Confessions of a libra

Your resident ethnographer | Credit: Here

[ Author’s note: Grab a wine, it’s gonna be a long one ]

2.11.25

I love a proud racist. No, really. I think many Black people would agree. That’s probably not what you expect to hear from a Black woman, but let me take you down a rabbit hole. This is a Thando-special for all the leftists of the world. Particularly the leftists in Western countries, on stolen land. It feels like kismet that I – a woman born in Harare, Zimbabwe – would find myself in the artsy, progressive city of Melbourne. A damn relief from my short stint in country Victoria, I will tell you that now.

My largest audience base for this blog belong to Portland, Oregon. Another source of kismet. One of the most progressive cities in the US of A from my understanding. A place I would visit, were I to grace the lands of your country again. A city that is doing a fabulous job responding to absolute tyranny and strong-manning. With a touch of humour of course, because life is for the living. Life is to be enjoyed even in the thick of it. Many Black people across different cultures share this core belief. We will make beauty out of pain, because life would be much too unbearable otherwise.

What, pray-tell could Melbourne and Portland have in common? Leftist ideals? Strong protest culture? A racist beginning turned progressive “Golden child”? Well… I can’t speak to a place I’ve never actually felt beneath my palms, but I will tell you what Melbourne has taught me about leftists, ethics and values. We all know that I am an intellectual who thinks in systems and patterns. I have been mapping my stay in this city like an ethnographer. When I meet ‘expats’ in this city, they quickly find out that I am the right person to ask about the culture of Australians. Not from the perspective of a passive participant, but an active one who is also part observer.

It might help for me to describe my value system, as it is also the basis for my judgements. I want to be super transparent, so you are absolutely clear where I am coming from. I was raised in an ex-British colony, who had only reached independence a few decades back. That made colonialism alive and well in the psyche of the people I came from. With colonialism came Christianity which we did not have prior. We are still heavily Christian, which to me personally indicates the deconstruction we are still yet to do in decades and centuries to come.

I have always been deeply devoted to my spirituality, from when I was a child and Christian to when I denounced it. As a Christian, living in Melbourne while being from Southern Africa – I had to unlearn homophobia. Firstly, I didn’t even know what gay people were and I arrived when I was 12 years old. Once I learnt about them, of course I was taught to think and speak of them, per the bible. I, however had mostly atheist friends growing up. One of the first thing my young teenage mind captured is how dispassionate Christians are in Australia.

I stopped going to church at 16, but before then I was trying to get into Australian church culture. Many Australians I knew at school only attended church for Easter and Christmas, if at all. So, me in my early teens had the thought, why is a majority White country birthed from the same colonialists this lacking in religious passion/zeal when that’s what they thought made us primitive? I recall getting Christmas presents at church in Zimbabwe as a child, because they said some Missionaries sent them. Mind you, I was already attending a private school at that time, I just happened to go to my grandmother’s church and they gave us free toys.

I didn’t mind because, who is going to turn down free toys? But I was very much aware this was supposed to be ‘charity’. By charity I interpreted it as, ‘we think you’re poor, so here’s what we think would entertain you’. That might shock you, because you have never thought of it from an African child’s perspective. It might surprise you how present and thoughtful I was. It wasn’t just me, we were already speaking very deep topics from a young age, such is the environment we are raised in.

I was taught about condoms before I fully understood what sex was. I just knew when I eventually has sex, a condom should be involved. My mum gave me a little elephant pouch with an extra pair of underwear and some pads to carry with me to school ‘just in case’, several years before my period ever came. We knew and understood that the White kids at our school were treated differently, because their ancestors had arrived and subjugated us, which gave them access to more money. These weren’t things I began understanding when I arrived here and got a bit older.

Personally, my value system has been about living as much in truth as possible, and as is reasonable. There are many bureaucracies that are not at all reasonable because they are made legal. Let’s just remember that racism and colonialism were legally sanctioned. So legality does not equate to morality. I brought up my early believes about gay people, because it is honest, it is visceral and was embarrassing for me once I deconstructed religion. With religion removed as my lens for morality I had to carve out my own.

I knew I wanted to be a progressive person, not just known as one. It is what felt intellectually and emotionally attuned to who I am as an individual. I was learning about gay people from all the wrong sources. Which is why when I heard things like ‘the Greeks invented gayness’, I regurgitated it because I was still learning how to discern information you receive online. It was actually the revulsion of a boy at school, who I don’t think was gay himself, that I did some more research. I was appalled that I might have misunderstood something (because I’m also someone obsessed with accuracy of information, and knowledge).

So I unlearned the homophobia, which led to unlearning compulsory heteronormativity, which led me to realising I was bisexual. I have never come out, because it doesn’t make sense to me personally to do so. Culturally, parents don’t even want to know unless you’re dating seriously. My mother is a very progressive African woman, but I’ve never dated a woman. I have gone on a date, but that’s not the same thing. As such, she would not take me seriously. So, one day when I am in a relationship I will let her know.

I also don’t hide my attraction for women either. I no longer hide, if you ask I’ll answer. I think it’s cultural too, I never walked around announcing I’m straight, so I don’t see the need to do it the other way. But I support everyone else’s coming out stories. Also, my family very likely read this blog, so if they have questions, they know where to find me. Now that we have done that ground-work let’s explore what it has felt like learning, growing, becoming more progressive but surrounded by White progressives.

I dropped out of Uni in the second semester, but I kept my Uni friends for years. That Uni period really opened me up and started aligning me with who I really was. This is when I was introduced to smoking weed of course. I would have never done it any earlier, I was too pious. I went to La Trobe University in Bundoora, while my friends were mostly people living in the inner Northern suburbs. We’re talking Northcote, Brunswick, Coburg vibes. The crunchiest part of Melbourne.

For those in other countries, this is the part of Melbourne where you get; more organic stores, housing activists who charge rent, Indigenous rights banners “Always Was, Always Will Be”, sharehousing treated as performance art piece about equity, little communes, eclectic hippie granny-chic styles of self-expression. Think inner child-healing workshops for $150-300, co-working spaces, progressive parenting, body-hair-as-women’s-rights and polycules lining every street in the neighbourhood.

This was the first place that ever taught me the insidiousness of deeply leftist spaces. All polished, all the right language, all the right protests, but not enough praxis. Let’s take you through some stories, so you too can see why I prefer a loud and proud racist. One I can see with my own two eyes instead of the shank in the back in the dead of night. I moved out of home in an angry flurry, determined to get as far away from my mother or die on the street. That is how dire it had become to me, the state of our relationship.

Most of my friends, I had collected through doing a cabaret at La Trobe. One said friend let me stay on his couch for a week. Then another who I had already visited in Northcote before and met the crew, said I could just crash with them, until I sorted something out. It wasn’t going to be fancy, because the sharehouse was already well occupied. I was the 5th person to live there, and I am not counting the partners who came in and out.

I was now living with financially secure people masquerading as financially insecure. Something I have found to be rampant in this city. Many of them tried to make me think we were the same. Except I was surviving without a single person I could turn to. I come from a pretty small and antisocial family. We are also the only ones in this country. So leaving my mother, meant leaving everything. While these people were mostly not even working and being supported by their parent’s money. What they were responding to was not having access to MORE money than their allowances. That is not the same.

One of the friends at the time was mixed but from India. In this crowd, she would be telling her stories, and the White men and women would occasionally correct her on the intricacies of her culture, because of that one time they also travelled to India. She is the reason I moved into that house. While everyone in that house was supposedly so progressive, they looked down on my then new boyfriend because he was a blue collar worker. These were men studying Journalism and Women’s studies. They were not beyond correcting me or any other women on their intellectual understanding of our lived experience.

This is perhaps the biggest and most insidious aspect of leftist circles. The people of privilege get so intellectually passionate, sometimes having an ego trip at the idea of being on the right side of history this time (unlike their ancestors) – leading to overcompensation. Leftists love a debate. Especially the men. They pride themselves on being seen to correct someone. That’s what I remember the most about those nights we spend smoking joints by a bonfire.

It was rigorous intellectual discussion, with men especially dominating the conversation and seeking to correct anyone and everyone. You cannot say you see your privilege as a man, as a White man, as White woman when you speak over the experiences of the people you know are below you, on the privilege rung. That is what we call punching down, and is White Saviourism repackaged. Instead of Missionaries, now we have well-travelled ‘expats’ taking trips to developing countries to have something to regale their friends with over dinner and wine.

They want to be able to tell you how much their understanding the housing crisis in Asia, because they volunteered in one of the countries and built one house with other volunteers – as guided by the locals who knew what they are doing. I experienced a few side eyes for not wanting to attend protests when I was exhausted from working and supporting myself without any backup or bigger emotional support team. My then-partner did the best he could for someone who himself was much more privileged than I. I wasn’t looking for sympathy, but I already exist in a Black body, I don’t need a protest to care about injustice.

Long-story short, that was the sharehouse I told you about wherein 2 out of 3 men turned out to be rapists, one who is a Journalist now on one of the major networks. The last man was at the very least a groomer. He was 36, dating a 18/19 year old Japanese woman who couldn’t speak much English, and he didn’t know how to speak Japanese. These are the same so-called progressive men who looked down at my Chef of a boyfriend, because he wasn’t going around proclaiming that he was a leftist.

He didn’t perform his progressiveness he just lived it. He was raised in a primarily White, upper middle-class neighbourhood, had barely been around people of colour until he started working with them in the kitchens at 16. Now dating a Black woman certainly does not make you not-racist, but if someone can identify someone who isn’t racist, it’s me. And he wasn’t. But because it didn’t come in the leftist uniform, those other men treated him differently. In the end, he never crossed my boundaries like any of those men in that house did to other women.

I’ve worked for very openly progressive companies in my 20’s. Despite being ‘more socially conscious’, how many times do you think they asked me to be in promotional material? Almost all of them. Was it because I am just so beautiful, I would make a great impression for incoming staff and customers or, is it to appear like they had more people of colour than were actually present? Ask your closest person of colour, how many places they worked had very multicultural training material, that didn’t match the demographics of the business itself.

This is how progressiveness becomes performative. It’s the same thing as having ‘Are you OK?’ day, while having no mental health support for your employees to access. It’s let’s fundraise for this latest social cause we just heard about so we sound like we are with the times, while refusing to raise your employees’ wages regularly. The KPI’s always rise, the wages stay the same. It’s we’re a family, let’s have a pizza day, but the promotions are rigged and we won’t ask you what you think. We’ll just place someone in the position then say we’re sorry but next time we will have due process.

Melbourne is the city of performative ethical non-monogamy. I was so excited straight out of Uni to be among a group of people who seemed to value non-conformist, non-traditional ways of conducting relationships. I think stating that ‘monogamy is natural’ is a myth and if it was true the state of marriages and the amount of cheating that occurs just wouldn’t occur. Well, what are the issues I noticed in this ‘progressive’ dating landscape?

Men pretending they can even handle monogamy is a big one. But as I always say, if someone lies to themselves, how can they be honest with you? Men in ethical non-monogamy were still toxic in other ways. They may have adhered to the rules of the polycule but been emotionally and physically abusive. The amount of sexual assault that still occurs amongst leftists actually makes me distrust the loudest leftist men. I feel that they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Lulling you into security by espousing how they unlearned their male privilege and how basically women are Goddess. That’s how they get you. Then a few drinks, a joint and a jazz bar later, they are pushing you for sex. I had a male manager take me out for drinks when I was leaving the company and he started bringing up time he had sexual dalliances with other staff. He started bringing up his sex life with his ex. For women who do not know, the moment a man brings up an ex with you, he wants you.

He wants to sleep with you, or he wants to lower your emotional defences for something. If a man compares you to his girlfriend, it is the same and I have had bosses do that too. The moment you hear that, you should be extremely cautious about what is coming next. At a progressive workplace I have had a boss get a fixation on me before. He was lowkey stalking me but thinking that he was really sly about it. He wasn’t. He raised my cortisol.

I moved to Brisbane not because I thought it would be more progressive than Melbourne – I am not dumb. As a Black person in this country, I will always have to make concessions. There will be racists everywhere I go, what matters is do I still feel like I can find beauty in the environment. So I knew I was taking a few steps back, but I was curious what everything from the land to the weather would do for my Spirit. Brisbane was more progressive than I painted it in my own mind. I guess it is a major city after-all.

I was working at large-company that is Australia-wide and in fact, just moved branches from Melbourne to the Brisbane office. This company was progressive in the way many companies in Melbourne are. Pride flags were everywhere during pride week. Posters everywhere for NAIDOC week. One manager pulled me into a meeting for coaching. Then got distracted telling me that she has dated both Sudanese-Australian men and African American men in Brisbane who play basketball. She said, as such she has always dreamed of having a daughter with ‘hair like mine’.

Melburnians might hear this and cringe. They might think to themselves, well at least we’re not that bad. Well if you have been reading this blog you would know that I had to give up a position I worked for in a company, to give it to a White woman who had bullied me, left the company in a huff but returned with her tail between her legs. THAT is structural racism. THAT was in Melbourne. My hard-earned hard work meant nothing at the end of the day, because I am not White. The boss of that company – a British man – yelled at me because I resigned and told me to leave immediately as a humiliation ritual. All for not taking crumbs and being grateful for them because I should be glad to even have an opportunity.

So to my leftists I simply ask you. How deep do your values truly go? Would you do a Jessica Chastain and refuse to sign a contract until your Blak/Black or Brown colleague gets paid the same amount? Would you be willing to stand among the few and defend a woman harshly criticised internationally for daring to be bold and not-White, the way some of Meghan Markle’s White colleagues have? Are you attending protests, but protecting your friend’s secret as he cheats on his partner?

This is one thing I see in men in particular. The bro-code appears to lie in protecting each other’s worst behaviour, instead of holding each other to account. It is why their relationships last so long. I would have way more friends if I didn’t require people around me to be ethically congruent. Sometimes we want to get away with things because we think others won’t find out. But when you live like that, you cannot consider yourself to be ethical and progressive.

Even some of the nihilistic takes I hear are just repackaged privilege. Once someone pushes too hard for you to look at your own privilege in the mirror, suddenly it’s ‘why is everything about race, why can’t we all love each other’. Or ‘nothing means anything anyway, we don’t really have as much power as we think we do’. I hope that my exploration of covert abuse in leftist circles can make us all hyperconscious of how we are operating in them. And please don’t ask the closest Black woman to teach you the nuances. Just Google it. For those leftists who do not fall into any of the aforementioned categories, then I salute you. May we continue to progress. We are not free, until we are all free. Asé.