This week on Let’s Talk – Black Knowing, strap in as Chelsea & David talk through the persistent undervaluing and dismissing of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples as ‘knowers’ in and of the colony. A week after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) handed down their interim finding that there was a “plausible claim to Genocide” in Palestine, Chelsea & David dig into a recently leaked whatsapp chat in which almost 600 well-known artists, academics and professional workers from so-called australia share their plans to censure and silence Palestinian organisers and their allies on this continent. They draw out some of the choice quotes from the recently leaked chat – particularly those relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s solidarity with Palestinians – to help us understand the deeper racial and colonial logics that these seemingly ridiculous comments reveal.
With a lot of laughter – because really, what else can you do? – Chelsea & David reflect on why it’s important to interrogate the racist colonial narratives that are circulating in this moment, and to understand the political work they’re doing. From infantilising representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as hapless “followers” of a newly “trendy” discourse of decolonisation, to the constant framing of Palestinian organisers and anti-Zionist Jews as “dangerous”, “threatening” and “anti-semitic”, it is crucial that we understand how these racist ideas serve to justify and obscure both the genocide in Gaza, and the continuing reality of colonisation and white supremacy right here.
So! Tune in for the paper-shuffling, receipt providing, can-you-believe-they-actually-said-that-ing power of Let’s Talk – Black Knowing.