Place-defending and the denial of racism

This paper introduces the concept of place defending and articulates its implications for locality based social policy. Place defending is the protection of one’s local area from unfavourable assessments, in this case of being labelled or perceived as a racist space. Place attachment and identifications with place are drivers of place defending. Person place relationships and their implications for locality based social policies have not yet received sufficient consideration in the literature—a significant oversight considering the current policy focus in Australia and the United Kingdom on locality based social policy. In this study of local anti racism in the Australian context, place defending involved the denial of racism and performances of place that reproduced the discourse of tolerance. Print media coverage of the release of national data on racism was analysed alongside a series of interviews with individuals working on anti racism at both local and state/federal levels. Four tools of place defending are discussed: direct action to defend place; spatial deflections; use of minority group members to discredit claims of racism; and critiques of those who make claims about racism. The tools of place defending operated to construct localities as places of tolerance, potentially undermining the case for anti racism.