Book review of "Beyond white guilt: the real challenge for black-white relations in Australia" by Sarah Maddison, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Abstract

[Extract] The compelling insight behind Sarah Maddison's book is her contention that improvement in settler-Indigenous relations, and in the lives of Indigenous people, require more than mere legislative or institutional reform. A change of attitude and feeling on the part of settler Australians is necessary. This is not a novel insight. It has been asserted by moral reformers since the beginning of the colonisation of this country - indeed, since the establishment of comparable colonies of settlement in America and the Pacific. Those earlier generations of moral reformers were typically driven by a devout sense of Christian duty. Maddison's morality, by contrast, is secular, articulated in the language of human rights, equality and decolonisation. Yet, even more than her religiously-driven predecessors, Maddison is obsessed with guilt.