People of colour speak out about casual racism in Illawarra

They have told of the offhand comments, preconceived prejudices and blatant name calling by some white people.

James Cairns felt singled out because of his appearance during a marketing tutorial at the University of Wollongong in 2014.

He said the tutor approached him after requesting that domestic and international students separate and sit on either side of the classroom.

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"The tutor asked me if I was an international student, and after replying, 'no', some students started laughing prompting her to say, 'why are you laughing, how am I supposed to know?'

"This insinuated that she based whether or not I was Australian solely on my appearance, regardless of the fact I sat on the 'domestic' side of the classroom.

"It made me feel uncomfortable, embarrassed and upset and as though I didn't belong on the domestic side only because of my Asian appearance.

"False assumptions based on appearance are not without consequence.

"Whilst to her it may be an offhand comment, to me it caused offence.

"I was born and have lived in Australia my entire life, and being singled out because of my non-Caucasian appearance was upsetting."

Whereas Ankita Som, a 20-year-old student from Kolkata in India, experienced an overt form of racism when she was living in a share house in Wollongong.

"In August last year, when a few of my housemates and I were returning from grocery shopping, we found some dog poo and other trash very systematically placed right outside of our front door," she said.

"We knew that it was racially motivated because another housemate had seen a couple of white teenagers staring at him with anger when he was going to work in the morning.

"I felt really unsafe living in that neighbourhood and a few months after I moved."

Palak Sahni lost her job during lockdown and could not find another one despite being a 25-year-old UOW student who previously worked as an assistant manager in five-star hotels in India.

"Managers would much rather hire Australians because they were able to get JobKeeper," she said.

"Plus anything I got payed was extremely low, sometimes $50 for a six-hour shift.

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"I feel that a lot of employers are exploiting international students.

"Not being hired stings even more because I have proven myself with my accolades and that stands for nothing because of the colour of my skin or what country I hail from.

"I've only dealt with racism for the past five months since I've been here."

Another Wollongong man, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was mixed-race and grew up in England. He spoke of hearing overt racist remarks about Aboriginal and black people.

He said a colleague at his work Christmas party shouted to him, 'be quiet you big black n*****,' to which many people laughed.

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"How do you explain to people like that how offensive and wrong it is to talk about people in that way, especially when they are a friend or think it is funny?" he said.

"When your boss is laughing along, and you are the only person of colour in the room, you learn to roll with it.

"I'll call out the overt racism such as name calling, especially as I get older.

"But the accepted and preconceived prejudices are the hardest to identify and I let it slide a lot."

Being dismissed as someone who can not speak English or spoken over the top of are just some of the examples of casual racism a UOW sociology senior lecturer has experienced.

As a queer, migrant woman of colour, Dr Quah Ee Ling Sharon feels the emotional labour of trying to convince students and staff members of her qualifications.

"When differences are flattened and people of similar heritage are assumed to be all the same, that is casual and everyday racism people of colour often face," she said.

"Even when I have explained that as a Singaporean, English is my first language, I often get written off as someone who cannot speak English even before I open my mouth to speak.

"When I start speaking, I either get responses like, 'you speak such good English', 'it is so amazing that you could do this work even when English is not your first language' or 'do you understand this English expression?'

"I receive skeptical and dismissive looks sending a message that I am not the same and will never be regarded as good enough.

"The subsequent refusal to have eye contact, icing you out of conversations or interrupting you in mid-sentences are all part of social, relational violence we commonly have to endure at the workplace and in social interactions."

Dr Quah, who researches race and diversity, said this kind of everyday, casual racism was especially hard to call out and was "poisonous, derogatory and debilitating".

"Then when I call it out, I get a response of, 'I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it like that, I'm not a racist," she said.

"But the comments can have devastating consequences for people of colour because then they have the additional labour of trying to convince someone that what they said was racist or wrong.

"The victim has to educate people."

Dr Quah said the first steps to being anti-racist for white people was to acknowledge their privilege, recognise their complicity in the injustice, and educate themselves through resources written by people of colour.

She said she often had to pick her battles as to when to call out racism, however believes in the power of education and advocacy work to change people's attitudes.

Dr Quah would like to see gender and race education introduced across faculties.

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