Al-Natour, Ryan --- "'Of Middle Eastern Appearance' is a Flawed Racial Profiling Descriptor" [2017] CICrimJust 17; (2017) 29(2) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 107

---

‘Of Middle Eastern Appearance’ is a Flawed Racial Profiling Descriptor

Ryan Al-Natour^[*]

Abstract

Arab Australian communities and social science academics have argued that the racial descriptor ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ increases anti-Arab racism in Australia. These stakeholders argue this descriptor is heavily racialised, gendered, criminalised and inaccurately racially profiles Arabs as Muslims with a range of phenotypical characteristics. Identifying the flawed nature of this racial profiling descriptor, this article argues that this inaccuracy enables a range of discourses attempting to legitimise and undermine anti-Arab racism. The Cronulla pogrom of 2005 is examined as a case study that details these discourses. Ultimately, this article points out how this descriptor produces a number of paradoxes, limitations and unanswered questions common in attempts to racially profile Arab Australia.

Keywords: racial profiling – racism – Middle Eastern – anti-Arab – phenotypes – Cronulla pogrom – Australia

Introduction

In Paula Abood’s (2000) film Of Middle Eastern Appearance, a police officer questions a woman about alleged gang activity in a South West Sydney street. The following dialogue is exchanged:

Police Officer: Were they of Middle Eastern appearance?

Woman: What does Middle Eastern look like?

Police Officer: Well, what are you? Greek?

Woman: No.

Police Officer: Italian?

Woman: No.

Police Officer: Maltese?

Woman: No.

Police Officer: Spanish?

Woman: No.

Police Officer: Turkish?

Woman: No.

Police Officer: You’re not Aboriginal, are ya?

Woman: I’m Arab.

Police Officer: Arab? You don’t look Arab! (Abood 2000)

As ‘an ideologically constructed category’ (Cunneen et al. 2015, p. 180), ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ is a racial profiling descriptor used by police, the media and the general public in reporting suspects. It commonly references dark-complexioned features such as olive ‘tanned’ skin tone and dark-coloured hair, where a person’s ancestry is correlated with his or her appearance (El Khouri 2012). The aforementioned scene depicts the common Arab criticisms of this descriptor. The officer struggles to racially profile Marah (the female character), drawing upon numerous European ancestral descriptors and even questioning whether Marah is ‘Aboriginal’. The interaction captures how ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ is imposed onto a body, whereby a police officer fails to ‘read’ Marah’s racial identity before engaging in a racial profiling guessing game. The irony is that the officer, attempting to successfully profile youths ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’, is unable to identify the Middle Eastern ancestry of the woman he is questioning. The exchange depicted the common experiences of some Arab Australians who challenge a stereotypical mould in which non-Arabs struggle to place them. ‘Of Middle Eastern appearance’ is a broad term used to denote how non-Arab Australians classify people whose ancestry originates from the Middle East. As this article shows, these attempts usually fail. The following extracts exemplify some common challenges of racially profiling people of Middle Eastern heritage:

[A]n Aboriginal teenager tragically killed by a train in Western Sydney in the last year or so. His family were not notified for about a week because the police were looking for a ‘Lebanese’ family: wrong appearance this time (Poynting 2001, p. 110, original emphasis).

How can people from over 20 different counties share one homogenous physical appearance? (Jabbour 2001, p. 2)

Call them Scottish? ... Mahmoud and Mahamed ... two [red-haired fair-skinned] Lebanese Australians who don’t fit easily into a racial stereotype (Wainwright 2006).

Within the Australian context, scholars and members of Australia’s Arab communities have challenged the accuracy and usefulness of this descriptor in identifying individuals. Since the 1990s, scholars have identified how this racial descriptor is prominent in crime reporting, whereas white suspects are not racialised in the media (Dunn et al. 2004; Jabbour 2001; Manning 2006a, 2006b; Poynting et al. 2004; White 2007; Collins et al. 2000; El Khouri 2012; Fraser et al. 1997; Warner 2004). While New South Wales (‘NSW’) police and various conservative commentators defend using the descriptor ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’, various discourses still contest its accuracy, revealing it to be explicitly redundant in accurately identifying a person’s ancestral heritage. This article investigates how this inaccurate descriptor enables the denial and undermining of racism against Arab Australia. It argues that this public racial profiling of a hybrid Arab/Lebanese/Muslim identity in Australia, achieved through the racial descriptor ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’, reveals a number of limitations and contradictory flaws. These limitations and paradoxes enable commentators to criminalise Arab Australia as violent and misogynistic while simultaneously denying racism.

The 2005 Cronulla pogrom is an excellent case study that exemplifies how racial descriptors are fluid and produce flawed characterisations that racially profile (usually male) Arab Australians as ‘Muslim’/‘Lebanese’ with particular phenotypical features. This article contextualises and explores how this descriptor shapes the experiences of various individuals, both Arab and non-Arab. The second and third sections describe the Cronulla pogrom and examine the significance of this descriptor within this pogrom’s context. Fourth, the article reveals how this racial profiling works in narratives that undermine or deny racism explicit within the pogrom. Finally, a number of specific unanswered questions, limitations and paradoxes that strengthen the view that ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ is a flawed racial descriptor are discussed.

‘Of Middle Eastern appearance’ as a policing, media and public racial profiling descriptor

The discussion of the Arab Other (Collins et al. 2000; Poynting et al. 2004) and Said’s (1978) Orientalism is significant in charting ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ as a racial profiling descriptor. Poynting et al. (2004) identified how policing and media stakeholders emphasise ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ in crime reporting, contributing to the formation of the Arab Other who ‘has little to do with the lived experience of those of Arab or Middle Eastern or Muslim origin, and everything to do with a host of social anxieties which overlap and feed upon each other in a series of moral panics’ (p. 3). Pugliese (2003) draws on Said’s Orientalism in challenging this racial descriptor and argues the terminology ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ exemplifies how Orientalist ideals are imposed on bodies. Pugliese (2003) critically reflects on his Italian heritage and his personal experiences of being profiled as a range of ethnicities in different contexts, observing a ‘paradoxical formulation’: ‘I am of Middle Eastern appearance and I am not Middle Eastern’. This racial descriptor enables the thematisation of bodies that do not always include peoples whose ancestries originate directly from the Middle East. ‘Of Middle Eastern appearance’ is produced by a person’s reading of another’s body, similar to the way Hall (Hall & Jhally 1996) discusses how racial identity evolves from a process of reading the body as a text, whereby conclusions are made regarding a person’s physical appearance. Pugliese (2003) discusses how the term concerns a racialised, essentialised figure that people use to categorise entire communities. Pugliese (2003) argues:

The figure of Middle Eastern appearance is founded on paradox. The paradox of this geographically named and situated identity, of this identity that assumes its conditions of enunciation from a geographical place and location, is that, in its effects, it produces no geography as such and an infinitely dispersed series of locations. Of Middle Eastern appearance is constituted by no habitable locus ... The power of this ethnic descriptor, what Said would term its flexible positional superiority, resides precisely in its capacity to activate and deploy an infinite series of sign-substitutions that effectively works to encompass a heterogeneity bodies within its Orientalist biometric grid.

There is a body of scholarship that identifies how racial profiling ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ fits into several discriminatory practices that correlate crime with Arab and Muslim communities (Collins et al. 2000; Poynting 2000, 2001; Poynting et al. 2004; El Khouri 2012; Pugliese 2003). Chan (2011) argues that for the targets of racial profiling, ‘the intention of the policing agent is not an issue; the sense of injustice and insecurity is what stays with them’ (p. 75). Chan discusses how racial profiling tactics by police in North America involve prejudice, stereotyping, cognitive biases and race-based deployment (Alpert et al. 2007) which are, arguably, paralleled in the Australian policing context. White (2007, p. 73) argues ‘there is an implicit offence category in the New South Wales policing description, people “of Middle Eastern appearance”. In part this offence stems from the actions of a few young men which are then transposed onto the community as a whole’. Poynting et al. (2001 p. 85) argued ‘the mainstream media, in a symbiosis with the police and political leaders, has rather continued its framing of young people with “Middle Eastern appearance”’. Manning (2006a, 2006b, 2003, 2004) profiled numerous Sydney newspapers in the aftermath of events of 11 September 2001 and found that the descriptor was not only prominent in the reporting of suspects of crime, but that criticisms of the term received little attention. Dellal (2004, p. 14) argued the media’s racial profiling through the ‘phrase ‘Middle Eastern appearance’ created the usual negative stereotype and aroused undue suspicion and fear in the general population’. Members of the public further engaged in identifying individuals ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ in reporting crime to police, which El Khouri (2012, p. 102) argues is problematic as they ‘may be subject to prejudice, emotion and indefinite opinions of appearance’. While ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ is often associated with Lebanese people (Stratton 2011), Arab Australians have challenged the accuracy and harm of this descriptor within police and media profiling (Fraser et al. 1997). Abdel-Fattah (2007, p. 157) has called this descriptor a ‘crude misnomer’ that criminalises Arab communities. Jabbour (2001, p. 2) argued ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ is a redundant racial descriptor for Arab communities, as it is ‘not only misleading and inaccurate, but often inadvertently lead to the victimisation of individuals and entire communities’. El-Khouri (2012) discusses the disproportionate police profiling focus on males within Middle Eastern communities. These criticisms from Arab Australians have been disregarded by NSW police who support the use of this descriptor (New South Wales Police Force 2006) (discussed further below).

The Cronulla pogrom of 2005

A pogrom (Moses 2006) against people ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ occurred at Cronulla Beach on 11 December 2005. It was popularly understood that a beachside incident kick-started this pogrom. On Sunday 4 December 2005, a brawl between three white male lifeguards and four Lebanese Australian males took place, resulting in police intervention. Manning (2006b) noted that the evening news reported this brawl without racial profiling those involved. On Monday 5 December, white radio shock-jock Alan Jones took the initiative to racially profile those involved and claim that ‘Middle Eastern grubs’ were a menace to Cronulla (Poynting 2007). For five days, Jones told listeners that Middle Eastern communities were frequenting Cronulla beach, arriving from the Western suburbs to assault locals, raping white females, and invading the beach (Manning 2006b). Jones suggested locals engage in public demonstration, where the public would greet Middle Eastern youths at Cronulla train station and assault them as a way of protecting local white females. The mainstream media followed suit and sensationalised the brawl. Cronulla locals organised text messages inspiring Aussies to engage in ‘National Leb and Wog bashing day’ (where ‘Leb’ is a colloquial term for ‘Lebanese’ or ‘Arab’ Australians (Jackson 2006) and ‘wog’ is a racial slur and a colloquial term that originates as an acronym for ‘Western Oriental Gentleman’). On 11 December 2005, over 5000 predominantly white males took part in this pogrom and engaged in racial assaults against people ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’. The expressions of racial violence were armed with the national flag and the sporting of racist slogans such as ‘No Lebs’, ‘Wog-free zone’, ‘Fuck Off Lebs’, ‘Ethnic Cleansing unit’, ‘Free snags, no Tabouli’ and ‘We grew here you flew here’ (Singh 2007; Poynting 2007; Perera 2006). A spate of violent retaliatory attacks and property damage occurred in nearby suburbs over the following nights, as community and religious leaders called for calm.

There are ample academic publications that have sought to make sense of the pogrom. Discourses on racism, gender, masculinity, multiculturalism and nationalism are common topic areas featured in these publications. One of the first scholarly publications on the pogrom theorised it as an outbreak of extreme racist violence (Poynting 2006). Asquith (2008) argued that the riot indicates the necessity of drawing attention to the harmful nature of hate speech and the importance of criminalising hate speech. For Collins (2009, p. 31) the riot operated as a ‘serious enough to remind governments of the responsibilities of managing cultural diversity and resisting racist undercurrents’. Dunn (2009, p. 76) argued that ‘performances of Australian nationalism were frequent throughout the build-up to and immediate aftermath of the Cronulla riots’. Singh (2007, p. 1) stated that ‘racial assertion is central to racial violence’ within the pogrom. For Noble and Poynting (2010, p. 499) the riot illustrated ‘not simply the persistence of racism in Australia, but the complex interweaving of space and national belonging that has occurred over several years’.

Reading the body ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’

The racial descriptor ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ is significant to the pogrom (El Khouri 2012). From the genesis of the event by Jones, to the actions of pogrom-peddlers, this racial descriptor shaped the profiling of Arabs as ‘Muslims’ through a range subcultural and physical, phenotypical features. Participants did not ask victims if they were of Arab heritage; rather, these identities were assessed and imposed violently upon individuals. Evers (2009, p. 187) discussed subcultural elements that marked out the ways local white surfers differentiated themselves from Lebanese Australians:

These blokes favour particular cars, sports, food and ways of dressing; even their bodily posture is read for its cultural coding; how they stand, walk and sit. What informs their choices and bodies are their ethnic and class backgrounds. Some Cronulla locals claim that those who come to the beach are supposed to obey local rules and values...

A poster that was placed in the shire before the pogrom highlights these associations that discuss subcultural characteristics in the racialisation of young Arab men:

Our Australian culture is epitomized by our beaches, which have become cesspools of antisocial behaviour after the recent and unwelcome influx of young men, of ‘middle eastern’ [sic] appearance from the inner suburbs of Sydney. These young men who sport the inappropriate ‘beach’ attire of Adidas track pants, Nike sneakers and utterly unforgivable haircuts upon their heads, migrate south every Saturday and Sunday to our Shire, and to our beaches (New South Wales Police Force 2006, p. 35).

The Other here is gendered as male and identified as looking ‘Middle Eastern’, which is associated with a number of subcultural clothing brands deemed to be the antithesis of beach etiquette and Australian norms. Interestingly, Nike and Adidas are sporting brands that are not culturally ‘Middle Eastern’. Further, the discussion of haircuts as ‘unforgivable’ demonstrate that appearance is key to the racialisation of the Other. Asquith (2008, p. 54) argues that in the context of the pogrom, ‘Middle Eastern’ transformed into an abusive term, reflecting the power dynamics of social definitions and how they exclude people. Evidently, the identity ‘Middle Eastern’ has a range of racial floating signifiers that vilify Arab Australia.

Along with clothing and haircuts, skin tone and colour are significant factors that mark a subject ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’. Pogrom participants identified several peoples by their skin tone and skin colour to mark them as targets of racially motivated violence. Dunn (2009, p. 82) writes that ‘the targets of violence were determined physically, in this case by their skin colour. Racist violence is a performance of exclusive nationalism which identifies and attacks performances that are considered to be non-normative’. The pogrom participants were informed by the descriptor ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ along with other terms such as ‘Lebs’ and ‘Wogs’, even if the victims of racial violence were not Middle Eastern themselves. As Poynting (2006, p. 87) observes, ‘in a moral panic about the purported bad behaviour of “Lebs” at the beach, a bystander of Bangladeshi background was chased, mobbed and assaulted. The Arab “Other” ... morphed into the Muslim “other”’.

The racially constructed ‘Leb’/‘Wog’ ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ is an ambiguous term encompassing flaws. While a number of observers identify how the Other’s phenotypical features of criminalised, Farid (2009) discusses how the Cronulla’s Other is feared yet envied. Farid (2009, p. 66) situates the pogrom’s racist attacks against individuals ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ ‘within the triangulated axis of power-knowledge — pleasure had functioned through centuries of Orientalist imageries and racist visual codifications to fix the “Arab” body as an object of both desire and fear’. As an object of desire, the racial descriptor ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ includes olive ‘tanned’ skin:

Tanning on the beach, a cultural pastime at Cronulla beach as in many other Australian beaches, is seen not as a desire to blacken the somatic qualities of the white subject but to enhance its aesthetic modalities. However, there is always the cautionary dermatological marker where fetishism of the Arab body’s sought-after ‘‘olive skin’’ abruptly ends (Farid 2009, p. 66).

Despite the obvious failures of the racial descriptor ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ to accurately represent peoples of Middle Eastern ancestry, NSW Police defend their continued usage of it. A police investigation into the pogrom unconvincingly concluded that racial descriptors are of ‘considerable benefit to the ethnic community’ (NSW Police Force 2006, p. 17). This report’s homogenisation of ‘ethnic community’ overlooked the diversity among Middle Eastern peoples placed into this category. Further, this report addressed issues raised by right-wing political actors and peddlers who sought to justify the pogrom via several rumours that males ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ commonly harassed local white females and violently assaulted white males. In an unsuccessful quest to identify a correlation between people of Middle Eastern ancestry and high rates of crime in Cronulla, the report found several inaccuracies in the ways local police racially profiled individuals ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’. In pre-pogrom Cronulla, several individuals profiled as being ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ were not of Middle Eastern ancestry. The NSW police dismissed the folklore of Cronulla’s supposed history of Middle Eastern crime, thus rendering it an inadequate explanation of the pogrom. However, this was insufficient to convince NSW Police to abandon a racial profiling descriptor they found to be flawed:

The NSW Police in fact, stand alone in their support on the use of racial descriptors as a valid law enforcement tool. During this review the use of the racial descriptor ‘Mediterranean/Middle Eastern’ has been of significant benefit in providing some statistics on events involving people so described. The result obtained from the research painted a picture that was in fact favourable to the Middle Eastern community ... This investigation involved viewing each particular event where a person was described as ‘Mediterranean/Middle Eastern’. The result of the research was that some events involved people of strictly Mediterranean background who were obviously not Middle Eastern. Again, the use of racial descriptors by police in these instances was of benefit to ethnic communities, in particular the Middle Eastern community (NSW Police Force 2006, p. 23).

This investigation’s bogus sweeping conclusion is that racial profiling descriptors benefit ‘ethnic’ communities because they misrepresent them. As this report found, some individuals profiled as being ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ were of Greek, Croatian, Serbian and even Caucasian ancestry. Thus, NSW police who had an unstable relationships with Sydney’s Arab communities in the late 1990s (Collins et al. 2000; Fraser et al. 1997) found that local Cronulla police racially profiled various people of European ancestry as ‘Middle Eastern’. Perhaps ironically, such conclusions only further illustrate how ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ is a flawed racial profiling descriptor.

Contrary to the aforementioned statement, NSW police are not alone in their support of the racial descriptor ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’. A number of discourses that deny or undermine the racism within the pogrom also find the term useful in characterising the events as expressions of patriotism and depicting Arab males as violent and misogynistic. Their support for the term is obvious in their unquestioned racial profiling efforts that criminalise Arab Australians. The next section unpacks these discourses.

Denial and undermining racism

Noble (2009) argued:

[C]laims that the riots revealed the ‘racist underbelly’ of Australian society are no less enlightening, because they reduce complex phenomena to single frame analysis. This is not to side with those politicians who refused to see [the pogrom’s] racism ... Nor is it to side with conservatives who argued that racism came from the Lebanese (pp. 3–4).

This section examines arguments that deny or undermine the pogrom’s racism. In avoiding a single frame analysis, this section unpacks racism in relation to a number of overlapping themes regarding identity, gender, patriotism, criminalisation, Otherness, and culture. Within the context of the pogrom, racial profiling is central to these themes. The denial or undermining of the pogrom’s racism is achieved through the affirming of several racial profiling efforts that aim to criminalise Arab males as violent sexual deviants who are obsessed with white females from Cronulla.

The denial of the pogrom’s racism was apparent among anti-Arab/Muslim peddlers who attempted to legitimise it as an expression of patriotic defence. These peddlers zoned in on the infamous beachside incident and emphasise the ‘brutality of the attack, the extent of injuries, and the frequency of such events, and racialising all of these as aspects of the inherent criminality and deviant masculinity of Lebanese-Australian young men’ (Poynting 2006, p. 45). A number of pogrom-enthusiasts claimed that Lebanese males constantly threatened white females on Cronulla beach (even though no white females were involved in the beachside incident). These hearsay narratives were significant to the ways locals legitimised the need to drape themselves with Australiana items and racially assault those they deemed to be ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’. The Four Corners program outlined some examples of these narratives in interviews with pogrom participants, who claimed that Middle Eastern men regularly assaulted ‘Aussie’ females, harassed peoples, polluted the local parks and beaches, played soccer on the beaches and often kicked their balls at people passing by, and Middle Eastern women dressed wearing ‘too many clothes’ on the beach.

LIZ JACKSON: The surfies at Cronulla were talking about it, too. The bare facts are these. Three volunteer lifesavers were leaving the beach, having finished their patrol. They were not in uniform. There was a verbal altercation with a group of what the locals call Lebs, with provocative insults from both sides. The lifesavers were bashed. But these are the rumours that were spreading around ...

SCOTT: They were playing soccer, I think. And they kicked the ball at some girls and started harassing the girls. And the lifeguards asked them to stop. Standard thing — happens all the time down here. And, you know, they didn’t like it and a fight broke out.

MARK: Well, I heard that a lifeguard saved, like, a Muslim lady. And because they touched her, the Muslim men bashed them. But I don’t know if that’s true. But that’s what I heard.

MICK: There was two lifeguards on duty. They just got picked on and just, apparently, bashed, you know (Jackson 2006).

Perera (2006) critiques the Four Corners program’s depiction of the pogrom, arguing: ‘Cronulla Beach comes to stand for a paired sequence of events, the riot and the revenge, in a fable of equivalence in which two misguided groups, mostly of young men, mirror each other’s ignorance and prejudices, for example, by each claiming to protect their womenfolk.’

The personal anecdotes apparent in the program, while incorrect in explaining the beachside incident, are based on racially profiling exhibiting the fluidity of an Arab/Muslim/Lebanese/Middle Eastern Other. The racialised rumour mill did not have a consensus of a particular narration of what happened that prompted the pogrom. However, there is a strong consensus regarding the Othering and criminalisation of Lebanese and Muslim males as violent and misogynistic in ways that victimise white Australia. Shaw (2009) argues that ‘bashings’ and fights on Cronulla beach are not new; there have been several ‘turf wars’ between locals themselves and between ‘Westies’ (a colloquial term referring to people from Sydney’s western suburbs) and local peoples. Wise (2009, p. 141) examines a number of newspaper headlines from the local newspapers in Cronulla that report crime and antisocial behaviour in the beachside city. Wise (2009) comments:

What is interesting about the reporting is how certain bodies ‘appear’ and ‘disappear’ over this time, intersecting with moral panics of the time. With a couple of exceptions, until the early 2000s, the anti-social behaviour was committed by perpetrators without a named ethnicity (p. 141).

However, according to local racist folklore, crime was alien in the area and introduced by particular people they labelled as ‘wogs’/‘Lebs’ ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’. A year after the event, Jackson (2006) observed:

New South Wales police are now far more visible on Cronulla Beach. And locals will tell you that it’s about time. That Middle Eastern gangs have been picking fights with them for years and getting away with it. Police acknowledge there has been escalating tension. But there isn’t an ethnic breakdown of local crime, so evidence is largely anecdotal (emphasis added).

The Hazzard Report attempted to find truth to these personal anecdotes:

[I]t was claimed that the problem of ethnic tension in the community, particularly in the beach environment was prevalent over the past decade. It allegedly involved gangs or people of Middle Eastern appearance travelling to Cronulla from [Western Sydney] ... creating conflict with the local community. Crime trends and police interaction with persons of interest did not identify any significant trend for involvement by people of Middle Eastern background in local incidents. Research also indicated that the majority of crime in the local area command is committed by people who live in the Sutherland Shire. ... the review also established that historically there have been incidents of public disorder in Cronulla that did not involve ethnic tension, but were brought about by the atmosphere of an occasion and excessive consumption of alcohol’ (NSW Police Force 2006, p. 17).

To identify these discourses as anecdotal is not to say that there have never been instances where ‘Lebs’ have harassed white females; rather, it is to question the conclusions of these discourses that form the ‘patriotic’ or ‘feminist’ interpretations of the pogrom.

The anecdotal evidence of Middle Eastern deviancy functions within racialised folklore that proponents draw on in a desperate attempt to legitimise the pogrom. The criminalisation of Others in the aftermath of the pogrom is captured in Stone’s (2006) argument that Australia has an ‘Islamic cancer’. Stone (2006) argued the event in Cronulla was provoked by ‘Muslim lawlessness’. Further, Stone (2006) discussed Muslims abstractly in defining the ‘Muslim problem’, with the exception of the ‘gang-raping of “white Aussie sluts” by young Muslim men of Pakistani origin’ (p. 11). The 2002 Sydney gang rapes involving Pakistani perpetrators informed Stone’s position on the pogrom as a reaction to Middle Eastern deviancy.

While Gleeson (2007, p. 171) writes that gang rape is unfortunately widely practised among white Australia and is in fact ‘an Australian tradition’, Stone ignores these events and uses the 2002 gang rapes to profile Muslims as sexual predators.

In an article titled ‘Racism or patriotism?: An eyewitness account of the Cronulla demonstration of 11 December 2005’, Barclay and West (2006) attempted to portray the Cronulla events as people merely celebrating Australian identity. In describing the causation of the event, Barclay and West (2006) dedicate an entire section titled ‘the Lebanese males’. Here, the authors criminalise Lebanese males as perpetrators of rape, violence and terrorism in Australia. The category of ‘Australian’ is afforded to white people, whom Barclay and West (2006) position as victims. The evidence they use to criminalise Lebanese males is largely anecdotal. Barclay and West (2006, p. 77) claim that local people identify Lebanese males due to their phenotypical features such as ‘haircuts and swarthy features helped mark them out as different from locals’. Further, these authors construct ‘Lebanese males’ as

anti-Australian activists who assault white Australians — and, as a consequence, ‘Aussies’ legitimately celebrated their national identity. A mix of biological and cultural racial profiling works to paint the pogrom as victimised patriots legitimately celebrating their national identity. Barclay and West (2006) contextualise the pogrom in the spirit of this folklore, drawing on it to claim that ‘[m]ales in packs would verbally abuse females or offer sexually explicit comments. The phrases “you’re a slut”, “you Aussie slut” “you should be raped”’ (p. 77). Barclay and West (2006) characterise ‘the Lebanese males’ as aggressive, claiming to local peoples: ‘This is our beach. We own it’ (p. 77). These folklore claims are only substantiated by gossip rather than statistical evidence of reported crime rates. Racial profiling is inherent in their attempt to minimise racism and legitimise the actions of racist hatred as mere patriotism.

In her feminist response to the Cronulla riots, Lattas (2009) drew on her ethnography with locals to prove that there is a history of local harassment of Lebanese males against white females. Lattas (2009) discussed the work of conservative commentators to argue that the ‘Left’ have neglected these narratives of Lebanese harassment. To legitimise the view that white females constantly face Arab male sexism, Lattas (2009, p. 207) even fleshes out one account of a participant in one study (Poynting et al. 1997) named ‘Mohamed’ who described (white) ‘Australian’ girls as ‘easy’.^[†] Lattas poses the questions:

Are these reports of Lebanese/Muslim harassment of white females in Cronulla evidence of allegations of racists, given their use in justifying the riots? As nothing out of the ordinary, given old-fashioned Aussie sexual harassment? As ‘further proof’ of Muslim immigrant misogyny? As the failed practice, or failed myth, of Australian multiculturalism? ... none of these responses will do (pp. 200–1).

While Lattas (2009) positions her analysis away from the undermining of racism, the conclusions drawn depict Arab/Muslim males as sexual predators. This is revealed in a paradoxical assertion communicated later:

[Y]oung [white] women in Australia today are being made to bear an unfair burden of Muslim male resentment at the exclusion they feel here. The powerful myth of the slut is intensifying and channelling the affective charge of this felt exclusion onto the exposed bodies of young Aussie women, and they are at a loss with how to deal with it (p. 211).

The descriptor ‘Muslim’ significantly contrasts data elsewhere in her ethnography, where participants identify ‘Lebs’ as the common perpetrators. In these personal anecdotes, participants racially profile the perpetrators as ‘Lebanese’ (discussed further below) or ‘Muslim’ who unfairly burden white females and thus it is necessary to distinguish white male harassment from Muslim. These conclusions not only contrast the earlier dismissal of ‘Lebanese/Muslim harassment’ (p. 211), but also exhibit a white feminist Orientalist (Abood 2002) discourse within racist perspectives of the pogrom. Said (1978) argued the

hyper-sexualisation of Arab males is common in Western Orientalist representations. Within the Australian context, Western Orientalist mythologies of ‘Arab’ masculinity produce popular depictions of Arab/Muslim males as ‘unable to control their sexual urges’ (Dagistanli & Grewal 2012, p. 129). The sexualisation of Arab males as being lustful and thirsty for white females is a typical blockbuster thriller-plot that has wowed Hollywood and Western audiences (Shaheen 2001). Shaheen (2012) argues that Hollywood’s common racist depictions of Arab males as a threat to white females is widespread in storylines across Western film screens. Within Australian screens, Orientalism flavours the characterisation of Arab males as villains who are rarely portrayed as heroes (Krayem 2014). Perhaps unsurprisingly, participants within an ethnographic study in the aftermath of the pogrom hold similar stories that are mysteriously omitted from a police investigation into the events.

The limitations, paradoxes and unanswered questions

The characterisation of males ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ as sexual predators who target white females is significant to the pogrom. The aforementioned discourses empowered these representations uniquely in ways that denied or undermined racism in Cronulla. These personal anecdotes of Arab male harassment, whether documented through hearsay or ethnography, are collectively based on the racial profiling efforts by individuals. The significance of racial profiling is neglected in these narratives as they collectively fail to address five crucial aspects/questions in relation to the pogrom. It is here that the limitations and paradoxes within the ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ discourses shine clearly.

The first concerns the common bypassing of the fluid categories involved. Arab Australians are diverse, ranging from Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Sudanese, Algerian, Moroccan, Jordanian, Qatari and so on. Most Australian Arabs are Christian and Muslim peoples not exclusive to the Middle East. Yet the aforementioned narratives that profile people as ‘Muslim’ and ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ as equivalent homogenous categories. While Lebanese Australians are the largest group within Arab Australia (El Khouri 2012), they are not an overwhelming majority. On the day of the pogrom, several victims of racist mob violence were not Lebanese or Middle Eastern, though pogrom enthusiasts identified them as such.

Individual claims that the harassment of white females was perpetrated by males ‘who looked to be of Lebanese origin’ (Lattas 2009, p. 208) — or, as Barclay and West (2006) put it, feature ‘swarthy’ (p. 77) appearances — need to be examined in this context. Reading ‘race’ on one’s body is a crucial factor in (mis)representing the Other. As discussed previously, the NSW Police report investigating the Cronulla riot further found this racialised descriptor to be problematic. The constant interchange between the identities of ‘Muslim’, ‘Lebanese’ and ‘Middle Eastern’ only affirms the failure of individuals to racially profile others, shedding doubt over the accuracy of the aforementioned narratives.

The second aspect concerns the topic of gender, which Lattas (2009) rightly argues should be significant to the analysis of the events/discourses in Cronulla. However, the aforementioned narratives of harassment omit the voices of Arab and Muslim women, as captured in the following exchange on the 60 Minutes program about the pogrom:

Female 1: As a 17 year old living in South West Sydney. We can walk to school 5 days a week, we can get stopped, 3 out of the 5 days get harassed for being [white] Australian walking to School.

Female 2: I am Lebanese and I’m Muslim and I also get harassed. So it’s not just the Aussies. I really really get angry when Aussies think that they are targeted just because they are white. That is not true. All women get harassed! (Martin 2006)

The exchange reveals how the ‘feminist response’ (Lattas 2009) encompasses a white Eurocentric account that omits Arab female voices. This white hegemonic feminist approach is not unique in Australia. Moreton-Robinson (2000) critiques the whiteness within the Australian feminist movement, pointing out how Indigenous women have challenged the authority of white feminist knowledge. Moreton-Robinson (2000) argues this positionality among white feminists in Australia maintains a white hegemonic racial order within Australian feminism. From an Arab Australian feminist perspective, Abood (2002) writes ‘when the voices of Western women still speak over and above everyone else. It is equally important that Arab-Australian women be seen and heard’ (p. 168). Abood (2002) argues that white Oriental feminism is a common challenge for Arab Australian feminist activists. Awad (2017) identifies how Arab Australian women mediate between Western ideas and Arab traditions, noting the importance of critiquing ‘the books written by Anglo women in search of the truth about Arab women’ (p. 284). Genuine feminist perspectives on the pogrom should account for the experiences of all women involved, as identified on the day:

About 1.30pm three Middle Eastern people (two men and a woman) were sitting on a wall at North Cronulla Beach when three Caucasian women verbally abused them. A large crowd gathered, commenced chanting and throwing sausages at them ...

At 2.30pm two females aged 17 and 18 were near the Cronulla Beach. As they walked past three Caucasian women of about the same age, one of the victims was wearing an Islamic symbol around her neck. They were verbally abused by the other three women with reference made to them as being Lebanese and remarks made about the Islamic faith (NSW Police Force 2006, p. 40).

A white hegemonic feminist analysis that engages in racial profiling Arab Australian males furthers the undermining of the pogrom’s racism. The stories of victimised white females is centred and neglects other narratives crucial to the pogrom. Numerous reports have identified that Arab/Muslim women are more likely to be victims of racial assaults in Australia (Poynting 2009; Poynting & Noble 2004; Tabar et al. 2010), and this reality of assaulting women has not sparked a riot to ‘protect’ or defend these women among Arab Australian and Muslim communities. This relates to the third aspect of ‘protection’ in relation to gender. Within the pogrom, various white males claimed it was necessary to protect ‘our women’ from Arab males. These notions of protecting ‘Anglo women from Lebanese men recreates the Orientalist understanding’ (Krayem 2014, p. 117) of Arab males as sexually deviant. The feminist response discussed above overlooked critiquing these actions of dominance alluding to a patriarchal structure where white females require white males to protect them from Arab males. In contrast, Idriss (2014) challenged the attitudes of males within the Lebanese community who felt the need to protect Lebanese women from racist white males. Offering an Arab feminist critique, Idriss (2014) writes:

Essentially, Lebanese-Australian women did not ask for their honour to be defended by the boys that day. In fact, many of the young women I knew and spoke to about those incidents were frustrated by the ways our very own existence as females was treated as an excuse for violence. Lebanese-Australian young women, including myself, were taunted by the question, ‘How many of your cousins were in the Riots?’ when in fact many of us only knew of the riots by what we saw on the evening news. ... [We] were drawn into this conflict without our consent.

The related fourth aspect concerns the ignored normalised misogynistic Cronulla culture that predates the pogrom and is omitted in the aforementioned discussions on gender and patriotism in Cronulla. One famous Australian book titled Puberty Blues (Carey & Lette 1979) narrates the common local Cronulla white patriarchy against white females. In this classic publication, white female characters experience various forms of sexism, ranging from protests against female surfers to beachside sexual abuse. One of the authors discussed how white females were treated as second-class citizens, ‘nothing more than a life-support system to a vagina ... the terms for women were “bush pigs” or “swamp hogs”. If you were very good-looking you got called a “glamour maggot”’ (Jones 2002). A pertinent question remains: If misogyny is of such concern to pogrom-peddlers, why did these instances not inspire a riot? Evidently, the racial profiling of misogyny as Arab is not significant.

The fifth and final aspect concerns the question on why Cronulla was chosen by ‘ethnic’ males as a space to harass white females. The racial profiling of Lebanese/Muslim harassment — whether through local folklore (Barclay & West 2006), ethnographic research (Lattas 2009) or communicated through right-wing commentators — fails to answer this question. There are beaches all over Sydney’s coast that Arab Australians visit, yet an anti-Arab/Muslim pogrom occurred in Cronulla. This begs the questions: If Arab male harassment of white females is a common occurrence in modern-day Australia, why haven’t pogroms erupted in other parts of Australia? Do the aforementioned perspectives hold that misogynistic, Lebanese/Muslim males only target white females in Cronulla? What is significant about Cronulla as a space for these actions? The racial profiling of males ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ as sexual predators becomes the focal point that neglects to explain the obvious: Why Cronulla?

Conclusion

Since the genesis of the recent moral panics in the late 1990s (Collins et al. 2000; Poynting 2000; Poynting et al. 1997; White 2007) that increased the policing, media and public usage of the descriptor ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’, scholars have noted a shift from an Arab Other (Poynting et al. 2004) to an emphasis on a Muslim Other (Itaoui & Dunn 2017). In almost two decades, this shift has seen the lingering of the term ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ correlated with both forms of interrelated Otherness. As this article has highlighted, the NSW police investigation into the events in Cronulla revealed their relentless support for usage of the racialised descriptor. For decades, Arab Australian communities and social science scholars have argued that this inaccurate descriptor increases anti-Arab sentiment in Australia. This article has further highlighted how this racial descriptor, in the context of the Cronulla pogrom, enables the denial and undermining of racism against Arab Australia. It enables commentators of the pogrom to legitimise, undermine or deny anti-Arab racism. The descriptor has a number of flaws and contradictions that continue to be ignored by NSW police, media commentators and a minority of academics involved in ethnographic research or racist hearsay narratives. These stakeholders continue to overlook the everyday lived experiences of Arab Australia, contributing to their marginalisation.

References

Abdel-Fattah, R 2007, ‘Of Middle Eastern appearance’, The Griffith Review, no. 15, pp. 157–9.

Abood, P 2002, ‘Arab-Australian women’s activism’, in G Hage (ed.), Arab-Australians today: citizenship and belonging, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Vic, pp. 161–72.

‘After the riots’ 2006, 60 Minutes, Channel 9. Directed by R Martin.

Alpert, GP, Dunham, RG & Smith, MR 2007, ‘Investigating racial profiling by the Miami‐Dade Police Department: a multimethod approach’, Criminology & Public Policy, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 25–55.

Asquith, N 2008, ‘Race riots on the beach: a case for criminalising hate speech?’, Papers from the British Criminology Conference, British Society of Criminology, pp. 50–64.

Awad, A 2017, Beyond veiled cliches: the real lives of Arab women, Vintage, North Sydney, NSW.

Barclay, R & West, P 2006, ‘Racism or patriotism?: an eyewitness account of the Cronulla demonstration of 11 December 2005’, People & Place, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 75–85.

Carey, G & Lette, K 1979, Puberty Blues, McPhee Gribble, Carlton, Vic.

Chan, J 2011, ‘Racial profiling and police subculture’, Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 75–8.

Collins, J 2009, ‘Sydney’s Cronulla riots: the context and implications’ in G Noble (ed.), Lines in the sands: the Cronulla riots, multiculturalism and national belonging, Sydney Institute of Criminology Press, Sydney, NSW, pp. 27–43.

Collins, J, Noble, G, Poynting, S & Tabar, P 2000, Kebabs, kids, cops and crime: youth, ethnicity and crime, Pluto Press Sydney, NSW.

Cunneen, C, White, R & Richards, K 2015, Juvenile justice: youth and crime in Australia, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Vic.

Dagistanli, S & Grewal, K 2012, ‘Peverse Muslim masculinities in contemporary Orientalist discourse: the vagaries of Muslim immigration in the West’ in G Morgan & S Poynting (eds.), Global Islamophobia: Muslims and moral panic in the West, Ashgate, Surrey, pp. 119–42.

Dellal, H 2004, ‘“Of Middle Eastern appearance”: police and Muslim communities in Australia’, Around the Globe, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 14–17.

Dunn, K 2009, ‘Performing Australian nationalisms at Cronulla’ in G Noble (ed.), Lines in the sands: the Cronulla riots, multiculturalism and national belonging, Sydney Institute of Criminology Press, Sydney, NSW, pp. 76–94.

Dunn, K, Forrest, J, Burnley, I & McDonald, A 2004, ‘Constructing racism in Australia’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 409–30.

El Khouri, P 2012, Keeping up ‘appearances’ Australia 2013: Ancestry and ethnic descriptors — after the Cronulla riots, Palmer Higgs, Sydney, NSW.

Evers, C 2009, ‘“The local boys”: violence, care, masculinity and the riots’, in G Noble (ed.), Lines in the sands: the Cronulla riots, multiculturalism and national belonging, Sydney Institute of Criminology Press, Sydney, NSW, pp. 185–99.

Farid, F 2009, ‘Terror at the beach: Arab bodies and the somatic violence of white cartographic anxiety in Australia and Palestine/Israel’, Social Semiotics, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 59–78.

Fraser, D, Melhem, M & Yacoub, M 1997, ‘Violence against Arab Australians’ in C Cunneen, D Fraser, & S Tomsen (eds.), Faces of hate: hate crime in Australia, Hawkins Press, Annandale, NSW pp. 75–96.

Gleeson, K 2007, ‘White natives and gang rape at the time of centenary’ in S Poynting & G Morgan (eds.), Outrageous: moral panics in Australia, ACYS Publishing, Hobart, Tas, pp. 171–80.

Idriss, S 2014, The ‘lionesses’ of Lebanon, SBS, viewed 15 November 2017, http://www.sbs.com.au/

programs/onceuponatimein/article/2014/07/09/lionesses-lebanon.

Itaoui, R & Dunn, K 2017, ‘Media representations of racism and spatial mobility: young Muslim (un) belonging in a post-Cronulla riot Sutherland’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 315–32.

Jabbour, R 2001, ‘Policing partnership in a multicultural Australia: achievements and challenges: an Australian Arabic perspective’, Australian Institute of Criminology, Brisbane, Qld, pp. 25–6.

Krayem, M 2014, Heroes, villains and more villains: representations of Arab men on Australian screens PhD thesis, University of Technology, viewed 15 November 2017, https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/

10453/37018/2/02whole.pdf.

Lattas, J 2009, ‘“Bikini vs Burqa” in contemporary Australia: a feminist response to the Cronulla riots’ in G Noble (ed.), Lines in the sands: the Cronulla riots, multiculturalism and national belonging, Sydney Institute of Criminology Press, Sydney, NSW, pp. 200–17.

Manning, P 2003, ‘Arabic and Muslim people in Sydney’s daily newspapers, before and after September 11’, Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, vol. 109, no. 1, pp. 50–70.

Manning, P 2004, Dog whistle politics and journalism: reporting Arabic and Muslim people in Sydney newspapers, Australia: Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, UTS, Sydney, NSW.

Manning, P 2006a, ‘Australians imagining Islam’ in E Poole & JE Richardson (eds.), Muslims and the new media, Tauris and Co., New York, pp. 128–41.

Manning, P 2006b, Us and them: a journalist’s investigation of media, Muslims and the Middle East, Random House, Sydney, NSW.

Moreton-Robinson, A 2000, Talkin’ up to the white woman: Aboriginal women and feminism, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld.

Moses, D 2006, Pogrom talk, On Line Opinion, 11 January, viewed 15 November 2017, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4038.

New South Wales Police Force 2006, Hazard Report – Cronulla riots: review of the police response: report and recommendations, New South Wales Police Force, Sydney, NSW.

Noble, G 2009, ‘“Where the bloody hell are we?” Multicultural manners in a world of hyperdiversity’, in G Noble (ed.), Lines in the sands: the Cronulla riots, multiculturalism and national belonging, Sydney Institute of Criminology Press, Sydney, NSW, pp.1–22.

Noble, G & Poynting, S 2010, ‘White lines: the intercultural politics of everyday movement in social spaces’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 489–505.

Of Middle Eastern appearance 2000, motion picture, Metro Screen, Sydney, Australia. Directed by P Abood.

Perera, S 2006, ‘Race terror, Sydney, December 2005’, Borderlands, vol. 5, no. 1, viewed 15 November 2017, http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol5no1_2006/perera_raceterror.htm.

Poynting, S 2000, ‘Ethnicising criminality and criminalising ethnicity’ in J Collins & S Poynting (eds.), The other Sydney: communities, identities and inequalities in Western Sydney, Common Ground, Melbourne, Vic, pp. 63–78.

Poynting, S 2001, ‘Appearances and ethnic crime’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 110–13.

Poynting, S 2006, ‘What caused the Cronulla riot?’, Race & Class, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 85–92.

Poynting, S 2007, ‘“Thugs” and “grubs” at Cronulla: from media beat-ups to beating up migrants’ in Poynting, S & Morgan, G (eds.), Outrageous: moral panics in Australia, ACYS Publishing, Hobart, Tas, pp. 158–70.

Poynting, S 2009, ‘The “lost”girls: Muslim young women in Australia’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 373–86.

Poynting, S and Noble, G 2004, Living with racism: the experience and reporting by Arab and Muslim Australians of discrimination, abuse and violence since 11 September 2001, Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney Sydney, NSW.

Poynting, S, Noble, G & Tabar, P 1997, ‘“We stay Lebanese together”: a study in “protest masculinity”’, Education Australia, no. 37, pp. 10–13.

Poynting, S, Noble, G & Tabar, P 2001, ‘Middle Eastern appearances: “Ethnic gangs”, moral panic and media framing’, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 67–90.

Poynting, S, Noble, G, Tabar, P & Collins, J 2004, Bin Laden in the suburbs: criminalising the Arab other, Sydney Institute of Criminology, Sydney, NSW.

Pugliese, J 2003, ‘The locus of the non: the racial fault-line “of Middle-Eastern Appearance”’, Borderlands, vol. 2, no. 3, viewed 15 November 2017, http://www.borderlands.net.au/

vol2no3_2003/pugliese_non.htm.

Race: the floating signifier 1996, videorecording, Media Education Foundation, USA. Directed by S Hall and S Jhally.

‘Riot and revenge’ 2006, Four Corners, television program transcript, ABC, Sydney, 13 March, viewed 15 November 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/riot-and-revenge/8953550.

Said, E 1978, Orientalism, Penguin, New York, NY.

Shaheen, J 2001, Reel bad Arabs: how Hollywood vilifies a people, Olive Branch Press, New York, NY.

Shaheen, J 2012, Guilty: Hollywood’s verdict on Arabs after 9/11, Olive Branch Press, New York, NY.

Shaw, W 2009, ‘Riotous Sydney take three (Cronulla): confessions of a beach survivor’ in G Noble (ed.), Lines in the sands: the Cronulla riots, multiculturalism and national belonging, Sydney Institute of Criminology Press, Sydney, NSW, pp. 58–71.

Singh, D 2007, ‘White subjectivity and racial terror: towards an understanding of racial violence’, ACRAWSA, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–10.

Stone, J 2006, ‘The Muslim problem and what to do about it’, Quadrant, vol. 50, no. 9, pp. 11–17.

Stratton, J 2011, Uncertain lives: culture, race and neoliberalism in Australia, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, UK.

Tabar, P, Noble, G & Poynting, S 2010, On being Lebanese in Australia: identity, racism, and the ethnic field, Lebanese American University Press, Beirut, Lebanon.

The big chill 2002, radio broadcast, 2GB, Sydney, 5 December.

Wainwright, R 2006, ‘Which faces fit Middle East tag?’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 July, viewed 15 November 2017, http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/which-faces-fit-middle-east-tag/2006/07/

14/1152637872158.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1.

Warner, K 2004, ‘Gang rape in Sydney: crime, the media, politics, race and sentencing’, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 344–61.

White, R 2007, ‘Policing the other: Lebanese young people in a climate of conflict’ in J Jupp, J Neiuwenhuysen & E Dawson (eds.), Social cohesion in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, Vic, pp. 70–9.

Wise, A 2009, ‘“It’s just an attitude that you feel”: inter-ethnic habitus before the Cronulla riots’ in G Noble (ed.), Lines in the sands: the Cronulla riots, multiculturalism and national belonging, Sydney Institute of Criminology Press, Sydney, NSW, pp. 127–45.

---

^[*] Lecturer, School of Teacher Education, Faculty of Arts and Education, Charles Sturt University, Locked Bag 49, Dubbo NSW 2830, Australia. Email: [e-mail].

^[†] Note that the authors of these studies have produced numerous publications that explore the harassment of white males against Arab and Muslim females (see Poynting & Noble 2004; Tabar, Noble & Poynting 2010). These did not form part of the ‘feminist’ response discussed above.