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Navigating Identity, Assimilation, and Racial Dignity w/Kathomi Gatwiri
How does a pervasive atmosphere of racism grind down the essence of human dignity? Join us as we explore this question with the esteemed academic and associate professor Kathomi Gatwiri, who shares her illuminating research on blackness and Africanness in the Australian context. Her work aims to build a comprehensive theory of racial dignity rooted in the lived experiences of black Australians. Through Kathomi's insights, we reflect on historical injustices and systemic issues, emphasising the urgent need for targeted solutions to foster racial equity.
As a seasoned psychotherapist she shares her unique perspective on the interplay between racial battle fatigue and mental health. We unpack the concept of racial dignity, born from my therapeutic work, and delve into the weathering effect of constant racial assaults, which culminate in cellular-level exhaustion. By shining a light on these hidden traumas, we underscore the importance of addressing racial trauma and fostering dignity within psychotherapy, providing a pathway for healing and resilience.
Venturing further, we tackle the complexities of cultural assimilation, the harsh realities of cultural erasure, and the intricate journey of identity in predominantly white societies. Through real-life anecdotes and critical discussions, we highlight the implications of systemic racism and the role of critical race theory in challenging these entrenched issues. From understanding the African diaspora's layered identities to redefining one's sense of self in a new cultural context, this episode promises a profound exploration of identity, dignity, and the relentless pursuit of equality.
Host:
Fungai Mutsiwa
Guest:
Kathomi Gatwiri
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A lot of the conversations about dignity were from that social medical context and I couldn't find anything about race and I thought racism does exactly the same thing it erodes, it erases, it, questions, it makes you doubt who you are and it weathers you down. I have a dream today.
Speaker 1:Is it too much to ask you to grant us human dignity? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin to such extent that you bleach? For so many, many years, we were told that only white people were beautiful.
Speaker 2:You're afraid that if you give us equal ground, that we will match you and we will override you. Black is beautiful Greenhood.
Speaker 3:Say it out loud water free Greenhood, usakango ni duumbo pawakachirwa, which means don't forget who you are or where you came from. Welcome to Black for 30. Thank you for coming through and joining us in another discussion on Black for 30. And, of course, before the episode begins, we just need to observe 15 seconds. It's just being quiet, just so you know you can wrap up whatever it is you're doing and then we can fully engross ourselves in this discussion to come. So the 15 seconds starts now.
Speaker 3:Welcome to this movement of consciousness that is black 430, and of course I am your host, the then chief justice, uh, ruth ginsburg. So she expressed how she couldn't understand you know how we set racial objectives but choose non-racial means to achieve those objectives. You know. For me, her statement highlights the challenge of achieving racial equity through non-racial approaches. Essentially, you know so, racial disparities are, I believe are deeply rooted in historical, social and systemic context, and ignoring those contexts can lead to superficial solutions.
Speaker 3:For example, if we look at achieving racial equity in education or employment, we can't accomplish that by merely implementing general policies to promote equality, because the whole idea is we're meant to be devising targeted solutions or targeted measures to address, you know, specific barriers that marginalized racial groups face. So, in essence, to effectively reach a racial objective, the means must explicitly consider the or address racial matters. You know so. Otherwise we will fall short. So today, you know, we examine society through the lens of social work and social policy, and to do that, I'm being joined by a really dope guest. I would love for her to introduce herself however she feels like hi everyone, thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1:My name is kathomi yatwiri I. I am many things I don't know what things to be for the conversation today, uh but I'm an academic, um, an associate professor at, and my area of expertise or research for CHI is on racial scholarship, and what that looks like is understanding experiences of blackness and Africannanness in the australian social landscape. So, and the reason why I study those together is because I started to notice that there's a level, there's an experience that black people of african origin there's a unique experience that they experience in Australia.
Speaker 1:I couldn't work out why, but I think it's that double jeopardy of being a black person, but also you're from the continent, that is ravished by everybody else you know, so a lot of my work will focus on blackness and Africanness and how those two compound together to produce this racialised experience, not just in Australia but, I think, in the global west. Apart from that, so I'm currently on an Australian Research Council grant called ADECRA, where I'm leading a project called the Racial Dignity Project and I am developing the first theory thinking about what racial dignity actually is, how it's embodied, how it's experienced, you know, and really going across Australia to talk to black people about their experiences of dignity or lack thereof. Outside of academia, I love dancing, I'm a salsa dancer, I love moving and I'm also a psychotherapist and as a consultant. So outside of academia, I run a private practice of psychotherapy where I see black people and people of colour mostly wanting, who want to work with a black practitioner, you know, because the issues that they experience have got a racial lens to them or simply because they want to work with a practitioner that they feel would understand the cultural context, the racial context that compound their daily experience. So that's really good.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, send me an email if you're a therapist in one way, and also, apart from that, I do consulting for a lot of organizations who are looking through their anti-racism projects and policies. You know, for an outsider eye to look at their work, to see. You know if they're committed to an anti-racist workplace. What does that really entail and what are some of the conversations that they need to be having? So that's why I said I don't know what to be today, but maybe I could be all those things For sure, I'd love for us to tap into those different areas as we go along.
Speaker 3:And, of course, from the sounds of it, you've got your work cut out for you, especially in the Australian context, right, because in a lot of ways this country is new, I guess, when it comes to how to integrate other cultures. What not new? I would say young in comparison to, um, you know, if you look at a lot of other places globally. So in your research, right, you quote individuals with lived experiences in australia, highlighting how societal opinions have led to insecurities and a disdain for being themselves. You focus on an interesting concept that I'd love for us to touch on here racial dignity. So can you briefly explain what that is to people to kind of like, lay the context and a little bit about? You know, I guess, how it presents itself.
Speaker 1:Sure. So dignity is a concept that came to me, actually not in research but through my psychotherapy work. Um, and a lot of people who are coming to see me because they were experiencing this fatigue, they were calling it, they were saying I'm not, it's not the work, you know it's not. I can't quite explain, but I feel like my entire spirit is just kind of exhausted. I feel the fatigue of the soul. I remember Du Bois' work on the double consciousness where he talks about the fatigue of the soul, the fatigue of the spirit. And in training as a psychotherapist nobody trains you how to do that. You know we are trained how to talk about trauma and how to talk about you know what's happening in your world and give me tangible experiences about how you're feeling this. Nobody prepares you for conversations about the fatigue of the soul. So that was quite challenging for me. But people said it in different ways, you know, and I wasn't quite sure what they meant when they talked about this deep fatigue. It wasn't in the body, it felt like it was cellular fatigue, and the more I worked with these clients the more I realized it's a form of racial battle fatigue, and racial battle fatigue was a framework developed by an American professor, william Smith, about how the body responds to the cumulative effect of living in a racist environment. You know when your body is weathering racial assaults, whether consciously or unconsciously, day in, day out, because it's not like these experiences are over-enduring and in the everyday. But it's almost that you've experienced them too much that your body starts to anticipate them, starts to go into hyper vigilance. Before you even step out of the door, you start putting on your little mask because you do not know who in your day-to-day experience is going to be the person who goes there with you, right?
Speaker 1:So the more I looked into this racial fatigue concept, the more I realised that you know we were not talking enough about racial trauma, particularly for black people, and how particularly black Africans are very good at hiding their trauma, very good at mask wearing, and I think part of that is cultural. You know, get on with it. You know what do you want us to do about it? Just get up and get the work done. But it's not a trauma that we ever got taught how to deal with, because it's not a trauma that our parents had any awareness on how to teach their children to deal with. Parents had any awareness on how to teach their children to deal with. So it's within these conversations of racial battle, fatigue and racial trauma and having a body that is weathered, you know, it's almost like there's also the weathering framework, which is like you put a rock under a drip of water. It won't crack, but at some point that tiny drop of water will crack a rock that is so huge and it's almost seen as indestructible you know that's what we call.
Speaker 1:the weathering effect in racial politics is that you put a strong person in a drip, in a drip or whatever that drip is, whether that is harm racial harm or domestic harm or gendered harm and eventually it will split open the rock you know.
Speaker 1:So in my therapy practice there are a lot of conversations about being weathered, feeling weathered, feeling like you're living out there in the elements. That's when people started bringing out the concept of dignity. They weren't talking a lot about racial trauma they were talking about. For me, I feel like my dignity is constantly under question. I feel like it's constantly being questioned. I feel like it's constantly being trampled on. I almost don't feel human because my dignity, which is that which cushions my humanity, is constantly being taken away from me. And that's when I went oh. So I started reading everything that I could about dignity so I could support my clients, but then I realized there wasn't much there about dignity on the black body. The concept of dignity was mostly in medical context, where especially people with disabilities were talking about how to practise dignity. For people with disabilities so saying, when I get cared for like this, I feel dignified because my own body cannot do those things, especially in disability practice, right? So people are talking about dignity in this bodied sense. Patients with dementia who feel like their bodies are filled, you know, are saying well, I experience dignity when people do this and this. So a lot of the conversations about dignity were from that social medical context and I couldn't find anything about race. And I thought racism does exactly the same thing it erodes, it erases, it, questions, it makes you doubt who you are and it weathers you down, you know. So that's when I was like, well, if this is what people are saying is happening to them and their children, then I better read about it. Or if there isn't any knowledge about it, I'll create a body of work around it so that people can start to read about their experiences and put words. Because I think what therapy does? It helps you to put words or language into an experience. So me, creating this body of work around racial dignity is putting language into an already existing experience. So what is racial dignity? A long way to get there, but I wanted to give you context.
Speaker 1:Dignity, from what I gathered, is kind of like an experience that cushions the core of your humanity. You know it's that which protects that which is true about you, and that which is true about you is that you're a human being, you're worthy, you're valuable, you have inalienable rights, your humanity is undebatable and immutable, so those things are already true about you, right? So dignity cushions that. It's almost like a lock onto those experiences that make you a human being. So when dignity is taken away from you, it also takes the other things which are true about you, your humanity, the core essence of what makes you a human being, right?
Speaker 1:So when I called my mom and I said, oh, so I'm working on this thing, it's confusing me, I don't have the language for it, but could you please quickly tell me what dignity is in our mother tongue, in our language, so that I can see ancestral thinking around this? And I think it's my mother's response that paved the way that I framed the interview questions. And she said we don't have language for that, which is common sense. And I said well, what do you mean by that? She said well, dignity is like having clothes on. You know, you don't notice you don't have clothes on until you don't have clothes on. She says we don't walk around the town going look, fungi has clothes on and Kithami has clothes on, and you know Jane has clothes on. We only go oh, look, kithami doesn't have clothes on. Something is terribly wrong.
Speaker 1:As I say, dignity is part and parcel of being a human being and because it's so integral to who you are as a person, it is not possible to have language about it, because it is essentially integrated into you being a human being. It is not a separate thing. But if dignity is missing, it is so core to your humanity that if it's missing, it's the first thing that we notice has been taken away from you. Just like my mother was trying to explain, if you don't have clothes on, we go what's wrong with Kithomi? She's walking around town naked right.
Speaker 1:And it's the same with dignity. It's the clothes, it's the garment that clothes our humanity. So it's almost like dignity is there, but it's that which is the cloak that cushions us and protects that which is already human about us. And if we take that off, it renders us naked, it renders us vulnerable, it renders us weathered. And I remember that's what my clients were talking about. They say I walk around exposed, I walk around feeling vulnerable, I walk around feeling completely weathered and completely not sure it's because the cloak of dignity had been poked at and cut and erased and now they had this sense of heightened vulnerability and exposure and rendered them naked to the elements that can cause more harm to their humanity. So a little bit philosophical, but I can come back to more practical aspects of what people told me in the research.
Speaker 3:For sure You've just reminded me of a conversation I was having with my girl funny enough because we were obviously not related to race, but it was more like we're just talking about relationships, right, and we're talking about how there's certain things that are just standard, that I shouldn't have to ask for.
Speaker 3:You know, respect, you know, is one of them. You know, dignity, you know. So I think I definitely get that, because it's like you don't ask for respect in a relationship, you, you expect that to just be the bare minimum walking into a relationship, right, and then what you then navigate are your values and your interests and so forth. And that's kind of how I'm also seeing it when you're saying and dignity is, is this cloak, and I definitely want to tap more into the philosophical parts of that, for sure, because they do hold value, especially in terms of how we then, you know, see ourselves as the individual, you know, as an immigrant, you know, I I like, one of the one of the things I I find quite interesting right that I had to like deal with when I moved here to sydney, you know, was the idea of assimilation, you know where I I saw assimilation as, or I see assimilation as, you know, this relegation of my culture to a secondary status, you know, to replace it by the dominant culture, which, of course, is, you know, white Australian culture. You know, whereas integration, right, is more to do with allowing, I guess, multiple cultures to coexist, you know, be acknowledged, empowered, um, you know, preserved, or practiced, you know, whichever word you'd want to, you'd want to use, you know.
Speaker 3:So I remember, and one of your papers I was just reading about some of the experiences of you know people here in Australia, and one, one story that it reminded me of is, like you know, which is quite common, is how children at schools are not allowed to wear their natural hair, you know. Or another one as well, and this one kind of I don't know if you've experienced this where I'll come across zimbabweans who don't eat traditional food anymore, and the reason they say they don't eat traditional food anymore is because they're fed up of eating sadza, for example, which to me, I think is quite bizarre, right, because you were eating rice when you're back home and you're still eating rice today when you're here anyway, right? So is it really the specific food or is it something that has to do with, like you know how you then feel about the fact that you then stand out. You know food, language, whatever the case is, right. So what are your thoughts on the impacts of, I guess, cultural assimilation on on someone's identity?
Speaker 1:well, I think assimilation requires two things of people is it requires you first of all, to acknowledge that there's something about your culture that is not good, you know, because that's why it needs to be erased. You know, because you can't erase that which is good, that which is empowering, that which is youthful, that which is revered, that which is respected, you only just try to check out that which is inferior, bad, you know, savage, not civilised. So assimilation requires you to first of all view your cultural positioning that way, and I think that's a violent position to ask anybody to assume You're asking them to position their culture as something horrible, bad, you know, something that is actually so bad that it needs to be completely erased off the face of this place that you're living in. And the reason why I say it's violent is because, you know, as a sociologist, I often think that we are cultural beings. You know, we are products of our culture. We have different experiences, Fungi, because we are Africans, but we are, you know, from two totally different cultural viewpoints. You know, just because of how we were brought up. And it is that culture that gives us a framework for how we live our lives. It underpins, it almost anchors our position in the world. So when you go to a place and someone says you've got to cut your roots off, all right, it's almost like this tree is food, it's producing fruit, but no, no, no, cut fruit, cut it. So we're asking people to actually cut off that which anchors them, to cut off the foundations and the blueprints of their life and it might not also be the blueprint for their own lives, but the blueprints of their parents' lives, of their siblings' lives, of their whole existence. And for me I think that's a violent position. And when you ask people to do that kind of massive erasure on themselves, it's almost like you're committing a form of I don't say this lightly cultural genocide, because I know the word is loaded at the moment and it's significant politically at the moment.
Speaker 1:But when you go to a community and you say this whole culture, you know, especially during colonisation, this is what was done, it was a cultural genocide. You know we don't want your culture. So replace it with this religion, replace it with these practices, and then maybe you will be worthy of our respect. So that's what it requires you to do at the beginning is to have this contempt for your culture. And it's so sad because, being a cultural being, you're not actually having contempt on your culture. You're having contempt for yourself because you're rooted somewhere. Having contempt on your culture, You're having contempt for yourself because you're rooted somewhere and it is your culture that roots you and anchors you. So it's not possible to have contempt for your culture without, at the same time as some own little place, having contempt for yourself and for your people. And the thing about white supremacy is that it recruits agents, and if black people can be agents of this work, then it doesn't have to do that work for itself. So if we can get as many black people as many Africans rooting for this cultural erasure, then you know, white supremacy does a good job of hiding itself behind black faces and behind our cultures. And so that's number one.
Speaker 1:I say two things. The second thing that it requires you to do is to then assume a position of cultural superiority after assuming these other layers of the other culture. Oh, I don't dress like that, I don't speak like that, I don't speak like that, I don't live in these suburbs, there are too many immigrants there. Because then you start, the first phase forces you to have a level of contempt you know so when you assume this other culture and why supremacy in and of itself is a superiority culture.
Speaker 1:It's a hierarchy culture, so this one at the top, this one, this one, this one, and then who is at the bottom? So by erasing this other thing about yourself, you're being inducted into a form of I'm better than you know because I don't do that, and it's a very dangerous position to be a person who thinks you're better than other people in any shape or form. Right? So then you start to equate the rejection of your culture as something that represents a form of superiority about you. Because I don't speak my mother tongue, because I don't eat this, because I don't dress this way, because I don't speak with an accent, because I don't do this, then all these things cumulatively make me a good black.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's almost like you're doing. You know a palatable blackness contest, you know and if I can do all these things and if I can reject all these things about myself, I can be inducted into whiteness.
Speaker 3:And Uncle Tom right yeah, or Aunt Jemima yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all that stuff. And it's so violent because then you realise, you know, often the thing is that you realise you reject all these things and there still can never be full membership into whiteness. Regardless of what you do, regardless of how much you throw your people under the bus, there can never be full incorporation into this other place that you're trying to go. So all that means is that you're left suspended into something. There is no full incorporation into the membership of this other group, but also you've rejected it and you're saying they're backward, they're this, they do these things. So you're left in the middle, without community and totally culturally lonely. There is no place to go, and I think that has a lot of mental health implications.
Speaker 1:What I think is useful is what you talked about, which is the concept of integration, which is there's something good about my culture that I would like to keep and there's also something good about this culture that I have entered and I can hold those two truths as equally possible, that there's something good about myself and there's also something good about you, and those two perspectives can coexist without trying to form a hierarchy. You know, and that's why I say you know, supremacist cultures try to create a hierarchy, integrationist cultures, try to create a parallel perspective which says yours is just as equally useful, just different. But also, in doing that, it also allows us to look at our cultures critically and go. There are aspects about my own culture that I also don't appreciate. I actually think that's valid.
Speaker 1:I actually think that's violent. I actually think that's horrible. I don't think we should be doing that to women. I don't think we should be treating children like that. Because you're not super invested in the hierarchy politics, you can then look at your own culture and go. I think culture also evolves because culture is not static and you can start to have critical conversations about aspects of your own culture that needs to evolve not defended because they're not good, but evolve because our cultures are also not static, while also holding the other culture accountable into how they also need to evolve as well.
Speaker 3:And I think that's what's useful for all of us is to be able to hold multiple cultural perspectives as equally useful but also equally worthy of critique, because not culture is beyond a critical appraisal yeah, yeah, like I see the idea of a simulation almost, like you know, in cartoons, whenever you see someone holding a carrot in front of a donkey, right, so that's kind of how I see it, where you always think you're going to get there, you're going to achieve this certain level which then makes you feel accepted. You feel accepted, but you know that there really isn't a stage where you finally then become accepted. You know, instead, it's more a, a degradation of who you are.
Speaker 1:Um, because it's like a cult. Think about all the things that people often are asked to do before they join a cult. Right, it's like, oh, go, and you know. Uh, you know, abandon all your family. Okay, once you've done that, go and, um, quit your job. Okay, you've done that. And then, okay, leave your entire family and move into this remote position. Okay, done that. Yeah, you're still a sinner fungi, you still need to repent for 10 years, you know, and you never get there. And by the time you've done all these things, there's nothing left of you, because what you're being asked to reject and to lose is so integral as you're anchoring in society, and for me, I often equate it to being recruited into a cult where nothing is ever truly good enough and where there will be the next thing to do before they elevate you to the next level of importance, into the membership. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I remember hearing this strong statement from Nas. He said inclusion is a hell of a drug. And as soon as he said it, it really clicked for me, because it makes me examine the lengths we go to feel accepted, whether it's subduing ourselves so we don't stand out, or finding refuge in tokenism as a form of acceptance. You know, in practice, I find that the acceptance or inclusion often has, like you know, this underlying prerequisite, you know conforming to the status quo. So, while the degree of conformity required is arguable, the expectation to fit in is always going to be there.
Speaker 3:And I think of um, this lady, I don't know if you know her, patricia j williams. So she was, like um, a lawyer, um, I think she was at harvard, but she was. She was also an activist, you know, and there's a quote in one of her books where she says standards are concrete monuments to socially accepted subjective preference. I wonder, indeed, if the fact that the standard road is good may obscure the fact that it is not the only good road, and that basically goes back to what you were saying before. That basically goes back to what you were saying before, you know, like being able to hold two parallels and you know both existing without any hierarchy. So, like in your practice, did you come across that interplay between inclusion and conformity, and like how they manifest either at an individual level or more at a policy level?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's part of what contributes to that fatigue we talked about earlier, because it's almost like living two lives right, you know it's like, oh God, I've got to do this voice at work and then when I come home I can talk like a normal person, or I've got to do this, and so it feels like putting two people in a box, and the one person is, you know, has to do that because they have children, they have mortgages, they have bills, you know, because I think a lot of places say, come as you are, bring your authentic self. And then black people show up with their authentic self and people go like well, whoa, not like that, back off.
Speaker 1:Just tone it a little bit, you know tone it down, tone it down. We didn't really mean it. What made you think that we actually wanted you to show up here like? That you know. And so there's a constant set of confusion, which is you say you welcome us and you say we're a multicultural society and we are in a lot of ways, but then there's a line we are not allowed to cross you know, there is a, there is a towing the line which I often write about in my work, about towing the line of this invisible line of whiteness which is, you know, you can be the exceptional black model minority.
Speaker 1:Like you can be exceptional, you can be great at your work, raise your kids well, pay your taxes, do all these things. But you must only do that and we'll celebrate you only and only when you can toe that line. But nobody tells you there's a line there, right. But we all collectively know there's a line, right. And also it's because we've seen what has happened to other black people who've crossed the line and who've transgressed the line, you know, and the backlash and the violence. You know, I wrote a paper about getting Yasmin'd, you know, and getting Yasmin'd is this, you know, and getting yasmin'd is this, you know, you do one thing, you cross the line, you do one bad thing and there's almost no forgiveness. It's like that's it. It's a confirmation that something is truly morally reprehensible about you. You know, what we had before was a facade. This thing that you've done is a confirmation that, oh, you know, there's something morally broken about this community, about you. So it's never really an opportunity to learn, which a lot of other people get, which is let's give the second chances, let's have another conversation. It's a confirmation about something, about you, and that's why we find that a lot of black people will go over and beyond to make sure that they are never a confirmation of a pre-existing assumption.
Speaker 1:I can't make a mistake at work, because that will not be an opportunity to learn. It will be a confirmation that Africans are not good at one, two, three. I have to work twice as hard because my 100% often is seen as me not pulling my weight, you know. So I have to do 150, 160. And I have to be aware of the scrutiny and the hyper-policing around my work. And there's this responsibility that we carry on our shoulders that you can't fuck it up for everybody, because if I mess up, it means that the next black person who puts in for a job application is going to be punished for sins that they did not commit. They're going to be punished for my mistakes, for how I messed up, for the rules I didn't follow, for the rules that I broke, and this random black person coming in with their own expertise is going to be punished for the responsibilities of the decisions and the choices of another black person that they don't even know exists.
Speaker 1:So there's not a lot of room to be an individual. So, whether we like it or not, we operate in these collective threads, you know, and I think that contributes to that fatigue, because you're not just living your life minding your business, you're living your life with the awareness that there's a line. You're also living your life with the awareness that you carry invisible people on your shoulders and you know it's kind of like a responsibility, especially if you're a black person who is, you know, out there visibly doing things. You know it can become very challenging. So you asked the question about conformity and inclusion. So a lot of people would do a lot of things to fit in, because fitting in attracts less racial violence, you know.
Speaker 1:So I don't blame anybody, any black person who tries to conform to the standards, because I think sometimes, because racial violence is so harmful and so challenging, if they do those things as a way to mark themselves, so that they can live a less you know hypervigilant life. So if I talk like this, people are less likely to question my expertise. If I wear like this, people are more likely to take me seriously If I do this and if I do this. So sometimes it's not conformity, it's not an expression of self-hatred, you know. That's why I say we have to have multiple truths.
Speaker 1:A conformity is also an expression of reducing violence against your own body, especially when you know there's not much you can do to change the systems that are pre-existing.
Speaker 1:So it's not always an expression of, you know, your own internalized anti-blackness. It's also the fact that you know, if I have to lessen the way people treat me every time I, you know the gaze, you know the collective gaze on the black body, what that means, the scrutiny, the hyper-policing, the hyper-vigilance, and there are things I feel I have to modify to lessen that kind of scrutiny. And so a lot of people struggle with that. They want to live their lives authentically as who they are, as the highest expressions of themselves, but they feel there's what Mother Nassabam talks about unfreedoms. They feel that they experience a lot of freedoms in Australia, but there's also this unspoken unfreedoms, which means you experience freedom in all these beautiful ways, but there's a box that nobody speaks of that contains all the unfreedoms and when you exist within these unfreedoms that you feel you need to conform so that you can enjoy all the other freedoms that are offered to you. I don't know whether that answers the question or whether you would like me to elaborate further.
Speaker 3:No, I definitely get you. You've touched on a few interesting points there as well the idea of the individual versus the collective, where we don't have the luxury in certain instances to be seen as an individual but we are measured against the perception of Black people as a collective. I think about my dating experience, for example.
Speaker 3:I would come across women who would say that, upon realizing that I'm Zimbabwean, they immediately didn't say, oh, I can't date or I won't date a Zimbabwean. I'm like, oh okay, why is that? And they recount a negative experience that they had with one Zimbabwean dude. And so for me, that used used to just it would annoy me, but then also like it would just kind of surprise me in terms of how people would so easily say that without realizing the prejudice that comes from that, in the sense that so you can judge me of your experience with one person, right, but you can have several shit experiences with this indian dude or that white dude, and that's okay. But when it comes to black people or zimbabweans, then it's a little different. You know, there seems to be this, this caveat often it goes back to that point about.
Speaker 1:It's a confirmation of a pre-existing thing. I've already confirmed what the bias is already about me, that there's something that can't be trusted about these people, and that just confirms it yeah, you know um, and? And then you can't talk me out of it, because now it's true. Before it was a prejudice, now it's true, before it was a prejudice, now it's a fact.
Speaker 3:Because Of that one experience.
Speaker 3:Right Of that one experience, you know, like, along the years, I think one of the things I've found very valuable for me and which has played a huge impact in my experience here in Australia, but like just the world as a whole, is in.
Speaker 3:You know, you're talking about weighing between your culture versus another culture.
Speaker 3:Right, I've had to go back to read and I continue to do that because I could. I feel like it's a, it's a lifelong uh discipline for me, right to to continue to learn things about my culture, specifically as a Zimbabwean, but then also, um, that in the African context, because the more sure I've become in certain elements of who I am, um, and as far as where I come from, I'm not easily shaken by others opinions of me, um, I, I understand, of course, you know there's the, there's the, there's the part of the discussion that talks about, you know, the system like it's like systemic, you know, uh, systemic oppression, uh, or discrimination, right, yeah, that's a different conversation, but, like, I'm speaking more to the individual experience, the day-to-day, you know. So, for me, in being quite rooted in those elements of my culture and my traditions, I know that it is not inferior to any other culture, regardless of what someone else may say, because you know it's apples and oranges really Like what's valuable and precious for one culture doesn't translate across to the next culture, right?
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. And it goes back to the point you were asking earlier about assimilatory practices. They require you to devalue something about your own culture and then it makes it easier when the other culture trumps upon you. It makes it easier for the other culture that you've assimilated to make you feel a certain way about yourself. So it's one thing you've got to respect. You know supremacist ideologies for is that they're very methodical, you know, because they first get you to do the violence yourself cut the roots, you know, have contempt for that which anchors you, and then you're now anchorless. You now have no roots, which makes it easier, for when those comments come at every point at you, at work, in dating experiences, you have nothing to anchor you. So you're just floating as a body of micro injuries because there's nothing to return you to, to just, you know, tether you to a truth about who you are. And I think that is why often the first step of assimilation is disengagement with your anchor, you know.
Speaker 1:So I heard this from the DECO project as well, from participants telling me I started learning Swahili, I started learning Igbo, I started learning Yoruba, I started learning Shauna because, oh, you know, there's something in my language that just gives me. It feels, like one of them said, it feels like poetry. It's like, you know, a lot of Western people read poetry from Margaret Atwood. For me, I just go and read Yoruba and I just feel like I've just drunk from a well, and it was very interesting for people, especially who've lived here a long time and for whom that has not been a constant exposure to them, to return and to experience the beauty of your own culture and to also have a critical appraisal of their own culture and to say, yeah, I wouldn't actually do that, but look at all this other beauty that is around it, the language, the poetry. And what was interesting in that interview she said to me I feel like every time I learn a new word in Yoruba and I learn a sentence, it's almost like the next day as I'm preparing to go into this workplace. I just feel like bring it on.
Speaker 1:Because I feel like I'm rooted in some ancestral strength that helps me to navigate to the day tomorrow or the day tomorrow or the day after.
Speaker 1:And for me that's what I always say, even in therapeutic practice If you can return home, if you have the resources to anchor yourself in a cultural route, you know, because it means that when people say things like go back to where you come from, often now I say, sure, actually, I'd love to. I'm just waiting for my leave to just go, because when I go I feel satiated, I feel good and I feel fulfilled and it gives me the strength to be able to come back and continue living in a bicultural way. But a lot of us do not have a place where we go to have our cultural tank filled, you know, because we don't speak our language, we don't read our language, we don't have parents who taught us our language. And I think to be a bicultural kid, to be a third culture kid, you need to have the first culture, the second culture and then create your own culture here of the things that you love about both cultures, that is, your own singular culture that you love about both. But if you've been denied the opportunity to learn and engage with one culture, or if you've been told constantly that there's nothing worth learning from this culture, then you're even though you've been raised here, you're not a bicultural person you're a monocultural person because there is an instinctual rejection of the
Speaker 1:other culture. So that's good that you say that, because I remember going. That is so. The more people return to the concept of sankofa you know, to return to something about themselves that is true and essential the more they're able to withstand the weathering effect that we talked about earlier, which is the exposure to elements because you've got a cloak around you and a cultural attachment is a form of dignity and a cultural erasure is a form of indignity, because it's removing something about you that affords you the capacity to live your life with more resilience and with more anchoring. I could talk about this topic for ages, so I stopped there because I see how much it wounds people and how much it it yeah, anyway, yeah, no, like it, it is definitely like a an interesting, um and important subject.
Speaker 3:Let's move on to, like I know we wanted to talk about, you know, the critical race theory as well. I think it's more prevalent, I think those discussions are more prevalent in America than here. But you know, as you probably would have found in your work, that, like, a lot of our experiences anywhere are shared, of course is the nuances of the geography, but, um, a lot of those experiences are shared, right? So I guess? For, for a bit of context, like you know, so critical race theory is is essentially and uh, and feel free to add on to to my definition as well you know it's an academic concept. I think it was created about like 40 years ago, this core idea that, you know, race is a social construct and that racism is not just, you know, individual bias or prejudice, but it's also embedded in legal systems and in policies, right? So how would its tenants inform policy and and practice? Um, you know, here in in australia, and, and I guess within that answer as well, if you can share some of the criticisms of the framework?
Speaker 1:I think critical race theory is a very important perspective because it shows us how race operates as a tool almost in every aspect of today's society. You know in the curriculum, in law, in medicine, you know in almost every institution. But the beauty of it is that most of it is invisibilised we don't even know it's operational, you know that's the challenge. Don't even know it's operational, you know. That's the challenge. And here, when critical theorists were trying to unpack the factor of race in critical perspective, is to say let's look at who is more likely to be incarcerated and why. Let's look at who is more likely to receive harsher sentences, even for the same crime. Let's see who is more is seen of worthy of rehabilitation and reintegration into community. Let's see who is more policeable, you know is more policeable, you know and let's who is more, who is worthy of more resources at schools, you know. And let's see which schools are actually more likely to be unfunded and why. Where are these schools? What are the kind of kids that are likely to be in those schools? What is the kind of housing that they're living in? You know all those things. So this is where we go often postcode discrimination where you know, and we see it here in Australia too, where the richest and the wealthiest suburbs also have access to some of the biggest resources that could well be used in you know postcodes that need those resources. You know, even here in Australia, you know you look at education, which I'm a part of, and you see the amount of money, for example, that go into private schools, you know, and the kind of government support that they receive and the kind of government support that they receive. And it's literally quite shocking, you know, when you know public schools in certain postcodes will struggle to even get extra teachers, extra resources, extra money for extracurricular activities. And you see if two children grow up in that parallel system and who are the kids who are likely to be in this other situation.
Speaker 1:And then we say it's a fair go for everybody. You know like Australia is. You know it's a fair go, everybody gets a fair go. But is it really a fair go when you know your teachers do not have enough resources to teach you, when they've not been funded enough to support children who didn't come to school with no breakfast? How are children who are coming to school hungry, studying? You know students who have no money to go for excursions, to go and experience other cultures, to go and learn outside of their own little bubble, who have not networks, who are constantly struggling to be in any kind of extracurricular activity, whether that's swimming or playing, soccer or playing you know whatnot.
Speaker 1:And then these are the kids who are brought up in the fair go context and then tell me who is more likely to go to university, who is more likely to have had enough resources to prepare them to enter medicine, to enter law school, to enter highly competitive.
Speaker 1:You know spots or spots in the university.
Speaker 1:You know who is going to be more prepared by the structures, by the institutions, to then go into the next step, to acquire these spots in very, very well-funded universities, which is then going to prepare them to go into very well-funded organizations which are then going to introduce them to a very, very, very wealthy network of individuals which is then going to expand their opportunities for work and where they live and how much they earn and who they marry, because then they're more likely then to be exposed to people in certain networks and by who they marry.
Speaker 1:It means they've doubled their wealth of knowledge and their wealth of resources and doubled their social capital. You know so simple things like those that do not take, you know, a scientific analysis, just an observation. And where do the kids from these other postcodes go, you know? But the discrimination is not overt. We are not saying to those kids you do not deserve an education, you do not deserve to live in a nice house, you do not deserve to be CEO, you do not deserve to be an academic and a professor. We are just saying if you don't, we'll be okay with it, we'll be fine. You know, because we are training the people we think are worthy of those jobs if you guys make it cool lovely nice meeting
Speaker 1:you, if you don't have a nice life, we wouldn't be thinking about you. You know, and I think that's that's the impetus of critical race theories to see who is more likely to be marginalized by systems, and you know, um, you know, and if kids are in this post-courts and they have no access to education and they're not having breakfast and they're not, how are they more likely then to be recruited into crime, you know, into poor eating habits, into bad associations that are then going to affect the trajectories of their lives? So when we talk about systems, this is what we mean. We're not just talking about an individual. This is why I hate when talking about racism, people talk about it, talk about individuals. I don't even engage in that kind of discourse. You know, I love talking about, you know, systems, because they're the things that produce the individuals that then enact those policies, right? So critical race theory is all about those systems and how then they have real and material implications on people. So I'll give you an example that came out of my data and it's mostly women who are talking about their experiences, black women talking about their experiences with healthcare systems, and I was surprised I shouldn't be surprised by how many people told me about how their doctors treated them. Oh, I'm surprised that your skin is not as thick as I thought it would be. Why, doctor? Why is that so? You know, like people preparing these things and then being surprised that the needle might not. You know, were like really bizarre assumptions, or women in childbirth being treated really horribly or being assumed that they should be able to tolerate the pain. You know, because black people can have more tolerance to a pain threshold. You know, because black people can have more tolerance to a pain threshold. You know, um, and therefore whatever kind of help they're requesting during childbirth are their most vulnerable. They're just being ignored because they should be able to tolerate a particular threshold of pain. You know, and sometimes, by the time doctors realize that this woman is not faking it, the child has died. You know, and there's been, you know, incredible repercussions to people just not responding to people as they should. Well, there's been a long-lasting obstetric trauma for this woman that makes the net childbirth experience either terribly complicated or their intimate life completely. You know like the lives of people are so ruined because of these kind of subtle, structural, systemic assumptions that are made.
Speaker 1:But sometimes you don't even blame the doctor you blame? What kind of curriculum do they have? What kind of bodies did they use as their, you know, when they were practising medicine? What kind of bodies do they think they were going to go, you know, and engage in? You know? I remember one time going to the hospital and I had a, you know, in real pain, and I said, you know, there's a bruise. And they said to me oh, I don't think that's too serious, it doesn't look purple or blue to me. And I said, let me tell you, doctor, there will never be a time in history when my skin turns purple or blue because of something has happened. Our skin looks different when it's injured, you know. And he went, what really? And I said, well, which is so bizarre.
Speaker 1:This could lead to sepsis. This could lead to an infection where someone could literally lose their life. Because the doctor is looking at it and it's like, well, it's not blue or purple, so that means, you know, maybe it's under control. Again, I said it is not under control. My skin will never turn purple, you know, and I think that was the penny drop moment for him. But people should not be going to do this kind of education, especially when their life is at stake, in doing critical race education with your doctor, when you're under life support. That's just a funny note. I'm not saying it happens, but can you see how all these systems then contribute to very singular experiences that could have very, very, very serious implications? That could have very, very, very serious implications.
Speaker 1:So for me, I think it's really important that we incorporate multiple knowledges when we are teaching people. So for me, in my classroom, you will hear a voice from everybody. You will hear disabled, you know scholarship from disabled people. You will hear scholarship from people from the LGBT community. You will hear, you know experiences from people whose knowledges are often not the centre of academic discourse, Because I want my students to understand that when they go out there as social workers. Australia has changed and I'm training them to be practitioners and to be safe practitioners for a multicultural Australia, for a multi-purpose and multi-layered Australia. There's no point setting up my students to fail, you know, when I train them as if they're going to practice under white Australian policy and then they go out there and they don't know what to do, they don't know what to say, they feel stumped, they feel burnt out because I didn't prepare them for what real Australia really looks like. And I think all of us have a role to play, whether it's professors, as lawyers, as doctors. We have a role to play to prepare practitioners for what real Australia actually looks like. Otherwise, we're just failing on everybody.
Speaker 1:In the context of the criticism society, I remember Pauline Hanson saying that it's a framework that encourages white people to hate themselves, and at no point in that whole discussion did I even talk about white people. I talked about systems, I talked about structures. But also it encourages white people, like that doctor that I talked about, to see how their singular way of practice can cause unintended harm to other people. Because I don't think he had any malice, he wasn't trying to be a horrible person to me. He genuinely did not know, because he's never had a person with black skin go with that kind of injury and he didn't have a reference point.
Speaker 1:So I don't think it's malice, I think it's total lack of education, but I don't think it's a framework that encourages people to hate themselves. I think it's a framework that encourages people to look at the structures critically so that when people say, oh, the system is broken, the system is broken, I say no, no, no, no, no, no, the system is not broken, the system is working exactly as it was intended to work. You are just not part of the thought process.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's exciting, but it's working exactly for who it was intended to work. So when we talk about critical perspectives, we're encouraging systems to rethink who they include in their planning services black people, indigenous people, disabled people, who are not part and parcel of the initial creation of the systems that we now have to live under. And critical perspectives help us to rethink who is part of creating the system and who is protected in the system, because the system is working just fine for the people it was created for. So we need to reimagine the systems because there's nothing broken about it.
Speaker 3:It's perfectly fine, you know you've um, you've definitely struck a few thoughts and also, like you've helped me remember a couple of experiences like the first one I wanted to share is she's Sudanese. Yeah, she's Sudanese. So we're talking about our skin color in the sense that apparently there's an issue. So she works in the healthcare sector and she was talking about how there's an issue, or she studied healthcare and she was talking about how there's an issue with regards to police being able to identify domestic violence victims because of skin pigment. So how that's an issue amongst Black women because you know, you go to report a case, but because they're unable to identify bruises they're like wings of a high yeah.
Speaker 3:And then you know so there's a lot of cases that are sort of going unrecognized. Because of that, I wrote my citizenship test and I remember they provided some study material. Australia, at least, the lands were claimed under no violence or bloodshed, which was so wild for me, you know, and I remember I took a screenshot and I sent it to someone. Like you know, it's been years now so I can't find it, but it was so crazy. But then at the same time it then also then made me realize just the power of displacing or distorting history, because once you change the narrative it's it then influences how we then perceive not only ourselves but also the world around us everything else after that.
Speaker 1:You know like once you change the primary story, every other experience after that is almost like a lie, because it's predicated on a force storyline yeah, so to kind of move to like a slightly different uh subject here.
Speaker 3:So like I remember one of your articles you you were talking about the idea of you know you're writing about, like african diaspora you know, and you know, you mentioned how what it means to be african ceases to be a about the geographical space and it becomes more of an embodied experience did. Did you mind, I guess, expanding a bit on that idea.
Speaker 1:It's not just about being African, it's also about being black. I say this almost everywhere that I go, that we become black here, you know, especially for those of us who came here, had to learn how to be black. You know, because there was no way, there was no hashtag black girl magic in Kenya. There was, you know there was no like. I didn't grow up with that. I didn't grow up with a race consciousness. There was no need to. I was part of the majority. You know I was part of the dominant culture.
Speaker 1:Now, don't get me wrong, I still had other identity markers that mattered, like. I'm very aware of being a woman when I got Kenya. I'm very aware of my tribe, but I was never, ever, ever aware, grew up to think of myself as a black person. I was my father's child, I was my father's child, I was my mother's child, I was this tribe. I was a woman, I was a Christian, I was this, this things, but race was not one of them.
Speaker 1:So when you come to Australia, often you're taught you become black in a way, and when I arrived here, I was like like what does that even mean? I have no idea. So I was giving a keynote a few weeks ago and I said you become a student and an expert at the same time because you're, when people talk about black people, they look at you and you're like, yeah, I have no idea. I can reference the pop stars in america, but I have no idea what that means, right? And so you're thrown into this deep pit of being student and expert. Now, over time, you know, I was made an expert of this experience by my own intellectual writing practices, but also my embodied experience. So that's the blackness part and I'm giving that as a concept to also talk about Africanness. A lot of us, when we are in Africa, we are not often thinking about this being a huge identity framework for us.
Speaker 1:We are in our clans, in fact. Fact, we identify as kenyans, as your country. You say I'm zimbabwean, I'm kenyan.
Speaker 1:In fact, if I'm in kenya, I'll say I'm meru, that's my tribe you know, or I'm kikuyu or I'm luo, or I'm this, and I'm that right. You don't go as an african, you know? It's the same thing I was trying to say about being black. It's almost secondary. You are your tribe or your clan, and then you are this, and then you're Kenyan, and then you're African, and then you're a global city. So there's so many identities that don't ever come into play when you live in the continent. Okay, so you move out of the continent and you come into the global west and suddenly you become an African rather than a Zimbabwean or a Kenyan, and you have to start embodying the African essence, you know. And you also become a student and an expert, because suddenly I need to know where Namibia is. Suddenly, I need to figure out where is Lesotho you know where is Chad?
Speaker 1:you know, because I just can't be Kenyan. I need to be an African, you know. So it becomes an embodied experience because I feel like I'm a representation of 54 countries and I have to become a student of those cultures constantly. So when I'm with my Zimbabwean friends, I'm learning about you, know their language and you know practices, because at any point I know I will get asked the question Kithami, as an African, what do you think you know?
Speaker 1:And I have to reference multiple african perspectives to be able to have I can't just speak from an insular, singular kenyan perspective, because I know that that's not even a representation of a quarter of what it means to be an african. So when I say it becomes an embodied experience, I feel like I become multiple things. I I can speak about South African culture. I can speak about Zimbabwean culture. I can speak about Zambian culture. I can speak about Egyptian culture, ethiopian culture. I'm none of those things and of course I'll speak, not with a level of authority as Kenyan. But I feel I have needed to embody some of those knowledges, not just embody them but defend them as if they were mine.
Speaker 1:So if I go across a place and I hear people talking about South Africans, I'll be there defending them Zambians, I'll be there defending them, and it becomes this embodied experience where you just feel like it's not just about knowing, it's that you have to protect your brothers and sisters, because in this landscape we are a monolith and that can be beautiful and dangerous at the same time. So I don't know what your experience is, but that's what I was trying to say about how some of these monolith frameworks make us both students and experts. And then you're constantly spread out, you know, trying to learn about everyone so that you have a sense of protection for everyone and you have a sense of defending people. But you need to have a framework before you can speak about anyone in the continent For sure.
Speaker 3:So recently I had this realization, right. So, like, one of my peeves has been how people make fun of my name, you know. So it's, it's fungi and it's spelled f-u-n-g-a-i. So when people see it because of course, like the, the n-n-g is unfamiliar in terms of how to pronounce it, so people would then split my name into two and they'll call me fun guy, um, and of course they then make the joke are you a funny guy, you know, and which has kind of worn off, you know? And I guess in the first few years when I got here, sure it was, you know, and which has kind of worn off, you know, and I guess in the first few years when I got here, sure it was, you know, somewhat, I guess, funny, but then it's worn off now, and if I'm not that, then people make the reference of mushrooms, you know, but then my name actually means to think, which is in no way related to any of those two examples, right?
Speaker 3:So I remember a guy who is asking me about my name and he said you know, fun guy, and so he's um, and we're talking about our experiences because he's he's brazilian. And I told him it's like it's, it's quite interesting that, like, I never thought of my name in that way at all, even though I've, you know, I've grown up learning and speaking english since I was probably I don't know six, so I've never at once even thought of my name as fun guy, or or even thought of mushrooms, right, it only started, uh, I only started to experience that once I came here, you know. But then also, what's even more interesting for me is people rarely ever ask me what my name means, so people will so easily, you know, take it apart and, like, make fun of it in different ways, which I think is quite disrespectful, right, because if I don't know you, if we have a personal relationship, I get it right, but if I don't know you and I just met you, there's no way I'd ever have the audacity to make fun of your name. Right, because your name is is like, especially in our interaction. I'd like to think that, like you know, you want me to pronounce your name, right, and you at least want me to give a good attempt at it. You know, because I feel like that's the first respectful thing you can do if you're having any kind of dialogue with someone. You know, but I'd never have anyone ask me what my name actually means. So for me it kind of struck me as like huh, so like you don't really care and like you have like a lack of respect in that sense.
Speaker 3:Earlier you were talking about in some way like as in, how we associate ourselves with, with words, you know, one, one particular thing I've kind of been thinking a lot about is the idea of african australian versus australian african.
Speaker 3:You know, and it dawned on me one day when I was like huh, you know, because obviously, when you hyphenate the, the last word is the one that's the root, that's the base, right, and so for me I'm not African Australian, because my, my root and my base is Zimbabwean, right, and I am Australian by citizenship but not by nationality.
Speaker 3:So by and by calling myself Australian, african, it also then reminds me of the reason why I came here in the first place. I didn't come here because I wanted to, because, comparing with, let's say, chinese or, you know, europeans or the british, for example, they come here, you know, almost like out of their own volition, whereas we come here because of economical circumstances, political circumstances, whatever the case is, you know, and sometimes it's so easy to then forget that. But when I then call myself Australian, african, I then remember why I am here and what I lost by coming here as well. You know, and I guess I was kind of like curious in terms of you know for you, how do word associations influence the way we see ourselves and like interpret the world around us?
Speaker 1:I was just as you were saying that. I was like, how do I normally, you know, identify myself? And I just realized, often I don't, you know, I don't have a hyphenated identity, I'm not saying I wouldn't. Often I say I'm a Kenyan, you know, based in Australia. You know, doing this because that's how it feels at the moment that even though I'm a citizen of both countries, there's a part of me that doesn't feel Australian. So I don't feel like I can claim Australian-ness if that makes sense, you know because I feel like I haven't gotten there to a place where I can say I am Australian.
Speaker 1:I don't feel like sometimes I'm allowed to even say I'm Australian, you know, I'm allowed to even say I'm Australian, you know, because there are always questions about are you really, you know, now that you have citizenship, are you allowed to say you're an Australian? Because even when you say, there's so much scrutiny about your right to call yourself that so I'm not saying mine has been that deep, I haven't actually thought about it but I still see myself as a Kenyan and African and so often that's where I'll go to and then I'll use Australia as the location, the place where I do this work and where I extend that scholarship. Maybe there will be a time when I can say you know, I feel Kenyan and Australian, because I still don't feel like I embody fully the Africans. You know, because I don't know the essence of what it fully is to be African, because I haven't lived in those contexts.
Speaker 1:So I'm still learning, I've been made a student of you know. So there's still the Kenyan identity is very, very strong, and there's the place where I get to leave my identity, you know, and to extend those. And I do think words matter a whole lot about how we identify ourselves, but also, just like culture, even those identities shift. You know, a lot of people start with African. I think there's one person that I know, a visible, famous South Sudanese woman. She says an Australian of African appearance because of the experience that she's had and when she came here and all those things. So I think all those names are part of the politics of where you are on the journey.
Speaker 1:And there are other kids who are born here, who don't see themselves as Africans. They'll say I'm just an Australian, you know. And I think it's important not to give them grief about it and instead to allow them to ask questions about you know, what makes you feel fully Australian, you know?
Speaker 1:and to share experiences, rather than say but you're African, you know I just, I actually don't think that kind of imposition helps anybody to think critically about how they name themselves. And, and, you know, because we have difficulties naming ourselves, because we've moved everywhere and their names that have been given to us, where we are, like, ah, I don't know about that, you know, but we are still finding our own naming processes and I think that's the beauty of it. In terms of my name, you know, when I first came here, I used to use my name, my English name, and it didn't feel true at some point. I mean, I still love my English name, it's beautiful, I still use it, you know. Know, and a few of my close friends still use it. But, like I keep saying, everything changes about being a human being and there was a time when I thought I want to use the name that my grandmother gave me because I feel like that's what represents where I'm at in my life at the moment, and so I adopted that name and maybe in 20 years I was like that's that name, I want to go back to my English name because I feel like I'm living in all my glory, you know, because my name is glory, you know, and maybe I'll return to that and maybe I'll find a way to decolonize the name so that it can make sense for me.
Speaker 1:I don't think there's a there's a right or wrong way, but I think what's often important is to defend what you feel is yours in the moment. So, for example, when people call me Cathy, I go absolutely not. When people say maybe I'll call you Kat, I say oh, absolutely not, let's just do the whole thing. I can show you how to pronounce it. But when you call me Kathy, it changes the entire essence of my whole name. I don't know who Kathy is. I have never met a Kathy. The essence of the name changes. The feel of the name, the energy of the name completely changes. When it's Kithome it's the name my grandmother gave me and actually what Kothome means is the one who loves to read, the educated one. It's the true embodiment of my life at the. Moment.
Speaker 1:So when we say Kathy, I'm like, oh, zero connection to what that is, zero connection to what that is. So. But I don't often get offended when people say how do I pronounce your name? Or if they get it wrong, I'll say you pronounce the t and the h because, like you said earlier, the n and the g often in your name doesn't operate in a lot of other cultures and how they pronounce, and I would rather teach people I would just say my name right and rather than compromise on that part, you know, because I feel it's one of the few things I feel I have a sense of, I can defend and I know why I'm defending it and nobody has the right to tell me you can't call yourself that.
Speaker 1:So I feel it's one of the few things where I feel like I've got agency and a sense of self-determination. And maybe with the way people make fun of your name, maybe it's also thinking about whether you want to put some boundaries around that and go. You know, like I know, aussies love shortening names, but I don't like my name shortened. I like my name said in full and this is how you say it. If someone after that continues to then cross that line and cross that boundary. That's a very, very different conversation after that, for sure.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3:thank you very much for your thoughts you're welcome and I'm sure, and I'd hope that you know, uh, people who are listening like we'll take something from this, because I think it's very important sort of being able to to analyze those, those components of like our society, to be able to, because all of that then feeds into who you are as a person and like how you then move in and around the world. So I think there's a whole lot of value in sort of like dissecting those, all those different parts of you know what makes Australian society in this case, to everyone that's you know, press play, thank. Society. In this case, to everyone that's you know, press play. Thank you very much for tuning in, hope you took something from this. And what's the best place for people to look for your work or to just look for you personally?
Speaker 1:I have a lot of rants on linkedin so you can come and follow me over there. I I'm not on many other social medias, so actually I'm on Instagram as Afrocentric Psychotherapy, but that's purely a page for psychotherapy, mental health stuff.
Speaker 3:Which I take would be very helpful for a lot of people, because at least I come across a lot of people who not only want to you know, either you know start therapy, but then also are looking for black practitioners, so definitely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think you know it's just like people say I want to go and see a female doctor, I want to go and see this. I feel a lot of people say I want to go and see a female doctor, I want to go and see this. I feel a lot of people say I also want to see someone from my culture or not. But sometimes people just hear that I'm too close to their culture and I'm like, ah, not her. You know it's too close, which is totally fine as well, so they can Google that for Instagram.
Speaker 1:I'm not very active there, except posting memes or stories. And then, if you want my academic work, you just google my name, kithomiga twerry, google scholar, um, and it'll come up with a list of all my publications and, if you want to read, most of them are open access, so you should be able to read that.
Speaker 3:Cool. So to everybody else that's listening, remember, stay black. I hope this was a learning experience to adopt and change the way you think and live. The goal is for us and that includes you to be able to see ourselves for who we are, so we can accept the person in the mirror and begin to value ourselves. Whether you agreed, opposed or were offended by some of the content, I encourage you to engage with me so we can have positive discussions in trying to understand each other. So send your comments, reviews or feedback to our Instagram black for 30, or an email to admin at black for 30.com. If you believe someone would benefit from this episode, please share it. When you get to the end of this recording, please subscribe to black for 30, wherever you get to the end of this recording. Please subscribe to Black for 30 wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for your time and I wish for you to join me again.
