How can you help to fight racism?

In episode four of our podcast How Can I Help?, we speak to Dominic Guerrera and Nèha Madhok about what you can do to confront racism.

If you are a person of colour in Australia, racism affects every part of your life and it has its origins in the nation’s colonial past.  

British colonisation has shaped our laws, schools, and many other institutions to the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 

It’s what led to racist government policy such as the White Australia Policy and the Stolen Generations. And there continues to be a plethora of modern examples of how institutionalised racism has shaped racist policies that have long lasting effects.

It can manifest in many different ways in different contexts – but you can’t help, if you can’t recognise it.

So in this episode of How Can I Help? we look at the ways we can engage with the issue of racism in Australia. That includes calling it out when you see it, but also doing work on yourself.

We speak with Neha Madhok, national director of Democracy in Colour, and Dominic Guerrera, a Ngarrindjeri person who works as an Aboriginal health educator and student support officer, and is also a poet, podcaster and writer.  

Listen below or find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

You can read a transcript of this episode here.

For more information about the work of Democracy in Colour, visit democracyincolor.org.

Below are some other resources that you may find helpful:

Books

• Decolonizing Solidarity by Clare Land
• Talkin’ Up to the White Woman by Aileen Moreton-Robinson  
• Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe
• White Tears / Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad

Podcasts

• Pretty for an Aboriginal
• Debutante: Race, Resistance and Girl Power
• Roots with South Asian Today
• Still Processing

Articles

• ‘If you don’t include all voices, you don’t get the truth’ (Women’s Agenda) by Jan Fran
• How white women use strategic tears (Guardian Australia) by Ruby Hamad

Distribute your money

• Pay the rent (Victoria)
• Seed Mob 
• Change the Record
• NATSILS
• Original Power
• Democracy in Colour’s Solidarity Network

How Can I Help? Is a podcast for people who want to help, but don’t know where to start.

Hosted by Pro Bono News editor Wendy Williams, the six-part series features conversations with people with lived experience and experts in the field on what we can do to help in situations that we might encounter at some point in our lives  – whether that’s when you see someone sleeping rough, if you think a friend or colleague is in an abusive relationship, or if a family member is suffering from depression. 

Find out more at probonoaustralia.com.au/how-can-i-help/.