Fighting Words: Writing About Race

With an open heart and inquiring intellect, Raymond Evans sets out to uncover a past not studied in the school books of his youth. Growing up in the 1950s, he lived in a community devoid of Aboriginal presence. It was an enclave of Welsh migrant families, with all the rituals and traditions of a faraway "Home". His evolving historical consciousness was fired by the need to connect with these shadowy absences and to engage with his adopted homeland. Interwoven with his personal journey is a revealing selection of race relations histories, which cover a wide arena from the Aboriginal/European conflicts of colonial Queensland to the anti-Chinese riots of 1888 and civilian internment during World War I. Evans also moves beyond frontier conflict into the long period of repressive government control of Aboriginal lives. In writing on race, gender and labour relations he illustrates how selective history can be by omitting the contribution of Aboriginal labourers, men and women. These form a critical bridge to understanding the complexities of race relations today.