In preparing for this new year of Understanding Race, the Masters of Research class I teach at Western Sydney University, I have been thinking about the call to speak more about race in settler colonial ‘Australia’. As I have written, there is an elision of race…
For the final week of The Racial State, we are going to engage in the relationship between race, digital technology and social media. We shall focus our classroom activity around Joy Buolamwini’s research project Coded Bias which has also been made into a Netflix documentary. We…
In Week 12, we will have a guest lecture from author of Radical Skin, Moderate Masks, Dr Yassir Morsi. Watch Yassir discuss his book together with author of The Muslims Are Coming!, Arun Kundnani here:
Week 11 of The Racial State all involve a discussion of police, prison and detention abolition. I have adapted some tests produced by abolitionist activists and intellectuals Mariame Kaba, Debbie Kilroy (from Sisters Inside) and Tabitha Lean. In preparation for this week’s theme, we will be…
Mariame Kaba has some amazing resources on her blog, Prison Culture including the #FergusonSyllabus: Talking and Teaching about police violence. I have adapted one of her techniques, the ‘6 word story’ exercise for us on Week 10 of The Racial State during which we will be…
I first developed this exercise when I was invited by Professor Lilon Bandler to speak to er medical students at Sydney University! Here I have re-adapted it for use in our The Racial State Week 8 on institutional and systemic racism, as a ‘menu’.
In Week 7 of The Racial State we will be discussing assimilation, multiculturalism against the backdrop of ‘White Australia’ and the ruse of Indigenous ‘inclusion’. I have got the permission of the brilliant Indigenous run t-shirt company Dark and Disturbing to adopt some of their designs…
For Week 6 of The Racial State we are going to subvert the idea that there is a debate to be had about ‘Australia Day’, known more correctly as Invasion Day. We are going to be engaging with Professor Irene Watson’s short text, ‘Why celebrate on…
For Week 5 of The Racial State we are going to be working with a short version of Patricia Hill Collins’ text, Chapter 4 of Black Feminist Thought: ‘Mammies, Matriarchs and other Controlling Images’ from Blackfeminisms.com. We will watch the short video, ‘Mammy, Jezebel and Sapphire’…
I’ve tried to use TikTok. It is full-on the hardest thing ever to get right, so I am not sure how many videos I will actually end up producing! However, as a conversation started for Week 1 of The Racial State, I have produced a TiTok…