Good White People: Settler Colonial Anxiety and the Endurance of Racism

The focus of this essay is the racialised political emotions of \u27good white people\u27. I examine what Berlant names \u27public feelings\u27, focusing on the way emotional states are part of communal experiences. My interest is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples\u27 repeated calls for mainstream Australia to genuinely engage with political and cultural difference, and listen. Such claims often make \u27good white people\u27 anxious. They protest, insist they are trying but don\u27t know what to do. Good white people\u27s anxiety is much more telling than the stories that are told about bad racists. Thus, it is a productive site to analyse the cultural dynamics of settler-Indigenous relations, and to understand how race structures Australian culture and the endurance of racism