Earlier this month Australian national soccer team captain Sam Kerr was charged for ‘racially aggravated harassment’ of a white police officer, and it has never been more evident that white supremacy as a global system of power, is not widely understood. Comedian Aamer Rahman covers this quite brilliantly in his three-minute explainer of why reverse racism does not exist.
The re-framing of racism is nothing new. Since 1999 the Australian Government has been reframing the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, as ‘Harmony Day.’ As we’ve written about before, while this change of messaging seems subtle, it is a damaging tactic which erases the concept of racism in Australian society. IndigenousX agree that without a willingness to name the problem, we cannot move toward meaningful and sustainable solutions.
Perhaps then, for those of us from marginalised communities, the skill of shifting focus and re-framing a narrative can be empowering when we choose it for ourselves, and yet it can become a dis-empowering tool of colonialism when it becomes a way to speak over us. Indeed, raising the very question of who holds the power to shift a narrative – whether that be the media, the legal system, government, or us as individuals – can help us to think critically and ask better questions.
Social and political movements led by marginalised communities have taught us that real engagement and change happens when people who are most impacted are talked to, talked with, and not talked down to. It is encouraging that the important role that lived experience experts play in drawing attention to issues, is becoming more valued and commonplace in mainstream spaces. However, our lived experience stories have true power when they are re-focused away from deficit thinking, and towards opportunities to highlight the need for systemic and institutional change. We often see examples of highly educated bilingual (or trilingual!) migrant women being described as having ‘low literacy rates’ or facing ‘language barriers.’ However, migrant women have clearly told us that this is not how they would describe themselves. Rather, they point out, the source of the problem is that health resources, education and service information are often only available in English, thus making an already complex health system harder to navigate.
Similarly, because public narratives often centre the point of view of white Anglo-Saxon audiences, this often leads to stories being told about migrant and refugee women and communities that lack cultural complexity, nuance and understanding. Issues such as forced marriage and female genital cutting are often framed as being inherent to certain cultural norms or specific to certain countries. They are therefore wrongly understood as being immoveable ‘cultural’ issues. When issues are mis-framed in this way, we miss the opportunity to take a universal human rights approach that is more culturally nuanced and proposes attainable solutions.
We know that preventive health initiatives work best when stakeholders and community advocates avoid voyeurism and sensationalism when representing and engaging with migrant communities. It is worth reiterating that no one spokesperson can or should speak on behalf of their own or another community, just as no-one person represents a dominant community or culture and because internalised racism and even re-framing our own stories, can take years to dismantle.
Whilst we may occasionally hear stories from communities that fall beyond our own understanding or experience, amplifying stories that conform to racist stereotypes can have a damaging effect because they are incomplete, one-dimensional and often, untrue. Learning more about the history of white saviorism in healthcare can be a useful path forwards to ensuring that communities who have been marginalised feel the true benefit and strength of allyship.
As a migrant and refugee run organisation with 46 years’ experience advancing health equity, we know that migrant and refugee women are active decision-makers when it comes to their health and wellbeing and that of their families. We have seen migrant and refugee women and communities lead the way in advocating for change and transforming systems of oppression. What we now need is for society to think deeply, critically, and to ultimately tell stories that raise us up, not tear us down and undermine our knowledge, strengths and expertise. We need more stories that shift the focus towards the systems and barriers that together, we want to dismantle and re-imagine.
This article was first published in edition #131 of The WRAP on March 2024.