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Keywords: Blackface

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Remembering Maggie Smith’s enduring magic

    • Peter Craven
    • 02 October 2024

    If you care about theatre and film and television you should be grateful to have lived at the same time as Maggie Smith. She was an artist of incomparable power and nuance, of tremendous wit and complementary poignancy. The Harry Potter kids are lucky to have experienced such style and know-how and grace. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How to be woke?

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 04 July 2023
    1 Comment

    In a world quick to label 'woke' as groupthink gone wild, can we instead redefine it as a deepened awareness of our collective history that subtly weaves itself into our language and daily life? As we examine our society's fraught past through the lens of language can we navigate these nuanced conversations constructively? 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bridging histories: In conversation with Tony Birch

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 23 June 2023
    1 Comment

    Renowned author and academic Tony Birch is known for his insightful and compelling narrative explorations into societal issues like marginalisation, Aboriginal identity and racial struggles. In conversation with Paul Mitchell, Birch discusses his work, the unique intersection of academia and creative writing, and the profound impact of historical dispossession.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    AOC speech not racist, just code switching

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 12 April 2019
    6 Comments

    US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was accused by some of 'verbal blackface' due to her manner in a speech last week. But she wasn't being racist — she was code switching, defined by linguists as the act of moving back and forth between two or more languages or dialects. It's something I know a lot about from experience.

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  • MEDIA

    Our media's vested interest in racism

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 08 October 2018
    8 Comments

    Most of the requests wanted my slant on the racist cartoon, the blackface incident or the girl who wouldn't stand for the anthem. They weren't interested in delving into the systemic issues which led to most of those other situations. Most wanted Aboriginal opinion for the purposes of producing clickbait.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2017: Why 'white' isn't a racist slur

    • Sonia Nair
    • 10 January 2018
    5 Comments

    I hung out with a group of Indian-Australians while I was a university student who called themselves 'curries', but the unspoken camaraderie that ensued from this self-identification stood in stark contrast to that time I was called a 'f***ing curry' by a passing car full of white people.

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  • RELIGION

    Cultural appropriation a year after Shriver furore

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 12 September 2017
    5 Comments

    A little over a year ago, Lionel Shriver delivered the opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival, deriding political correctness and defending the practice of cultural appropriation by white writers. This year's festival didn't attract real controversy, but the memory of last year still lingered, and it's clear that parts of that mentality live on.

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  • RELIGION

    Do we ban the nun's veil next?

    • Rachel Woodlock
    • 24 August 2017
    29 Comments

    For an item of clothing that virtually no Australian Muslims wear, the burqa sure gets plenty of airtime. I've never seen the (usually blue) all-enveloping cloak with the small material grill for sale in any of the bricks-and-mortar Islamic clothing stores I've visited. Short of travelling to Afghanistan, the only place I can think where an anti-Islam protester might get one is by searching Halloween costume listings on eBay or Etsy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why 'white' isn't a racist slur

    • Sonia Nair
    • 13 July 2017
    11 Comments

    I hung out with a group of Indian-Australians while I was a university student who called themselves 'curries', but the unspoken camaraderie that ensued from this self-identification stood in stark contrast to that time I was called a 'f***ing curry' by a passing car full of white people. You often hear from white people that they can't be called 'white' because that too is racist language. This reflects a flawed assumption that societal structures advantage and disadvantage people in the exact same way.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    'Racist' Luke Cage's case for black justice

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 12 October 2016
    2 Comments

    Representation of minority identities in popular entertainment is key to amplifying and dignifying those identities and their stories. Conversely, the lack of representation is a form of silencing. It's why the charges of racism laid against the all-black Luke Cage is so laughable. 'I will never get tired of seeing a bullet-proof black man,' series creator Cheo Hodari Coker told the LA Times earlier this month, positing the character as a riposte to the phenomenon of police shootings of unarmed black men in the US.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The problem of privilege in transgender stories

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 04 February 2016
    11 Comments

    As a white, middle-class, straight, cisgendered man, I am conscious of the extent to which the chips of social privilege have been stacked in my favour. As such there are some public conversations that I am patently unqualified to enter. One of these is the sometimes fierce debate that exists between some feminists and some members or supporters of the transgender community. One of the pitfalls of telling a story about marginalisation from a perspective of privilege is that you can overlook ethical nuances.

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  • MEDIA

    Best of 2013: McGuire ape gaffe exposes Australian tolerance as myth

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 09 January 2014
    1 Comment

    Those who object to Indigenous people being called 'apes' and to white men painting themselves black are dismissed as being politically correct and denying free speech. But how can Adam Goodes choose not to be offended by comments conceived for the very purpose of justifying crimes against the racial group to which he belongs?

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