Category: Features

Where Are You From? Like ‘From’ From?
August 31, 2020 6:30 pm Comments Off on Where Are You From? Like ‘From’ From?
This piece is one of many in the Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni series in association with the ANU BIPOC Department . Want to write for the series? Email anuethnoculturaldept@gmail.com with a pitch or draft.

“Where are you from? Like from from?”
It’s questions like these that make my mind race a million miles an hour. My answer depends on who I’m in front of and how much I’m mentally prepared to enter into a conversation about it. This is how I navigated my identity and my need to ‘belong’ in racist institutions like the education system.

The answer to where I’m from sounds something like this: I was born in the UK and moved to East Africa a month or so after I was born. I stayed there for the next three to four years as my father’s side of the family was from there. From there, we decided to move back to the UK, where my mother was largely raised and her side of the family mostly still resided. I stayed there until I was thirteen, and then we made the move to Australia. All these places, languages and cultures have had a strong influence on who I am. But the last one that has also shaped a lot of who I am is my ancestral culture, my Indian side. My family was forced to migrate from Gujarat, in North East India, to Africa for various reasons. However, that didn’t stop my grandparents and parents from trying to sustain their Gujarati heritage and culture, even if we couldn’t maintain a link geographically. This has meant that I have grown up as an Indian, East African, British and Australian.

When I lived in the UK, it was in a highly diverse community. This community had a lot of Gujaratis, so I was never too far away from kids that looked like me and had very similar experiences of co-existing in both Indian and British cultures. I saw myself in my peers and felt like I belonged. We recognised each other and immediately knew our Indian community existed on the outskirts of the wider British community we were also a part of. Yet even back then, I still encountered subtle remarks. My mother told me that there was a group of girls who would regularly bully me and tell me I couldn’t play with them because of my skin colour and yet I still thought they were my friends. She went to the principal and fought for an apology from them, but it wasn’t until she told me about the incident again in my twenties that I saw how ingrained institutional racism had already become within me. I wanted so badly to play with these kids, even if they were racist bullies. Five or six years later, my family moved to Australia.

While I’ve grown to love living here and embrace the good with the bad, as every country has, I struggled with my identity, amongst other things, as I made my way through high school.

I went to a Christian High School and College, which lacked diversity within my peer group and the teaching staff. There were 4 brown kids in my year of around 250. I say brown because there exists a plethora of South Asian communities and while our heritages might be geographically close, they were all so different and all had completely different languages.

Going to that school allowed me to receive the education and make the friends I have today, so I’m grateful for that. However, going to that school didn’t help me confront the idea that racism, in subversive or overt forms can and should be challenged.

One day, while I was still in Year 10, I’d left the classroom for some reason and while I was gone, a girl in my class made a comment about ‘Indians smelling bad’ and said something along the lines of me being no exception. I wasn’t there so I’ll never really know what was said, but a friend of mine let me know after class, what had been said in front of everyone, in front of the teacher too. No one said anything to the girl who had made the comment. No one, except that friend, said anything to me. I didn’t say anything to anyone.

That was the moment I truly felt othered.

I had thought about my ethnicity and heritage from time to time, but never to the extent I had at that point. I had also never felt so ashamed. I was angry with her for saying what she’d said, but I never confronted her about it because I was paralysed with my own anger and shame and figured that if a teacher hadn’t said anything, then who was I to say anything?

or someone who until that point had believed in working to the point where ‘you’re so good they can’t ignore you’, that experience made me understand something that I stand by to this day. That even if I do work harder and smarter than my – at the time – predominantly white peers, take part in all of the extra-curricular activities I could and shove down the Indian-ness within me, essentially whitewashing myself to fit in, I would never fit in completely. This was something that I felt so insecure about until I was 21. Imagine not believing your friends truly like you for who you are for that long, just because of internalised racism? It was exhausting.

Interestingly, I was catching up with some high school friends a couple of months ago and that incident came up in conversation. One of my friends recalled it and said she felt ashamed she didn’t call out that behaviour in that moment. That was powerful for me to hear because I’d never known if anyone else had cared enough when I was that age. They did, they just didn’t have any role models who had taught them that calling out racism was better than being a bystander.

The institution, and I mean teachers, class curriculums and pastoral care needs to be better. If I’d known I had the backing and support of people like my teachers, I would have felt safer; maybe if my peers had been taught some of these morals and seen it in practice, they would have been more likely to say something. As much as I can say I went to a Catholic school with less diversity than some of the public schools around me, that’s no excuse for a lack of understanding of basic racism from teachers. This lack of understanding is the very thing contributing to the bias of many young people’s futures and opportunities. That teacher not saying anything, along with all the white supremacy I had already internalised changed the way I interacted within my varying communities, pushing away all the Indian parts of me for so long.

Coming to Australia, I had not only moved countries and lost some friends – which was everything back then to thirteen-year-old me – but I had also lost the cultural linkages to my ancestors. Incidents like the ones in that classroom only cemented this loss further. In Leicester, I was just one of many Gujarati kids whose family had moved from East Africa and built a mixed cultural life there. In Canberra, I was ‘the British person’ because of where I’d geographically moved from. This was confusing for some people to wrap their heads around as I didn’t look like a stereotypical British person – and that’s verbatim been said to my face. Having family who had Indian culture from the seventies, a splash of East African culture of the eighties and nineties, and then some British culture of the noughties made us belong to so many places, and yet never fully belong anywhere. My family sometimes speaks Gujarati, Swahili and English in one conversation and it flows for us. In the same way, my cultural ideals, values and tastes flow from Indian, East African, English and Australian all the time. Riz Ahmed expresses it beautifully in his latest album, The Breakup:
Maybe I’m from everywhere and nowhere.
No man’s land, between the trenches.
Yeah I make my own space in this business of Britishness
Your question’s just limiting, it’s based on appearances.

Stop trying to make a box for us
I’ll make my own and bruck your poxy concept of us
Very few fit these labels so I’m repping for the rest of us
Who know that there’s no place like home and that stretches us
Who code switch so don’t piss me off for a cricket test for us
Or question us about our loyalty, our blood and sweat’s enough.
Born under a sun you made too hot for us
Kidnapped by empire and diaspora fostered us
Raised by bhangra, garage and halal southern fried chicken shops
A junglist and jungly
I’m Mowgli from the Jungle Book, I’m John Barnes in the box
I blaze hard after mosque
I bend words like brown and west until they just spell what.
My tribe is a quest to a land that was lost to us
And its name is dignity
So where I’m from is not your problem bruv.
I wish teen me had people like Riz to listen to and know that I’ll never fully fit in anywhere, and that it’s okay because I don’t need to fit in anywhere to be ‘valued’.

Having role models and spaces I could feel like me in were important in relearning that I wasn’t less than because I didn’t and could never fit someone’s “poxy concept of me”. Even though I was never very active in the Ethnocultural department, it was just good to see the group out there on social media and providing spaces for me if I ever needed or wanted it. Hearing artists like Riz Ahmed – and many other creators – helped me understand that the institution was not going to advocate for me, they weren’t going to give me a space to be me, because it hadn’t been built by people who represented me. If I wanted that space, I had to make it for myself.

I stopped feeling as though I needed to be someone I wasn’t so I could belong. I figured I might as well just be this complex, South Asian woman, who had grown up with influences from East Africa, India, England and Australia and if people didn’t like it, that was okay.

It took me well into my third year of university to really believe that, and I still waver sometimes, but less so. My hope is that young people of colour can exist within these institutions feeling safe to explore their identities. I want them to know that they have role models, confidants and teachers, that reflect, represent and advocate for them within the institution. I want teachers and the institution to give young people the tools they need for high school and college, but also what they need to explore their complex, rich and beautiful identities safely.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni

Woroni Editor
An Interview with Sweet and Sour
10:57 am Comments Off on An Interview with Sweet and Sour
The Sweet and Sour Zine (SNS) was conceived in the middle of isolation by founder Sydney Farey. As COVID-19 spread across the world, along with it came a rise in xenophobia catalysed by the pandemic. Without everyday physical interactions and our usual support networks, people begin to lose a sense of community. That’s what inspired Sydney to post in ANU Facebook groups in search of a like-minded team to found SNS. After an overwhelming amount of submissions from the community (thank you!) and a lot of hard work from everyone on the team, Issue One of the zine was successfully launched on the 8th of August at Smith’s Alternative. What was a wet and cold day outside, could not stop the merriment and buzz of excitement that filled Smith’s that afternoon. As we are bi-monthly, sending in content for us to print is a way you can support us! Look out for Issue Two submission openings soon!

Following is an interview with Sydney Farey and some responses from SNS team members discussing the zine and its significance.
–Viv Wang

Founder Sydney Farey:

About you:
I consider myself a visual artist and art historian. I work mostly in printmaking, and in ceramics more recently. I was born and raised in China, moving to Canberra when I was twelve years old. My identity is a mix between my Chinese upbringing, my American family, and my life growing up in Australia.

What inspired you to found SNS?
I wanted to create a space for individuals with Asian heritage in Australia to share our thoughts, experiences and creativity, and provide a supportive platform where we can come together to explore our cultures, connect and heal. It is a powerful feeling when we realise we are not alone and many of our experiences are shared with others.

What has the reception been like thus far?
The reception has been overwhelmingly positive! From our dedicated executive team members and contributors, to the people who share our social pages and send us encouraging messages – we have been met with nothing but support from the Canberra, and greater Australia community. It goes to show how important a platform like SNS is, especially during tumultuous times like these. Our community is growing bigger and bigger every day.
On Aug 8 launch event, our FB page surpassed 600 likes, and our IG page surpassed 300 likes. Most online traction came from our Smith’s event at over 9.5k interactions. We had over 50 contributions to the first issue of the zine from all over Australia.

What do you hope SNS will be able to achieve?
I hope SNS can keep providing opportunities for Asian creators to develop and share their work in a supportive and creative environment, and continue educating the broader public through bringing attention to Asian stories and experiences. While most of our team and our community is based in Canberra at the moment, I hope SNS will keep growing and reach areas all around Australia.

How can others support BIPOC creators/SNS?
While we were able to keep the first issue of SNS free as we received SEEF funding, our future issues may require a small charge in order to sustain printing fees and keep this platform alive. We will always try to keep SNS as accessible as possible, with free issues online at all times. The best way to directly support BIPOC artists is to do it locally! Attend BIPOC artists’ exhibitions, plays, shows, live sets, purchase locally produced art, clothing, crafts and objects from BIPOC creators.

The Sweet and Sour Team:

What motivated you to join the SNS team?
Chetan Kharbanda (Management): Race and culture takes up a huge chunk of my headspace as a POC living in Australia. Being an extroverted and super social person, I feel very connected to my peer group which constitutes people from all sorts of backgrounds. Despite this, I’ve always struggled to share some thoughts, ideas and experiences effectively due to a huge difference in personal context. When I saw Sydney’s post about a potential venture which will facilitate sharing the voices of the BIPOC community, the first thought that hit me was “Hell yeah!!”.

What do you hope SNS will be able to achieve?
Viv Wang (Marketing): I hope SNS will become a popularised space where Asian creators feel safe and appreciated. I see SNS as an important tool in cross-cultural understanding as it provides a platform for creators categorically deemed as niche to publish their work.

How do you think SNS will impact Asians in Australia?
James Yang (Design): I think it will be a good way to attract more attention to the Asian-Australian experience, as I think it is something that is often deemed insignificant, or pushed to the side in light of other social issues.

Viv Wang (Marketing): I think the massive turnout and the really enthusiastic reception we’ve gotten so far speaks volumes about how such a project was needed. I believe SNS will assist in the popularisation and spotlighting of the wide varieties of Asian-Australian experiences which may help in the validation of other Asian Australians.

How can others support BIPOC creators/SNS?
Chetan Kharbanda (Management): I’d say follow the three E’s. Educate yourself, Empathise and Enact the change. We’re here to help you do that.
Photographer: Abby Ching

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Viv Wang
What Does It Mean Going to University on Stolen Land?
10:49 am Comments Off on What Does It Mean Going to University on Stolen Land?
This piece is the first of many in the Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni series in association with the ANU BIPOC Department. Want to write for the series? Email anuethnoculturaldept@gmail.com with a pitch or draft.

How aware are you?

The ANU operates on the stolen lands of the Nngunnawal and Ngambri people. Have you ever thought about the fact that you live, study and work on stolen land? A land where sovereignty has never been ceded?

When you go to class and learn through a predominately white Settler gaze, how aware are you that you do so where First Nations complex social and political systems were in place for thousands of years on land beneath your feet?

What are you going to do about it?

As you progress through your degree at the ANU, are you also educating yourself in ways you may be complicit in the oppression of First Nations people today? As you learn to critically analyse and speak up, are you also amplifying the voices of Indigenous people? You are and will always be living on stolen land.

What are you going to do about it? Here’s a great place to start.

Read and listen to Indigenous authors.

Ambelin Kwaymullina is an Aboriginal writer and illustrator from the Palyku people of the Pilbara region. She has written a book, Living on Stolen Land, which is an exploration on how Settlers can respect the Indigenous sovereignties around them and take meaningful action.

This is a short extract from one of Kwaymullina’s poems:

“Settler-colonialism
is a serial violator
of indigenous boundaries
Of lands bodies
hearts
minds….
Listening means learning to hear
the noise of settler-colonialism
inside your head
and all around you
so you can hear past it
to understand our voices
on our own terms”

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni

Anushri Goswami
What Does a Decolonised University Look Like?
10:43 am Comments Off on What Does a Decolonised University Look Like?
This piece is the first of many in the Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni series in association with the ANU BIPOC Department. Want to write for the series? Email anuethnoculturaldept@gmail.com with a pitch or draft.

What does a decolonised university look like? No one truly knows…

No one knows what a decolonised university looks like because we have never had the opportunity to witness a decolonised world. When the university as an institution is a result of the colonial project and imagination, how decolonised is decolonised enough?

In this context, decolonisation never fully arrives. It is in a constant state of becoming, no matter how ‘progressive’ or ‘radical’ the change seems.

Let’s imagine…

The systemic nature of racism is designed to crush the power of imagination in BIPOC communities through distraction. The distraction of constantly having to prove yourself and that you can’t ask for me. And, in a world prone to pessimism, we often forget how beautiful it is to create through imagining the future. So, let’s imagine what an anti-racist, decolonised universiry would look like. Here are some ideas:

A university that better supports its BIPOC students

A university that actively employs BIPOC counsellors and psychologists to make mental health assistance more accessible and inclusive for its BIPOC students.

A university that listens to its BIPOC students’ concerns without citing lack of resources as a concern.

A university that employs and encourages more BIPOC representation in academia

A university that encourages more BIPOC academics but also goes beyond that to give voice to the lived experience in its research methodologies and output.

A university that stops making pledges for more diversity and inclusion and actually does something about it.

A university that responds to workplace racism and disciplines its staff and leadership when
they make the ‘casual racist comment’.

A university which critically re-evaluates the whiteness of its learning curriculum.

A university that looks beyond the conventional approach to education and curriculum and appreciates that true decolonisation means education will never begin and end in its academy.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni

Niroshnee Ranjan
Don’t Look Away
10:34 am Comments Off on Don’t Look Away
This piece is the first of many in the Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni series in association with the ANU BIPOC Department. Want to write for the series? Email anuethnoculturaldept@gmail.com with a pitch or draft.

Don’t look, just walk on.
This is an attitude I was taught. When visiting my Mum’s country, you will be struck by the amount of beggars on the street. And not just the amount, but the severity. Men without legs, women without faces, blind, the elderly and children. All very calm, begging, selling or just watching as you pass by.
The advice I was given?
“Don’t look at them, just keep walking”.
A strange puzzle for a child. When you see someone hurt, someone suffering, you feel as if you have to help them. But here, in the dense and packed nation of India, there’s just too many. Too many people to try and help. For a single person, it’s hilariously impossible. But the lesson, I think, was wrong. To look past someone felt utterly unjust to me. It coloured such a large amount of who I am, that it became impossible to think. Enjoying food, TV, good clothes or company almost became a crime for me. How could you enjoy anything, knowing that just outside the door people had less?

How could you admire heroes, the Gandhis or Lincolns that you only knew as a fairy tale, when a cruel reality was lurking around you?And the fact that this same fate, reduced to poverty, could so easily happen to you? Hell, you clung on tighter to any kind of safety.

And then, back to Australia.
Suddenly back to a place that was almost grossly, infinitely richer. I wondered why there were so few beggars, so many clean cars and so much food. I tried to forget the words I had learned in India. To just walk past my problems.

And soon, that became utterly impossible. You have to face people when speaking to them. You can’t ignore family members when they ask for help. And problems don’t just disappear if you stop thinking about them.

The lessons given in India helped me, and the people there, to go about their lives. When you need to work for food, education and housing, it’s unnecessary torture to focus at the beggars lining the street. And my lesson was to learn that while people may not look at the poor, they are still working to help.

There are dozens of charities in India, with thousands moving above the poverty line yearly. People work like devils to improve things, the most common line in India is “I want to afford a good education for my children”. People want to create a better future. Everyone does, even Lincoln and Gandhi managed between civil war and independence to try and reform conditions in their countries.

The point was not to turn away. While we can’t torture ourselves with guilt, being aware of the conditions we live in, have lived in and those we could potentially live through are important so that we can face problems down the track. The lesson I learnt in India changed from “don’t face your problems” to “don’t dwell on what you can’t help”.
And in Australia, I learnt that ultimately, we cannot look away from a crisis.

Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni

Anonymous
Things We’ve Learned About Being a Better Ally
10:19 am Comments Off on Things We’ve Learned About Being a Better Ally
This piece is the first of many in the Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni series in association with the ANU BIPOC Department. Want to write for the series? Email anuethnoculturaldept@gmail.com with a pitch or draft.

The award for “perfect ally” goes to…absolutely no one.

You will never reach a point in your life when you become the “perfect ally”. Being an ally is ever-evolving. It’s a process of change and development. The term ‘ally’ is a verb and so it actually requires you to do something.

You’re going to make mistakes….

As an ally, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes and incorrect assumptions. This is the case even if you’re fighting the good fight to end racism in your community. Learn to say sorry when you do make those mistakes and be prepared to get called out.

You can’t be BFFS with everyone’s oppression.

Everyone’s experience with racism is different and you can’t use your own experience with racism to understand the oppression of others.

I’m guilty of this, in doing so we forget the complexities of systemic racism and how it affects different minority groups. Human empathy does not rely on relatedness. Start listening. Stop relating.

The most radical thing you do is admitting that you don’t know it all.

Often BIPOC are called upon to be the highest authority on all topics related to race but sometimes we don’t know it all. Acknowledging that you don’t know it all makes space for others who can better articulate their thoughts on the topic.

I’m (not) sorry you feel guilty.

Feeling guilty about your complicit stance on racism does not automatically mean you are being a better ally. Guilt is the first step in a very long process of self reflection and development. The process of deconstructing your inner self and contextualising it against the world you live in. The question is, are you ready to do that?

Performative allyship? It ain’t it chief.

Sharing posts on social media and engaging with anti-racist resources is all great but you need to show up when you are needed the most. You need to put yourself on the front lines and weaponise your white privilege or otherwise to help those who can’t afford to do so. You need to be ready to call racism out when you see it.

Your POC, Black or Indigenous friends and student leaders are not your moral yardsticks and encyclopedias for racism. If you have a question, google it. The answer is definitely out there. If you can’t find it? Look harder.

The emotional labour of having to talk about race again and again is exhausting. Don’t fall prey to the dangerous in between. You can read all the critical race theory in the world or watch all the TV shows featuring Black people ever to be made but that doesn’t give you the authority to speak over other people whose lived experience is racism. I’m so glad you’re finally on your personal journey to dismantling white supremacy but it doesn’t just stop there. What are you going to do about it?

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni

Niroshnee Ranjan
What is ‘Are You Racist ANU’ About?
9:57 am Comments Off on What is ‘Are You Racist ANU’ About?
This piece is the first of many in the Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni series in association with the ANU BIPOC Department. Want to write for the series? Email anuethnoculturaldept@gmail.com with a pitch or draft.

It’s about weaponising the power of storytelling to dismantle white supremacy at the ANU.

White supremacy manifests in more than one form. Just because we don’t see outright racism doesn’t mean we can deny the historical and cultural influences our university is built around.

From a lack of BIPOC representation in academia to non-critical representations of historical figures, there are constant reminders that the university space hasn’t dismantled the white supremacy it’s rooted in.

We must empower the BIPOC community at ANU to speak their truth. The experiences of racism, struggles with identity, stories within the BIPIC community are vastly diverse and personal to each person and their history. It is important we speak our truth to dismantle the whiteness that minority and ethnic communities are socialised to ignore.

What does racism look like?

Racism takes many forms and can happen in many places. Often when we think about racism, we think about individual incidents of abuse, brutality or harassment that were motivated by racist behaviours. A white, patriarchal capitalist world wants to you believe racism is an isolated incident.

But that’s not how racism works! Racism can be broken down into types such as these:

1. Systemic Racism

Systemic racism is also known as institutional racism or structural racism. It assumes white superiority individually, ideologically and institutionally. Under systemic racism, systems of education, government and the media celebrate and reward whiteness. This assumption of superiority can pervade thinking consciously and unconsciously.

2. Internalised Racism

As BIPOC are victimised by racism, we internalise it. That is, we develop ideas, beliefs, actions and behaviours that support or collude with racism. This internalised racism has its own systemic reality and its own negative consequences in the lives and communities of people of colour. More than just a consequence of racism, then, internalised racism is a systemic oppression in reaction to racism that has a life of its own.

Because race is a social and political construct grounded in a history/experience of oppressor/oppressed relationships based on physical characteristics, by definition it offers people of colour a very limited sense of self. With internalised racism, this limited sense of self can undermine people of colour’s belief in our full humanity and disrupt our understanding of our inner life.

3. Interpersonal Racism

Interpersonal racism occurs between individuals. Once private beliefs come into interaction with others, racism is now in the interpersonal realm. Examples include public expressions of racial prejudice, hate, bias, and bigotry between individuals.

Understanding your racism and what you can do about it:

Just because you don’t commit hate crimes doesn’t mean you aren’t racist.
Just because you don’t intend to be racist doesn’t mean you’re not racist.
Just because you’re not white doesn’t mean you’re not racist.

Racism is ingrained in a society that benefits YOU, so you are racist. The question is, what can you do about it?

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni

ANU BIPOC Department
ANU’s Aggravating Colour Class Bias
August 25, 2020 7:32 am Comments Off on ANU’s Aggravating Colour Class Bias
This piece is part of the Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni series in association with the ANU Ethnocultural Department. Want to write for the series? Email anuethnoculturaldept@gmail.com with a pitch or draft.

“I’ve been financially independent for 2 years, my parents just pay my rent for Bruce Hall”
Statements coated with the blindness of economic privilege like above are regularly heard on the ANU campus. University for many can be an isolating experience, however at the ANU, the experiences of coming from a low socio-economic (SES) minority background can isolate you almost completely. The ANU is unique in that a major proportion of students are determined by their economic ability to move interstate and abroad to attend in the first place. This essential barrier knocks out a majority of low SES individuals from attending the university in a fell sweep.
In my first year as a fresh Logan Queenslander youth I felt like someone who had just landed on an alternate private school campus. ANU has the lowest level of low SES student participation at all universities in Australia, (even less than Bond University)! In a 2008 study, the national average of most universities’ proportion of low SES students was 16%. ANU, on the other hand, had an abysmal makeup of 4.53% (notably the highest number they had ever had at the time)! This is reflected in the makeup of students on the campus, many who herald from elite international and private schools that reflect an artificial monied and controlled picture of the society they come from. These students often pride themselves on growing up with a diverse environment, going to schools overseas and interacting with people all over the globe, yet they never acknowledge the falsity of this diversity. The underlying makeup is that of wealth.
Lack of low SES representation for me has single handedly resulted in an isolating cultural difference. Having parents not on the dole, connections, a financially and emotionally supportive family network, holidays around the world and the polished spoken command private schools equip you with are prerequisites for participating in this university without feeling inferior. As a direct result the voices of people most affected by situations of strife tend to be drowned out by those who choose to speak on our behalf. It is as though low SES culturally diverse individuals are a foreign specimen in a David Attenborough documentary that requires the palatable translation of richer minorities from affluent families with the right degree of learned political correctness.
Being lectured by well-meaning friends about economic responsibility when they come from backgrounds of economic stability feels like a particularly insidious salt in the wound. Worse is when this kind of patronisation of experience comes from circles and groups meant to advocate for minorities. In my personal experience interacting with these spaces, a singular identity of palatable elitist politically savvy POC-ness is championed and catered to, and the diversity of thought is stifled as a result.
In my experience of most advocacy spaces on campus, those who speak up most and try to control the narrative tend to be from privileged backgrounds. Spaces cater to one type of POC-ness. There is little to no recognition that sometimes they share more in common with the rich white girls and boys of elite colleges and halls, than the low SES ethnic communities they try to represent, oftentimes ridiculing the same communities for not being acclimated to a white palatable ethnic makeup. The beauty of POC experiences feels diluted through this controlled lens. The often ugly, unfiltered, sometimes problematic and ultimately complicated experience is diluted when only represented through this filtered lens.
Weaponisation of the very real and personal experiences of low SES POCs as a medium to garner woke validation is reductive to the experiences of actual low SES people of colour. There’s an immense irony that those that will never have to deal with the intricacies of public housing, over-policing, and a myriad of other low SES issues, are the ones who try to dictate the narratives of these experiences.
Competitional poverty is a side hobby, rather than a lived reality for many of those who attend ANU. Race and class are all comparative, and there’s always someone worse off or better off. But I think more students at Australia’s most prestigious university should use the critical lens they apply to their readings to themselves and their cohort to keep their positionality in these institutions in perspective.
Changing the way ANU students engage with the low SES issue is important. Tokenistically pointing to the lack of low SES representation during stupol season, with empty promises of change isn’t enough. Changing the culture of how we as students comport ourselves, is important in order to not make university an even more isolating experience for those already marginalised by their background.

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Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni

Manya Sinha
Learning to ‘Speak Your Truth’ in a Racist University
August 1, 2020 6:23 pm Comments Off on Learning to ‘Speak Your Truth’ in a Racist University
Niroshnee Ranjan writes about how we need to speak our truth to dismantle white supremacy at the ANU. This piece is the first of many in the Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni series in association with the ANU BIPOC Department. Want to write for the series? Email anuethnoculturaldept@gmail.com with a pitch or draft.

Last Friday, the ANU BIPOC Department launched their Semester Two campaign Are You Racist ANU?. If the name doesn’t speak for itself, let me tell you that this will be the most confronting anti-racism movement ANU has seen by far. The motto of this campaign is to ‘Speak Your Truth’. At its core, this campaign is about weaponising the power of storytelling to dismantle white supremacy at the ANU.
When having to witness the severe lack of minority representation in ANU academia, to non-critical representations of historical figures on campus grounds or even ANU’s lack of anti-racism resources and training, one thing remains clear above all. This university is not free from the clasps of white supremacy. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Some may think this is a new wave of identity politics. It’s not. The movement intends to empower members of the Ethnocultural community at the ANU to ‘Speak Your Truth’, or in other words, tell their story.
Unfortunately, there is no hiding the emotional labour that comes with telling one’s story. Being oppressed, let alone finding the words to explain that very oppression is a mentally exhausting task. As writer and academic Toni Morrison says, “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being…”
Thus, telling your story can very easily turn into having to prove your experiences with racism. This constant need to not only justify yourself but also having to verify the anti-racism movement for the white gaze is dehumanising to those who are oppressed by racism in the first place. It is one of the underlying reasons for the disempowerment of minority communities in their fight towards an anti-racist world. If only we could all just say, No Karen, this isn’t the Oppression Olympics. These are my experiences and I can speak about them in any way I want to. It’s a privilege to listen to the stories of racism without ever having to experience racism in the first place.
So, what is the point of speaking your truth?
In the white, patriarchal, capitalist society we live in, racism is both explicit and implicit. It is the very nature of this white, patriarchal capitalist society that associates racism with isolated incidents of harassment and abuse, diverting attention away from the structural nature in which racism infiltrates our institutions.
The only way we will actually start seeing it, is if we speak our truth.
For instance, I spent the last two years of my university education living in a residential college that was predominantly white. I was very lucky to find my clan both inside and outside of college but when I had to interact with the rest of the college community, I would put on my ‘white voice’ and hone my ‘white personality’. The dual nature of my identity and interactions with those at my residential college went unnoticed not only by those around me but also by myself. That was, until it was pointed out to me by my friends and I began to see that the very nature of white supremacy ingrained in the institution I called home, was to make you believe that this was the norm. You are led to believe that there is no room for imagining what a anti-racist residential college could look like in a world running rampant with racism and white supremacy.
It wasn’t until very recently that I confessed to my white friends about this duality in my nature. They were shocked to hear what I had to say. Understandably so, for when one hasn’t borne the brunt of systemic racism in the first place, how could they know how it feels to be oppressed by the very institution we all called home? However, they know this is how I feel now, and their rose-coloured glasses have been tainted by the harsh realities of the world as we minorities see it.
This was a positive experience of speaking my truth. But there is a fine line between speaking your truth in this way and having to explain yourself and ‘prove’ your experiences with racism all the time. The difference is, that by speaking your truth, you are weaponising your agency as a person, whilst also sharing your experiences for the benefit of others. But most importantly, for the benefit of yourself.
Truth is not only born from the fact that you are telling other people about your story. Truth is also born from the fact that you are sharing your story on your own terms, and are consequently carving out an anti-racist, white-supremacy-free niche for yourself in this world.
You are forced to seize your own place in this world by engaging in a process of disidentification. This is a term coined by Cuban American academic, José Esteban Muñoz, that encapsulates how marginalised performers and artists negotiate the dominant culture by neither identifying with the dominant ideology, nor rejecting it. Instead, they adopt a disidentificatory category wherein they harness the tools made available to the so-called majority to effectively speak their truth. In doing so, one enacts permanent structural change in this world, whilst also valuing the power of the individual experience.
You can enact this change. All you have to do is speak your truth.
Speaking your truth will allow you to bring to light the complexities that underlie the creation of the ethnocultural community at the ANU in the first place. In a world where minority communities have to look to one another for safety and comfort, these communities can often be mistaken for thriving simply off a sense of relatability. Let’s take Subtle Asian Traits for instance. The content shared on this groups is mostly for the pleasure of being #sorelatable. The dawn of millennial immigrant culture is sharing memes that humour the immigrant experience in a way that brings together an online community of Asian diaspora around the world. Although Facebook groups like Subtle Asian Traits are beneficial to minority communities, we are so much more than that. There is unseen beauty in the intricacies underlying our identities which are often misunderstood or cast aside as unimportant.
But let me tell you, they are important.
I think it’s only fair if I use an example from my own life to explain what that means.
As a Sri Lankan Australian who speaks Tamil, often when I speak about my heritage to my friends (white or not), their thoughts immediately go to the civil war or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). I’m pretty sure your thoughts just did. What’s interesting about being Tamil and having lived in Sri Lanka for seven years is that there is so much more to being Tamil in Sri Lanka than just anecdotes from the civil war. In fact, there are two sub-groups of Tamils living in Sri Lanka who deeply differ from one another on the basis of the dialect of Tamil they speak, the cultural practices they engage in, the food they eat and how kinship manifests itself within their communities. They are colloquially referred to as the ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’ and ‘Indian Tamils’, and I belong to the latter. This can be attributed to the different migration patterns of Indians who moved to Sri Lanka all those years ago.
The only time those nuances actually come to light is when I meet a fellow Sri Lankan Tamil, and we get talking about which part of Sri Lanka our families are from. Somewhere in our conversation, one of us will always ask the other, So, are you Sri Lankan Tamil or Indian Tamil?, even though both of our families had lived in Sri Lanka for so many years. This simple question is a moment of welcomed relief in a world eager to categorise your sense of self and also one of mutual understanding about the apolitical nature of our identities.
However, due to the sparse nature of the Sri Lankan Tamil community at the ANU, most of my time is spent with my friends whose ancestry descends from other South Asian countries like India. Although I have no problem doing this, I spend more time partaking in their culture than my own. There are definitely many similarities when it comes to the different cultures found in South Asian countries. Yet, the complexities of my story, like that of many others, still remain stark as ever.
It’s complicated. I know.
Speaking your truth is just as much owning up to the bad as showcasing the good. Growing up in a conservative family, I have actively partaken in endorsing the colourist attitudes of my light skinned family members. When I met my baby brother for the first time, the first thing I said was, ‘Why is he so black?’. I was five and even then, white supremacy had taken over my biases.
However, the power of the anti-racism movement lies in being able to unlearn those biases that are both visible and invisible in their own ways. I’m on a very long journey to dismantling internalised white supremacy but the least I can do along the way is speak my truth in the process of it all.
Nevertheless, my truth in many ways, is still one of privilege. For it is masked by the niceties of my skin colour, socio-economic class and model minority status. I am not black. Nor am I Indigenous. I don’t face the same extremities of oppression and blatant fear for one’s life that my peers do. I will never truly understand how it feels as I too am on stolen land. But I can provide a platform where they can speak their truth, whilst I speak my own.
Perhaps you read this and noticed how I speak my truth. Perhaps you didn’t.
Maybe this piece will convince someone else to do the same. Maybe it won’t.
Reading this piece will definitley make someone feel uncomfortable. But isn’t that the point of it all in the first place?
It’s time we make people uncomfortable when speaking about racism at the ANU.
So, will you ‘Speak Your Truth’?

Niroshnee Ranjan is a third year Law and Anthropology student and also the Deputy Officer of the ANU Ethnocultural Department. You can find more of her speaking her truth here.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Are You Racist ANU? x Woroni

Niroshnee Ranjan
How We Can Join In The Fight Against Racism
June 4, 2020 1:41 pm Comments Off on How We Can Join In The Fight Against Racism
Recently, three African-Americans died at the hands of white police brutality. Their names were George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, and they are not the only ones. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, police brutality is the leading cause of death for young black men in the United States. Violence committed by police against people of colour is rife all over the globe.
Here in Australia, we are not immune from this. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community have endured a long history of mistreatment by the institutions which are supposed to protect them but which inevitably cater first and foremost to white people.
When people think of racism, they often picture a white person yelling the “N” word at a person of colour, or shouting at someone to “go back to where they came from.” Indeed, these occurrences are prevalent. But its more pervasive, more insidious counterpart is institutionalised racism. This form of racism is implicitly committed by members of an institution, such as the government, the media, the education system or the criminal justice system. Institutionalised racism can appear in the form of passing over a person of colour for a job due to their “unusual” name, or selling foundation where the darkest shade is “medium.” Another example of this is police brutality, particularly against black and brown men. Feminist theorist Gayatri Spivak speaks of the concept of ‘White men protecting brown women from brown men’. Men of colour are so often depicted as dangerous and violent due to the history of Western cultures considering non-Western cultures to be “savage” – remember Pocahontas?
Racism, in the form of institutional discrimination and vilification, is alive and well. When I heard about the recent events in the United States, I felt deeply sad and helpless. But, there is something we can do about it. Institutions were, after all, created by humans. So, humans can destroy them, too. Sure, no one individual can single-handedly bring down white supremacy. But if we all do our little bit, we can begin on a journey towards a fairer, safer future for everyone.

Check your privilege
Being asked to “check your privilege” is guaranteed to make you roll your eyes. But there is a reason why you are, and should be, asked this. Whiteness, in many respects, makes your life easier.
Of course, there are white people who are also poor, disabled, women who have been sexually harassed or queer* people who have experienced discrimination. White privilege doesn’t negate any of these other experiences. Middle-class, male, non-disabled and cishet privileges also exist. But in the fight to end racism, it is whiteness that we must focus on. In the specific case of police brutality, African-Americans are three times more likely than Anglo-Americans to be killed. This is due to the stereotyping of black men as “dangerous” and “uncivilised,” a stereotype to which white men don’t fall victim. If you are a white person, or even a white-passing or light-skinned person of colour, the risk of dying at the hands of the police is relatively low. Once you can see this, you will also be able to see just how far we really are from true equality. And only then will you be able to make a change.
Another part of checking your privilege is working creatively with said privilege, and ideating ways to uphold people of colour. Unfortunately, people of colour are taken less seriously than white people when speaking about race. If you are white, people will undoubtedly listen to you. So, speak up! Try not to speak over people of colour, but in spaces where there aren’t any people of colour in the room you should take up the responsibility of advocating for the community.

Check your biases
We are all biased. You might think, ‘I’m not racist’, but the truth is, you probably are. This is a hard pill to swallow – no one likes to believe that they’re a bad person. But being racist doesn’t automatically make you bad, nor will your past racist attitudes necessarily define what you’ll believe in the future. You can change how you think about the world, so long as you put in the work.
If you see a black man walking down the street, do you immediately swerve sideways? If you meet someone whose skin colour is different from yours, do you feel the need to ask them where they’re “from”? If your law lecturer is of Chinese heritage, do you automatically think to yourself, ‘Jee, their English is good!’? If so, that’s okay – I, despite being a person of colour, sometimes think these things too! What is important here is to be mindful of what you think, and why. If you think black men are dangerous, this might be because of the media you have consumed and the things you’ve heard certain politicians say that are untrue. Always be critical. We can all change. We can all do better by ourselves and by our community.

Listen
When you hear a person of colour talk about their experience with racism your instinct might be to say, ‘But racism is over! You can vote! Slavery is over!’. This is understandable. There are certain experiences that people of colour have had which white people haven’t had. This can make it hard for white people to empathise with a person of colour’s life. But it isn’t impossible!
If you feel yourself becoming defensive after hearing a person of colour talk about racism, stop for a second. Listen to that voice in your head, the one that says, ‘They’re wrong and I’m right’. Read what they’ve written, or listen to what they’ve said, properly. Try and put yourself in their shoes and if you still don’t believe them, ask them to clarify. They might not respond to you – after all, people of colour aren’t responsible for educating others. But if they do respond, listen again without judgment. This is how empathy is built, and empathy is necessary to fight racism.
It’s worth mentioning here that at this point in time, the focus of discussion is on the black community. They are the people who are suffering the most right now. If you’re like me, a person of colour who isn’t black, you might feel the need to advocate for your own community. Again, stop and think for a little while. There’s no question that all people of colour have their unique challenges that come with living in a white supremacist world, and we will talk about these challenges eventually. But for now, in respect of the people who’ve recently lost their lives, try to keep the discussion to the black experience.

Educate yourself
I believe that a significant contributor to racism is ignorance. “Ignorance” simply means, ‘A lack of knowledge’. A lack of knowledge is likely to come from a lack of education.
You don’t need to take a sociology class to learn about society! In the digital age, there is knowledge everywhere and if you have access to the Internet, you can find it all. Read books, listen to podcasts, watch TV shows…whatever you fancy. One of my favourite books is Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge. In this book, Eddo-Lodge discusses politics, history, feminism and more, all through the lens of anti-racism. While the focus is mostly on racism in the United Kingdom, what with Eddo-Lodge being a Brit herself, much of the content is applicable to much of the Western world. It’s important to note that Eddo-Lodge has requested via Twitter if you were to buy her book that you should match what you paid to donate to nonprofit organisation Minnesota Freedom Fund.
Other great resources include Instagram account @nowhitesaviours and YouTube videos ‘why black people are angry and tired’ by Vee Kativu and ‘White Moderates, Cowards, John Boyega + Black Lives Matter’ by Claudia Boleyn, both British people of colour.

For more resources, go here.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Phoebe Lupton