Tag: Race critical and decolonial sociology

This is the first in a series of posts for my graduate course, Race Critical and Decolonial Sociology offered during my Hans Speier Visiting Professorship at The New School in New York (Spring 2017). See the syllabus here.

In Session 2, we discussed Robin D.G. Kelley’s article in The Boston Review and the responses to it from the perspective of the current challenges facing the United States and the world unleashed by the white supremacist Trump regime and asked what the role of the University could be from a race critical perspective.

In April 2016, the Free University of Western Sydney was launched by a group of local people – activists, teachers/educators and students – critical of the neoliberal university’s capacity to be a site for free study. I was honoured to be in attendance at the launch event which purposefully was a panel discussion between Aboriginal activists to address ‘the foundation of Australia’s racist architecture to aid in the development of a collective understanding of racial oppression.’ The discussion addressed the truth that, just as white Australia was built on the systematic dispossession of Aboriginal land, people and culture, its knowledge structures, including those within the university, serve to perpetuate these dispossessions. As such, no learning within the university, no matter how radical in purpose or tone, can on its own dismantle the structures of domination on which the persistence of Australia as a white settler colony depend. To think of an example that is relevant in my own teaching, in the context of my undergraduate course at Western Sydney University, The Racial State, it is insufficient to critique attachments to ‘Australia Day’ often displayed by students or to question the frequently repeated misconceptions about Aboriginal people (e.g. all Aboriginal people are given university places above members of all other groups irrespective of their attainment) in a room where Aboriginal students are either absent or in an extreme minority. It is insufficient to acknowledge country or even welcome Aboriginal speakers into the classroom to (for example Aunty Jenny Munro who came to talk about the struggles of the Redfern Tent Embassy) without asking why I, a recent migrant to Australia, with a European Union passport, is teaching on the continuities of race and racism rather than any number of Aboriginal scholars.

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