Yesterday in Crikey, Jan Fran asked the question we* were all thinking: what, do we have to prove we’re a member of a race now, as well as proving we’ve been discriminated against?
Gosh that does sound like a lot of work. So here’s a handy primer:
- There is no such thing as race.
There’s culture, which is the practices that define and unite us. There’s nationality, which is our relationship to the political state in which we were born. But there is no such thing as race.
- There is such a thing as racists.
Racists like to feel powerful. Racists discriminate against, exclude or attack people who make them feel less powerful. To be sure to disempower those people further, racists pretend it’s because of some negative quality that all of those people share.
- Racists invented racism.
Racism is what racists do. It can be a one-off yelled-out phrase or drunken rant. It can be systematic and structural, such as that defined by the ABC’s Independent Review into ABC Systems and Processes in Support of Staff who Experience Racism that nobody seems to have read. Or it can be an entire policy, like the very first one that the Australian Government ever legislated: the White Australia policy.
- Race was invented by racists because racism.
Race is a set of negative qualities invented by racists to implement racism and reinforce the superior position they themselves have assumed. Race as a system of categorisation is a product of colonisation: the invasion and subjugation of entire populations by racists. (Why? See 2. There is such a thing as racists.) There was racism long before there was race, and there were racists long before there was racism. Think about it.
- Race, racism and racists are just distractions from White privilege.
At this point, I must defer to the masters: two recent, authoritative works in this field are by Michael Mohammed Ahmad and Aamer Rahman. You’re welcome.
* Today ‘we’ means the culturally diverse majority of the Australian population. Deal with it.
ESTHER ANATOLITIS 