Unmasking the Racial Contract

Winner of the Stanner Award, 2019.

In an era of reconciliation and cultural diversity, Indigenous peoples in Australia still experience everyday and structural racisms in the workplace. Unmasking the Racial Contract is a study of one such workplace: the Australian Public Service. Bargallie shows that despite claims of fairness, inclusion, opportunity, respect and racial equality for all, Indigenous employees continue to languish on the lower rungs of the Australian Public Service employment ladder. By showing how racism is normalised in white institutions, Bargallie aims to help us see and understand — and ultimately challenge — racism.

This original and innovative book, written from an Indigenous standpoint, is the first to use race as a key framework to critically examine the discrimination faced by Indigenous employees in an Australian institution. Bargallie provides an insider’s perspective and privileges the voices of other Indigenous employees, and she applies critical race theory to unmask the racial contract that underpins the ‘absent presence’ of racism in the Australian Public Service.

Bargallie provides an important counter-narrative to the pervasive myth of meritocracy, and encourages readers to consider the effects of the racial contract in colonial–colonised relations in Australia more broadly.

"I have just read Unmasking the Racial Contract. Congratulations! It is theoretically and empirically rich and robust, giving voice to Indigenous experiences of racial injustice, and clearly and powerfully identifying an agenda for dismantling racism, not just in the Australian Public Service, but in all our nation's systems and practices."

- Barbara Pini, Professor, School of Humanities, Griffith University

Production Details

• Paperback
• 230mm x 153mm x 170mm
• 256pp
• Released June 2020
• ISBN 9781925302653

Contents

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
PART A: Understanding racism through lived experiences
Chapter 1: Introduction — what’s your problem?
Chapter 2: Critical Indigenist research, standpoint and the situated knower
Chapter 3: Australia the racial state
Chapter 4: Mobilising race, racism and Indigeneity as critical concepts
PART B: Listening to the voices, experiences and knowledges of Indigenous APS employees
Chapter 5: Racial microaggressions and the absent presence of racism
Chapter 6: Making the invisible visible
Chapter 7: Racism at work: every day and in every way
Chapter 8: Towards breaking the racial contract
PART C: What will it take to break the racial contract?
Chapter 9: Dismantling racism at work
Chapter 10: Concluding remarks
Notes
References
Index

About the Author

Dr Debbie Bargallie is a descendent of the Kamilaroi and Wonnarua Aboriginal peoples of the North-West and Upper Hunter Valley regions of New South Wales, Australia. Debbie was born and raised on D’harawal country in Wollongong, New South Wales, where she continues to have strong connections. 

In 2019 she was awarded the prestigious Stanner Award by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies for her doctoral research on Indigenous employee’s experiences of racism in the Australian Public Service.

Debbie is currently a Postdoctoral Senior Research Fellow with the Griffith Institute of Educational Research at Griffith University.

About the Cover