Racial complaint and sovereign divergence: the case of Australia's first Indigenous ophthalmologist

Abstract

Abstract This is a reflective piece that examines the nature of racial complaint with reference to Dr Kris Rallah-Baker's concerns about the racism that characterised his medical education. It will further examine the anti-racist campaign that sprung up in support of Rallah-Baker with a view to illustrating the limits of conventional critical race theory in understanding the course of events. Using the work of Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Gramsci and Stuart Hall, it will be argued that the Rallah-Baker case illustrates that Australian hegemonic formations can never quite command total legitimacy because sovereign formations, anti-racist in outlook, erupt with a frequency and facticity that lay bare the conceit of settler-colonialism. In so doing the paper will work towards an understanding of the critical Indigenous/race paradigm that goes beyond critical race insights borne of other places and experiences. As will be seen, what followed Rallah-Baker's complaint, the campaign that supported him and the concessions finally won was not, as critical race theory is wont to claim, a case simply of ‘interest convergence’; rather it was, I propose, an example of ‘sovereign divergence’.