Abstract

During the 1960s, international and domestic pressure on the Australian government led to a softening of restrictive immigration practices that had played a key role scaffolding what is commonly referred to as the White Australia policy. The appointment of Dean Dixon—an African American expatriate—to lead the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1963 was celebrated by both the government and a cohort of journalists in the Australian press as an important milestone in the immigration reform effort. In this article, I discuss the paradox of how Dixon’s appointment allowed notions of a racially progressive society to circulate in the Australian press in ways that simultaneously entrenched what Gwenda Tavan refers to as the ‘indices’ of ‘whiteness’ and ‘Britishness’ anchoring assimilationist thought. I then outline how the African American press, in contrast, framed Dixon’s work abroad as a challenge to ideologies of white supremacy. Threading these two stories of Dixon’s migration together reveals different views on the possibilities bound up in his appointment and a fundamental tension between the Australian and African American press’s understanding of the kind of cultural work Dixon undertook while leading the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

摘要

在 1960 年代，国际和国内对澳大利亚政府的压力导致限制性移民做法的软化，这些做法在通常所说的白澳政策中发挥了关键作用。1963 年任命非裔美国人迪克森（Dean Dixon）领导悉尼交响乐团，被政府和澳大利亚媒体的一群记者庆祝为移民改革努力的一个重要里程碑。在这篇文章中，我讨论了狄克逊的任命如何让种族进步社会的概念在澳大利亚媒体中传播的悖论同时巩固了格温达·塔万所说的“白人”和“英国”锚定同化主义者的“指数”想法。然后，我概述了非洲裔美国人的媒体，相比之下，将狄克逊在国外的工作视为对白人至上意识形态的挑战。将这两个关于狄克逊移民的故事串联起来，揭示了对他的任命所涉及的可能性的不同看法，以及澳大利亚和非裔美国媒体对狄克逊在领导悉尼交响乐团时所从事的文化工作的理解之间的根本矛盾。