Artist: Dylan Mooney
Hello again,
My last newsletter focussed on resources for supporting Indigenous Australian causes. I believe that the reckoning for non-Indigenous Australians right now is to swing the spotlight onto our own social inequalities, to push ourselves further to see and to listen to what the First Nations people of this country are/have been telling us. We should reflect on the culture that we consume and interrogate who else we can support that will make it easier for black voices to be heard.
I know that it all can sound so impassioned and righteous. Language at the moment is imperative. Messages are reduced to the essentials, but this can have opposing results. People either get swept up in the rhetoric, or push back against the tide of seemingly endless orders. With open minds, both reactions have their place. We need momentum and we need to take stock at the same time. Look at this week’s ‘#BlackoutTuesday’ phenomenon: it went from a tweaked version of the music industry’s #TheShowMustBePaused, halting self-promotion for a day, and snowballed into something anyone with an Instagram account jumped on. Share a black picture to support #BlackLivesMatter — makes sense! Last night, almost my entire feed was black, even from people who haven’t posted anything on social media for months — I even joined in. Then, the damage control started: black organisers asked everyone to either delete the black picture or to at least delete the hashtag. Thousands of black pictures took up the #BlackLivesMatter feed which meant protesters and organisers couldn’t find breaking news from around their city and the country. Information on social media has been propelling the protests and, suddenly, there was a blackout. It was an incredible example of the bandwagon effect, a simple, throwaway symbol of support, and few people questioning why they were jumping aboard. The point of pausing self-promotion was to escalate anti-racism and pro-protest messaging, not to stop messaging altogether.
For other people, the demands, the racial terminology, the accusations, and the requests can all sound hyperbolic, preachy and/or personal. It can be hard to hear. It can be especially jarring when someone outside The Discourse enters out of curiosity and is met with ‘ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS’ (#ACAB) and ‘IF YOU’RE WHITE YOU ARE RACIST’. It’s easier to then join the bad faith arguments around property damage and looting. You were brought up knowing they were bad. Police protect our possessions, right?
Allow me to digress… I’d like to give a candid summary of my relationship with racism as an Anglo-Australian to illustrate just how hard it is to dismantle personal biases and perception. I hope, however, it elucidates why I care now.
As a kid I said and did racist things. Not all the time, of course, and I was too young to have a racist philosophy, but I operated from a place of entitlement. I was praised for my blue eyes and blonde hair. I was praised for being a boy. The world, at that age, was my oyster. So, if a non-white student did better than me in class, I used their background against them. Twice, I said it aloud, both times to Asian girls — yikes. I was admonished then and I was admonished when I ran away scared from the Indigenous kids on our street. In high school I was bullied nearly every day for about three years, which, thankfully, turned me into a more empathetic person, rather than a resentful one. I experienced the bottom rungs of the social order, but observed enough racism against other students to know where I did have privilege. (Teachers also showed us Jane Elliot’s seminal documentary ‘Blue Eyed’, which opened mine.)
Out of high school, I still said and did racist things. I reasoned that it was a waste of money to give special support to Indigenous and other marginalised artists if the opportunities were plundered on mediocre art (I know!). I believed in meritocracy (I am still unlearning this today). I fetishised non-white bodies (they were still Other).
Parallel to this, I was becoming more and more passionate about fighting THE MAN. At university I was learning about all the ways in which the world was, like, totally fucked. I was learning -isms and -ologies and semantics and social justice, while working through what it meant to be an out gay man in the early '00s. I liked to see myself as Not Racist Anymore, as Not Sexist Anymore, but I played the marginalised card whenever I was.
It’s just that as a white man in my early 20s, the entitlement to ideas and opinions was a complete blind spot. Taking up space was what I expected everyone to do, and I didn’t understand that not everyone felt they could. The struggles of others were heard, but not completely understood. My reasoning kept coming back to that idea of meritocracy. That idea of a clean slate and fair go that Australians have instilled in them from a young age.
There wasn’t a moment when everything clicked, because there never will be. I’m still learning and unlearning. In my job as an English Language teacher, I still battle with the odd sweeping judgement that pops into my head from time to time. These are mostly ones that parade as positive but are just as reductive and harmful (“They really know how to cook”, “They’re all good at <thing>”, “Their culture is a lot richer than mine”, etc.), but some are negative (“They’re not good critical thinkers”, “They complain too much”, etc.). As a teacher I’m also privy to these sorts of judgements from my multicultural students towards Australians and towards each other. For this reason, I don’t beat myself up too much for the instances of racist thought I still have. Repression of these thoughts turns into white guilt, and white inaction. This leads to comments of “I don’t see colour” and fretful, knee-jerk reactions whenever the term “racism” appears: “I’m not racist!!!”. But there’s a whole well of non-violent racist acts we do that we’re convinced stem from a good place. White people believe they’re not racist if they fetishise a culture, by ‘discovering’ their foods and consuming their art, which can lead to appropriation — that is, others’ lived experience get re-centred as white adornments. The lack of humility, the lack of admitting when we’re centring ourselves, and our denial of a history of cultural imperialism are all in the making of white supremacy.
If you really want to do anti-racism work, it starts with being able to sit with the term ‘racist’. Proceed with caution. Do you have enough people of that race/culture around you to have a nuanced perception of them/it? Who do you follow on social media? Who do you listen to? Who do you read? How many? Are the voices uniform or varied? If you agree that people are neither good nor bad, why do you keep seeking to be seen as ‘good’? Anti-racism isn’t about moral high ground — that’s the white saviour complex. It’s about working towards creating space for everyone.
I think all of this has been aided by my interrogation of being marginalised by sexuality and how I deal with homophobia. It frustrated me during the Marriage Equality postal survey debacle to only see ‘Love is love’ and no admission from straight allies of how they are still complicit in homophobia. How many people would exclaim “I’m not homophobic!!!” but never in their life sit within queer spaces wanting to learn more. There’s the overt kind of homophobia — the violence, name-calling, and legislative exclusion — but then there’s the covert kind which has everything to do with heteronormativity (gender binary, weddings, babies) and the belief that it’s the default setting.
Whiteness is still seen as the default setting.
And Blackness, outside of most countries in Africa, is still seen as the bottom rung.
That’s the problem.
It’s not arbitrary, either. There is a fascinating history behind why Africans became slaves (here’s more!). And that’s, I think, my point with all of this — this post, this newsletter, the whole ‘An Odd Geography’ concept.
Anti-racism doesn’t have to be this loaded, scary thing. It can be confronting, but also endlessly fun. It can spark curiosity and expand the mind. You’ll be introduced to creators and stories that blow your mind and become new favourites. Challenge yourself. You’ll make mistakes; you’ll get better.
Collection of #BlackLivesMatter information:
Good advice on how to be a white ally;
The practical demands of the protests from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP);
TWO (2) Twitter threads of video evidence of police brutality and vandalism during the protests;
One of the best black rights activists I follow on Twitter is Bree Newsome Bass — she’s the woman who in 2015 climbed the South Carolina Capitol Building and took down the confederate flag. Knows her stuff. Knows it well;
How Western Media Would Cover Minneapolis If It Happened In Another Country — thanks, Ann! (follow her too!);
Justice for Joyce — Indigenous woman shot and killed by police in 2019;
A new Indigenous Deaths in Custody explainer in The Conversation;
A GOOGLE DOCS FOR #BLM SUPPORT FOR AUSTRALIANS
Other links of interest:
Australia’s National Environment Law Allows Extinction to Happen
The video for Lido Pimienta’s ‘Eso Que Tu Haces’, with the dance group KUMBE filmed in San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia (the first ‘free town’ for Africans in America):