So why should I be the one that slinks back? So why would I return? No accountability has been taken. “It is important that people understand that: nothing has changed. The next few lines were electrifying, delivered as Abdel-Magied stared fiercely down the barrel of the camera. And not everything broken needs to be healed.” “It’s partly why I avoid friendships with Australians after I left – because inevitably … that is the question people ask: when are you going back? And my answer is: why would I go back? … The social contract between me and the country was broken.
So why would I return?’ Photograph: Jamie Williams Have you felt pressure to answer in a different way, Msimang asked, to perform a measure of forgiveness? “One of the essays starts with my fantasy of giving up my Australian citizenship … Unless something irrevocably changes, I don’t think I will be making it my home again any time soon.” At the end of the panel, an audience member asked: will she ever return? She appeared via video link from the UK, where she relocated after her 2017 Facebook post about Anzac Day led to such ferocious and racist backlash and threats that she no longer felt welcome in Australia. Yassmin Abdel-Magied was warm and insightful as she discussed her latest book, Talking About a Revolution, with Sisonke Msimang. Surely you’ve taken enough.” – Steph Harmon Yassmin Abdel-Magied isn’t coming back to Australia any time soon “When Audre spoke of self-care she was not speaking to you, white women – but rather the importance of self-care from you … Go do whatever you need to do to maintain your middle-class mindfulness – just leave our intellectual contributions the fuck alone. Those same bodies burning down the colony.
“She was talking about the need to care for Black women’s bodies. “She wasn’t talking about bubble baths and face masks and hikes in the wilderness,” Watego said. “Canva must be abolished.”Īs the audience tittered with slightly nervous laughter, she loaded up a slideshow: “Hear me out, white people.”
“Canva is at the heart of one of the biggest challenges to Black liberation,” she proclaimed, only partially joking.
But at Thursday night’s storytelling gala, she had a different bone to pick: with Australian software platform Canva. And I’m here to try to provide alternative models, examples, and even hope.” – Steph Harmon Chelsea Watego: Canva has a lot to answer forĪnother Day in the Colony author Chelsea Watego has a different take on hope, which she finds a particularly useless tool in the fight for racial justice.
“The left is full of killjoys … I grew up in the left and it fucking sucks. “Everyday things kept him grounded and sane and able to do the other work he did, which he once called ‘facing unpleasant facts’ and we can also call ‘being one of the great anti-fascists of the 21st century’,” she said. There’s a lesson in that we can all take on board.