A comrade in solidarity from Australia recently wrote us the following:
Hi there,
I have been searching google to no avail looking for an Australian equivalent to POCO. I find POCO to be a great resource for me as a white person to learn about issues facing POC, and to learn how to be a better ally. I wonder if you guys have any Australian contributors, or if you know of any anti-racist Australian organisations? I’ve learnt everything I know (which is still very little) about anti-racism and whiteness via American sources, and I find it difficult to apply this information to the Australian cultural and political scene. Sorry for the long-ish question; I appreciate your time and help. Thanks very much.
I felt my response was instructive to those comrades out there who want to be in solidarity with people of color; but then I got to thinking, “Shit, a lot people of color don’t know this either.” We felt that my response (which is the subject of this particular post), to this sincere comrade, would be useful to all. Educate and organize people, take care!
An understanding of the political economy upon which the nation you live in is fundamental to your understanding of the race relations in your particular society and the world; you live in Australia, and Australia, just like America, is a settler nation, that is built upon what is called settler colonialism. So what is settler colonialism? It can be defined as such:
Settler colonialism is a global and transnational phenomenon, and as much a thing of the past as a thing of the present. There is no such thing as neo-settler colonialism or post-settler colonialism because settler colonialism is a resilient formation that rarely ends. Not all migrants are settlers: settlers come to stay, and are founders of political orders who carry with them a distinct sovereign capacity. And settler colonialism is not colonialism: settlers want Indigenous people to vanish (but can make use of their labour before they are made to disappear). Sometimes settler colonial forms operate within colonial ones, sometimes they subvert them, sometimes they replace them. But even if colonialism and settler colonialism interpenetrate and overlap, they remain separate as they co-define each other.
I put the emphasis on vanish because that’s what the Aborigines had to do (they had to die) in order make way for British settlers, or as with all settler colonial nations, bring “civilization” as they might say. Now I must admit I don’t know much about the idiosyncrasies of Australia but I’m pretty sure in school your nation’s creation myth starts with Captain James Cook, I do know that Aborigines were known as Black people and called “niggers”. So white people are settlers, and as Frantz Fanon says in Toward The African Revolution:
In reality a colonial nation is a racist nation…The racist in a culture with racism is therefore normal. He has achieved perfect harmony of economic relations and ideology…And, we repeat, every colonialist group is a racist nation. (40)
What unites the settler colonial nation (white nation) is their opposition against the racialized other, even when policies are detrimental to them. Reactionary nationalism is the basis for a settler colonial nation. I would suggest you read Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of The Earth and Albert Memmi’s The Colonizer and The Colonized; when Fanon speaks of the colonized Algerian and The African, think of the people of color in your country (the colonized). The same goes for Memmi, because the settler is the white (the quintessence of civilization) and the colonized is the Aborigines (the dehumanized human that needs to remain so for the justification for the theft of their nation and every other person of color not Black, play an intermediary roles in the racial hierarchy).
Take this information and apply it to your country and then you will be able to see things clearly for yourself, and when you engage or try to build solidarity with people of color, you will been rooted in very sound ideological basis. Colonialism may seem different from place to place, but it’s really the same old shit over and over. Feel free to keep us informed about news that happens in “The land down under”, and thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
The IKONOKLAST
To the person who asked the question which spurred this article, if you’re looking for ways to increase your knowledge of issues in Australia you should come along to the Invasion/Sovereignty Day at the Tent Embassy on the 26th (this year being the 40th anniversary it will be from the 26th – 29th).
I’ve been attending for the past few years and as a white person, it’s a great opportunity to just be able to sit and listen with Elders and First Nations People and have them explain their first hand experiences with colonialism in Australia.
If you don’t feel like going alone feel free to send me an email and you can camp with us there.
Cheers.