History in black and white: A critical analysis of the black armband debate

In his 1993 Latham Lecture, Geoffrey Blainey contended that Australian history was being overtaken by an overly negative reading of the past.Invoking the emotive imagery of mourning, Blainey argued that this 'Black Armband' history discredited and rejected the celebratory optimism of older Australian historical writing.It overemphasised past wrongs and saw 'mainly injustice in the present and poverty and inequality in the past'.The 'Black Armband' label came to represent a strategic conservative swipe at histories that revealed Australia's past as racist and violent.It served to present critical history as unbalanced and extreme.The Black Armband debate has come to frame much of the discussion about Australian history in recent times.It dominates not only the conservative critique of critical histories, but has also been adopted by historians who emphasise that the shameful history of Australia requires black armbands.Yet the discussion is profoundly limited.By presenting historical approaches as divergent, by encouraging a dichotomous reading of Australia's past, the Black Armband debate fails to recognise the process of historical interpretation as inherently revisionist.