MEET the white face of a new black race - the political Aborigine.
Meet, say, acclaimed St Kilda artist Bindi Cole, who was raised by her English-Jewish mother yet calls herself "Aboriginal but white".
She rarely saw her part-Aboriginal father, and could in truth join any one of several ethnic groups, but chose Aboriginal, insisting on a racial identity you could not guess from her features.
She also chose, incidentally, the one identity open to her that has political and career clout.
And how popular a choice that now is. Ask Annette Sax, another artist and - as the very correct Age newspaper described her - a "white Koori".
Her father was Swiss, and her mother only part-Aboriginal. Racially, if these things mattered, she is more Caucasian than anything else. Culturally, she's more European. In looks, she's Swiss.
But she, too, has chosen to call herself Aboriginal, which happily means she could be shortlisted for this year's Victorian Indigenous Art Award.
Shall I go on? Not yet convinced that there is a whole new fashion in academia, the arts and professional activism to identify as Aboriginal? Read more.