1 - Introduction: Articulating a Critical Racial and Decolonial Liberatory Imperative for Our Times

Summary

This book was inspired by research conversations undertaken with scholars and educators of race, racism and anti- racism by Debbie Bargallie with Nilmini Fernando (Bargallie et al, 2023). Conversations extended beyond the research. As our network of educators committed to anti- racist praxis grew, we sensed an urgency to curate and collate the dedicated work being done, often at the margins. For us, this book is a project of solidarity.

Debbie is an Indigenous Australian interdisciplinary critical race scholar. Nilmini is a Sri Lankan Australian critical race feminist scholar, educator and writer. We first met in 2014 at the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Association (ACRAWSA) conference in Brisbane. We met again when we found ourselves sitting next to each other at our inaugural meeting as new ACRAWSA board members (2018– 20). Our research, individually and together, emphasizes that race work must be done at multiple locations and be grounded in praxis that enacts scholarly knowledge in transformative ways.

The 2020 ACRAWSA conference, titled ‘Racial Literacies vs White Supremacy: Educating and Researching Together Against Racial Silencing, Racial Violence and Racial Capitalism’, was convened by Alana Lentin. Patricia Hill Collins was the international keynote speaker, having just published Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (2019). This conference was primarily the impetus for the term ‘racial literacy’ gaining traction in Australia. As a travelling concept, racial literacy had earlier emerged in a course at the University of Melbourne titled ‘Racial Literacy, Indigeneity and Whiteness’, developed and taught by Ballardong artist Dianne Jones from Noongar Country in Western Australia, and Odette Kelada, a senior lecturer in creative writing of Anglo- Egyptian heritage. Influenced by renowned African American Black feminist anthropologist and educator Yolanda T. Moses, Jones and Kelada developed their course around 2010 to redress a ‘compelling need for greater racial literacy’ in Australia particularly in relation to Indigenous sovereignty (Brown et al, 2021: 83).

In the settler racial- colonial context of Australia, race studies and research have been subjected to institutional neglect. Australia's white supremacist roots and later liberal multiculturalist ideologies have marginalized Indigenous knowledges and subjugated critical voices.