Encountering the Other: one Indigenous Australian woman's experience of racialisation on a Saturday night

Abstract

This article narrates the complex ways in which race and gender play out for the author, an Indigenous woman, when she encounters a man one Saturday night. It highlights how as a ‘raced’ being she finds herself placed in the position of the Other even whilst attempting to enact resistance and agency. The encounter raises questions about discourses of race and the impact on Indigenous women when blackness and whiteness converge, and reveals how whiteness is privileged. The narrative unpacks the nuances of desire, blackness and whiteness and how interracial relationships in Australia are performed in everyday life viewed through the lens of an Aboriginal woman.