Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Hostages to Whiteness

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Handbook of Critical Whiteness

  • 89 Accesses

Abstract

Hostage syndrome is understood as a psychological attachment developed due to fear or other circumstances that may elude the consciousness of those who are held captive. Earlier reference to hostage theory often was restricted to being held prisoner against one’s will. Elsewhere a broader context has been described to illuminate captive, psychologically dependent or dominating relationships, or influential ideology. In Australia, colonizers of British heritage committed unfathomable atrocities against the First Nations people while seeking to establish their “superiority” and their legitimacy to claim ownership. In Australia and elsewhere it is an imperative to challenge ongoing oppression and the impacts of White master narratives in order to bring about critical social change. Yet those with colonizer heritage may be held captive by a Whitewashed history, in part because facing the truth might feel like a considerable disloyalty and a threat to their socialized White identity. Equally, subsequent generations of Australian migrant bystanders have benefitted by turning a blind eye to First Nations’ peoples suffering, dispossession, and disempowerment. In this chapter, while recognizing some pitfalls, I ponder whether introducing hostage theory when critically examining past atrocities, pervasive White privilege, and the ongoing undermining of Indigenous knowledges might enable learners to more easily deconstruct their White captive mind.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adorjan M, Christensen T, Kelly B, Pawluch D (2012) Stockholm syndrome as vernacular resource. Sociol Q 53:454–474

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alatas S (1974) The captive mind and creative development. Int Soc Sci J 26(4):691–700

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkinson J (2002) Trauma trails. Spinifex Press, Melbourne

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkinson J, Nelson J, Atkinson C (2010) Trauma, transgenerational transfer and effects on community wellbeing. In: Purdie N, Dudgeon P, Walker R (eds) Working together: aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice. Australian Department of Health and Ageing, Canberra, pp 135–144

    Google Scholar 

  • Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) (2012) UN Declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1

  • Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2018) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Stolen Generations aged 50 and over. Author

    Google Scholar 

  • Baldwin J (2010) The cross of redemption. Uncollected writings. Pantheon Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Baskin C (2011) Strong helpers’ teachings. Canadian Scholars’ Press, Toronto

    Google Scholar 

  • Bessarab D (2012) The supervisory yarn: embedding indigenous epistemology in supervision. In: Bennett B, Green S, Gilbert S, Bessarab D (eds) Our voices. Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander social work. Palgrave Macmillan, South Yarra, pp 73–92

    Google Scholar 

  • Bottoms T (2013) Conspiracy of silence. Queensland frontier killing times. Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest

    Google Scholar 

  • Carpinschi A (2020) Captive mind syndrome and the society of the spectacle. J Intercult Manag Ethics 3(4):51–61

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen S (2001) States of denial. Polity Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Crudup C, Fike C, McLoone C (2021) De-centering Whiteness through revisualizing theory in social work education, practice, and scholarship. Adv Soc Work 21(2/3):654–671

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dominelli L (2018) Anti-racist social work, 4th edn. Palgrave, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Doosje B, Branscombe N, Spears R, Manstead A (1998) Guilt by association: when one’s group has a negative history. J Pers Soc Psychol 75(4):872–886

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fourmile HL (1990) Possession is nine-tenths of the law - and don't aboriginal people know it! COMA Bulletin 23:57–67

    Google Scholar 

  • Frankenberg R (1993) White women, race matters: the social construction of Whiteness. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gair S (2016) Critical reflections on teaching challenging content: do non-indigenous students ‘shoot the (White) messenger’? Reflective Pract 17(5):592–604

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gair S (2017) Pondering the colour of empathy: social work students’ engagement and reasoning on empathy, racism and activism. Br J Soc Work 47(1):162–180

    Google Scholar 

  • Giroux HA (1997) White squall: resistance and the pedagogy of Whiteness. Cult Stud 11(3):376–389. https://doi.org/10.1080/095023897335664

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodall J (2019) The politics of the common good. NewSouth publishing, Sydney

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon P (2004) Souls in Armour: thoughts on psychoanalysis and racism. Br J Psychother 21(2):277–298. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0118.2004.tb00209.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graham D, Rawlings E, Rigsby R (1994) Loving to survive: sexual terror, men’s violence and women’s lives. New York University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Haebich A (2007) A twilight of knowing: The Australian public and The Bringing Them Home Report. In Remember me. Commemorating the tenth anniversary of the bringing them home report. Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Inc. (SNAICC), North Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia. pp 20–22

    Google Scholar 

  • Hage G (1998) White nation. Fantasies of White supremacy in a multicultural society. Pluto Press, Sydney

    Google Scholar 

  • Haslanger S (2019) Cognition as a social skill. Australas Philos Rev 3(1):5–25

    Google Scholar 

  • Healing Foundation (2021) Supporting stolen generations, families, survivors and communities. https://healingfoundation.org.au/

  • Higgins J (2019) Giving flesh to culture: an enactivist interpretation of Haslanger. Australas Philos Rev 3(1):81–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hollinsworth D (2016) Unsettling Australian settler supremacy: combating resistance in university aboriginal studies. Race Ethn Educ 19(2):412–432. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2014.911166

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hooks B (1996) Killing rage. Ending racism. Penguin books, Great Britain

    Google Scholar 

  • Huggins J (1998) Sister girl. University of Queensland Press, St Lucia

    Google Scholar 

  • Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997) Bringing them home: report of the national inquiry into the separation of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Author, Sydney. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen/

    Google Scholar 

  • Janis I (1991) Groupthink. In: Griffin E (ed) A first look at communication theory. McGraw Hill, New York, pp 235–246

    Google Scholar 

  • Leonardo Z (2004) The colour of supremacy: beyond the discourse of White privilege. Educ Philos Theory 36(2):137–152

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Libesman T, Briskman L (2018) Indigenous Australians: continuity of colonialism in law and social work. In: Rice S, Day A, Briskman L (eds) Social work in the shadow of the law. Federation Press, Leichhardt

    Google Scholar 

  • Lockard CA (2016) Unhappy confessions: the temptation of admitting to White privilege. Feminist Philos Quart 2(2):1–20. https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2016.2.2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maiese M (2021) Mind-shaping, enactivism, and ideological oppression. Topoi 41(2):341–354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09770-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martin AM (1882, October) Answers. The Chautauquan. Chautauqua Liter Scien Circle 3:355

    Google Scholar 

  • McGregor R (1997) Imagined destinies. Aboriginal Australians and the doomed race theory, 1880–1939. Melbourne University Press, Victoria

    Google Scholar 

  • McIntosh P (2003) White privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack. In: Plous S (ed) Understanding prejudice and discrimination. McGraw-Hill, New York, pp 191–196

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer JH, Land R (2005) Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2) : epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. High Educ 49:373–388. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-004-6779-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moreton-Robinson A (2000) Talkin’ up to the White woman: indigenous women and feminism. University of Queensland Press, Brisbane

    Google Scholar 

  • Muller L (2014) A theory for indigenous Australian health and human service work. Allen and Unwin, Sydney

    Google Scholar 

  • Namnyak M, Tufton N, Szekely R, Toal M, Worboys S, Sampson E (2008) ‘Stockholm syndrome’: psychiatric diagnosis or urban myth? Acta Psychiatr Scand 117(1):4–11

    Google Scholar 

  • Neill R (2002) White out. Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest

    Google Scholar 

  • Nunn K (1993) Rights held hostage: race, ideology and the peremptory challenge. Harvard Civil Rights Civil Libert Law Rev 28(1):63–117

    Google Scholar 

  • Oliver M (2021) James Baldwin and ‘the lie of Whiteness’: toward an ethic of culpability, complicity and confession. Religion 12(6):447. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12060447

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Onwuzuruigbo I (2018) Indigenising eurocentric sociology: the captive mind and five decades of sociology in Nigeria. Current Sociol Rev 66(6):831–848

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pascoe B (2014) Dark emu. Magabala Books, Broome

    Google Scholar 

  • Patton L, Haynes C (2020) Dear White people: reimagining Whiteness in the struggle for racial equity. Change: Magazine High Learn 52(2):41–45

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perera S, Pugliese J (2011) Death in a dry riverbed: black life, White property, parched justice. Somatechnics 1(1):65–86

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reynolds H (1987) The law of the land. Penguin Books, Ringwood

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson PH, Holcomb L (2021) Indoctrination and social influence as a defense to crime: are we responsible for who we are? Faculty Scholarship Penn Law 85(3):2153. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2153

    Google Scholar 

  • Roediger D (1994) Towards the abolition of Whiteness. Verso, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Sarra C (2011) Strong and smart. Towards a pedagogy of emancipation. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Savage D, Gair S (2020) Confronting the past so we do not disempower families in the present: reflections on use of a digitised case study. Adv Soc Work Welf Edu 22(1):23–33

    Google Scholar 

  • Simko C (2021) From legacy to memory: reckoning with racial violence at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Ann Am Acad Political Soc Sci 649(1):157–171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smallwood G (2011) Human rights and first Australians’ wellbeing unpublished. PhD thesis. James Cook University

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanley J, Goddard C (1997) Failures in child protection: a case study. Child Abuse Rev 6(1):46–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stanner WEH (1968) After the dreaming: black and White Australians – an anthropologist’s view. In: The Boyer lectures 1968. The Australian Broadcasting Commission, Sydney

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia

    Susan Gair

Authors
  1. Susan Gair
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Susan Gair .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sydney School of Education and Social Work, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Jioji Ravulo

  2. School of Health and Society, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Katarzyna Olcoń

  3. Translational Health Research Institute, Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism Translational Research Unit, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Tinashe Dune

  4. School of Health Sciences, Translational Health Research Institute, Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism Translational Research Unit, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Alex Workman

  5. College of Health Sciences, VinUniversity, Hanoi, Vietnam

    Pranee Liamputtong

Section Editor information

  1. School of Health and Society, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia

    Katarzyna Olcoń

  2. School of Health Sciences, Translational Health Research Institute, Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism Translational Research Unit, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Tinashe Dune Ph.D

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Gair, S. (2023). Hostages to Whiteness. In: Ravulo, J., Olcoń, K., Dune, T., Workman, A., Liamputtong, P. (eds) Handbook of Critical Whiteness. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1612-0_30-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1612-0_30-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-19-1612-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-19-1612-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Social SciencesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation