Introduction

How are we to teach ‘race’ in the context of a settler colony that is structured by the grammar of racialization and whose institutions refuse to confront these uncomfortable foundations? The question, in this instance, relates specifically to the settler colony of Australia, where the enduring national mythology is derived from an image of the happy- go- lucky convict who, through hard work and mateship, forges a new society in a hostile colonial outpost. The persistent idea of a nation defined by the promise of ‘fair go’ is at odds with the history of invasion and occupation that defines the project of settler colonialism. The establishment of the colony on top of the unbroken sovereignty of First Nations is an act of dispossession that relies upon the (re)production of racial regimes that mutate over time in order to legitimate and uphold the authority of the settler state. As the historian Patrick Wolfe (2016: 33) famously wrote, ‘invasion is a structure, not an event’. It is a structure that produces shifting grammars of racialization, progressing from genocidal violence to forms of conditional recognition.

In the contemporary moment, the reproduction of the settler state involves the escalation of attacks on principles of anti- racism that increasingly take education as a primary battleground. A culture war is raging, and it has implications for the future of sovereign First Nations struggles, the safety and wellbeing of negatively racialized people and the perpetuation of racialized exploitation. One response to the politicization of education has been a retreat from anti- racism into the institutionalized frameworks of diversity and inclusion, which often focus on representational rather than material redress. Another has been a retreat from critically engaging with race and racism beyond the reductive notion that racism is an expression of individual prejudice or bias. This chapter reflects on Stuart Hall's (2021a) essay ‘Teaching race’ in order to consider the challenges of critically teaching about race from the settler- colonial context of Australia and in the midst of an escalating culture war. It begins by offering some coordinates for understanding the current attacks on anti- racism before historicizing this culture war in relation to the longue durée of settlement.