ABSTRACT
The forms of racism prevalent since the beginning of the 1980s have gained significance through their opposition to the socio-scientific objectifications of Aborigines associated with welfare interventions. Dumont argues that in the modern state biological egalitarianism is the fundamental basis for universal citizenship. The predominance of biological racism as a social discourse was closely linked to the denial of Aboriginal equality before the state. The obsessive concern amongst Europeans with levels of government assistance to Aborigines provides confirmation, while denying overt racism, that Aborigines are indeed neither capable of acting 'rationally' nor of having equivalent rights and responsibilities. The issue of racism, as understood by such writers, is in terms of an artificial barrier to individual Aboriginal mobility exacerbated by rural decline. The change from political and legalistic control to the economic coercions of a declining rural economy also changed the emphasis and meaning of racism.
