ABSTRACT
And yet, even now, if I get into an argument about the Australian Black ‘Question’ (it is still a question) with someone from Darwin or Western Australia, or even with someone who has just visited there, at a deep and instinctual level I am effaced by the voice of authentic experience. This familiar, personal difficulty can be translated into the god-like question: who is it that is to name the racist? If it is also true that wearing a badge proclaiming ‘I am not a racist’ might well, in its Manichean assertion of differences, signify ‘I am a racist’, the difficulty is further compounded. In academic terms, this is the problem of the speaking position, of the postcolonial critic and the ethnographer alike. It is not a problem that arises in, nor is restricted to, the academy.
