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Exploring the "American Obsession" Down Under: Teaching Civil Rights History in Australia
Timothy J. Minchin
| Race may be, as Studs Terkel claimed, the "American obsession," but it is an obsession that many foreigners clearly share.1 In recent years, scholars based outside the United States have published much of the best scholarship on civil rights and race relations, and the subject plays a central role in the teaching of U.S. history abroad, particularly in Great Britain.2 Much of this topic's appeal for both undergraduates and teachers may reflect how it exposes the gap between America's profession of democratic ideals and their realization. The subject also has particular relevance for Australia, a country confronting its own long history of white domination of its indigenous people, although some students are more comfortable critiquing America's record rather than examining their own society. Nevertheless, the interest in learning about civil rights history remains, and the concept of race provides a defining theme that can be used to focus broad courses on American history. When teaching American history from afar, breadth of coverage is particularly important, as students are unlikely to have the background knowledge that allows U.S. universities to run more specialized courses. |
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The teacher of American history in Australia has a number of advantages, and the discipline has been a core part of the humanities curriculum for most of the post–World War II period. Like many students around the globe, those in Australia are interested in learning about the most powerful country on earth, but Australians have a particularly close bond with the citizens of the nation that has acted as the guarantor of their security since World War II. Despite the geographic distance between the two countries, they share much in common, including a similar territorial size and a history of settlement by migrants. Today, they are open and culturally tolerant societies, and are characterized by informality—features that many visitors, particularly from Europe, find refreshing. In addition, although both the American dream and the Australian dream are nebulous concepts, they ultimately articulate a similar vision of upward mobility and property ownership. In both countries, moreover, white settlers have been more able to achieve this mobility than nonwhites, although in recent years Asian migrants to both countries have achieved success.3 |
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The cultural influence of the United States on Australia is hard to exaggerate. American content dominates commercial television networks, and the popularity of Hollywood movies dwarfs that of the small domestic film industry. Australians generally regard Americans favorably because of the close relationship that the two allies forged during the Pacific campaign of World War II. Since then, a secure bond has endured. Most European countries balked at joining America's military ventures in Vietnam and Iraq, but the Australian government participated as keenly as its American counterpart. As was the case in the United States, the Vietnam War caused acute divisions in Australian society; many young people resisted conscription and supported the antiwar movement. Still, the fundamental bond between the two countries was largely unaffected, and many disaffected Americans relocated to Australia and New Zealand during those years. While American travellers often complain that Europeans treat them with disdain or even hostility, in Australia they are likely to be welcomed with genuine affection.4 |
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