The Big Slap: Mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university graduates and the myth of meritocracy

Abstract

The Big Slap is a decolonised constructivist grounded theory study that explains the meaning of university education to mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university graduates in the context of age, life-stage, history, culture, socioeconomic status, race and place. It situates these meanings within the larger social structures that shaped the graduates’ lives and pays particular but not exclusive attention to the experiences of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university graduates who lived and worked in remote regions of Australia. This study was developed in response to the identification of a defeatist discourse in the peer-reviewed and grey literature around the potential societal worth of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students. We noted an especially negative representation in the grey literature around the aspirations, capabilities and potential of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from remote regions. This discourse was starkly at odds with the positive representations of younger Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students from regional and urban areas, and mature-age university students in general. It also conflicted with my experiential knowledge of the characteristics and contributions of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university graduates, many of whom lived and worked in remote regions. The findings of this study provide a far more nuanced appraisal of the potential and actual societal worth of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students and graduates. They also challenge the ideological construct of Australia as a ‘post-racial’ society. These findings produced The Big Slap substantive grounded theory, which explains the relationship between two dynamic, interrelated and antithetical forces: the transformative potential of university education for mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander graduates, and the ways in which structural racism in the graduates’ workplaces and communities acted to suppress that potential while protecting white innocence and preserving white power and privilege. The realisation that the meritocratic ideal promised by university education was largely a myth destabilised the graduates’ critical hope and disrupted their optimistic orientation toward a changed future. Nonetheless, the graduates demonstrated a determined resistance to the oppressive project of structural racism. They retained their transformative potential and remained committed to deploying it to the extent possible in the service of family and community wellbeing. The Big Slap offers a unique contribution to the fields of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university education, graduate employment outcomes, and associated workplace organisational behaviour. It disrupts the defeatism in the literature around the potential societal worth of mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students, including those who live and work in remote regions of Australia. It also exposes the presence and effects of structural racism in the graduates’ workplaces and explains its relationship to pervasive and persistent global ideologies of racial superiority and inferiority. Finally, The Big Slap challenges the Australian government and non-government sectors to enact structural change that genuinely and respectfully accommodates mature-age Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students’ and graduates’ aspirations and capabilities, and potential and actual contributions to society.