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Introduction  

My name is Giridharan Sivaraman and I’m the Commonwealth Race Discrimination Commissioner at the �����鱨վ.  

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.   
 
I wish to acknowledge the Turrbal and Yuggera people as traditional custodians of the land we are meeting on and and pay my respects to elders past and present. I’d like to extend those respects to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people here today.  

Acknowledging that I’m on Country is important. For me, as a non-First Nations person, but who has lived experience of racism and is leading anti-racism work, it’s important to understand the difference between the racism someone like me suffers, and that which is suffered and has been suffered for 238 years by First Nations people. Someone like me may suffer racism through a denial of equality, dignity and respect. The racism First Nations people suffered and continue to suffer is also a denial of equality, dignity and respect. But in addition, it is a denial of self determination and sovereignty which included the taking of their land by settlers before me. And I, as a settler, have benefited from that denial of sovereignty. I have benefited from the taking of their land. Therefore, it is a small but important step for me to acknowledge I’m on Country.   

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (IDERD) vs Harmony Day  

Many of you know today, the 21st of March, as Australia’s traditional celebration of Harmony Day.  

What less of you may be aware of, is that 21st of March is the date globally recognised as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It was designated as such by the UN in 1966 and began as a day of mourning. It is a day set aside to annually observe and reflect on the mass murder of 69 people, by police, at a peaceful demonstration against apartheid in Sharpeville, South Africa. The United Nations frames the day as one in which we should be “building solidarity with the peoples struggling against racism and racial discrimination.”  

For me, it is somewhat jarring that a day recognising a massacre born of racism, is replaced with a day of celebration under the banner of Harmony Day. And Australia is the only country in the world to do so.  Harmony is a wonderful ideal. But we have to ask ourselves, as a country, why are we so loathe to talk about racism? Because to get to a harmonious society, we first need to address racism.  

Racism is rarely about race. Ta Nehise Coates wrote, ‘race is the child, racism is the parent’. It’s usually about power and privilege. Structural racism ensures that power and privilege is maintained by the dominant race. In Australia that dominancy is white. It is white Anglo race, culture and identity which remains dominant, and structurally so.     

If you are white, it’s the power and privilege to know that the institutions around you were built by people like you, for people like you and privilege people like you.   

It is also the power and privilege to decide on the narratives that influence politics and public discourse.   

It was a deliberate decision to rename IDERD to Harmony Day. The change was made in 1999 under former Prime Minister John Howard, to celebrate diversity and multiculturalism, instead of focusing on racism and discrimination.   

Celebrating the diversity within our communities has value. The UQ community is proudly diverse. Many of you bring a particular cultural heritage, experience, in some cases language, perhaps religion and understanding of the world. It’s what makes the fabric of this university, and this country prosperous and successful. It is also a true reflection of the history of this country. We have the oldest continuous culture in the world.  

However, can our diversity truly thrive, when racism permeates and impacts the lives of so many of us? Are we genuinely pluralistic or are you forced to express your culture in the shadows?  

Personal reflections and Cultural Safety

I went to university more than two decades ago, to Macquarie University. I remember being drawn to people of South Asian origin. There was the Indian society, the Sri Lankan society, there were probably other societies. My recollection, and perhaps this has changed, was a lot of focus on dance parties. Each Uni Indian society had a dance party, and each one would try and outdo the last one.  

Why did we all drift towards each other? Because starting university was daunting. It was a whole new world, a whole new way of learning. You wanted to be around people that understood you, understood the way you were brought up, understood your cultural customs. You wanted to feel like you belonged.  

University wasn’t necessarily that place. Outside of the Indian society, did it feel like a culturally safe place? Could you speak languages other than English in classes? Did you have a safe place to pray? Were your tutors educated in the various cultural backgrounds of their students? Could you wear traditional dress without feeling out of place? None of that was the case when I was at university.  

The lack of cultural safety I experienced didn’t end at university. As I ventured into the world of law, I was acutely conscious of fitting in, in a space that rewarded conformity not difference. I was brought up in a Tamil speaking, Hindu, teetotalling, vegetarian household. I let go of Tamil so as to not sound different. Its a beautiful language, of poetry and literature but it had no place anywhere outside private spaces. I remember my ceremony to be admitted as a lawyer. I was given a choice of an oath on a bible or a secular affirmation. No room for Hindu beliefs there. I remember attending events started with a Christian prayer. Even now the only religious public holidays recognised by law are Christian ones. Alcohol was the key to mingling with clients or other lawyers, otherwise you were left out. So all I maintained was my vegetarianism. For a while there veganism was in vogue which meant i was cool for a bit but that quickly passed.  I’m part of the multicultural success story. Yet my culture, language and religion were all obstacles to my success.  

The ability to feel like you belong, to feel like you can be your whole self, is what is often denied to us by structural racism. It is a system that teaches us that we must diminish ourselves in order to succeed, and in order to minimise ongoing discrimination. 

Racism@Uni

In our consultations for the National Anti-racism Framework, we heard stories in education, experiences of racism occur as early as pre-school. That sadly won’t be a surprise to many of you.  But it permeates throughout the education system right up to the university level. 

I hope that through Racism@Uni -- the �����鱨վ’s historic study into racism in universities -- we will find out more about this.  The project is currently underway and intends examining the prevalence, nature, and impact of racism at universities for students and staff​. All forms of racism will be addressed in this project, including the experiences of international students, and the experiences of all negatively racialised communities.  

Our Interim Report released in December has already revealed trends of racism in the sector. This includes the prevalence of anti-Indigenous racism, increased antisemitism and Islamophobia, and structural discrimination. We have also seen, of course, the significant impacts of racism on wellbeing, participation, and performance.​ 

The Racism@Uni study implements part of a key recommendation from the Australian Universities Accord Final Report. It is intended to be a first step in the design and development of a national, longitudinal approach to measuring and tracking racism in the tertiary sector. It also follows more than 20 years of research by the Commission and other organisations, which have recommended a comprehensive examination of systemic racism at universities.   

We are currently undertaking a fieldwork phase, through national online survey and focus groups​ to establish a baseline of racism experiences at universities.​ Our findings will inform a final report with recommendations to universities and the government. The aim is to create a safer, more equitable, and inclusive environment for all university students and staff. 

National Anti-Racism Framework

In the meantime, we need universities to be taking proactive approaches. While universities are environments that can perpetuate racism, they are also environments with immense opportunity for positive impact. 

UQ announced it will be developing an Anti-Racism Commitment to lay the groundwork for the university to work towards becoming an anti-racist institution. This is an admirable first step. The Commission’s National Anti-Racism Framework can provide a guide for achieving this more long-term goal.  

The National Anti-Racism Framework was released in November. It contains 63 recommendations for a whole of society approach, with proposed reforms across Australia’s legal, justice, health, education, media and arts sectors as well as workplaces and data collection.   

However, before can tackle racism, it is necessary to first meaningfully acknowledge the issue. Examples like referring to IDERD as ‘Harmony Day’ hinders our collective anti-racism journey.  

In Australia, the refusal to name and confront racism has prevented meaningful progress on eliminating it.  In our work at the Commission we have found that approaches to anti-racism across all levels of government is ad-hoc, disjointed and piece meal. Many institutions don’t even want to use the word racism. They would rather use terms like social cohesion, or harmony. Racism isn’t Beetlejuice. Naming it doesn’t make a demon appear, the demon is already amongst us. Anyone who’s watched a horror movie knows that closing your eyes and pretending the monster isn’t there doesn’t make it go away. It’ll still get you.  
 
In the Framework, a key theme is the need to build racial literacy. When someone likes me walks into a room, people will automatically have assumptions based on my names and the way I look. Understanding that is racial literacy. The next step is understanding how race and racism functions in Australia, and how our institutions and systems use it to disadvantage some people over others.  

It is building our racial literacy in this way that allows us to improve our institutions and systems.  For us to tackle racism, we must all make a genuine commitment to ongoing learning, and educating both ourselves and others.  

However, enhancing racial literacy and education alone is not sufficient for addressing racism. It must be accompanied by actively challenging racist systems, structures, and ideas.  

We are all too familiar with seeing diversity campaigns that showcase staff of different backgrounds, while there are no steps to address the discrimination those staff are being actively subjected to.  We are tired of people in authority publicly condemning a horrific act of racism when it occurs, and then seeing no action being taken. We no longer want the pain and suffering of so many communities being swept under the rug and silenced with platitudes.   

Moving forward

In my explanation of structural racism, I have talked about how it is inherently tied to, and upheld by, power and privilege. Fortunately, it is also power and privilege that can be used to dismantle it.  

Everyone in this room today, whether institutionally or individually, has some sort of power or authority.  We therefore have the privilege of being able use our power to lead the way. UQ’s Anti-Racism commitment is a good starting place, but there is also so much work to be done. Call out racism when you see it, challenge injustice, and advocate for change both inside and outside of university settings.

Many of the rights we take for granted today exist because people came together in solidarity, refused to accept injustice and demanded change. History shows us that when communities unite in this way, systems have to shift. At a time when the road ahead might seem overwhelming, this is the hope we must remember. When we collectively commit to a better future and reflect this commitment in our everyday actions, change is possible.   

 I encourage everyone here today to reflect on your own areas of work and influence, and commit to meaningful change as we embrace this collective journey to eliminate racism. I hope that by working together we can create a more just and equitable society.  

Thank you.