Cirrus@Austlit

Beirut-born Australian cultural theorist Ghassan Hage finds an unexpected linkage between the 'anti-intellectual' views and range of worries of his grandmother and the 'White-and-very-worried-about-the-nation' backlash most graphically embodied in Pauline Hanson and her One Nation movement.' Such linkage is replicable both within this author's family experience and the wider Aboriginal community. Self-constructions of 'Whiteness' by non-Anglo 'others' involves conscious or unconscious pursuance of strategies involving consonance with views Hage characterizes as 'fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society'. Potential exists for significant personal and social costs to be incurred. Larbalestier's 'imagined space of 'white Australia ", her core of (White) Australian identity, can only be occupied by 'others' through significant behavioural self-censoring and cognitive morphing. Read estimates 100,000 Australians of Aboriginal descent either are denied or deny their Aboriginality. This paper postulates the existence of a phenomenon of 'strategic Whiteness'. It articulates modes through which 'others' pursue such a strategy and explores the complexity of the possible consequences for health and well- being.'  (Publication abstract)