Confessions of a libra

Trauma lives in the body | Credit: Here

29.07.25

The High School I attended was in a low socioeconomic area in Melbourne. I always love explaining to new Melburnians the East vs West classism that exists in this city. To summarise again, I lived in the Western suburbs. Traditionally an industrial area, that they shoved all the immigrants, so they knew where not to funnel funds for development. One of my favourite facts about my school is most of the White kids had very rich cultural backgrounds themselves. Many were immigrants from the following countries; Malta, Serbia, Greece, England and Poland. Many of them spoke a different language and ate food from varied cultures.

I recall in Year 11 our English teacher asking us to put our hands up if we were born in the country. There might have been less than 5 people. Then she asked whose parents were born in the country. Maybe 2 people. By the time we got to grandparents it was one White boy. And White kids were still the majority at my High School. While many made fun of us for going to this school, when I have spoken to many Private School kids from around the country, there is one thing our school did a lot better than theirs. Teaching about a wide range of varied cultural experience. I see it as them not only trying to educate, but trying to build empathy. In Year 8, we started learning about the history of how Australia was colonised.

Unlike in many Private Schools in this country, my White History teacher in School didn’t mince her words about the atrocities. Up until then I knew snippets, I hadn’t done a lot of research personally. I can still remember being that young, learning about the way White colonialists systematically used alcohol to addle the minds of the local population, as they slaughtered millions and millions of Aboriginal people who had been living quite peacefully on this land beforehand. Yes, I do mean that.I simply don’t believe White propaganda about tribal wars being equal to colonisation.

None of the tribal disputes that happened on this continent or on Africa caused the level of systemic, and generational pain that colonisation did. Plus, with everything I know about history being written by the victors – and with what I know about how White people misunderstand cultural nuance – I double down on this take. We can see this in how Captain Cook and crew, arrived on this land and decided it wasn’t occupied simply because they didn’t see brick houses with picket fences. Read that again. Isn’t that intentionally obtuse? You arrive on a strange island, see Blak men existing and go, well if they don’t live like the Brits then they aren’t even people. This is why I think White people in the modern day can really struggle relating to minorities. It’s epigenetic lack of empathy.

Back to school. We watched this movie ‘Aussie rules’, which was based on the book ‘Deadly, Unna?’ by Phillip Gwynne. It is story based in a small town in South Australia, where in the lead Indigenous boys navigate playing a sport that is important to them, while navigating racism at the same time. It’s important for us to learn about the lived experience of others, but watching that movie wasn’t me watching a concept outside of myself. Every time any of the Black characters faced racism, I felt that shit in my body. I was on edge the whole movie. Then, came the rape scene. I truly believe we should stop showing rape scenes in films. I think we should only elude to them. It’s nice and tidy packaging for people to think that sexual assault is a rarity, but not if you’re a woman.

In more recent studies, it is said that 1 in 5 Australian women have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. 85% of those women knew their perpetrator, with 69% having home-based assaults. Every time I have been sexually assaulted, it has been at home. I also want to point out that these numbers may be shocking especially to the menfolk, but I’m about to blow your mind. The actual numbers would likely be higher. I would posit 1 in 2 or 1 in 3.

This is because this data is based off of people who have come forward to report their assaults. We know that victims under-report for a multitude of reasons. Anything from the social stigma, being threatened by the perpetrator, feeling the guilt that follows being a victim or even a fear of going through a trial. Watching that very brutal, very graphic rape scene had my with my hand covering my mouth in shock, and silent tears streaming down my face. The best part? The White boys thought it was funny to laugh at me afterwards for being so affected by a movie, as to cry. Evidently none of those boys talking had ever been close to being raped.

Then all the documentaries we watched on racism. Every time I had to sit through one it was like a knife being stabbed a little deeper in my heart. While it was important especially for the White kids, unfortunately it merely retraumatised me. What was merely a concept to a teacher, was a generational wound they were reopening. I remember in Year 11, an English teacher made us watch Mississippi burning. I blocked that movie out and I had to look it up to remind you what it’s about.

Essentially a movie about the Ku Klux Klan (idiotic name btw), orchestrating the beating, lynching and killing of Black people. If I never see an image or movie with lynching again for the rest of my life I will die happy. As an adult I have a boundary about not watching movies involving slavery, and it often confuses people. It’s certainly confused men I have dated. Hopefully, this is illuminating. I cried in class, and I wished I could have missed school that day.  So, yes while you were enjoying concepts in school, I was fighting for my life. Do you know what it’s like to be born knowing that a whole group of people just woke up and decided that people who look like you didn’t matter? Didn’t count as people? Then have generations worth of state-sanctioned White violence?

The fact that I had to grow up in a world where White people were civilised for eating with a fork instead of with their God-given hands, yet those were same people created whole Pantomimes in Black face (minstrel shows)? The same people who converted us down South to Christianity (before the Orthodox Ethiopians come for me), had whole human zoos showcasing us (ala Sarah Baartman). White people have always been so obsessed with people of colour, especially Black people.

Here’s the thing, if White people are as inherently powerful as they tried to convince themselves when they were trying to own the majority of the world, it wouldn’t have needed violence. If White people are so great, they would have special powers that other humans don’t. Instead, White people have perpetuated violence, decided when it was over (around the world as countries stopped the practice of slavery) and repackaged the original racism for these new parameters (e.g. Redlining in the States, prisons as a form of modern slavery and seemingly neutral laws while intentionally spreading dog whistles to keep people down). Instead White people’s main enemy is actually the sun, as we can see by the high rates of cancer in Australia. These are just facts.

When I was around 16 my mother sat me down and explained that since I would be in the workforce soon, she wanted to give me the option of using an Anglo name. She said it was an option, just as many Asian Australians migrate and get an English name separate to their name in their first language. I refused, but I appreciated how my mother handled it. She laid out the reasons, she was honest that while my resume could be amazing, as soon as they see a name ‘they can’t pronounce’ (always the excuse), they would bin my resume. She told me this could just give me a fraction better chances in the Corporate world. Still I refused.

As I have heard a few Black female celebrities say, if you can learn to pronounce Dostoevsky or Saoirse, you can say Thando. That’s why when I had a White woman recently pretended to not know how to pronounce Mandela on Nelson Mandela day, I was not amused. I watched her do that thing White women do, she stumbled looked around all giggly asking people to say it for her, and I looked at her deadpan. I bet you she knows how to say mandala (the pattern), but she draws the line at Mandela. Give me a fucking break. That’s what it’s like being Black. Facing microaggressions, dressed in infantilised giggles.

I left High School to go straight into institutionalised racism. Here in Australia the racism is covert. Though, as you will hear from people who move here from slightly more progressive countries like Canada, Australia is massively behind in how it talks about and informs its people on race relations. Firstly, not wanting to call what happened to Indigenous Australians genocide is a great example. The fact that it was controversial for Kevin Rudd to apologise to Indigenous Australians, as if it wasn’t the fucking bare minimum – infuriates the hell out of me.

All I hear is White Australians whingeing about Aboriginal people using Centrelink as though White people aren’t the majority in this country by a long-shot. Even if in your warped racist mind, every single Indigenous person accessed those social services – it would still not be as much of a burden on the system as you think. Remember, Indigenous people only make up 3.8% of the population. It’s always complaining about how people utilise social services, but never enough discourse about how to empower people to not need those services.

It’s very convenient to slap labels on people for surface-level behaviour, for example stating the way alcohol has ravaged some Indigenous communities, without critically thinking about the historical implications. And because I have seen this with my own eyes, I know some White person out there rolled their eyes at historical implications because it sounds like an excuse. If that’s you reading this, know that you’re an imbecile and you lack empathy. I as a Black immigrant in Australia, know that I have it marginally better than Indigenous Australians and Sudanese people. I know that the way I speak, does have even a little bit of sway. But imagine if I spoke like someone who grew up in a village in Zimbabwe, my experiences with White people would be different.

All this to say, if I can admit the privileges I have as Black person, why can’t you? I told you that I went to a private school in Zimbabwe, that is a privilege I know I had over other Zimbabweans. But I also was raised by a single mum, she killed her career enough to be able to afford to give me the dream of a two parent household. Then I had to watch her suffer in this country, being refused jobs she was qualifies for and watching her confidence diminish like she isn’t the most intelligent person in most rooms she is in. When I say I come from a family of intellectuals, I mean that. This has been the fire beneath my wings. This is the reason I plotted to use my voice, and use every skill in my body to fight racism.

I have always been the most outspoken person in rooms on matters of race and sex. This is why we need intersectional feminism because White women only have to worry about sexism. I have to worry about racism and sexism. I have to dodge your attacks because you think I’m hot. I actually think White women have caused me an inflated self esteem. If you guys didn’t go so hard to try and sabotage me – and thereby sharpening the tools in my arsenal – I never would have thought I was all that.

Yet the levels White women have gone to, when they are upset that other people find me attractive… Always trying to dig at my ethnic features. When I was a teenager I was massively bullied for my Afrocentric features by White girls. For my lips especially, my hair and my butt. Everything I wore was seemingly inappropriate, especially once I started experimenting outside of Christian constraints. Who could have known that a decade later, everyone and their dog would be getting lip filler and BBL’s. If I had known then, I would have more amused and less annoyed. In the next part I want to discuss some cyclical trends surrounding progress (racial or otherwise), the state of politics here or in America and how that shapes racial discourse presently. Until then.