Making anti-racism more actionable
Sabina Patawaran and Jinyoung Kim founded the Australian High School Anti-Racism Kit to help young people address racism within their communities. (Courtesy of Sabina Patawaran)
18-year-old Sabina Patawaran discusses co-founding the Australian High School Anti-Racism Kit.
If I had to pick a word to characterise the past 18 months, I’d pick inertia.
Inertia — if my passable knowledge of physics serves me right — is the way a stationary object remains stationary or a moving object keeps moving unless another force is applied to it. Within the context of everyday speech, it’s the tendency for something to remain unchanged. To do nothing.
Inertia also seems to be a feeling that characterised many young people’s experiences as the world grinded to a halt at the start of 2020. We were overwhelmed by a pandemic on a scale that most had never experienced before. But, as the year progressed, staying in a state of inertia was no longer an option. Australia erupted into flames during the Black Summer; across the world, California would later experience the same fate. People called for an end to the violence against women that spiked during quarantine, and countries like Mexico and Turkey grappled with their respective femicide epidemics. East and Southeast Asian people were vilified as some looked for a scapegoat for COVID-19. People had to be reminded that Black lives matter when it shouldn’t even be a question.
I could see that young people wanted to take action on these issues but some weren’t sure exactly how to go about it. It was a scenario that I was familiar with.
“I could see that young people wanted to take action on these issues but some weren’t sure exactly how to go about it.”
As a young migrant woman of colour, I had the privilege of moving to a small, diverse community that was welcoming to migrant families. That was the Australia I was introduced to — but, as I grew up and became more aware of Australia’s history and the experiences of other young people of colour, it was apparent that wasn’t the norm (although it should be). I wanted to help work towards a future where racism was no longer a barrier to safety and success, and help provide students with practical steps to start to dismantle expansive societal racism.
Partnering with my friend Jinyoung Kim — who I had met during high school while volunteering in similar racial justice and youth activism spaces — we first looked at youth anti-racism resources within Australia and considered their failings. For one, some anti-racism resources were inaccessible; the academic jargon often drowned out the valuable ideas they offered. Many resources also felt intangible; they showed us why anti-racism is important, but there was less emphasis on the exact steps we can take. The resources that felt more accessible and tangible were often outdated or targeted towards teachers to incorporate into their classrooms. While we looked for more answers and solutions on how to create a toolkit that felt actionable, we were only left with more questions. Where were the resources that helped the conversation on race go beyond the classroom? Where were the resources that recognised the agency of the students themselves and their potential to create change? Most importantly, why did some Australian-specific guides tiptoe around the idea of anti-racism?
“Where were the resources that helped the conversation on race go beyond the classroom? Where were the resources that recognised the agency of the students themselves and their potential to create change? Most importantly, why did some Australian-specific guides tiptoe around the idea of anti-racism?”
The conversation in Australia about anti-racism leans more towards palatable variants like “multiculturalism” and “celebrating diversity.” Things like the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination are rebranded to the innocuous sounding Harmony Day. There’s something insidious about this quietness, because it means that the metanarrative of Australia being the “most successful multicultural country” or “society” in the world isn’t interrogated as much as it should be. Admitting it has a race problem regrettably seems too bitter of a pill for many in Australia to swallow. This isn’t a new issue but by bringing race to the long overdue forefront of public discourse, the events of 2020 made sure we didn’t forget it.
Lockdown gave Jin and I the opportunity to consider the ways Australian youth anti-racism guides are lacking and the time to create our own. In 2020, we co-founded the Australian High School Anti-Racism Kit to help young people address racism within their communities. We tried to fill in the gaps we saw in other anti-racism resources, creating it to feel accessible, actionable and tailored towards young people within an Australian context. The original version of the Anti-Racism Kit (ARK) was essentially a massive Google Doc that comedically lagged all the time (though it definitely wasn’t as funny when we were trying to edit it at the time). Although we were so proud of our content and what we created, we decided to redevelop our guide once we graduated to make it even better and reach more people.
After sending some cold emails to various organisations for advice and assistance, we were fortunate enough to receive mentorship and backing from the anti-racism training and consulting company HUE. HUE was able to connect us to consultants, designers and illustrators who helped transform ARK into the digital resource we relaunched in September 2021.
Divided in three sections, the kit shows us the actions we can take to tackle racism within ourselves, our school and wider society. The kit contains actions you can take as an individual or with a group. Here are just a few of the anti-racism actions we suggest:
“Pay the rent.” Settlers can pay reparations and reserve a proportion of their income to First Nations-led groups and organisations. Since government funding and resources can be hard to come by, the money can go towards the ongoing work and campaigns that these groups do.
Create an anti-discrimination statement. Working with school officials, craft an enforceable statement that outlines how your school will commit to creating a safe environment for students of all cultural backgrounds, such as anti-racism training for staff members or providing additional support for international students or students from refugee backgrounds. This will help your school take a tangible and measurable stand against racism.
Read and learn. Educating ourselves by listening to the voices of people of colour is a meaningful way for us to be allies. It may sound less brave or impactful than protesting on a street, but challenging what we know and any biases we may hold can be one of the most difficult and meaningful things we can do. Our kit has a suggested reading list to help you get started.
What I’ve learned through this process is that there’s no one way to be anti-racist, and it’s ultimately up to you to decide what would be the best action for you to take. However, I think that no matter what approach you decide to take, there’s one important thing to keep in mind: Becoming anti-racist involves pushing through fear, and learning so that we can grow. We won’t necessarily get anti-racism down pat straight away. Mistakes can be unintentionally made and that’s OK. What’s important is that we learn from them and keep moving forward and to not let this fear of messing up paralyse us and prevent us from taking any meaningful action at all.
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