Racism Wasn’t that Bad” and Other Inane Arguments - Priyanka Sharma

“Racism Wasn’t that Bad” AND OTHER INANE ARGUMENTS

Priyanka Sharma

TW: DESCRIPTIONS OF RACIAL VIOLENCE, CHILD ABUSE, MURDER, SLAVERY, GENOCIDE

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. This is what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote on April 16, 1963 in ‘Letter from a Birmingham jail.’ Today, exactly 57 years later, his words remain just as relevant.

I was fifteen years old the first time I really understood Black history and anti-Black racism. In my Literature class that year, we studied the novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird.’ We learnt about the Antebellum South, and the Civil Rights era, and were suitably appalled at the numerous stories of slavery and human rights abuse. The reality of the dire situation of slaves and their inhumane treatment didn’t sink in for any of us until we heard the story of Emmett Till. Emmett was a 14-year-old boy born in 1941 in Chicago, Illinois who was visiting relatives in Mississippi during his summer vacation in 1955. Three days after visiting a grocery store and “offending” a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, he was abducted from his greatuncle’s home and lynched by her husband and his half-brother. The pair beat and mutilated Emmett, then shot him in the head and sank his body in the Tallahatchie river. When discovered three days later, he was barely recognisable, and his mother insisted on a public funeral with an open casket. Tens of thousands of people attended the funeral, and pictures of Emmett’s body were shown in blackoriented magazines. Later that year, an all-white jury declared Emmett’s attackers not guilty, and in 2008, Bryant revealed parts of her testimony against Emmett were “not true”. Emmett’s brutal death brought attention and nationwide scrutiny to the treatment of African Americans in the Jim Crow era and was a catalyst for the Civil rights movement, with the Montgomery Bus Boycott taking place soon after. Stories like this really drive home the absolute atrocities that have been committed against people of colour, but especially against Black and Indigenous people. In Australia, we are no better. Since European Invasion in 1788, Indigenous Australians have been oppressed in their own country. It is estimated that before colonisation almost 750 000 First Nations people inhabited the continent. We know now that Indigenous Australian people are custodians of the world’s oldest living culture, placed at around 60 000 years ago. However, the ignorance and ill-founded superiority of the British Empire resulted in Lieutenant James Cook’s declaration that the continent was an unoccupied wasteland, or “Terra nullius”. The arrival of European colonisers brought diseases such as smallpox, syphilis and influenza, killing large proportions of the Indigenous population. Since Indigenous culture was so entwined with nature, and most groups would move from site to site to make minimal impact on the environment, the concept of fixed land ownership and fences didn’t exist. This resulted in Indigenous people unwittingly entering what the colonisers had claimed as “their” land, and being shot. Lack of communication and general disregard for Indigenous lives led to the British Empire committing genocide against the existing inhabitants of Australia. Respect for, and equality of Indigenous people in this country is only just beginning to be addressed. The fact that all Indigenous people won the right to vote in 1965 (a mere 55 years ago), the display of the head of Bunuba warrior, Jandamarra in a private British trophy collection in 1897, and the fact that the Australian Prime Minister’s official apology to Indigenous people came only 12 years ago, in 2008, all go to show that First Nations people have been brutalised and disrespected, and that reparations are not only still necessary, but long overdue.

As for where we are today; during a global pandemic, the USA has ignited an international movement in protest of systemic racism and police brutality against Black and Indigenous people. The recent death of George Floyd, a Black man whose windpipe was pinned under police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee for nine minutes, was the catalyst for this. Millions of people are in support of the movement for equality, and yet simultaneously, the Ku Klux Klan has resurfaced, while right wing groups and conspiracy theorists claim that racism no longer exists, and perhaps never did. But as long as injustice and inequality persist, people will continue to protest, and riot, and rebel, until systems of government undergo the necessary change. When I first read the story of Emmett Till, as a sheltered fifteen-year-old girl living in the 21st century, I thought, this boy was one year younger than me. If not for the geographical location and time period I live in, the body in the open casket could have been mine. My brown skin, although no longer a death sentence, remains a barrier today- but some people have it worse. Now is the time to champion the voices of people of colour, especially of Black people, and of Indigenous people. Now is the time to create the necessary change in our governing systems, and in our collective social consciousness.

And finally, to George Floyd, Tanya Day, Breonna Taylor, Dominique Clayton, Eric Reason, Atatiana Jefferson, Tane Chatfield, Botham Jean, Philando Castile, Bettie Jones, Walter Scott, Veronica Walker, Natasha McKenna, Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson, Michelle Cusseaux, Eric Garner, Ezell Ford, Rayshard Brooks, Priscilla Slater, Robert Forbes, Nathan Reynolds, David McAtee, James Scurlock, Patrick Fisher, Calvin Horton Jr, Rebecca Maher, Dion Johnson, Maurice Gordon, Cornelius Fredericks, Joyce Clarke, Steven Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Barry Gedeus, Wayne Morrison, Manuel Ellis, Jaquyn O’Neill Light, William Green, and the many, many others we didn’t record, see, or hear about- we remember you, we are sorry, and we are fighting for a better world.

What you can do to help:

Research. Educate yourself on what people of colour, Black and Indigenous people have faced throughout history, and why systemic racism exists and is an issue. Find causes to support, places to donate, people to listen to and learn from.

Sign petitions. Donate, if you can.

Acknowledge your privilege. Everyone has it; skin colour, wealth, level of education, language, ability, sex, and sexuality are a small fraction of factors that affect a person’s status in the world. Everyone has differing levels of privilege, and we must acknowledge ours, and use it to lift those with less than us.

Be vocal. Don’t let your voice go unheard in the fight for equality, and amplify the voices of others who know more than you.