The cronulla race riots: Safety maps on an Australian beach

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 107, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 411-429

  Evers, Clifton ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950564282     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-2007-074     Document Type: Review

References (50)

1. To avoid violent confrontations, local surfers claim that if you give respect, you will get it. But that is not really true. The respect is one way because it is the local way, and hierarchy is considered the authentic or authoritative way to do things. Other ways of doing things will be tolerated, but they will not put an outsider on equal footing with the locals. This tolerance relies on the outsider being subservient to local rules and privilege. Political philosopher Preston King observes: "There is something intolerable about the concept of 'tolerance.' If one concedes or promotes a power to tolerate, one equally concedes a power not to tolerate." The locals' version of respect sets them up as legislators and guardians of their own laws and has perpetuated a very narrow sense of how things can be done. King, Toleration (London: Frank Cass, 1994), 6.
2. Ryan Barclay and Peter West, "Racism or Patriotism? An Eyewitness Account of the Cro-nulla Demonstration of 11 December 2005," People and Place 14.1 (2006): 70.
3. Paul Scott, "We Shall Fight on the Seas and the Oceans ... We Shall: Commodification, Localism, and Violence," M/C Journal 6.1 (February 2003), http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0302/05-weshallfight.php (accessed December 1, 2006).
4. Gunter Swoboda, "Tribal Pissings," in Surf Rage: A Surfer's Guide to Turning Negatives into Positives, ed. Nat Young (Angourie, Austr.: Nymbodia Press, 2000), 74-84.
5. Gail Mason, The Spectacle of Violence: Homophobia, Gender, and Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 2002), 84. Hereafter cited parenthetically by page number as Spectacle.
6. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique on the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).
7. These groups of men were referred to as "gangs" by locals the media, and politicians, even though they were mostly simple friendship groups. The same people and institutions racialized these groups to confirm their status as "dangerous." Ethnic profiling and criminalizing of groups of nonwhite men is common in the Australian media. See Scott Poynting et al.. Bin Laden in the Suburbs: Criminalizing the Arab Other (Sydney: Institute of Criminology, 2004).
8. Damien Murphy, "Thugs Ruled the Streets, and the Mob Sang Waltzing Matilda," Sydney Morning Herald, December 12, 2005.
9. See also Neil McMahon, "A Lesson in Beach Etiquette, Shire-Style," Sydney Morning Herald, December 10-11, 2005.
10. Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 75-76.
11. Douglas Booth explains that the rockers and bikers represented working-class youth solidarity against the middle-class sensibilities of the surfers. The rockers were resentful of the affluence and individualism favored by the surfers. Booth, Australian Beach Culture: The History of Sun, Sand, and Surf (London: Frank Cass, 2001).
12. James Forrest and Kevin Dunn, "Racism and Intolerance in Eastern Australia: A Geographic Perspective," Australian Geographer 37.2 (2006): 167-86.
13. Robert Drewe, introduction, The Picador Book of the Beach, ed. Drewe (Sydney: Picador, 1993), 6.
14. Keith Moore, "The Beach, Young Australians, and the Challenge to Egalitarianism in the 1960's" (paper presented at the "Social Change in the 21st Century" conference, Centre for Social Change Research, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, October 27, 2006).
15. One of the most celebrated images that captures this racial vision of the beach is Charles Meere's 1940 painting Australian Beach Pattern. Begun at the end of Australia's 1938 sesquicentennial celebration of the founding of Australia as a British colony, the painting depicts a "clutter of well-toned, super-race bodies" reflecting the ideals of fitness and physical beauty playing on the beach. The Museum of Modern Art in Heide, The Beach (Bulleen, VIC: The Museum of Modern Art in Heide, 1994), 32.
16. For a discussion of the Australian beach and eugenics, see Grant Rodwell, "The Sense of Victorious Struggle: The Eugenic Dynamic in Australian Popular Surf-Culture, 1900-50," Journal of Australian Studies 62 (1999): 56-63.
17. Meaghan Morris, "On the Beach," in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg et al. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 450-78.
18. Juliana Engberg, "Flotsam and Jetsam," The Beach, 19-26.
19. Suvendrini Perera, "Race, Terror, Sydney, December 2005," Borderlands 5.1 (May 2006), www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol5no1- 2006/perera-raceterror.htm (accessed December 12, 2006). Hereafter cited parenthetically as "Race, Terror."
20. Katherine Betts and Ernest Healy, "Lebanese Muslims in Australia and Social Disadvantage," People and Place 14.1 (2006): 24-41.
21. After the event in Cronulla, many young men from the area permanently tattooed the Southern Cross, the Australian flag, and the zip code of Cronulla (2230) on their bodies. Alice Brennan, JJJ Radio, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 27, 2006.
22. Karen Kissane, "Latest Outfit Flags Trend in Patriotism," Age (Melbourne), January 26, 2006.
23. "Cronulla Mob Attacks Beachgoers," ABC Online News, December 11, 2005, www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1528544.htm. Murphy, "Thugs Ruled the Streets."
24. Scott Poynting, "What Caused the Cronulla Riot?" Race and Class 48.1 (2006): 89. Hereafter cited parenthetically by page number as "What Caused."
25. Clifton Evers, "Men Who Surf," Cultural Studies Review 10.1 (2004): 27-41.
26. Caroline Overington and Drew Warne-Smith, "Countdown to Conflict," Australian (Sydney), December 17, 2005.
27. Kay Saunders, "The Lifesaver as National Icon," in Australian Legend and Its Discontent, ed. Richard Nile (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2000), 221-33.
28. Sean Hayes and Steven Kearney, "Call to Arms Transmitted by Text," Sydney Morning Herald, December 13, 2005.
29. Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity, 1688-1980 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1981), 155.
30. Ian Moffit, "March Past of an Image," Walkabout 39 (1973): 50.
31. Jock Collins, "Ethnic Gangs, Ethnic Youth, and the Cronulla Beach Riots" (paper presented at the "National Symposium Responding to Cronulla: Rethinking Multiculturalism" conference, Multi-Faith Centre, Griffith University, Nathan, February 21, 2006).
32. Kenneth Nguyen, "Jones Incited Cronulla Violence on Air," Sydney Morning Herald, April 11, 2007;
33. and David Marr, "One-Way Radio Plays by Its Own Rules," Sydney Morning Herald, December 13, 2005.
34. Jonathan Pearlman, "Text Messages, Emails Continue to Stir Poison," Sydney Morning Herald, December 14, 2005;
35. and Gerard Goggin, "SMS Riot: Transmitting Race on a Sydney Beach, December 2005," M/C Journal 9.1 (2006), http://journal.media-culture.org. au/0603/01-goggin.php (accessed December 1, 2006).
36. "War of Words," Sydney Morning Herald, December 12, 2005.
37. Gender theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explains that homosociality is a term for the way heterosexual men will show physical affection and emotional intimacy for one another, while rejecting homosexual desire. In a homosocial setting, the male body is protected from homoeroticism by a plethora of rules about how and where to look. Sedgwick argues that women are used as objects of exchange to allay any anxiety about male-male bonding and to prevent any blurring of homosociality with homoerotica. Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
38. Ghassan Hage, "Racism Is Not Simply Black and White," Online Opinion: Australia's E-Journal of Social and Political Debate (2006), www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp? article=4577 (accessed June 20, 2006).
39. Randa Kattan, "Kid Gloves Syndrome," Australian (Sydney), January 28, 2006.
40. René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer (London: Athlone Press, 1978).
41. Jock Collins, "Ethnic Crime and Cultural Diversity: Perceptions and Experiences of Gangs, Crime, and Community Safety in Multicultural Sydney," International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities, and Nations 3A (2003): 1-25.
42. "Scott," interviewed by Liz Jackson, "Riot and Revenge," Four Corners, Australian Broadcasting Commission, March 13, 2006.
43. Jackson, "Riot and Revenge."
44. Murphy, "Thugs Ruled the Streets."
45. Roland Haddad, "Treat Us Like Dogs and We'll Bite Back," Sydney Morning Herald, December 13, 2005.
46. Since the riots in December, many families from non-Anglo-Australian backgrounds have been too scared to return to Cronulla Beach. Instead they favor Brighton-le-Sands, a neighboring beach that might as well be on another planet. Brighton is not a surf beach and is far more racially and ethnically diverse than Cronulla. Sharon Verghis, "Welcome to Cronulla - Unless You'd Fit in Better at Brighton," Sydney Morning Herald, December 13, 2005.
47. John Kerin and Nick Leys, "We're Not a Bunch of Racists, PM Says," Australian (Sydney), December 13, 2005.
48. John Howard, "The Mob Violence Does Not Mean We Are a Racist Nation," Australian (Sydney), December 13, 2005.
49. See "Race, Terror";
50. and Nick McKenzie et al., "Win Hearts and Minds in Terrorism Fight: Nixon," Sydney Morning Herald, August 25, 2007.