includes a belief that Indigenous peoples receive unfair benefits. 
 

The survey findings revealed that a majority of Indigenous voters in Australia were distinctly supportive of the Voice despite active messaging from the mainstream ‘No’ campaign that Indigenous peoples were divided. Findings also revealed that non-Indigenous perceptions of Indigenous division did affect their vote choice. Meaning, people who perceived greater Indigenous division on the Voice were more likely to cast a ‘No’ vote. Importantly, the survey also confirms that Indigenous resentment is a real concept among non-Indigenous peoples in Australia. Also, that Indigenous resentment travels across settler-colonial contexts—including the United States, Canada and Ecuador—and shows up as a lack of support for Indigenous peoples and their issues. Considering these findings, Indigenous unity, division and disagreement are tricky in the eyes of settlers who already have little information about Indigenous peoples and issues. This research highlights majoritarian decision-making as a questionable strategy for advancing Indigenous rights. It also raises questions for Indigenous peoples and Indigenous organisations that are working to educate the public about Indigenous history and culture. Questions about who is most impacted by this work emerge as survey indicators about contact with Indigenous peoples, visiting Indigenous people’s communities, and knowledge about history and culture did not have an effect on voter opposition to the Voice. These are also questions about who is benefiting from public education? Who are we targeting, and what are the outcomes of these educational strategies? Resentment and hostility towards Indigenous peoples is alive and well as a historical construct that continues to shape political attitudes today. And so, the research work continues, looking at what an historical event like the Voice vote does to resentment, the role of historical guilt and patriotism and motivating vote choice, and the role that stereotypes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people play in shaping opposition.

Questions and comments from the audience

• Reconciliation Australia also has a poll, the reconciliation barometer, that indicated a much higher level of support for reconciliation issues. So, it was a surprise to many when public support fell away so quickly. Was this just a difference in polling questions/methodologies, or does the barometer miss critical issues that should be tracked?
   

• With the promotion of division among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voters on the Voice, what degree do you think this gives permission for racism to play out?  That is, does this division give permission for those holding racist attitudes a justification to enable that racism through the ‘No’ vote?
   

• Thank you so much for saying how it is not a good idea to be seeking assent for special measures for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from a majority settler electorate!

Presenters

Raymond Foxworth Ph.D is a Research Affiliate with the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He holds a PhD in Political Science and works in the fields of Comparative and American Politics, with research interests in Indigenous Politics, Democracy, Development and Inequality, Civil Society, Race and Ethnic Politics, and US and Latin American Politics. His research centres Indigenous peoples in politics as active political actors looking to advance their inherent rights to sovereignty, self-governance, and autonomy.

Carew Boulding is Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she has worked since 2007, after receiving her PhD from the University of California, San Diego. Her work focuses on understanding political participation in developing democracies, in particular, why people vote, why they protest, and how the context of democratic quality shapes those choices. She has a long-standing interest in Bolivian politics, and she has worked on several projects related to Indigenous peoples, including attitudes about Native Americans in the United States and Australia, and Indigenous political participation and behaviour in Latin America. She has three daughters and grew up in Boulder, Colorado. Her ancestors are Irish, English, and Norwegian immigrants to the United States.

Critical Public Conversations

Sovereignty and Solidarity: Redefining Belonging in So-Called Australia

In 2024, the Australian Centre’s Critical Public Conversations series will explore questions of belonging, borders, and place. We investigate how Australia’s founding as a settler colony constrains capacities to welcome refugees to these shores and highlight moments of transnational solidarity that bypass the settler order. We are guided by theorists, activists, and artists exploring the intersections and incommensurabilities between Indigenous, migrant, and other racialised communities’ politics and lived experiences. This series will go beyond settler binaries, boundaries, and borders, to explore the ways more humane international, domestic, and indeed interpersonal relations are inextricably bound to justice for First Nations.  

The Australian Centre is located at the University of Melbourne, Parkville campus, on unceded Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung land. We acknowledge Country and the people belonging to Country, the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Traditional Owners, and we value our continuing relationship with you and your on-going care for Country. We thank the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Cultural Heritage Corporation for your generous and ongoing contributions to the Australian Centre.

We also acknowledge that the University of Melbourne has campuses on Country of other First Nation groups, and we acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Parkville, Southbank, Werribee and Burnley campuses, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong/Boon Wurrung peoples; the Yorta Yorta Nations, whose Country the Shepparton and Dookie campuses are located, and the Dja Dja Wurrung Nations, Melbourne University’s Creswick campus location. 

The Australia Centre acknowledges all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and First Nations peoples whose work, lives and Country intersect with ours. We acknowledge that invasion and colonisation has caused harm that is on-going to First Peoples.