The name is absent

349

the urban people. Another group are the fringe dwellers living
in shanties on the outskirts of towns.

The Aborigines in the survey live in an urban situation. In the

1
words of the Perth magistrate quoted above , they live in normal
houses (if often substandard), with normal addresses and locate
themselves in urban society.

While traditional Aboriginal society is classless, urban Aborigines
may be seen to be integrated into white-society to the extent that
they reflect class attitudes.∙ Natasha McNamara is quoted by
fl

Gilbert (1977:107) as saying that ’’Adelaide has a middle-class
Aboriginal population which is, basically, I should imagine, somewhat
like the middle-class white people”.

Such Aboriginal people would, understandably, view those Aborigines
who are less acculturated as a different class and reproduce the same
response of distancing as is found in white society.

It is posited that the discrepancy between the stereotyping of
the Aboriginal self and Aborigines in general can be explained in terms
of distancing contexted into the research on social class. Davies (1969)
for example, points out that in locating oneself in a class, those
in the class nearest were rejected.

It is posited that mythologies about an ’Aboriginal way of life*
obscure the fact that Aboriginal people do allocate themselves, however
tentatively, to different class groups.

It may be expected that Aboriginal people will locate themselves
in a world view of a class society and wish to distance themselves
from those immediately below them.

20.82 (iv) Aborigines stereotype ’Australians*

Many Aborigines admit freely (e.g.,in Tatz, 1975:10, 20;. in Gilbert,
1977:91) that they are anti-white, that they too are racist, and
have a negative stereotype of whites.

¹See p. 120 above.

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