Racial fatigue, disembodiment and dignity: African Australians’ experiences of living in and coming out of the ‘fog of whiteness’

In this paper, we propose a metaphor that conceptualises racism as a fog. In so doing, we articulate how the racial fog operates as a meaning-(re)making system that hides, obscures and minimises the violence of racism. We suggest that the fog produces a form of epistemic entrapment , where Bla(c)k people are forced to self betray, idolise and internalise dominant white norms, often at the cost of their own identity and wellbeing. We utilise the fog of whiteness as a metaphor and as a theoretical provocation to demostrate how whiteness as a power structure ‘covers’ itself whiteness by ‘clouding’ and gaslighting victims of racism through (1) obscuring their racial realities, (2) making them doubt their own racial realities, (3) invalidating or minimising their racial realities and (4) making it difficult to articulate or address the reality of the violence they face within the fog. The study took the form of an in-depth qualitative design, with 42 Black Africans across the five largest Australian states interviewed using an Afrocentric storytelling approach. To survive these racial spectacles, participants described the necessity of crafting adaptive ‘masks’ or performative identities that were utilised strategically to reduce racial harm and/ or scrutiny. Importantly, our analytical emphasis centred on how participants, despite the obscurity and threats of repercussion, were able to ‘de-fog’ by refusing, disobeying and resisting its claims of inferiorisation. For participants, ‘coming out of the fog was akin to ‘seeing the light’, and a return to ‘who they were/are’ reclaiming.