Racism and Xenophobia Theme Analysis

Remembering Babylon tells the story of a Commonwealth colonial settlement living in the remote Australian bush (wilderness) near Queensland in the mid-19th century. The white settlers fear the Aboriginal Australians—whom they refer to and regard as “black” in comparison with their own whiteness—and view them as fundamentally different beings from themselves. However, those conceptions are challenged by the arrival of Gemmy, a white man who was raised by an Aboriginal community, speaks their language, and follows their customs. Although the settlers believe that white people are inherently separate from and superior to the Aboriginal peoples, Gemmy’s presence and the conduct of the white settlers suggests not only that the notion of racial superiority is foolish, but also that the hard distinction between “black” people and white people is similarly meaningless.

The settlers’ racism is primarily based upon their fear of people they do not understand, demonstrating how xenophobia (fear of others, especially those different from oneself) can lead to vicious racism. Upon first seeing Gemmy, Lachlan, the McIvor’s Scottish nephew who lives with them in Australia, immediately assumes that they are being raided by Aboriginal tribesmen because Gemmy has dark skin and is dressed like an Aboriginal person. However, looking closer, Lachlan can see that Gemmy’s hair, though filthy, is actually blonde, and his skin is merely tanned dark by the sun, indicating that he is white. Even so, Gemmy’s speech frightens Lachlan, since it is the Aboriginal people’s language and “the idea of a language he did not know scared him,” suggesting that the mysteriousness of it is what makes such speech frightening. What’s more, Lachlan and the white settlers are largely ignorant of the indigenous people who have lived in the territory for hundreds of years, which is demonstrated by the fact that Gemmy is able to teach Lachlan and Mr. Frazer, the botanist, basic aspects of survival and foraging that the Aboriginal tribes hold as common knowledge. This ignorance adds both to the Gemmy’s mysteriousness and to the settlers’ fear of the Aboriginal people, since they know nothing about how the indigenous people live, what they think, or where they travel. The settlers’ fear that anything may occur suggests that their racism, though vicious, is based primarily in their fear of the unknown. This is reinforced by the fact that Lachlan and even Jock McIvor—the father of the McIvor family—gradually grow less fearful of Aboriginal people as they become comfortable around Gemmy, since through him, the indigenous tribes of Australia feel just a little less unknown and unfamiliar.

Although most of the settlers maintain that white people are inherently superior to the “black” Aboriginal Australians, the settlers themselves actually end up perpetrating many of the behaviors for which they criticize Aboriginal people. For example, the settlers despise the Aboriginal Australians for their supposedly superstitious minds, which seem to be the mark of uncivilized people. However, in their fear, the white settlers become superstitious themselves. When a farmhand spies Gemmy speaking with two Aboriginal men and tells his boss, he untruthfully adds that they gave Gemmy a stone. The settlers’ minds run wild imagining what the powers of such an item—which doesn’t even exist—could be. Jock, in frustration, exclaims, “We’re no’ scared o stones. Ah thought that was the difference between us and them.” As Jock recognizes, if rationality and the lack of superstition are marks of civilized or superior people, then the settlers themselves have no claim to such superiority. The white settlers fear that the indigenous people will someday arrive to attack them, due to their supposedly “savage and fearsome” nature. However, the settlers never suffer any violence from the Aboriginal community. Rather, the settlers commit violence amongst themselves: a small mob abducts Gemmy from the McIvors’ home and attacks him, and Jock fears that the settlers will attack the Aboriginal people as well and start a war of retribution. Yet again, in their fear, the white settlers prove themselves to be much more savage than the “black” Aboriginal people, flatly disproving any notion that the white settlers are superior for being more civilized or peaceable.

Furthermore, the novel suggests that distinctions between races might be more a matter of perception than a matter of genuine difference. As a white European who is raised by a “black” Aboriginal tribe and adopts their customs, Gemmy challenges the notion that there is any true distinction between white and black human beings. Most of the settlers try to maintain a hard categorical separation between black and white people, and Gemmy’s very presence thus confounds them. In his first days in the settlement, the settlers are unsure of what to call Gemmy, since aside from his behavior and scant English, he is obviously white; he is eventually referred to as the “white black man.” However, even after he lives with the McIvors for several months, many of the settlers are still inclined to view him as a black person, since he does not fit their concept of a white person. That such a person can exist contradicts their racist and absolutist notions of black people and white people. But Mr. Frazer, rather than being bothered by Gemmy’s hybrid status, is encouraged by it, seeing him as a “forerunner” of what all the settlers should someday become, after they learn to adapt to the Australian wilderness and live from the land as the Aboriginal Australians do. Mr. Frazer’s interest in Gemmy’s position between the races further suggests that the division the settlers perceive between black people and white people has little meaning, since both groups of people are ultimately interchangeable as human beings.