The exoticization of African-Caribbean people points to the different faces of racism in Australian society, which 'has objectified black people rendering them invisible and exoticized or demonized' (Henry-Waring, 2008).  
In the early twentieth century, racial difference became a point of allegiance for Indigenous and non-Indigenous black people residing in and/or visiting Australia. In Sydney, there was a branch of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which connected Indigenous people with those of African descent through Garvey's call for Black Consciousness. The connection between these groups was also made clear through the formation of the Coloured Progressive Association, which included Caribbean, African American and Aboriginal men who were united in the face of the White Australia policy and colonial policies of paternalism and assimilation aimed at Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal activist Fred Maynard, mentioned earlier,  
attended the CPA dinner, as did African American boxer Jack Johnson and St. Croix boxer, Peter Felix (Maynard, 2005). While not explicitly tied to blackness, the alliance between these groups was built on the counter-discourses to white supremacy coming out of the Black Consciousness movement in the United States of America and the Caribbean and represented by intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey (Maynard 2005; Foley 2015a). Further, these intellectual connections inspired the emergence of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association.