If one more settler tells me that the referendum results happened because of some reason other than anti-Indigeneity I'm going to fucking snap I swear.
@cs
So the 97% Australians of Settler Heritage voted overwhelmingly against giving First Nations any voice at all at the big white table of government .
This shows that most of the AoSH majority have brought ALL their nasty prejudices (and ignorance) with them when they emigrated here and have learnt nothing.
@aby You can call it socialism or left leaning but what this referendum shows is both the overwhelming meanness of 2/3 Australians and/or the gullibility that they believed the dross swilling around social media.
An educated, empathetic and open minded population wouldn't have voted this way.
So far I'm seeing a lot of white and non-Indigenous people be shocked that Australia is racist, seeing them talk about how now they know where the most racist parts are they'll go elsewhere on holidays, and tone police Indigenous people for telling colonisers to fuck off.
If you're Aboriginal (actually, if you're Black, Indigenous, a Person of Colour) you might want to vote in the #referendum early.
Considering that the #VoiceToParliament question is the only thing we're voting on, it's likely that the entrance to polling places are going to be lined with racists spewing their hatred of us.
It's ok to protect yourself and go vote early to dodge them.
You'll be asked if you're eligible for early voting - just say yes. They shouldn't ask you specifics, but if they do, just tell them you're travelling on Saturday (travelling is a valid reason to vote early).
Some people here need to understand that racism is primarily systemic. While there are individual aspects to it (yes, what your uncle said IS racist), that just not using slurs or being a "good person" doesn't mean you're not actively complicit in racism by reifying racist tropes that these systems rely on to keep functioning.
Everything exists within a context, and nothing happens in a vacuum.
Even if you "didn't mean it like that", it's still perceived that way and still lends power to systemic racism.
Yeah, it's tiring to constantly be aware of the impact your words have. Suck it up, sunshine.
This is what we mean by "doing the work". But no matter how tired you are, I guarantee it's literally nothing compared to the tiredness felt by those people who exist under that racist system.
It never ends. It needs to be done. Stop complaining and just get on with it and stop crying about it.
Being okay with racism makes you a racist. In a fundamentally unequal society, there's little practical difference between hating POC and being wholly indifferent to their well-being.
Not using certain words is less about causing someone offense and more about recognizing the power of language, particularly colonial languages, to reinforce and validate systems of oppression.