I’m writing this week in the spirit of #blackoutday earlier this week, where much social media activity paused briefly as an encouragement to use that time to reflect — and educate ourselves — on inequality, injustice and racism.
I racked my brain about what I could write about in 5MSM that would add anything to the public discourse. And, the answer I came up with was ‘nothing’. But wait. There is. I know my clients engage me because I’m relentlessly curious, and I hold a personal belief that we are all more similar than dissimilar.
So, I offer this. Even the best informed, best connected, and best read amongst us can benefit from gaining additional perspectives on race. So, I’d say, take more than the time you spend on social media, and engage in some education this week.
Talk to people of colour around you, read a book, or watch something that enlightens. So, here are a few things that I’ll be absorbing, or that I recommend from having watched or read them recently.
Three books
The Australian Dream by journalist, Stan Grant. This is a shortish Quarterly Essay that deals masterfully with the Grant’s self-confessed paradox of being both Aboriginal and privileged, raised in the shade of a bigger tree, which is our country itself, one that is peaceful and prosperous, but nonetheless built on a dark history of neglect and bigotry.
The Underground Railroad is a remarkable novel, for which Colson Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. It deals with slavery in the US, and is a subtly magic-realist tale of Cora and Caesar’s escape from their enslavers, and their attempts to stay ahead of the slave hunter Ridgeway. I couldn’t put it down and three years later, I still think about this book.
Bruce Pascoe until his 30s presumed he was of entirely British origin, but then discovered otherwise and, from the age of 40, has considered himself indigenous. His book Dark Emu challenges the established ideas that Australia was terra nullius by showing evidence of Aboriginal settlements, engineering and agriculture.
Three movies
Ivan Sen’s film Toomelah got a two-minute standing ovation at Cannes in 2011.
It’s set in the Aboriginal community of the same name, and its anti-hero is 10yo Daniel, who gets embroiled in the local drug trade.
One of this film’s most powerful devices is the use of subtitles (trust me, you’ll need them).
Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country is a gripping story of bush racism of the early 20th century, again winner of numerous national and International prizes.
Last year, I missed the two documentaries about footballer Adam Goodes, The Final Quarter and The Australian Dream so I’m deeply fascinated by the interplay of indigenous pride with mainstream society’s response to this.
One building
And, if you live in Melbourne, you probably already know this perspective: it’s the artful use of negative space in the design of a 34 floor residential tower to depict the face of 19th century Aboriginal activist and artist, William Barak.
Is this a welcome tribute, a heightening of consciousness, having Barak look down upon us as we shop, learn and travel, directly within view of our war memorial, the Shrine of Remembrance?
Or is it a cruel paradox, placing his visage on 500 investor-owned high-end apartments, atop the city whose land was taken away, piece by piece, from his people?
So my question for this week is a simple one: How important is it in organisations not to assume we understand, but to continue to educate ourselves?
Have a reflective weekend, all.
Andrew