Two recent comments summarise the problem with responding to Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s base level Powellian dog-whistling racism with pictures of successful refugees.
Somayra Ismailjee‘s Engaging with Dutton’s Rhetoric is a Slippery Slope.
And this from Rise Refugee
This now happening in Australia reminds of the serious critiques of the I am an Immigrant campaign in the UK in 2015. Gurminder Bhambra, for example, wrote, “I am not an immigrant even if I may be treated as one. My family have held British passports for at least four generations, usually through no choice of their own. I am not now saying that my right to be here has to be justified on the basis of what I contribute to this society. I am here because you were there. Period. This is the basis on which I stake my claim & I defy your attempts to make me. justify my presence.”
It resonates in many places it seems, for example in this post by the brilliant Engbert Alejandro Martina I just came across.
And seems like I said something about ‘I Came By Boat’ in December 2015:
But actually in hindsight I’d be less critical of these campaigns, often run by people of migrant origin, than of ‘well-meaning’ liberal and ‘left’ journalists who trot out success stories and economically-focused arguments for supporting the rights of asylum seekers that miss the antiracist point made by RISE and Somayra Ismailjee. More on that when I have the energy but here’s a taste of the problem:
