Racial Justice: Local action is key

ID: 6 people of colour stand together smiling in front of the Torres Strait and the Aboriginal flags.

Marcella Brassett, Training and Campaigns Lead at Democracy in Colour, addresses the pervasive problem of racism in our institutions head-on, and outlines a radical plan that takes action into every space that racism is experienced.

A national anti-racism strategy by the Albanese Government is an immense relief.

A national admission that we have a crisis of racial injustice in Australia.

The most diverse Parliament in our history is also a long time coming, even if representation is just the beginning. 

But neither of these changes gets to the root of the problem. 

For so many decades, generations, lifetimes, racism in Australia has been a crisis, an atrocity borne in silence. For First Nations Peoples the violence continues unabated and largely unaddressed:  Deaths in Custody, the Hawthorn Football Club racially abusing entire families and incarcerated  children. 

For migrants / settlers of colour it has meant our parents trying desperately to be Australian enough. Work hard and say nothing so that their children can get the opportunities they never had. 

We choose to either carefully preserve languages and cultures or erase aspects of ourselves to survive in this hostile environment.

We need the space and time and safety to grieve our immense  losses, to heal and build bridges. 

However, before that, we need to end the silence and the inaction in our institutions and communities. 

Like most racialised peoples, I have found racism to be a dirty word here. 

Mention it in any conversation and I watch everyone in the room tense up, turn silent or vehemently turn against and disagree with me. It is not safe to bring up racism in our workplaces, in our doctors surgeries, in our mixed families, in our friendship groups.

We are unsafe especially on social media, even though I have found Twitter to be a community of validation, support and safety from fellow people of colour and First Nations peoples there. I learn from them, I report and block racists, I feel understood, heard and supported. We solve problems together, we share reactions to violence. We have a voice. 

I have learnt here that the first step to creating safety is building community. Building a shared language and understanding, a shared space to ask for help, express rage, and be listened to. All the elements needed to look forward together and get the action and the resources we need. 

I co-presented recently a First Nations Justice for People of Colour training session with two First Nations community organisers. The group in the workshop realised that we don’t have a shared understanding of what racial justice means.

There are many reasons for this, a primary one being we are often overwhelmed by the everyday work of dealing with racial injustice: supporting ourselves and our communities through the trauma. We don’t have the time nor the space to articulate what justice means for our communities. 

We struggle with compounded socio-economic and mental health impacts that are intergenerational. All while having to constantly code switch and navigate the minefield of racism just so we can earn a living in white dominated spaces. 

Racial Justice is complex and contextual. 

Each space we live in needs a response and an action to create justice, equity and safety based on context, dynamic, people and our individual experiences.

ID: Democracy in Colour 2022 Placement program participants (9 brightly dressed and smiling people of colour pose for a photograph)

Democracy in Colour runs placement programs to create new jobs for support current FNPOC working in the Not for Profit sector. The program offers culturally safe and productive spaces and customised professional development, so FNPOC can sooner lead organisations. 

Last week Democracy in Colour launched our Migration with Dignity campaign. 

We heard from human rights activists / temporary visa holders on the harmful  impact of racist migration policies. We are asking the Government to change its policies that are the antithesis to an anti racism strategy. 

In my personal life, I took a call a few months ago from a South Asian family member who is married to a white man from English heritage. They live in a regional town. His parents say racist stuff around her children. She called me fed up, upset but utterly lost for what to do about it.

I told her to talk to her white husband, because it is his job to take care of his family and call his parents out, to demand that they stop and think, and learn how to respect his wife and children. 

Racism comes at us from all sides, all at once, everywhere. 

What do we need then from Governments and Institutions? From civil society to address the racism crisis in our Sport, workplaces, service providers, migration system and very own homes?

Local, intentional, evidence based, short term and long term action.

We need to act on every level to make Australia a safe place to live, work, build families and futures for everyone, not just Anglos. 

We need an anti-racism strategy at every jurisdictional level - state, territory, and council.

We need local action plans for racial justice in every workplace, service provider, hospital, university, school. 

Everywhere First Nations peoples and People of Colour exist. 

The national anti-racism strategy cannot be just another tick-a-box, we’ve done our bit for diversity and inclusion ‘way out’ for white people with power. The Albanese Government must legislate to hold every institution accountable for racial justice, if we are finally going to face the crisis. 

It must legislate for local action and local impact. 

Our institutions need real change, not increasingly sophisticated platitudes. 

And like always, real change comes from people with power listening to those of us with lived experience, giving us power, doing the work for justice and equity in institutions, in communities, in families. 

First Nations and People of Colour have carried the load for generations, we have survived enduring injustice. 

We have paid the heavy price of White silence and White supremacy. 

Now we need justice where we are, not just in Parliament. 

ID: A series of colourful murals of women from many different cultural backgrounds painted on a fence