there are two Joes in Jedda--the diegetic character, Joe, whose dialogue and actions personify the perfectly assimilated '
half-caste', and the Joe of the (very cultivated) voiceover narration whose discourse veers strongly towards Doug McMann's anti-assimilationist views.
citizenship rights for "
half-caste" children born of such
The Dickensian register of the
half-caste's English may be read as a signal that Jim's story will henceforth be viewed through the Orientalizing prism of familiar Northern European genres and narratives--hence the collected Shakespeare that Jim takes with him up-river, allegedly to "cheer up a fellow" (LJ 218).
(37) The narrator, already an exile from his Polish homeland which has been absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, continues his journeying while the '
half-caste' Tikera is banished from her 'own country' because of colonial bigotry towards her race (p.
The term '
half-caste' was progressively eased out of legislation.
(9) People, classified only by race as 'Aboriginal natives', '
half-castes' and '
half-caste' children under sixteen, irrespective of lifestyle and associations, were grouped under the umbrella of the Act and subject to the very considerable powers of its administrators.
Dudley Kelsey, an ex-Territorian resident in Adelaide, was a man Stott had known personally for the past forty years and had employed a "
half-caste girl" the past four.
It is not casual that it is the
half-caste, and not the police, who crosses the border and goes after the priest.
This case would ultimately raise the larger question of whether mixed race people, referred to at the time as "
half-castes", should be categorised as "natives" or "non-natives".
Of greater concern were the "
half-castes" who "were widely thought to present the worst characteristics of both races." Here, the abstractions of Social Darwinism mingled with abstractions about racial traits to produce a general fear among whites that "this '
half-caste' race would breed up to become a social menace." (26) This perceived threat was a different sort of problem that precipitated a more active intervention on the part of white Australians.
They played a big and special part in my life, and accepted me into their home - even though I wasa
half-caste. Believe me, in those days not many families did.
The resultant mixed-blood population was itself very fertile, so that by around the 1890s European Australians were becoming increasingly concerned about what came to be defined as the '
half-caste problem'.
