tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608/articlesBlack Lives Matter Everywhere – The Conversation2021-06-03T03:31:33Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1614122021-06-03T03:31:33Z2021-06-03T03:31:33ZAustralia’s news media play an important role reminding the country that Black lives still matter<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of people who have passed away, and descriptions of these deaths.</em></p>
<p>One year has passed since George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. Floyd’s name is imprinted upon our consciousness, as it should be. </p>
<p>However, in Australia we know less about the <a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/black-lives-matter-movement-australia-first-nations-perspectives">more than 474 Indigenous people who have died in police or prison custody</a> in the 30 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.</p>
<p>While Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement sparked extensive media attention, Australian Indigenous deaths in custody have had a harder time attracting sustained coverage, particularly from mainstream news outlets. Media attention on the issue has been episodic and too often absent.</p>
<h2>The Great Australian Silence continues</h2>
<p>As Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist Amy McQuire <a href="https://7ampodcast.com.au/episodes/black-witness-white-witness">says</a>, there is a national apathy in response to First Nations deaths in custody. McQuire, who consistently reports on deaths in custody as an independent journalist, says: “When Aboriginal people die in custody there is a national silence”. Some deaths in custody break through, but many more pass unnoticed.</p>
<p>The royal commission stated that to reduce Aboriginal deaths in custody it is critical to reduce imprisonment rates (which have <a href="https://www.ceda.com.au/NewsAndResources/Opinion/Indigenous-affairs/Costs,-consequences-and-alternatives-to-imprisonin">doubled</a> since 1991), and to improve the exercise of the duty of care owed to people in custody. </p>
<p>Two Indigenous deaths in custody, 20 years apart, demonstrate the failure to achieve both.</p>
<p>In 1994, 30-year-old Aboriginal woman <a href="https://communityyarns.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/The-girl-in-cell-4.pdf">Ms Beetson</a> died of treatable heart disease in Sydney’s Mulawa women’s prison. </p>
<p>She was admitted to prison unwell; previous open-heart surgery and other concerns were highlighted on her admittance form. She was given a cursory medical examination and her symptoms were put down to drug withdrawal. Over a week, she became weaker and sicker, received no effective medical attention and died alone in a cell.</p>
<p>In 2014, Yamatji woman Ms Dhu, 22, was arrested for unpaid fines, against royal commission recommendations. She was held in a South Hedland, WA, police watch house for three days in intense pain and growing sicker. </p>
<p>The usual assumptions were made about drug withdrawal and that she was “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/dec/16/ms-dhu-endured-inhumane-treatment-by-police-before-death-in-custody-coroner">faking it</a>”. She died of staphylococcal septicaemia and pneumonia.</p>
<p>Twenty years apart, the circumstances around Ms Beetson’s and Ms Dhu’s deaths reflect the same inadequate medical treatment, inhumanity, lack of professionalism and failures. Both medical conditions were treatable and both deaths preventable. </p>
<p>But the story of Ms Dhu’s case broke through, due to local and effective activism, and because the media landscape had started to change.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/not-criminals-or-passive-victims-media-need-to-reframe-their-representation-of-aboriginal-deaths-in-custody-158561">Not criminals or passive victims: media need to reframe their representation of Aboriginal deaths in custody</a>
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<p>The year before Ms Dhu’s death, The Guardian began publishing an online Australian edition. Guardian journalist <a href="https://www.walkleys.com/spotlight-on-calla-wahlquist-and-lorena-allam/">Calla Wahlquist</a> reported at least one story every day from the inquest into Ms Dhu’s death. </p>
<p>The Guardian’s sustained deaths in custody reporting and its “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/series/deaths-inside">Deaths Inside</a>” database have made a difference to deaths in custody coverage.</p>
<h2>Australian media needs to keep addressing deaths in custody</h2>
<p>Media attention was important in helping to <a href="https://wendybacon.com/2021/Deaths">create the conditions</a> for the royal commission’s establishment. Among the more influential and agenda-setting stories were those by Western Australian freelance journalist <a href="https://www.icij.org/journalists/jan-mayman/">Jan Mayman</a> reporting on Roebourne teenager John Pat’s 1983 death for The Age, and a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/black-death---1985/2835060">1985 Four Corners program</a> presented by David Marr.</p>
<p>In its report and <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-criminals-or-passive-victims-media-need-to-reframe-their-representation-of-aboriginal-deaths-in-custody-158561">recommendations</a>, the royal commission recognised the important role of the media as a form of “collective conscience”, contributing to the possibility of increased justice for Aboriginal people. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-02/research-guide-aboriginal-deaths-in-custody.pdf">release</a> of the royal commission’s final report was a Black-lives-just-could-matter moment in Australia. </p>
<p>Here was the blueprint for transforming the life chances of Aboriginal people, and the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Implementing the report’s 339 recommendations could reduce imprisonment rates, deaths in custody, inequality and disadvantage.</p>
<p>When the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/rciadic/">report</a> was released, the media was again <a href="https://wendybacon.com/2021/Deaths">interested and engaged</a>. Aboriginal people’s points of view were heard, and Aboriginal deaths in custody became an important story that put individual deaths into context. However, this kind of reporting soon fell away.</p>
<p>Four years after the report, governments were claiming successful implementation of the royal commission’s recommendations. However, the <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/sr/sr21">Australian Institute of Criminology</a> was reporting deaths in prison at record levels. </p>
<p><a href="https://wendybacon.com/uploads/appendix-c_reportage-article.pdf">Research</a> by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism found the media uncritically reported government implementation claims as if they were true.</p>
<h2>Non-Indigenous journalists need to step up</h2>
<p>While First Nations journalists, such as Amy McQuire, Gamilaraay and Yawalaraay woman <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/lorena-allam">Loreena Allam</a> and Muruwari man <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-28/covering-black-deaths-in-australia-led-me-to-a-breakdown/12390416">Allan Clarke</a>, are telling stories of injustice meted out to Aboriginal people, non-Indigenous journalists must also keep telling stories about the injustices caused by colonisation.</p>
<p>It took an event in the US to spark the Indigenous lives matter response across Australia. Journalists must continue to report on the chain of events that lead to Black deaths at the hands of the state. </p>
<p><strong>How we can do this:</strong></p>
<p>We can report the facts, for instance, Indigenous adult and youth apprehension and imprisonment rates, Aboriginal youth and adult suicide rates, coronial inquest findings and recommendations.</p>
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<li><p>We can interview witnesses, family members and representatives, police and prison officers, and other experts and report what they and other informed commentators say about the facts, consequences and causes of those deaths. </p></li>
<li><p>We can investigate and discern the patterns emerging from these deaths; the similar facts and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/11/the-story-of-david-dungay-and-an-indigenous-death-in-custody">common factors</a>, the same systemic failures, the ongoing evidence of institutional racism.</p></li>
<li><p>Through our journalism we need to honour each person who has died, and try to bring some comfort to their affected families and communities.</p></li>
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<p>As investigative journalist Allan Clarke <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-28/covering-black-deaths-in-australia-led-me-to-a-breakdown/12390416">says</a>:</p>
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<p>Australia, we can do better and we must do better.</p>
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<p><em>See <a href="https://jeraa.org.au/listen-reporting-black-lives-matters/">here</a> for resources and guides for what we as journalists can do.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161412/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bonita Mason does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>George Floyd’s death and the US Black Lives Matter movement sparked extensive media attention. Why aren’t Australian Indigenous deaths in custody getting the same amount of media coverage?Bonita Mason, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1599282021-05-03T13:50:52Z2021-05-03T13:50:52ZThe N-Word: a volcano kept active by the flickering embers of racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398133/original/file-20210430-16-13d1npa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mural by Gabriel Marques, Dublin</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many years ago, talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey had actor Don Cheadle and a couple of other guests on her TV programme to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0667132/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl">debate</a> racism, including the unresolved question of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/john-mcwhorter-n-word-unsayable.html">N-word</a>. Arguably, by the end of the show, there was no resolution of the status of the word in American society, the country where it has caused so much anguish and turmoil.</p>
<p>“Negro”, under slave conditions, quite apart from being a neutral racial category, became a term of absolute dehumanisation. Africans <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Middle-Passage-slave-trade">stolen</a> by the millions and transported to the New World had to be divested of their humanity, individuality and variety. </p>
<p>A word had to be invested with the powers of dehumanisation, on the one hand, and absolve the racist oppressor of culpability, on the other. Since the period of US <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/plantation-system/">plantation slavery</a> from the 1600s to the 1800s, the word of terror – invested with so much vitriol, hate and revulsion – wended its venomous way through the veins of the black community, polluting the entire body politic. </p>
<p>A word is as delicate as an egg and had to be treated so accordingly.</p>
<h2>A state of white supremacy</h2>
<p>After the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-slavery-idUSL1561464920070322">defeat</a> of slavery, the end of the American Civil War, systemic lynching, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law">Jim Crow segregation</a> of the early 1900s, and the successes of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement">civil rights movement</a>, the terrible word was still loose in American society, evoking dusky trauma and spectres of toxins. It was a word that was not dead and buried. It had acquired a life of its own and had become as complex as the deceit and illusions of the ongoing <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/">age of mass incarceration</a>.</p>
<p>American authors <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Wright-American-writer">Richard Wright</a> in <em><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/103/1033262/native-son/9781784876128.html">Native Son</a></em> (1940) and <a href="https://bookriot.com/who-was-ralph-ellison/">Ralph Ellison</a> in <em><a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5053/the-art-of-fiction-no-8-ralph-ellison">The Invisible Man</a></em> (1952) evoke the terror and soul destroying anonymity through which blackness had to exist under white supremacy. The reality of blackness entailed a continual recoil into nameless shadows, opprobrium and silence. Finally, it entailed a state of enforced non-being even if it was artificially constructed.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mikhail_Bakhtin">Mikhail Bakhtin</a>, the Russian cultural critic and literary theorist, popularised the notion of the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095550811">carnivalesque</a> – a concept that became well-known in his country in the 1960s and much later in the West. It has been subsequently adopted as a means of deconstructing figures and institutions of tyrannical power by ordinary people. </p>
<p>Power, in arbitrary and irresponsible forms, is not often to be confronted head on. Instead, it is more judicious to puncture its bombastic façade using the weapons of humour, evasion and other similar sleights of hand. And thus the sheer terror of unaccountable power is defanged by the instrumentality of humour and the carnivalesque. In that manner, we are able to laugh at the state of abjectness that power imposes upon us in order to endure yet another day.</p>
<p>The N-word lives within the black community like a volcano, ready to erupt at any time, fed constantly by the bitter flares of history, humiliation and dehumanisation. But it also has to be appeased, detoxified and inverted for black folk to remain human and resilient. </p>
<h2>Taking venom from a snake</h2>
<p>And just as black folk have been able to create astounding works of beauty out of unbearable abjection – think of 1940s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/bebop">bebop</a> music from the brothels and after hours clubs of the American Chitlin’ circuit and <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7550286">hip hop</a> from the derelict precincts of the Bronx – the odious, life-crushing word was made to undergo a rebirth, a reinvention and was as such infused with new music and sinuousness. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man on stage raises both hands in peace signs as a crowd of arms from spectatotrs do the same. He wears a yellow T-shirt with a prominent image of a man on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398203/original/file-20210501-22-1xuhtrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Rapper Nas pays tribute to Tupac Shakur in 2004. Hip hop reclaimed the word.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scott Gries/Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>In this way, the victims and descendants of racial oppression wouldn’t have to live with tainted shadows, befouled blood and nightmares every moment of their lives. They had to perform an act similar to daredevilry, which is, to extract and detoxify venom from a snake without being bitten.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/05/26/529839430/all-songs-1-why-were-still-obsessed-with-tupac">Tupac</a> <a href="https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/1513077/Richie+Rich/Ratha+Be+Ya+Nigga">raps</a>, “I’d ratha be your N.I.G.G.A” and makes it cool to do so, it is easy to gloss over the tribulations, bloodshed and heartbreaks it took to reach this stage of supposedly post-racial, post-<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/martin-luther-king-hungry-club-forum/552533/">Martin Luther King</a> casual hipness. </p>
<p>Yet this seemingly benign scenario has to be juxtaposed with the rise of the <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com">Black Lives Matter</a> movement – including its contradictions and disenchantments. It rose due to the alarming cases of police brutality aimed at often unarmed black men and the apparent inaction of the political establishment in curbing these new forms of racial discrimination and injustice. </p>
<h2>Rivers of blood</h2>
<p>The word of abjection – regardless of its sordid and tortuous past itinerary – had to be appeased with endless rivers of blood. It would be a demonstration of a lack of empathy for a non-black person to throw the epithet around casually. </p>
<p>In this case, “non-blacks” are those who do not possess a direct or ancestral link to the transatlantic slave trade as primary victims. In the case of South Africa, non-blacks would apply to those who benefited most directly from the apartheid regime of racial stratification.</p>
<p>It is necessary to take into cognisance the multitude of crushed bones, shredded bodies and defeated spirits – in short, the genocidal ordeal – it took for the word to become hip and cool within only black communities. </p>
<p>In other words, it took horrifying crucibles for it to become a specific term of endearment, invariably, a consequence of astronomical costs. It is the inadequate recognition of this excruciating history by non-black persons that rankles the black community. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman with a fist in the air shouts into a microphone as she marches in a crowd in urban streets, a green and brown illustration of a man held aloft on a poster behind the woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398202/original/file-20210501-16-rumgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Protest for justice for George Floyd, NYC 2020. Police brutality forms a backdrop to the use of the word.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>We need to be constantly reminded that social transformation isn’t complete as long as blacks are vilified, oppressed and murdered simply because of the colour of their skin. Recent cases in point, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/shooting-of-Trayvon-Martin">Trayvon Martin</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html">Breonna Taylor</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56818766">George Floyd</a>.</p>
<p>It’s not helpful to adopt a trivialisation of the essence of racial <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-rainbow-nation-is-a-myth-that-students-need-to-unlearn-66872">rainbowism</a> without its accompanying historical realities. What precisely are we to achieve by flippantly discarding the humanism we have been nurtured by to acquire a stunted, uncertain version of something that continually seems to elude us? What is the benefit of the new if it fosters a form of ahistorical barbarism?</p>
<h2>Hands off the word</h2>
<p>So the N-word, regardless of its current chic hip hop-speak, is perennially a double-edged sword, thoroughly <a href="https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/Manichean">Manichean</a>, with Jekyll and Hyde properties. Non-blacks would do well to appreciate this ever-shifting duality and are perhaps better off eschewing it.</p>
<p>It took black folk unimaginable resources of creativity, humanity, humour and generosity to detoxify it for their own collective sanity. Nonetheless a non-black de-contextualised appropriation of it remains, as always, a seismic volcano. A volcano kept active by the flickering embers of racism.</p>
<p><em>Osha is the author of several books including <a href="https://brill.com/view/title/31257">Postethnophilosophy</a> (2011) and <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/dust-spittle-and-wind">Dust, Spittle and Wind</a> (2011), <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/an-underground-colony-of-summer-bees">An Underground Colony of Summer Bees</a> (2012) and <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/on-a-sad-weather-beaten-couch">On a Sad Weather-Beaten Couch</a> (2015).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It took black folk unimaginable resources of creativity, humanity, humour and generosity to detoxify the N-word for their own collective sanity.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1408162020-06-17T13:24:06Z2020-06-17T13:24:06ZBlack Lives Matter: you may be a vocal supporter and still hold racist views<p>The touch paper has been lit. Black Lives Matter have taken to the streets. The revolution has started – <a href="https://theconversation.com/statues-are-just-the-start-the-uk-is-peppered-with-slavery-heritage-140308">statues have been pulled down</a> and TV programmes have been removed from streaming services. Apologies are also coming in thick and fast – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KYgYTxJwjc">a tearful Keith Lemon actor</a>, a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52998870">“sincerely sorry” Ant and Dec</a>. Many white people <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-06-15/black-lives-matter-white-celebrities-support">are now joining the cause</a>, stating their views on social media and beyond. </p>
<p>But racism is about action in everyday life, not just words or hashtags at a time of uprising. We can be careful about what we say – language is conscious and controllable. But it is perfectly possible to hold deep-seated racist views, sometimes subconsciously, and simultaneously announce you are definitely not racist.</p>
<p>Some ten years ago, I started <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/02/19/book-review-our-racist-heart-beattie/">looking into the vexed question</a> of the under-representation of people from BAME backgrounds in academic and senior posts in universities. Universities were publically wringing their hands about this issue. It was emotionally charged with accusations of racial prejudice on the one hand, and the idea that racism is all in the past, with people just trying to get advantage by crying prejudice, on the other.</p>
<p>But what if most of us, at a conscious level, are no longer prone to open racial prejudice? What if at some deeper level, there is some independent system which is more susceptible to racial bias? This was the question we explored using the now well-known <a href="https://theconversation.com/think-youre-all-for-gender-equality-your-unconscious-may-have-other-ideas-69520">implicit association test</a>. </p>
<p>The basis for identifying bias in such tests is how quickly people associate white or black faces and names with concepts like “good” or “bad”. Research has shown that white people are quicker at associating white faces or names with the concept “good” than they are for black faces or names. </p>
<p>We tried to improve on the <a href="https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html">well-known Harvard test</a>, where all the faces are unfriendly, by making all faces nice and smiley. Surely, there would be no implicit racial bias here. Not so. We found a medium to strong implicit pro-white bias in white participants. This was regardless of what attitudes to race they reported that they had.</p>
<p>We also studied the shortlisting process for academic jobs experimentally. We presented participants with the CVs of four job candidates – two white, two BAME – for various positions with identical (but rotated) CVs. We also used a remote eye tracker to see what part of the CV they looked at on a computer screen. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342422/original/file-20200617-94049-ki6uqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342422/original/file-20200617-94049-ki6uqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342422/original/file-20200617-94049-ki6uqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342422/original/file-20200617-94049-ki6uqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342422/original/file-20200617-94049-ki6uqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342422/original/file-20200617-94049-ki6uqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342422/original/file-20200617-94049-ki6uqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hiring should be fairer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/african-applicant-caucasian-hr-manager-sitting-1634081005">fizkes/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We found that white experimental participants were ten times more likely to shortlist two white candidates for a lectureship post than two BAME candidates with exactly the same CV. We also found that white participants spent more time looking at good information on the CVs of white candidates and bad information on the CVs of BAME candidates. </p>
<h2>Combating implicit bias</h2>
<p>In other words, our “rational” decisions about the suitability of candidates are based on biased pattern of fixation. This is the reality of prejudice in action, working away below the level of consciousness. The practical implications are clear. We should never use “first thoughts” or “gut instincts” as a basis for shortlisting, and never conduct any shortlisting meetings under strict time pressure. The more time pressure, the more powerful the effects of these implicit processes will be.</p>
<p>A helpful tool may be “implementation intentions” – which are conscious plans to override unconscious instincts. This may be in the form of reminders such as: “If I see the application of a candidate from a BAME background then, if I am white, I should be careful to scrutinise the best sections of the application once again before I make my final decision.” It sounds clunky and unnatural, but it can work, blocking the effects of parts of the brain that want to jump to an immediate conclusion.</p>
<p>Recent task force recommendations <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30611895/">have spelt out other ways</a> of combating implicit bias – including committing to a culture shift, introducing bias literacy, encouraging mentoring and empowering individuals to recognise and overcome their own implicit biases.</p>
<p>But the implicit association test itself is not without its critics. A new study argues that we should focus not on the test, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342131465_Implicit_Bias_and_Anti-Discrimination_Policy">but on the actual psychological mechanisms</a> that can lead to implicit bias in actual discriminatory behaviour. For example, with multiple sources of information, there may be biased weighting of certain information over others, such as emphasis on experience versus education in assessing job applications, where this weighting may vary depending on the race of the candidate. We must also tackle biased interpretation – such as the perception of an object as a weapon when in the hands of a member of a particular racial group.</p>
<p>My colleagues and I have also argued that the implicit association test is not even genuinely implicit, because it hinges on explicit categorisation by race. Participants have to explicitly assign the facial images they see into the categories “black” or “white”, “bad or good” etc. </p>
<p>For this reason, we have just <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-53088-001">developed a new race implicit association test</a> probing multiple attributes at once. Participants are asked to categorise images of black and white male and female individuals on the basis of either race (as before) or gender (also associating it with good or bad). This means that we can look at people’s racial biases when they believe they are sorting faces by gender. Again, reaction times are used to measure the associative connections.</p>
<p>We have found that there is still a race bias even in these tests, but the effect is reduced in size. This new test may have important diagnostic potential for the future.</p>
<p>We need a revolution in action – not just in rhetoric. New critical thinking about implicit processes could be powerful tools for identifying the hidden barriers to equality of opportunity. Maybe even the quiet harbinger of the real revolution is still to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140816/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Beattie received funding from the Equality Challenge Unit to support the research into the effects of implicit bias on shortlisting. He also received funding with Dr Motonori Yamaguchi from Edge Hill University’s Research Investment Fund to investigate the role of explicit categorisation in the IAT. </span></em></p>We need a revolution in behaviour, not just in rhetoric.Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1402842020-06-16T06:07:18Z2020-06-16T06:07:18ZWe’ve been facing a pandemic of racism. How can we stop it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342080/original/file-20200616-23243-xby1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C0%2C12890%2C5796&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ending racism is both our individual and collective task.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>By now, we know what happened to George Floyd who <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-27/four-minneapolis-officers-fired-after-death-of-black-man/122896700">died after a US police officer kneeled on his neck</a>. </p>
<p>His tragic death has sparked worldwide protests against racism and police violence. The protests have moved US lawmakers to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/us/politics/democrats-police-misconduct-bill-protests.html">introduce a bill to end excessive use of force by police</a>. In the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/opinions/how-britain-must-face-winston-churchill-and-other-racism-thomas/index.html">UK</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/minneapolis-police-belgium-statue/activists-remove-statue-of-belgian-colonial-king-leopold-ii-in-brussels-idUSL4N2DP29Y">Belgium</a>, statues of racist colonial figures were removed. And <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a32823005/gone-with-the-wind-cops-live-pd-canceled-black-lives-matter-george-floyd/">films and TV shows that promote racism</a> have been dropped. </p>
<p>The police killing of George Floyd as bystanders watched shows us <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-floyds-death-reflects-the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-139805">how the US struggles with racism</a>. But structural racism is not exclusive to the US. Like the COVID-19 pandemic we’re currently facing, racism is present in every nook and corner of this planet. </p>
<p>As we must work together in combating COVID-19, we must also curb racism globally. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341833/original/file-20200615-65912-jcmmn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341833/original/file-20200615-65912-jcmmn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341833/original/file-20200615-65912-jcmmn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341833/original/file-20200615-65912-jcmmn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341833/original/file-20200615-65912-jcmmn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341833/original/file-20200615-65912-jcmmn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341833/original/file-20200615-65912-jcmmn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Lives Matter protesters march in New York City on June 5 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">tetiana.photographer/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The spread of racism</h2>
<p>People are debating whether the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/">400,000 people</a> is human-made, brought to us through <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA133101460&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=15279677&p=AONE&sw=w">the unintended and unforeseen side effects of industrial and exploitative modernity</a>. </p>
<p>For the pandemic of racism, there is no question it’s human-made. While COVID-19 is spread through the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the pandemic of racism originates from a delusional view of a group of people thinking they are better than other people who look different from them. </p>
<p>White European elites have used this world view to rationalise their imperialist, colonialist and racist policies, sustaining their claim that they are culturally and biologically superior. This world view led to colonisation of the world by White Europeans, slavery of Africans in their homeland, elsewhere and in America, and to the horror of the National Socialism of the German Nazis, which happened in Europe only 75 years ago. </p>
<p>Led by Adolf Hitler, the Nazis used <a href="http://users.clas.ufl.edu/davidson/Jim%20Crow%20America%20Spring%202016/Jim%20Crow%20America%20course%20readings/Week%203%20Race%20and%20Racism/Jackson%20and%20Weidman%202006.pdf">scientific racism</a> rooted in the period’s <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/social-darwinism">social Darwinism</a> to claim Germans were superior to all other groups and constituted a “master race of Aryans”. They used this to justify the systematic and industrial killing of around 11 million people from 1933-1945.</p>
<p>National Socialism, commonly known as Nazism, exploited and extended such eugenicist logic. They killed not only two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe at the time – as the world knows it – but also <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17504902.1999.11087097?casa_token=Lch1-a1HRsIAAAAA:II3sM4OrifYuAN4uSY44hs-4nINFMEmKTHxWXB49cZuKvxKsHByh-ygNN0zLMK-TWvbQaN319ig">millions of non-Jewish people, comprising of Africans, the Romani,the Sinti people, and what the Nazis labelled as “asocial” or “unworthy” people</a>, like those who were homosexual, deaf, blind, disabled and mentally ill. </p>
<p>The fact that we rarely hear about the killing of millions of other victimised groups may reflect the structural racism of our world. </p>
<p>It is thus a painful irony that the US, part of the Allied forces that defeated the Nazis and spurred denazification, only gave black Americans universal voting rights in the 1960s. Structural racism against African Americans continued.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, around the world, <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2019/08/20/how-postcolonial-is-postcolonial-indonesia.html">post-colonial nations</a> continue to struggle with white hegemony. </p>
<p>In the Asia-Pacific region, in countries that were formerly European colonies, people still consciously or unconsciously continue to use racial logic in their everyday realities. </p>
<p>Dark complexions are associated with menial labour, while fairness or lighter skin is associated with higher social status and cultural refinement. In a more subtle but no less hostile way, consumer society keeps racism alive by promoting beauty concepts that <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/pesona-barat-analisa-kritis-historis-tentang-kesadaran-warna-kulit-di-indonesia/oclc/212384010">tend to celebrate and glamorise people with fair skin</a>. </p>
<h2>Curbing the pandemic of racism</h2>
<p>Ending racism is both our individual and collective task. Here, it is helpful to recall socio-cultural anthropologist <a href="https://worddisk.com/wiki/Franz_Boas/">Franz Boas’s ideas challenging Eurocentrism</a>. He argued that culture is not something absolute. There is no one size fits all, and culture relates to its context. He pushed for a democratic understanding of culture and race, respectful of differences so that no single group is considered as the jewel in the crown. </p>
<p>At an individual level, overcoming racist perspectives and stopping racist behaviours start with changing our worldview. We should blur the concept of self and others and simply treat everyone, whatever their skin colour, equally. We can start by stop believing in white supremacy and ending the vilification of dark skin.</p>
<p>At organisational and community levels, we should oppose contemporary popular ideologies of scientific racism. For example, admission offices at schools, public services and corporations should not discriminate against people based on their race or colour. Organisations should actively support people from historically oppressed groups who due to racist discrimination are underrepresented in all areas of public life. </p>
<p>For the business sector, the hegemony of racialised politics of skin colour products must also be corrected. </p>
<p>Last but not least, governments around the world should work towards diminishing structural inequalities created by racist social hierarchies.</p>
<p>The death of George Floyd must not be in vain. His death has spurred a worldwide movement to overcome the pandemic of racism. </p>
<p>All of us should deconstruct our old “normal” of white supremacy and move toward a belief in racial equality. This means sincerely seeing every person as having equal respect and dignity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140284/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vissia Ita Yulianto tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>Like the COVID-19 pandemic we’re facing, racism is present in every nook and corner of this planet.Vissia Ita Yulianto, Socio-cultural anthropologist, Center for Southeast Asian Social Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/855872017-10-31T23:36:02Z2017-10-31T23:36:02ZThe backlash against Black Lives Matter is just more evidence of injustice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190314/original/file-20171016-27711-11yyiep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A mural in memory of Alton Sterling, who was shot several times at close range by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 5, 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mural_of_Alton_Sterling_at_the_Triple_S_Food_Mart_in_North_Baton_Rouge.jpg">W. Clarke/Wikipedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the last in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">Black Lives Matter Everywhere</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a>. To mark the presentation of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/black-lives-matter/">2017 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has re-ignited a global conversation about racism. The prize will be presented on November 2 (<a href="https://events.ticketbooth.com.au/events/22459">tickets here</a>).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In White-dominated societies, nearly any demand for equality by people of colour is met by a backlash couched in terms of White victimhood. This has been as true for Black Lives Matter as it was for the civil rights movement. </p>
<p>Just as Black Lives Matter went global, so did the backlash.</p>
<p>One popular (and self-serving) theory holds that White identity politics is merely a response to movements like Black Lives Matter. But this gets the story backwards. Black Lives Matter is a response to White supremacy. The anger harnessed by figures like Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani is the anger of White privilege forced to defend itself.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Lives_Matter">All Lives Matter</a>” and “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lives_Matter">Blue Lives Matter</a>” are two of the most prominent rhetorical manifestations of the backlash. Both played major roles in the media coverage of and political response to Black Lives Matter.</p>
<h2>All Lives Matter</h2>
<p>The hashtag and slogan “All Lives Matter” is a declaration of “colourblindness”, which Ian Haney-Lopez <a href="https://www.salon.com/2014/01/20/how_conservatives_hijacked_colorblindness_and_set_civil_rights_back_decades/">describes</a> as “the dominant etiquette around race” today. As is so often the case when it comes to race, liberal rhetoric serves conservative ends.</p>
<p>“All Lives Matter” erases a long past and present of systemic inequality in the US. It represents a refusal to acknowledge that the state does not value all lives in the same way. It reduces the problem of racism to individual prejudice and casts African-Americans as aggressors against a colourblind post-civil rights order in which White people no longer “see race”.</p>
<p>This kind of rhetoric is hardly new, as we learn from Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s book <a href="https://sociology.duke.edu/books/bonvilla-silva-racism-without-racists">Racism Without Racists</a>. It is the most up-to-date articulation of how most White people view racism (as a rare, archaic and unfortunate psychological disposition) as opposed to how most people of colour see it (as institutionalised and systemic). </p>
<p>Under the White understanding, talking about systemic racism is itself racist, because it conjures into existence “racial divides” that are invisible to Whites who believe themselves to be free of prejudice.</p>
<p>There is no better example of this than Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is a famous proponent of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/21/it-looks-like-rudy-giuliani-convinced-donald-trump-that-stop-and-frisk-actually-works/?utm_term=.1c2954c21a11">“stop and frisk”</a> policing and a longtime master of backlash politics. He <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/rudy-giuliani-black-lives-matter-inherently-racist/index.html">told CNN</a> Black Lives Matter is “inherently racist” because “it divides us … All lives matter: White lives, Black lives, all lives.” </p>
<p>Giuliani went on to say:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Black Lives Matter never protests when every 14 hours someone is killed in Chicago, probably 70-80% of the time by a Black person. Where are they then? Where are they when a young Black child is killed?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This argument is a popular one in backlash politics. It holds that Black Lives Matter only cares about Black life when White people are responsible for taking it, thus ignoring and displacing Black responsibility for violence in Black communities. </p>
<p>In November 2015, Donald Trump <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/23/donald-trump/trump-tweet-blacks-white-homicide-victims/">tweeted an infographic</a> purporting to show that Blacks were responsible for 97% of murders of Blacks and 82% of murders of Whites. Both “statistics” are wrong, the latter monstrously so: African-Americans accounted for about 15% of murders of Whites, <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2014.xls">according to FBI data</a>.</p>
<p>This twisted tribal accounting deliberately obscures Black Lives Matter’s critique of violence, inequality and failings at all levels of the criminal justice system. Like the slogan “All Lives Matter”, it is a way of changing the subject. </p>
<p>It also exposes the myths of colourblind rhetoric. Many White people are more than happy to “see colour” when assigning blame for Black deaths, and to treat that as the end of the issue.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4--cG8h52Ps?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Like many White people, Donald Trump is only happy to ‘see colour’ when assigning blame to the black community.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“All Lives Matter” has not always served as the powerful rebuke of Black Lives Matter that the backlash intends. One strategy by online activists has been to refuse to acknowledge the disingenuous binary of “Black” and “all”.</p>
<p>Nikita Carney <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0160597616643868">notes in a study</a> of the #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter hashtags that some Black Twitter users simply used both when calling for protests against police violence, effectively disarming the dishonest critique implied by All Lives Matter.</p>
<p>Alicia Garza, one of the creators of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, <a href="http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/">explained</a> in 2014 how Black lives mattering is a precondition for all lives mattering:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important – it means that Black lives, which are seen as without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation. Given the disproportionate impact state violence has on Black lives, we understand that when Black people in this country get free, the benefits will be wide-reaching and transformative for society as a whole. </p>
<p>When we are able to end the hyper-criminalisation and sexualisation of Black people and end the poverty, control and surveillance of Black people, every single person in this world has a better shot at getting and staying free. When Black people get free, everybody gets free.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Blue Lives Matter</h2>
<p>While campaigning for the presidency in late 2015, <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/262897-trump-i-will-mandate-death-penalty-for-killing-police-officers">Trump said</a> that if elected he would use an executive order to make the death penalty mandatory for anyone who killed a police officer. The US president has no such authority, but Trump was attuned to the politics of the backlash.</p>
<p>The idea of a Black Lives Matter-inspired “<a href="https://www.manhattan-institute.org/waroncops">war on cops</a>” plays a powerful role in the backlash imagination. In 2014 and 2016, there were three ambush murders of multiple officers in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/two-police-officers-shot-in-their-patrol-car-in-brooklyn.html">New York</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Baton_Rouge_police_officers">Baton Rouge</a> and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/dallas-police-shooting-day-two-five-officers-killed-in-ambush-at-protest-over-police-violence-20160708-gq1zs7.html">Dallas</a>. Each was committed by a different lone gunman who sought revenge against police for their violence against Black communities.</p>
<p>These atrocities received blanket media coverage and became a major theme of the 2016 Republican National Convention. <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/rnc-2016-night-one-blue-lives-matter-police-rudy-giuliani-david-clarke">Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke</a> opened his speech by declaring that “blue lives matter”, blaming Black Lives Matter for “the collapse of social order”. </p>
<p>Giuliani, speaking shortly afterwards, claimed that most Americans do not feel safe and “they fear for our police officers who are being targeted”.</p>
<p>In Australia, The Daily Telegraph’s Miranda Devine <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi_ktudzJnXAhWHnZQKHTiwD6MQFggmMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailytelegraph.com.au%2Frendezview%2Fa-black-cop-killed-an-australian-white-woman-how-does-that-fit-the-black-lives-matter-narrative%2Fnews-story%2Fae104aff0d76409b83648a7121938e11&usg=AOvVaw3yQ9YB7XnHrUJZ4t_bXRtF">blamed</a> Black Lives Matter for the killing of an unarmed Australian woman in Minnesota by a police officer in July this year. </p>
<p>Devine claimed police were “more prone to make tragic mistakes” because they felt under siege following a “wave of ambushes and assassinations” incited by Black Lives Matter. She also asserted, baselessly, that “their entire movement is built on a lie” and that “Black Americans are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops”. </p>
<p>In fact, it is estimated police killed more than four times as many Black Americans last year as the other way round. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/29/police-killed-2016-average">There is no evidence</a> of a resurgent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/opinion/why-there-is-no-war-on-the-police.html">“war on police”</a>. </p>
<p>In 2016, 64 officers were shot dead, a much-remarked jump from 41 in 2015. But this remains within the average range of police deaths for the last ten years, which itself represents a steep drop from previous decades. An average of 115 were murdered each year <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297">in the 1970s</a>, when the population was two-thirds what it is now. So far in 2017, 36 officers have been <a href="https://www.odmp.org/search/year">shot dead</a>.</p>
<p>It is far harder to say whether killings by police are rising or falling, because no reliable data have been kept until recently. Thousands of law enforcement agencies participate in the FBI’s annual <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/">Uniform Crime Report</a>, but <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/dec/03/marc-morial/are-deaths-police-shootings-highest-20-years/">according to Politifact</a> “just a small fraction of them willingly provide data on deadly force and justifiable homicides within their departments”. </p>
<p>This has led to recent data collection efforts by <a href="https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/">NGOs</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/">media outlets</a>, but without trustworthy numbers from previous years to allow for historical comparison. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings">“The Counted”</a>, a project by The Guardian, found police killed 1,093 people in 2016, 266 of them African-American.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190311/original/file-20171016-27766-1v6065h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Lives Matter draws attention not just to police violence, but to the many deep imbalances in how the state values human life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antrell Williams/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nonetheless, the Blue Lives Matter backlash has borne fruit. According to a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/blue-black-lives-matter-police-bills-states_us_58b61488e4b0780bac2e31b8">Huffington Post report</a>, 33 “Blue Lives Matter” bills have been introduced in 14 states in 2017, following 15 such bills in 2016. The purpose of these bills is to extend hate crime protections to members of law enforcement, thus increasing penalties for crimes committed against them. </p>
<p>Most of these bills have failed, but they have become law in <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/26/us/louisiana-blue-lives-matter-law/index.html">Louisiana</a> and <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/22/bevin-signs-contentious-blue-lives-matter-law/99514820/">Kentucky</a>. A similar bill went into the committee stage in <a href="http://www.wltx.com/news/local/proposed-bill-could-increase-penalties-for-crimes-against-police/405204115">South Carolina</a>, which doesn’t have a hate crimes statute and which automatically puts the death penalty on the table for the murder of police officers.</p>
<p>Such laws are profoundly unnecessary, which is why most don’t become laws. Penalties in all 50 states are already more severe for crimes committed against law enforcement officers.</p>
<p>However, Blue Lives Matter bills serve a political purpose. They suggest that members of racial minorities are somehow more “protected” than police officers, who are the real victims. </p>
<p>When Louisiana’s law was signed, a Blue Lives Matter national spokesman <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/26/us/louisiana-blue-lives-matter-law/index.html">said</a> it was “important symbolically because it advises there is a value to the lives of police officers”.</p>
<p>Bestowing the status of a victim class on police is a grotesque distortion of reality and a symptom of structural violence. Police do a dangerous job, but there has never been any question that their lives matter. Criminal justice is never pursued more vigorously than when a police officer is killed.</p>
<p>Slain police officers deserve to be mourned. But those slain by police officers deserve at least to be counted. Black Lives Matter draws attention not just to police violence, but to the many deep imbalances in how the state values human life.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Neither the spurious ‘facts’ about killings of police nor the supposedly ‘colour-blind’ logic of the backlash against Black Lives Matter hold up under scrutiny. Instead, they confirm its point.David Smith, Senior Lecturer in American Politics and Foreign Policy, Academic Director of the US Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/861402017-10-31T00:54:12Z2017-10-31T00:54:12ZAustralia’s hidden history of slavery: the government divides to conquer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191380/original/file-20171023-1748-lijr42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Sea Islanders working in a Townsville cane field in 1907.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/citylibrariestownsville/9712709137/in/photolist-i3jaXC-CvK26A-Cy462x-BAwEcb-BAxenE-Cy3s3x-BZxgYD-fNhb2g-fNhaYZ-fNhb5p-fNyMGC-fNhb3n-fNhb12-h9XwUJ-fNhb48-fNyMFd-fNyMHQ-h9XxA5-fNyMKj">CityLibraries Townsville/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the fourth in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">Black Lives Matter Everywhere</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a>. To mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/black-lives-matter/">2017 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has re-ignited a global conversation about racism. The prize will be presented on November 2 (<a href="https://events.ticketbooth.com.au/events/22459">tickets here</a>).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>My grandfather was Moses Topay Enares. He was only 12 years old when he was coerced onto a ship, put in the hold and fed stodge, a flour-like substance, until he arrived in Queensland.</p>
<p>His wife, who recorded and retold his story, tells of him being taken from the beach off the island of Tanna, Vanuatu. Moses passed on the Northern Rivers in New South Wales in 1961. He never saw his family from Tanna again.</p>
<p>Black Lives Matter is an inspired world movement of consciousness that gives voice to the resilience and self-determination of people of colour in their continued fight for freedom and social justice. This fight is very relevant to Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI). We are the descendants of some 62,500 people who were <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-17/blackbirding-australias-history-of-kidnapping-pacific-islanders/8860754">blackbirded</a> from the 80 islands of Vanuatu and Solomons to NSW in 1847, with an influx to Queensland under the “<a href="http://www.amw.org.au/content/queensland-south-sea-island-indentured-labourer-records-1863-1908">indentured labour</a>” trade.</p>
<p>Several words are used to depict the history of my people: indenture, slavery, kidnapping, blackbirding and Kanaka. But ASSI communities will tell any inquirer that we object to the use of the term “indenture” to describe what happened to our people when they were first brought to Australia. It’s a weak word that does not express the real truth of the physical and cultural theft of human beings.</p>
<p>We identify as Sugar Slaves, and we are confident and firm about correcting the “official” versions of history.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191327/original/file-20171023-26676-kjd0t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191327/original/file-20171023-26676-kjd0t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191327/original/file-20171023-26676-kjd0t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191327/original/file-20171023-26676-kjd0t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191327/original/file-20171023-26676-kjd0t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191327/original/file-20171023-26676-kjd0t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191327/original/file-20171023-26676-kjd0t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191327/original/file-20171023-26676-kjd0t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As president of ASSI-PJ since 2009, Emelda Davis’s work has helped revive the call for recognition of her people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ASSI-PJ</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-17/blackbirding-australias-history-of-kidnapping-pacific-islanders/8860754">Blackbirding</a>” comes from the African slave trade and truly expresses the violence of what happened. There were 870 voyages back and forth to the islands that brought my people to Australia. Some were kidnapped, but it is also undeniable that our warriors chose to return more than once. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the treatment of the Islanders was atrocious, exploitative and akin to slavery. When plantation owners went bankrupt, the workers were transferred as an asset with the sold property.</p>
<p>The grandfather of Gordon Johnson, a second-generation descendant of the blackbirding trade, was kidnapped from Malaita in the Solomon Islands and brought to Queensland to cut cane. Gordon says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My grandfather was a respected chief, he had wives and a lot of land when he was stolen. His family thought he was dead for almost ten years. One day my grandfather got back to his island only to find that his right to land and his wives had all been taken. His family thought he was a ghost, so he was banished and travelled to Vanuatu in hope of starting a new life, but was blackbirded from Vanuatu back to Australia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gordon is now 67 and has found the courage to share his experience years after the trade was abolished. As a 13-year-old in 1963, he had no option but to work alongside his father in the cane fields on Howard Farm, Bundaberg.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The owner used to come round and check up on us while we were cutting and he used to flog me all over that field. He said I wasn’t cuttin’ proper. My father would have to sit back and watch ’cause he was warned that if he stepped in he would get a floggin’ too and our family would be kicked off the farm. Ten of us lived in a one-room hut.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The full truth needs to be told</h2>
<p>Thousands upon thousands of men, along with a small percentage of women and children, were blackbirded to work under the harshest of conditions in the pastoral, maritime and sugar industries.</p>
<p>Blackbirding occurred not only in the cane fields, but also in the shipping industry. South Sea Islanders worked as seafarers and deckhands across the many ports of this nation.</p>
<p>In 1847, more than a decade after slavery was officially abolished throughout the British Empire, politician and entrepreneur <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/blackbirding-shame-yet-to-be-acknowledged-in-australia-20150603-ghfn9c.html">Benjamin Boyd</a> began the illegal blackbirding of 119 Islanders to work on his whaling and pastoral ventures in Eden and the Riverina in NSW. For Boyd it was a business proposition – one that has been documented as a human disaster.</p>
<p>Today, the <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2017/09/11/australias-slave-past-the-bitter-truth-about-our-sugar-trade/">bitter truth</a> about our sugar trade is commemorated by Australian South Sea Islanders in NSW marking 170 years since our forefathers escaped from Boyd and walked back to Sydney. By various means about half managed to be shipped home, which resulted in many Tanna men drowning in Sydney Harbour. The others died.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I4_zbkffAY4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Many Australian South Sea Islanders are descendants of the Pacific Islands blackbirding trade.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Earlier this year Stan Grant called for the inscription on Captain Cook’s statue to reflect the <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2017/08/22/correct-captain-cook-history-says-stan-grant">truth</a>. </p>
<p>In fact, the founding fathers of other townships, including entrepreneur Robert Towns <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/content/s4723163.htm">(Townsville)</a> and blackbirder John Mackay (Mackay), were part of a lucrative slave trade stretched to its fullest capacity for 40 years (1863-1903), regardless of illegalities and high death rates.</p>
<p>These cities are proud of their founders, but as with the case of Cook, a greater understanding and a broader discussion are needed. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/24/full-truth-needs-to-be-told-descendants-of-blackbirded-south-sea-islanders-want-memorials-amended">full truth</a> needs to be told.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.assipj.com.au/assipj-board/">Shireen Malamoo</a> identifies as an Aboriginal/Kanak Woman. “Kanak” is Hawaiian for “bushman”, a word the overseers used in a derogatory way for the Islanders. Shireen is the granddaughter of a Sugar Slave taken from the island of Tongoa in Vanuatu and a descendant of the Birrigubba traditional owners from Plantation Creek on the Burdekin River in Ayr, north Queensland. She says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Slavery affects people of colour globally and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/07/if-black-lives-really-matter-in-australia-its-time-we-owned-up-to-our-history">Australia’s version of slavery</a> is based on the stealing of our African brothers and sisters across the Atlantic. In Australia, they attempt to hide the truth through the political manipulation of policy into the legal framework coined as “indentured labour”. Our warriors were paid a pittance for their work and bonded to completion of an unknown three-year contract with no idea what they were in for, let alone knowing if they would live or die.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/anniversary-recalls-dark-past-of-south-sea-islander-migration/4885264">15,000</a> Sugar Slaves lost their lives to common diseases. This toll equated to almost 30% of the trade. Despite authorities knowing about this, the trade flourished. </p>
<p>In 1901, the new Commonwealth government, as part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-white-australia-policy-74084">White Australia Policy</a>, ordered the deportation of the entire Islander community, who were now denigrated as “aliens”. This was part of Australia’s ethnic cleansing.</p>
<p>Many Islanders legally belonged as British subjects and should not have been unlawfully deported. The 1906 High Court <a href="https://auspublaw.org/2016/10/still-paying-for-the-laws-failure/">judgment</a> authorising their expulsion was a self-interested abuse of the rule of law that sought to “create” a White Australian population.</p>
<p>So, four decades later, the islands and families who had been traumatised by the kidnapping of their fathers, husbands and sons witnessed the return of these peoples, distressed and disorientated, having been deported en masse from Australia.</p>
<p>It was a travesty, with cases of cultural warfare and further displacement as the island societies they once knew were no more, and were now foreign to the returning labourers and their families.</p>
<h2>Fighting for the right to live</h2>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Canning">Ken Canning</a> is a Murri activist, writer and poet, whose people are from the Kunja Clan of the Bidjara Nation in southwest Queensland. He says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While different groups are campaigning on many important issues, the same issues will become meaningless if we don’t fight for the right to live.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My people did not just take the abuse they received. They were activists as well, making the most of the new situation into which they were forced. Historians call this agency, or taking control of your life even in adverse circumstances.</p>
<p>More recently, intrinsic <a href="http://www.assipj.com.au/australian-south-sea-islander-historical-chronology/">agency</a> by ASSI descendants is seen through our work in solidarity with Indigenous peoples fighting for the right to live full and fruitful lives as our basic human right.</p>
<p>My people have a complex identity that affirms the consequence of colonialism’s truth and confronts the injustices inflicted upon two very different Black cultures – Indigenous Australian and immigrant Melanesian. We have produced several exceptional and stoic leaders, such as <a href="http://peopleaustralia.anu.edu.au/biography/bandler-ida-lessing-faith-15982">Faith Bandler</a>, <a href="http://www.assipj.com.au/assipj-board/">Bonita Mabo</a>, <a href="http://www.law.unsw.edu.au/news/2010/08/honouring-judge-bob-bellear-australias-1st-aboriginal-judge-and-unsw-law-alumnus">Bob Bellear</a>, <a href="http://www.robertasykesfoundation.com/shireen-malamoo.html">Shireen Malamoo</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-21/dr-evelyn-scott-indigenous-rights-campaigner-dies-aged-81/8967192">Evelyn Scott</a>.</p>
<p>Because of our history of forced migration to a foreign land and our marginalised cultural identity, ASSI descendants today must strive to restore our right to sovereignty. </p>
<p>Our ancestry is now mixed with Indigenous Australians and we support the call for respect and appreciation of the <a href="http://www.history.com/news/dna-study-finds-aboriginal-australians-worlds-oldest-civilization">oldest living civilisation</a>. But we also want to restore our connections with our islands of origin, and to ensure that future generations of our people in Australia are treated with dignity as citizens.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191339/original/file-20171023-9077-i36kg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191339/original/file-20171023-9077-i36kg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191339/original/file-20171023-9077-i36kg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191339/original/file-20171023-9077-i36kg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191339/original/file-20171023-9077-i36kg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191339/original/file-20171023-9077-i36kg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191339/original/file-20171023-9077-i36kg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ASSI-PJ with Tanya Plibersek on Recognition Day in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ASSI-PJ</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As part of <a href="http://www.assipj.com.au/">our</a> advocacy work, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has included Australian South Sea Islanders in its statistical gathering. The 2016 <a href="http://www.assipj.com.au/assipj-news-and-events/page/6/">Census</a> recorded a 133% increase in participation from 2011, giving a demographic guesstimate of some 70,000 descendants nationally. </p>
<p>This joint government and community endeavour has led to Australian South Sea Islanders being given a place on many forms, including those used in hospitals and by Centrelink.</p>
<p>Despite these successes, ASSI communities continue to suffer a great decline due to a lack of defined policy for supportive state and national action. Especially needed are initiatives that inspire economic stability and broader community engagement in grassroots capacity-building programs. Our demographic remains marginalised, suffering the same disadvantage found in Indigenous Australia.</p>
<h2>Queensland divides to conquer</h2>
<p>On March 22 this year, the Australian government responded to the plight of ASSI by accepting the <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/03_2017/australian_government_response_to_revisiting_recognition_report_on_the_roundtable_with_australian_south_sea_islanders_accessible.pdf">recommendations</a> of a House of Representatives standing committee that they be reinstated as a specific target group identified under the Multicultural and Equity Policy.</p>
<p>The intention was to co-ordinate assistance by all three tiers of government. It was the most significant Commonwealth investigation into ASSI since <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/faith-bandler-helped-change-a-nations-views-on-human-rights-and-social-justice-20150213-13epkb.html">Bandler</a> persuaded Gough Whitlam to establish an inter-departmental committee in the 1970s.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, no-one bothered to tell the National ASSI Association Roundtable. We found out indirectly in late October. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Queensland government has already begun consultations with ASSI in the state, once more dividing to conquer. Lured by offers of local-level funding, regional ASSI organisations failed to work with the national body they inaugurated. </p>
<p>Does the Queensland government have good intentions? What are its real motivations? A senior government official was evasive when contacted.</p>
<p><a href="http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/345">Clive Moore</a>, based on 40 years’ involvement with the ASSI community and a deep knowledge of our history, commented:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Queensland government once more is manipulating ASSI, dividing them, offering them scraps. There is also an election looming and they want to shore up marginal seats.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The government realises the likelihood of class action being taken over its disgraceful behaviour in the 19th century, when the state seized the wages of the 15,000 dead ASSI to pay for the administration of the Sugar Slave trade and ultimately the forced deportations in the 1900s.</p>
<p>In today’s money the Queensland and Australian governments have misappropriated tens of millions of dollars, in the same way as Aboriginal wages were misappropriated. Of this Moore says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Queensland’s government is protecting itself, not helping the modern ASSI generations. It is one Australia-wide community, and working within state borders is a deliberate impediment and not what the Commonwealth is seeking.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today Australia is home to some 350,000 Pacific Islanders, recent and historical, who are achieving a cultural renaissance through reconnection and kinship. But the battle is hard, with recent seemingly positive initiatives exposing the lack of communication between the government and our people, as well as the provincialism of the states and the wider impediments put in the way of justice. </p>
<p>Real justice is an opportunity for our nation’s healing – and for a national action plan that sees community groups come to the table in truthful, meaningful and long-term dialogue with the federal and state governments of Australia.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>(Waskam) Emelda Davis is the president of voluntary not-for-profit organisation Australian South Sea Islanders (Port Jackson). Emelda is a Masters of Arts (Research) candidate UTS-FASS: ARC Scholarship recipient and the 2017 Rotary 'Inspirational Women of the Year' recipient. <a href="http://www.assipj.com.au">www.assipj.com.au</a></span></em></p>Blackbirding is one of many shared Australian histories. Australian South Sea Islanders want to encourage broader community goodwill as we work towards social justice for a forgotten people.(Waskam) Emelda Davis, Australian South Sea Islanders – Chair, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/861392017-10-26T03:07:48Z2017-10-26T03:07:48ZWe cannot deny the violence of White supremacy any more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191312/original/file-20171023-13940-189xqy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5973%2C3143&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">White nationalists at the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rodneydunning/36401911981/">Robert Dunning/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the third in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">Black Lives Matter Everywhere</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a>. To mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/black-lives-matter/">2017 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has re-ignited a global conversation about racism. The 2017 Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 2 (<a href="https://events.ticketbooth.com.au/events/22459">tickets here</a>).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>It is a time of strife, turmoil and vitriol toward the Black Lives Matter movement. </p>
<p>The movement began in peaceful protest against the killing of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/17/black-lives-matter-birth-of-a-movement">Michael Brown</a> in Baltimore. Yet a host of organisations and publics, including some <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2017/10/police-spied-on-new-york-black-lives-matter-group-internal-police-documents-show/">police organisations</a>, continue to censure the movement because its members have dared to suggest, in the face of the persistent state-sanctioned killings of unarmed Black men, that America should not forget that Black lives matter too.</p>
<p>Some police departments have taken heed. They are now trying to figure out how they, as police officers, can have a better relationship with African-American communities and all the communities of colour they serve. </p>
<p>But the denial about the scope and the breadth of racist and White nationalist ideas, beliefs and practices in the US runs deep. The reaction of many police officers and their supporters has been to insist instead that “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lives_Matter">Blue Lives Matter</a>”. And nativists are quick to retort that “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Lives_Matter">All Lives Matter</a>”.</p>
<p>That was the point, and the origin, of “Black Lives Matter”. But the narrative that the US is a pluralistic democracy that welcomes immigrants and values diversity and excellence is floundering.</p>
<p>Globally, people were flummoxed by the intensity of the hatred they saw on the faces of the young White men who marched in the streets of <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-charlottesville-to-nazi-germany-sometimes-monuments-have-to-fall-82643">Charlottesville</a> only two months ago.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZN7vm9mIPBs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">White nationalists marched in Virginia in protest at the removal of a Confederate statue.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Why would a country that prides itself on its migrant history light up torches of intolerance and – with pride and entitlement – bare the dirty underbelly of its racist institutions and political and social processes to the world?</p>
<p>Charlottesville was and shall remain a chilling reminder of the entrenched racism against Black people and other marginalised groups in the US. </p>
<p>Rather than embracing diversity and inclusion, the people who marched focused their anger on the apparent need to take back their country and “make it great again”. This means taking the country back for White people who want to make it theirs and only theirs “again”. It is not an inclusive or socially just sentiment.</p>
<h2>A history rooted in White supremacy</h2>
<p>Until recently, White Americans have been in denial about the fact that the police intentionally go after Black men and other men of colour. But the research and statistics kept by state and federal agencies show this happens.</p>
<p>Last year, police killed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database">266 Black people</a> at a rate of 6.66 kills per million people. That makes a Black person more than twice as likely to be killed by police as a White or Hispanic/Latino person.</p>
<p>Black people are also regularly <a href="http://www.thinkprogress.org/police-medical-assistance-shootings-f13b85774f85/">left to die</a> – even after police officers disarm the wounded citizen (or discover they had no weapon at all).</p>
<p>High-profile police killings ended the lives of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/05/terence-crutcher-acquittal/527169/">Terence Crutcher</a>, 40, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/21/protesters-clash-with-police-in-charlotte-after-fatal-shooting-of-black-man">Keith Scott</a>, 43, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/19/tyre-king-shooting-columbus-police-examiner">Tyre King</a>, 13, among <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/colin-kaepernick-police-killings_us_57e14414e4b04a1497b69ba6">more than a dozen</a> others in 2016. Scott’s killing led to massive protests in Charlotte, North Carolina. These were led by residents fed up with <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/215911-poll-african-americans-see-lack-of-accountability-in-police">law enforcement’s lack of accountability</a> and <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/8/5/12379390/police-ice-cream-video">racist policing practices</a>.</p>
<p>Black Lives Matter is committed to shining a spotlight on the arbitrary criminalisation of Black people in the US. In <a href="http://newjimcrow.com/about">The New Jim Crow</a>, Michelle Alexander exposes the intentional structuring of the US penal justice system based on the belief that African-Americans (especially men) are dangerous and suspicious, thus necessitating constant surveillance and containment.</p>
<p>The enduring belief in African American male criminality is symptomatic of the lingering <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-2/science-race">race science legacy</a> in the history of American anthropology and eugenics. These beliefs are deeply held and go back to the time of slavery when masters were in constant fear of “uprisings”. </p>
<p>The profound fear of Black criminality has through law, social norms and cultural practices of institutionalised racism obtained a kind of normalcy within national narratives around Blacks and crime in the US.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191313/original/file-20171023-13943-g3yfu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191313/original/file-20171023-13943-g3yfu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191313/original/file-20171023-13943-g3yfu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191313/original/file-20171023-13943-g3yfu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191313/original/file-20171023-13943-g3yfu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191313/original/file-20171023-13943-g3yfu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191313/original/file-20171023-13943-g3yfu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191313/original/file-20171023-13943-g3yfu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fear of black criminality has been institutionalised in the US.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cuboctahedron/22720802730/in/photolist-ABL457-rs8QBd-qqDKft-JRPcFh-r8NBYp-pu4Xjc-q5tqAG-JMUZkH-qiWCfm-q3BFGj-q8St7v-rTVkth-5Ktdsi-Agq7Kw-qczSuP-px1wjF-q9pNqB-qccozh-qcd2vd-zXm4gE-DmSHmN-K9ofCC-ptQt2Y-6Jgvof-K9Jo4i-q9pPEv-q9h72C-q9pMEt-qtGpuJ-HyPYB-VxuwtQ-qruwV5-qqPUNv-qccu2j-PrqEiH-qiAGFQ-5Ds6jh-qMN72m-qtDyLp-VWvubq-JqELPQ-JRDX94-5V4qaJ-pmwPGu-7UWHnT-8vEXkh-cjf8xs-5LztEk-bQDcbZ-qiBzSN">Ella/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2016 the UN’s <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Racism/WGAfricanDescent/Pages/WGEPADIndex.aspx">Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent</a> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-police-un/u-s-police-killings-reminiscent-of-lynching-u-n-group-says-idINL8N1BZ3CF">described</a> the recent police killings of Black people in the US as reminiscent of 19th- and 20th-century lynchings:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Contemporary killings by police and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The UN working group said these problems were intrinsically linked to US history. In particular, the legacies of colonialism, enslavement, racial terrorism, subordination, segregation and inequality remain a serious challenge. To date there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent.</p>
<h2>A nation divided</h2>
<p>Though the election and re-election of President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 momentarily hushed the extreme fringe groups of White nationalists, we now find ourselves facing the blatant denial of White Americans in power once again. </p>
<p>Racist statements by President Donald Trump have emboldened and encouraged other White supremacists and Nazis to come out into the open and forcefully demand, among other things, to make America White again.</p>
<p>The truth is that we still live in communities separated by race and class, urban and rural, as well as political divides. But Black Lives Matter is an organisation that provides a platform for progressive people of all backgrounds to work together.</p>
<p>The movement joins a long tradition of Black activism that includes Martin Luther King’s protest marches and Marcus Garvey’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_nationalism">Black Nationalists</a>, who were labelled everything from “cop haters” to “terrorists”. </p>
<p>No doubt the current generation of Black activists, along with their supporters and allies, have reason to be wary. The police and FBI have the ability to put them under <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/surveillance-black-lives-matter-cointelpro_us_55d49dc6e4b055a6dab24008">surveillance</a>, to obtain their phone records en masse, to access their emails and to detain them indefinitely.</p>
<p>Black Lives Matter is protesting against the country’s treatment of Black people now because White supremacy is still present in the American population. Impunity for state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.</p>
<p>But with a history so steeped in racial violence, it will take much more than recognising the effect of prejudiced police brutality.</p>
<p>Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/">Jim Crow</a> and the fight for civil rights, racist ideology that ensures the domination of one group over another continues to suffocate the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African-Americans today.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86139/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yolanda Moses does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>White Americans have been in denial about the fact that police go after Black men and other men of colour. But the research and statistics kept by state and federal agencies show this happens.Yolanda Moses, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, RiversideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/851682017-10-16T01:03:05Z2017-10-16T01:03:05ZWe just Black matter: Australia’s indifference to Aboriginal lives and land<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188696/original/file-20171004-24230-15vzbqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'We refuse to appeal to the benevolence of White folk for our lives to matter. We remind them every day that we are still here.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/coreyoakley/16916996630/">Corey Oakley/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the second in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">Black Lives Matter Everywhere</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a>. To mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/black-lives-matter/">2017 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has re-ignited a global conversation about racism. The 2017 Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 2 (<a href="https://events.ticketbooth.com.au/events/22459">tickets here</a>).</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>We say “Black Lives Matter” but shit, the fact that matter is, we just Black matter to them, this shit keep happening.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a uniquely Aboriginal articulation of the global Black Lives Matter movement, Batdjala rapper <a href="http://badapplesmusic.com.au/artist/birdz/">Birdz</a> sings not of <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/category/tamir-rice/">Rice</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/dec/04/i-cant-breathe-eric-garner-chokehold-death-video">Garner</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-accumulated-injustices-of-the-trayvon-martin-case-16061">Martin</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/imagining-a-better-outcome-for-sandra-bland-45999">Bland</a>. Instead he sings of <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/11/19/no-justice-decade-horrific-palm-island-death-custody">Mulrunji</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-24/elijah-doughty-protest-in-sydney/8738884">Elijah</a>, <a href="http://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/yock-daniel-alfred-18056">Yock</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-14/tj-hickey-death-tenth-anniversary-march/5258958">Hickey</a> and the <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-malcolm-knox-mission-bowraville-murders-2786">Bowraville children</a> – each of whom died in seemingly different circumstances. </p>
<p>What ties them together, however, is the indifference to their deaths and the apparent disposability of Black lives in Australia.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ON8VK4fP9ZA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Birdz performs his song Black Lives Matter for NAIDOC Week live on triple j.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much of the media attention in Australia surrounding the US-led <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> movement has focused on police brutality and the murder of young African-American men on public streets, captured on smartphones and dashboard cameras. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the murders of Aboriginal people in Australia have been less visible. If mentioned at all, Aboriginal deaths at the hands of the state are variously framed as “suspicious”, “unknown”, “accidental” or “inevitable”, despite the presence of CCTV footage, protests, perpetrators, witnesses, coronial inquiries and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/deaths-in-custody-25-years-after-the-royal-commission-weve-gone-backwards-57109">royal commission</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/deaths-in-custody-25-years-after-the-royal-commission-weve-gone-backwards-57109">Deaths in custody: 25 years after the royal commission, we’ve gone backwards</a></strong></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Where murder is <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-21/elijah-doughty-trial-man-found-not-guilty-of-manslaughter/8729122">not even considered manslaughter</a>, where Black witnesses are <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/crime-and-misconduct-commission-agrees-to-oversee-investigations-into-unnatural-deaths-in-custody/news-story/7371de31449231263e3b387baee87121?sv=41b8e2b939a15d4290545ccdf2beaa1e">deemed “unreliable”</a>, where royal commission recommendations <a href="https://theconversation.com/deaths-in-custody-25-years-after-the-royal-commission-weve-gone-backwards-57109">aren’t implemented</a>, where coroners refuse to exercise their power to <a href="http://southburnett.com.au/news2/2013/05/curtain-falls-on-a-tragic-saga/">make recommendations</a>, and where White murderers of Black children enjoy the privilege of being <a href="http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/elijah-doughtys-death-in-kalgoorlie-may-yet-result-in-murder-charge-20160901-gr65uh.html">unnamed for their own protection</a>, it is blatantly clear whose lives really matter in Australia.</p>
<p>And there really is nothing mysterious about the deaths of Aboriginal people in Australia, either.</p>
<p>The settlers have long insisted that our death was destined, that our race was doomed, and that we, as a people, were vanishing. Our disappearance was inevitable because it was necessary to sustain <a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/orgs/car/docrec/policy/brief/terran.htm"><em>terra nullius</em></a>, the foundational myth of Australia. Black deaths rationalised White invasion and land expansion in Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188697/original/file-20171004-24219-1770zje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188697/original/file-20171004-24219-1770zje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188697/original/file-20171004-24219-1770zje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188697/original/file-20171004-24219-1770zje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188697/original/file-20171004-24219-1770zje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188697/original/file-20171004-24219-1770zje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188697/original/file-20171004-24219-1770zje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188697/original/file-20171004-24219-1770zje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A print ad for GenerationOne that was released in March 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GenerationOne/Coloribus</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a little over 100 years of White presence, they did not feel it was necessary to include us in their Constitution. Having been so successful in their work, they were anticipating our imminent departure – not to another land, but rather to be buried in our own lands. </p>
<p>In our dying, rather than in our living, our bodies mattered most to the colonial project.</p>
<h2>Black lives matter: in death and deviance</h2>
<p>White indifference to Black suffering has a long tradition in Australia. It remains ever-present, even in the supposedly benevolent contemporary policy agendas of <a href="http://www.indigenous.gov.au/indigenous-advancement-strategy">“Indigenous Advancement”</a> and “<a href="https://theconversation.com/closing-the-gap-is-failing-and-needs-a-radical-overhaul-72961">Closing the Gap</a>”.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.indigenous.gov.au/indigenous-advancement-strategy">We are told</a> by the Australian government:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Australian government made Indigenous affairs a significant national priority and has set three clear priorities to make sure efforts are effectively targeted – getting children to school, adults into work and building safer communities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Clearly, what is actually targeted here are Black lives and the unsafe Black body – which, we are told, are incapable of working or attending school. We see the gaze transfixed not on the systems that create disadvantage, but on remedying the behaviours of Black people through compliance to systems that have always failed us – and, let’s be honest, have deliberately excluded us.</p>
<p>Focusing on Black lives in this instance both lays blame on, and makes claims of, Black deviance from White norms, values, standards and expectations. The deviation from Black lives to White lives sanctions a “new” targeting of Black lives by the state, and necessitates the continuation of White control over us and our lands.</p>
<p>Black deviance (statistical or otherwise) has been a useful narrative device for the settlers. </p>
<p>Black deviance supports claims of White benevolence, in which White people are simultaneously positioned as our aspirational goal and saviours. It suggests to us that Black lives matter to them. Yet in emphasising our deviance, the sins of a system that White people uphold and benefit from remains unnamed and unnoticed.</p>
<p>Only last month we witnessed the routine deployment of Black deviance to sustain White virtue in the Queensland Department of Education and Training’s own marketing. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"905253464132878336"}"></div></p>
<p>The Black lives we see are not her students, but they need not be. Black lives only matter when they prop up claims of White intellectual and moral superiority, and it is in a state of deviance that our bodies, that our troublesome children and their neglectful parents, are suddenly hyper-visible.</p>
<p>But Black deviance doesn’t just make settlers look good: it rationalises them taking greater control over the lives and lands of Aboriginal people. Let’s not forget that it was via <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2017/06/23/bad-aunty-seven-years-how-abc-lateline-sparked-racist-nt-intervention/">mythologies of Black deviance</a> that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ten-years-on-its-time-we-learned-the-lessons-from-the-failed-northern-territory-intervention-79198">Northern Territory Emergency Response</a> (otherwise known as the Intervention) was introduced and the Racial Discrimination Act suspended. </p>
<p>Despite the Intervention’s inherently racist nature, it was framed as a benevolent act to Black women and children. Through the narratives of Black deviance and allegedly neglectful #IndigenousDads, attention was shifted away from the actual abuse of Aboriginal children within the youth justice system in the Northern Territory.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/ten-years-on-its-time-we-learned-the-lessons-from-the-failed-northern-territory-intervention-79198">Ten years on, it’s time we learned the lessons from the failed Northern Territory Intervention</a></strong></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Black deviance has worked well for the Australian health system too, in rationalising the enduring and appalling <a href="https://theconversation.com/northern-australia-syphilis-outbreak-is-about-government-neglect-not-child-abuse-44597">health inequalities</a> that Indigenous peoples suffer. Much like the education system, the health system asserts a public <a href="https://theconversation.com/acknowledge-the-brutal-history-of-indigenous-health-care-for-healing-64295">moral stance</a> of benevolence to avoid scrutiny over its ongoing refusal to care properly for Aboriginal people.</p>
<p>The coronial inquiry into the tragic death of Ms Dhu in police custody <a href="http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/ms-dhus-family-get-11m-exgratia-payment-20170920-gyl2fh.html">ruled that</a> it was also medical staff who “disregarded her welfare and right to treatment during her three visits to hospital in as many days”. </p>
<p>The failure of the health system to provide care to Aboriginal people is nothing new. And access to basic health care has been a <a href="https://issuu.com/uqpochecentre/docs/community_control_monograph_iuih_1">long and hard-fought battle</a> led by Indigenous activists across Australia over many decades. It was not until 1989, after two centuries of invasion, that the first National Aboriginal Health Strategy was devised.</p>
<p>Since 2013, the current <a href="http://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/oatsih-healthplan-toc">National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan</a> has had, as its vision, a health system free of racism for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But a cursory glance at coronial inquiries into Aboriginal deaths in hospitals in recent years reveals any number of preventable deaths that came about through an indifference to Black lives and Black suffering. </p>
<p>From the <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/indigenous-hospital-deceased-never-aggressive-inquest-20160411-go3u8f.html">excessive use of restraints</a> to the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-22/death-of-disabled-aboriginal-woman-in-hospital-to-be-probed/8141118">refusal to provide appropriate health care</a>, the names of the deceased remain unknown to most Australians – as do the crimes of the healthcare professionals responsible, thanks to the health and justice systems that protect them.</p>
<p>Even in death, descriptions of Aboriginal victims at the hands of the state frequently focus on Black deviance as a mitigating factor.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188698/original/file-20171004-24219-1sh5mdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188698/original/file-20171004-24219-1sh5mdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188698/original/file-20171004-24219-1sh5mdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188698/original/file-20171004-24219-1sh5mdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188698/original/file-20171004-24219-1sh5mdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188698/original/file-20171004-24219-1sh5mdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188698/original/file-20171004-24219-1sh5mdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vernon Ah Kee/Milani Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Black deviance operates as an alibi for racism and White supremacy. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, where Black deviance was successfully deployed to deflect attention away from the role of police brutality.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://changetherecord.org.au/resources/files/Chapter%2002_%20The%20Findings%20of%20the%20Commissioners%20as%20to%20the%20Deaths.pdf">inquiry found</a> that not one of the 99 Aboriginal deaths investigated was a result of “unlawful, deliberate killing of Aboriginal prisoners by police and prison officers”. </p>
<p>Instead, we were told that 37 of these deaths were attributable to disease, while 30 were self-inflicted hangings and 23 were caused by “other forms of trauma, especially head injuries”. Another nine were associated with dangerous alcohol and drug use.</p>
<p>Consequently, much of the attention around Black deaths in custody has focused on the apparently inevitable deaths of sick Aborigines rather than the violence of the state. But when police officers threaten Aboriginal men with <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/10/29/sa-cop-racially-abuses-aboriginal-man">tying a noose around their neck</a> and publicly mock Aboriginal people <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2_z9W6WnIY">who have died in custody</a> as a result of alleged “self-inflicted hangings”, it is little wonder that Aboriginal people <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-25/tane-chatfields-family-demands-answers-over-death-in-custody/8986246">are sceptical</a>.</p>
<h2>Black lands matter</h2>
<p>White benevolence really does feel brutal for Blackfullas in this country. So, it is hardly surprising that the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/black-lives-matter/">Black Lives Matter movement</a>, with its emphasis on countering racism and White supremacy, has a certain appeal for Blackfullas.</p>
<p>Co-founder Alicia Garza explains that the movement seeks to tackle the “deep-seated disease” of racism through a deeper conversation around citizenship:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We really need to be talking about this question of citizenship, which I think is huge. I feel like what Black folks are fighting for in this moment is what we’ve been fighting for the whole time - which isn’t citizenship, like papers, but it’s citizenship like dignity. Like humanity. Right? And access.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-8-KZ0RIN3w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Opal Tometi, the women who created the hashtag that galvanised a movement , discuss Black Lives Matter.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the promise of Black Lives Matter, it has not been taken up as a central political movement by Blackfullas in Australia. Perhaps it is because, as a people who are both Black and First Nations, we cannot embrace an emancipatory agenda that is silent about the significance of the relationship between Black lands and Black lives.</p>
<p>Blackfullas are not seeking a revitalised citizenship that recognises our dignity and humanity – we are insisting upon our sovereignty as First Nations peoples. </p>
<p>We refuse to talk about our lives independently of our land. We remind them every day that we are still here in this place – and it is their presence on our lands that poses the real problem, not our lives. </p>
<p>We refuse to appeal to the benevolence of the colonisers for our lives to matter, because we know that their existence on this continent remains legally predicated upon our non-existence.</p>
<p>That’s why I’m with Birdz on this one:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Shit. The fact that matter is, we just Black matter to them.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read the other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chelsea Bond receives funding from The Lowitja Institute and the Department of Education and Training as an Australian Learning and Teaching Fellow and is an Affiliate Member of the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. </span></em></p>Despite the promise of Black Lives Matter, it has not been taken up as a central political movement by Indigenous Australians.Chelsea Watego, Senior Lecturer, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit (ATSIS Unit), The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/854492017-10-12T01:18:51Z2017-10-12T01:18:51ZBlack Lives Matter is a revolutionary peace movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189568/original/file-20171010-19989-ozew98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The call for Black lives to matter is fundamentally a call for peace. And peace must not be confused with the momentary quiet of submission.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtumesoul/15401077114/in/album-72157660313134374/">Annette Bernhardt/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the first in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">Black Lives Matter Everywhere</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a>. To mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/black-lives-matter/">2017 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has reignited a global conversation about racism. The 2017 Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 2 (<a href="https://events.ticketbooth.com.au/events/22459">tickets here</a>).</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>Black Lives Matter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer intentionally and systematically targeted for demise. <strong>– Black Lives Matter mission statement</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>On July 13, 2013, hundreds of thousands of people – mostly Black people – flooded the streets of US cities following the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/us/george-zimmerman-verdict-trayvon-martin.html">acquittal</a> of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. </p>
<p>For weeks, we had been glued to our televisions as police and “friends” of Zimmerman tried to disparage the high schooler – to make the victim some kind of predator. But we had seen his face. We saw his eyes dance, his brown skin glisten, and his smile warm hearts. He was a child, a lovely, beautiful boy-child who looked like our own children. And Zimmerman had no right to steal his life, regardless of what a court says.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189513/original/file-20171010-17703-bt7dfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189513/original/file-20171010-17703-bt7dfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189513/original/file-20171010-17703-bt7dfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189513/original/file-20171010-17703-bt7dfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189513/original/file-20171010-17703-bt7dfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189513/original/file-20171010-17703-bt7dfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189513/original/file-20171010-17703-bt7dfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189513/original/file-20171010-17703-bt7dfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2012 Trayvon Martin was shot for ‘looking suspicious’. He was 17.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fleshmanpix/6863999486">Michael Fleshman/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, the verdict came down, and we erupted. Our spirits filled with the righteous indignation of generations past. Transgenerational memories came rushing back of <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/emmett-till-507515">Emmett Till</a>. </p>
<p>Trayvon was born to Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, but he was ours – all of ours.</p>
<p>Black bodies filled the streets, disrupting traffic, inhibiting White shoppers and making the normalcy of White American middle-class existence less certain. </p>
<p>As our ranks swelled and our presence became more intentionally targeted at White epicentres of escapism (including tourist attractions like Hollywood and Highland), we began to understand the power of disruption. In disrupting these spaces, we refused to allow our collective pain to be confined to Black communities. Others may not see their own children in the face of Trayvon, but they would not be permitted to dismiss us.</p>
<p>On the third day of protest, in the midst of our first freeway shutdown, a text message found its way to a few of us. It read like words from the Underground Railroad: “Meet at St. Elmo Village at 9pm” (a Black artist community in mid-city Los Angeles). </p>
<p>The message was from <a href="http://patrissecullors.com/bio/">Patrisse Cullors</a>, a young, powerful, emerging organiser in Black Los Angeles whose work had centred on ending sheriffs’ violence. Her text was passed onto other organisers by <a href="http://www.thandisizwe.net">Thandisizwe Chimurenga</a>, a Black independent journalist who had been most recently active in the struggle for justice for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Oscar_Grant">Oscar Grant</a>. </p>
<p>As the summer night settled in and demonstrators scurried from highways, dodging the police who came in with sticks, beanbag guns and tear gas, the mamas collected our young children, walked home and prepared to go back out that same night.</p>
<h2>A movement, not a moment</h2>
<p>I was late to the meeting. By the time I arrived, a few dozen folks, including about ten of my spirit-children/students were closing out discussions of what it means to build “a movement, not a moment”. </p>
<p>Many of us had been involved in what <a href="http://www.history.ucla.edu/faculty/brenda-stevenson">Brenda Stevenson</a> terms “episodic organising”, or demands for justice that are limited to a person or a moment in time. But what we came to embrace that night is that the murder of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant before him, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/10/local/me-brown10">Devin Brown</a> before him, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2002/dec/13/local/me-tyisha13">Tyisha Miller</a> before him, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/21/news/mn-56723">Margaret Mitchell</a> before her … and so many others, was not accidental. </p>
<p>Perhaps the names and specifics of each case unfolded independently, but the system of American policing was designed to produce these outcomes. The system is brutal, murderous and violent. Only by transforming the way that we vision justice can we realise peace. </p>
<p>So, we committed to building a new peace movement – one that was driven by the way that Trayvon had embedded his spirit in our collective souls and opened itself to the chorus of voices whose bodies had been stolen by the state before and after him.</p>
<p>All of this intuitive work had already happened prior to our gathering in the courtyard, and remains hugely important to the building of this movement. For a movement to grow, it must be organic, flowing from the hearts of the people.</p>
<p>Every transformative struggle for justice has been rooted in heart work. Attempts to insert causes into communities ring as false and ultimately fall flat. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lUzSZtI4-Oo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘What if it were my son, my brother?’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work of organisers, with the most effective organisers being part of the communities that they seek to organise, is to tap in to the souls of the community, hear the collective outcries and distil the issues and cast them in the context of a larger vision. They work to harness the energy as the movement builds and seize the time as communities make demands and arrive at solutions. </p>
<p>Civil rights, Black Power and Black Lives Matter organiser Greg Akili says that organising is “getting people to move on their own behalf and in their own interest”. </p>
<p>As the intuitive work was happening in the streets, Patrisse was assembling with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/02/alicia-garza-on-the-beauty-and-the-burden-of-black-lives-matter">Alicia Garza</a> and <a href="http://opaltometi.com">Opal Tometi</a> to organise us, visioning beyond the moment and strategising how to build a new iteration of Black freedom struggle.</p>
<h2>No justice, no peace</h2>
<p>Our mission emerged organically. It was summed up in the words penned by Alicia: “Black lives matter”. We have a right to our lives. Our children have a right to live and walk freely, without being hunted by the state, agents of the state, or wannabe agents of the state. </p>
<p>This is not debatable. There are no two ways to see it. This is one of those very basic, fundamental truths. </p>
<p>Getting to freedom and getting to justice, however, is a much more challenging charge. We are heirs of struggles that are also black-and-white: calls to end chattel slavery and lynching, demands for basic civil rights and voting rights, and the constant call for the end to police brutality. </p>
<p>While a hawk’s-eye view of these demands offers very obvious conclusions, the complication becomes the entrenchment of systems that produce unjust outcomes. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/736-how-capitalism-underdeveloped-black-america">How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America</a>, Manning Marable offers that “the system exists not to develop, but to underdevelop Black people”, with each advancement for White society coming at the expense of Black freedom.</p>
<p>So, while there are clearly just outcomes, like ending slavery and lynching, ushering in civil rights and voting rights, ending police brutality and now demanding an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people, such demands require a fundamental transformation of a system that preys on and benefits from Black suffering.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Recurrences of state-sanctioned violence against Black people are not accidental.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtumesoul/15997561326/in/album-72157660313134374/">Annette Bernhardt/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Black freedom movements, including Black Lives Matter, are clearly working for what is just, the disruption that they pose to current systems is often cast by that system as problematic, even violent. </p>
<p>Because systems are designed to protect themselves, they utilise their vast powers to contort the messages of those who seek to challenge them. They use the laws that they created, the media that they control and the social structures that they erected to present those who challenge them as essentially “enemy combatants”. </p>
<p>Examples of this date back to the hefty bounty put on the head of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman">Harriet Tubman</a>, the bombing of the office of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells">Ida B. Wells</a>, the 40 times that Martin Luther King was imprisoned, the assassinations of King and Malcolm X and the targeting, imprisonment and exile of members of the Black Panther Party, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_P._Newton">Huey P. Newton</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assata_Shakur">Assata Shakur</a>. Today, Black Lives Matter organisers and other Black freedom fighters are the new targets. </p>
<p>The call for Black lives to matter and for an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people (and by extension all people) is fundamentally a call for peace. And peace must not be confused with the momentary quiet of submission. The kind of peace sought by Black Lives Matter results from justice. </p>
<p>Peace cannot be compelled or forced. It is earned when the people benefit from and see themselves as a part of the societies in which they are housed. Peace is not a tactic of struggle, it is an outcome. </p>
<p>As we struggle for a world where Black lives are no longer intentionally and systematically targeted for demise, it means that the systems that prey on us must be not simply reformed but re-imagined and transformed. </p>
<p>Peace calls for an end to incarceration and criminalisation in favour of real public safety solutions. Peace calls for the meeting of basic human needs, including safe housing, clean water, healthy food, and medical care. Peace calls for quality education as a universal right and the ability to engage fully in the arts, culture and spirituality.</p>
<p>Peace requires revolutionary vision – and Black Lives Matter is a peace movement.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read the other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melina Abdullah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The peace and justice Black Lives Matter seeks require a fundamental transformation of a system that preys on and benefits from Black suffering.Melina Abdullah, Professor and Chair of Pan-African Studies, California State University, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/790892017-06-28T23:58:27Z2017-06-28T23:58:27ZBlack Lives Matter, police and Pride: Toronto activists spark a movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174092/original/file-20170615-24999-zy3aq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People from the Black Lives Matter lead the annual Pride Parade in Toronto on Sunday, July 3, 2016. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.cpimages.com/">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It only took 30 minutes. Thirty minutes to plunge Toronto’s queer community into a Queer Civil War. </p>
<p>Last July, Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLM-TO) held up the Toronto Pride Parade for 30 minutes. BLM-TO made a number of demands of Pride Toronto in order for the parade to get moving again. Among them was a ban on police forces marching in uniform or full regalia and carrying guns at the parade. All of BLM-TO demands were agreed to and later endorsed by Pride’s membership and board. But since then, Toronto’s queer community has been in a raging civil war. </p>
<p>The war rages between those who believe all gay rights are now secure and those who understand that rights are parsed out according to privileged identities.</p>
<p>On the one side, many are white male queers, and on the other side many are Black, Indigenous and bisexual people of colour (BIPOC), including poor queers, sex workers and people with disabilities. Those in the second group are still collectively fighting for fully accorded rights to be their full queer selves; to them, the police still represent a clear and present danger.</p>
<p>BLM-TO has emerged as the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/black-lives-matter-toronto-pride-2017-1.4177554">leading activist voice on anti-Black policing in North America</a>. As a result of their work, Pride marches across Canada and the United States are being forced to have difficult conversations about how police participation represents a fundamental political contradiction. Just this week, the New York City chapter of BLM stated their full solidarity with the Toronto chapter and <a href="https://medium.com/@blmnyc/not-like-this-notopride-8b3f414a3d5a">called for the removal of uniformed police from the NYC Pride Parade</a>. </p>
<h2>The vicious debate</h2>
<p>The debate has been vicious: racist, transphobic and anti-sex worker. <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/07/05/black-lives-matter-toronto-flooded-with-hate-mail-after-pride-protest.html">The mainstream queer community has been brutal</a> in its insistence that police marching in the parade represents progress and change that should be welcomed by all queers. </p>
<p>BLM-TO and other activist groups from Boston to Washington to Winnipeg to Vancouver offer a different perspective. These activists have long worked against policing abuses and other state interventions into their lives; they refuse to concede to business as usual. </p>
<p>The organization understands the importance of intersectionality as the philosophical and practical foundation of its organizing. They work together with queers, trans people and sex workers, people with mental health issues, poor people and people who are marginalized in a white capitalist heteropatriarchal society. These are also the people that modern policing most often subject to its brutal mechanisms of control, arrest and incarceration.</p>
<p>Within these groups, there is no debate about ongoing police discrimination and brutality. These constituencies have made clear to the queer communities of which they are a part that police and policing represents a clear and present danger for them and that police participation in parades contravenes their full participation as queer community members. </p>
<p>It is with these issues in mind that BLM-TO engaged in the direct action of July 2016 that resulted in a ban on police marching in uniforms in the Pride parade.</p>
<h2>A new direction in contemporary politics</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexandria Williams, of Black Lives Matter Toronto, speaks at a news conference to discuss the Pride Parade controversy in Toronto on Thursday July 7, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I participated in the sit-down protest last July. Invited as an OG (BLM-TO’s word for older Black queers), I did not know their plans for action, but I knew that I would support whatever they did. I knew I would because since 2014, BLM-TO has demonstrated in no uncertain terms that political organizing, direct action and community building could be immediately complex, queer-centred, trans-centered, sex-work positive and hold all these together without privileging one over the other. </p>
<p>BLM-TO began and retains an honest and complex rendering of the Black community and beyond. It began in recognizing that colonization is land theft, (near) genocide and stolen bodies from Africa simultaneously. BLM-TO began in a place that many Black and Indigenous activists had long worked for. </p>
<p>Last year, on the streets of Toronto as we approached the main intersection of College and Yonge, BLM-TO slowed us down so that the Indigenous drummers could come forward, form a circle and lead us into a sit-down protest. I was there for all of it.</p>
<p>The co-ordination between BLM-TO and the Indigenous community signalled a different relationship to contemporary politics. It signalled that Black and Indigenous activists and thinkers are seeking ways to work together that bridge white liberal divides that seek to separate us. And what more powerful way to demonstrate that bridge than to come together around policing at Pride? The power of the continuous Indigenous drumming kept us centered in the righteousness of demands within our sit-down protest. </p>
<p>Policing continues to have a significant impact on the lives of Black and Indigenous peoples across Canada. It would be insincere to believe that those impacted by the brutalities of policing are not Black queer and Indigenous Two-Spirit peoples, because they are. As I write, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/inquest-anniversary-1.4178539">Indigenous peoples in Thunder Bay are revealing the significant stories of police brutality</a> that shapes their lives. And the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/loku-inquest-closing-arguments-1.4178077">Andrew Loku</a> inquest continues in Toronto. </p>
<p>The queer civil war happening now is about Black, Indigenous, trans people and sex workers insisting that what we bring to queer communities is valuable, necessary and worth protecting. That some “mainstream” white queers and others want to insist that police marching in uniforms represents a progressive change is a repudiation of our very lives. </p>
<p>Police marching in Pride parades represents — both symbolically and otherwise — the ongoing colonial project of violently interdicting into the lives of Black and Indigenous peoples by making us less than human. </p>
<p>What BLM-TO started last July — and continued this June by refusing to register as a float but taking up space to march nonetheless — is a powerful movement. It is a statement that says: sub-human existence will no longer be tolerated by those of us most marginalized for the price of entry into something that will not have us anyway.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79089/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rinaldo Walcott is the director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto. </span></em></p>It took only 30 minutes to plunge Toronto’s queer community into civil war. All across North America, Pride parades are debating police brutality.Rinaldo Walcott, Director of Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.