Not Racist, But …: Racism, Identity and Labels
Who is ‘black’ in Australia today? Who is Asian-Australian? Who is ‘white’? And where do race and religion overlap when it comes to identity? And is it really possible, or desirable, to be colour-blind?
In this session – the third in a series of four talks curated by Santilla Chingaipe – Yassir Morsi, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Luke Pearson and Chingaipe unpack the complexities of racial identities and ask if race is skin deep.
Who?
Santilla Chingaipe
Zambian-born Santilla Chingaipe is an award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. She spent seven years working for SBS World News, which saw her reporting from Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia and interviewing some of Africa’s most prominent leaders.
She reports extensively on Australia’s diverse African community and recently presented a one-off documentary for SBS, Date My Race, which aired in February. Santilla is currently directing and producing documentary on the complexities of Australia’s South Sudanese community.
Luke Pearson
Luke Pearson is the founder of Indigenous media organisation IndigenousX. He is an editor, writer, consultant and public speaker.
Mridula Nath Chakraborty
Mridula Nath Chakraborty is the Deputy Director of the Monash Asia Institute.
Her projects include Australia-India Literatures International Forum (Finalist at the Federal Government’s Australian Arts in Asia Awards 2013) and Literary Commons!: Writing Australia-India in the Asian century with Dalit, Indigenous and Multilingual Tongues (2014–2016). In 2016, she co-edited, with Kent McCarter, a special issue of the Cordite Poetry Review on Dalit/Indigenous poetry.
Yassir Morsi
Yassir Morsi is a researcher at the International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia.
