PRISM Journal PRISM Volume 4. Issue 1 (2022) https://doi.org/10.24377/prism.ljmu.0401217 https://doi.org/10.24377/prism.ljmu.0401217 86 © 2021 PRISM, ISSN: 2514-5347 “How difficult can it be?” A non-Indigenous ‘Asian’ Australian high school teacher’s AsianCrit autoethnographic account of dealing with racial injustice. Aaron Teo School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia (aaron.teo@uq.edu.au) Received: 15/12/2020 Accepted for publication: 01/09/2021 Published: 06/11/2021 Abstract Australia’s colonial past and subsequent propagation of the White Australia policy in the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 has meant that 'Whiteness' remains central to the national imaginary. Consequently, racial-colonial discourses axiomatically regulate scholarly and societal understandings of racial minorities through two unique but analogous debates – one focussed on the schism between Indigenous and non- Indigenous peoples; the other centred around immigration policy and multiculturalism (Curthoys, 2000). In the context of Australian education, there is a slowly developing collection of Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholarship that has addressed and challenged the inequities that pervade the Indigenous student experience (Ford, 2013; Vass, 2014, 2015); however, there has been much less momentum made with other racial minorities. Specifically, the experiences and voices of migrant pre-service and early career teachers from Asian backgrounds like myself, who have become increasingly prevalent in Australian education, remain largely absent from scholarship. In light of this, in this paper I use Asian CRT (AsianCrit) (Museus & Iftikar, 2013) to present an autoethnographic account of a migrant ‘Asian’ Australian high school teacher’s subjectivities, quests for solidarity and attempts at dealing with racial injustice across a range of White Australian classrooms. Keywords: AsianCrit, pre-service teachers, early career teachers, Australian education, autoethnography Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ The day? A Monday. The weather? BIazing hot. The time? Approximately 9:00a.m. It is my first day as a fully-fledged teacher. Having successfully completed my Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education, here I was about to embark on my very first real, paid teaching job. Sure, I somehow managed to navigate the 15 weeks of practicum as well as the deluge of assignments as part of my teaching qualification, but this was different! With my backpack full of the day’s https://doi.org/10.24377/prism.ljmu.0401217 https://doi.org/10.24377/ https://openjournals.ljmu.ac.uk/index.php/prism/ mailto:aaron.teo@uq.edu.au https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8902-5663 PRISM (2022) Teo (2022) PRISM 87 4(1) teaching resources and a heart full of nervous anticipation, I strode towards my first class. ‘Clothes maketh the man,’ I had thought earlier that morning as I smugly decided that the tie, long- sleeve dress shirt and pants (colour-coordinated of course) I was wearing were absolutely essential despite being in the middle of a typical scorching Queensland summer. How wrong I was, as I felt the sweat start seeping out of my pores the moment I stepped away from the vortex of (slightly cooler) air created by the fan directly above me in the staffroom. As I continued anxiously, school map in hand, in the general direction of my first class (I hadn’t quite memorised where specific classrooms were, you see), I was physically stopped in my tracks by a group of three White male students, ages unknown. Unclear of their intentions, I smiled at them. Just as I was about to wish the trio a good morning, one of the boys let out a shrill ‘konichiwaaa’ and proceeded to demonstrate his best slant-eyed impression. Class hadn’t even begun and here it was – my first micro- aggression and teaching micro-decision: What do I do? Do I address the obviously inappropriate behaviour? Do I ignore him? Do I react in some overly punitive fashion to salvage my own pride and position as a teacher? Was there truly a compromise between any of these extremes? I had mere milliseconds to decide before these students sniffed any sort of weakness if I even so much as paused. Instead of jumping straight into what happens next, I pause my story here and ask you to reflect on what you would have done in this situation. For me, this incident was just one of my many run-ins with (casual) racism that continues to instantiate my position as an outsider within the teaching profession. What did I do at that point in time? I’ll get to this in just a moment – for now, let’s jump ahead to what I’m doing in this article: drawing on Asian CRT (Museus & Iftikar, 2013) to present an autoethnographic account of a migrant ‘Asian’ Australian high school teacher’s racial performativity and my attempts at seeking solidarity and addressing race within a series of White Australian high school classrooms. As Ellis (2004) explains, autoethnography is ‘research, writing, story and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social and political’ (p. xix). In other words, autoethnography acknowledges that individuals cannot be separated from social milieu, making personal experience a valid starting point for deeper sociological understanding (Wall, 2008). Notably, personal experience through the autoethnographer’s narrative encourages the sharing of private details and emotions to ensure that a wide range of traditional and non-traditional audiences (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011) are able to empathise and actively participate in the author’s experiences (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) to co-create meaning (Ai, 2017). To that end, I have fused personal narrative containing scenes rich with dialogue with traditional academic prose (Bochner & Ellis, 2002), regularly shifting between both voices as a-way of writing, and a ‘method for conducting and displaying research’ (Vasconcelos, 2011, p.417). Accordingly, the remainder of this paper initially explores the backdrop of existing migrant ‘Asian’ teacher scholarship, critical autoethnography as methodology, and its links to the AsianCrit theoretical framework. It then continues with my autoethnographic story and concludes with a discussion based on the issues raised in the paper. We Still (Can’t) Call Australia Home Before using the self-as-event (Ellis, 2004) to re- present research as / through story, it is necessary to briefly explore other similar stories of racialised marginalisation in the existing literature. For this, the focus is specifically on migrant ‘Asian’ teachers in Australian schools so as to situate the context for the remainder of the autoethnographic story. One such story of racialised marginalisation is told in work done by Collins and Reid (2012), who report instances of overt racism faced by migrant teachers in Australian schools. These instances were perpetrated by colleagues and students alike and include race-related barriers to employment and promotion, name-calling (e.g. ‘curry muncher’), and accent-related ridicule (Collins & Reid, 2012). Similar stories of ‘othering’ can also be seen in Kostogriz and Peeler’s (2007) study, which was PRISM (2022) Teo (2022) PRISM 88 4(1) situated in the ‘specific discourses of immigration, education and cultural politics’ (p. 110). Using interviews and focus group discussions, the authors investigated the sense of workplace belonging of nine overseas-born teachers who had language backgrounds other than English (five of whom were from ‘Asian’ backgrounds). In looking at this diverse group of teachers with varying years of overseas teaching experience and time spent in Australia, the authors discovered that the Australian teaching community used ‘gatekeeping mechanisms’ (p.111) based around the themes of boundary politics of inclusion/exclusion (e.g. delegitimisation of past professional knowledge/experiences) and marginality in workplace relations (based on employment status or perceived level of White Australian cultural literacy) to filter overseas-born teachers into the local professional space. Kostogriz and Peeler (2007) explain that this filtering creates barriers that keep the ‘foreigner’ or the ‘other’ at bay and conclude that this ‘othering’ has to do ‘not so much with their qualification but rather with other aspects that are standing out, namely their ethnicity, culture and language’ (p. 120). Yet another story of racialised marginalisation is evident in McCluskey, Sim and Johnson’s (2011) worrying report of a Taiwanese teacher’s (‘Susan’) journey as she began her Australian teaching career. The authors elucidate that Susan talked of exclusion and justified this through a discourse of racial difference, and thus positioned herself as ‘powerless and on the edge’ (p. 86) of the school’s Community of Practice. Even though these stories demonstrate the detrimental effects of the silencing and marginalising power of the ‘overwhelming presence of Whiteness’ (Sleeter, 2001, p.94) within the Australian schooling context, there has been surprisingly little progress made with non-Indigenous minorities, and minority teachers in particular, from a critical (race) perspective. In light of this, the next section turns to scholarship on the critical. Let’s Get Critical To articulate and identify hidden forces and ambiguities that operate beneath appearances; to guide judgments and evaluations emanating from our discontent; to direct our attention to the critical expressions within different interpretive communities relative to their unique symbol systems, customs, and codes; to demystify the ubiquity and magnitude of power; to provide insight and inspire acts of justice; and to name and analyse what is intuitively felt. (Madison, 2005, p.13) Madison’s (2005) taut definition of the critical is the basis upon which Marx, Pennington, and Chang (2017) highlight critical autoethnography’s potential for connecting deeply personal experiences like race, gender, culture, language, sexuality, and other aspects of marginalisation and privilege to the broader context of education in society, as well as lending itself to critical perspectives by addressing how power and privilege play out. Similarly, Boylorn and Orbe (2014) advocate for critical autoethnography’s usefulness in legitimating first- person accounts of discrimination and difference as a means of critiquing colonialism, racism, sexism, nationalism, regionalism, and ethnocentrism. They further explain that critical autoethnography’s commitment to political action inflects the following aspects of critical theory: ‘to understand the lived experiences of real people in context, to examine social conditions and uncover oppressive power arrangements, and to fuse theory and action to challenge processes of domination’ (p. 20). This notion of a theory-action nexus that challenges hegemonic processes is closely related to critical race theory’s main methodology – Counterstorytelling. As a form of narrative, it takes personal experience and configures it into something simultaneously politically subversive yet comprehensible. This ease of accessibility is what confers it with communicative power, making it a powerful tool of persuasion in disrupting the dominant narrative (Cann & DeMeulenaere, 2012) and therefore, a potential transformative device for the disempowered (Winter, 1989). As Delgado (1989) elaborates, counterstories can ‘jar the comfortable dominant complacency that is the principal anchor dragging down any incentive for reform’ (p. 2438). PRISM (2022) Teo (2022) PRISM 89 4(1) Beyond this, they can also be therapeutic for the teller and for listeners from marginalised communities as the act of telling can ‘lead to healing, liberation, mental health’ (Delgado, 1989, p. 2437). As it turns out, Cann & DeMeulenaere (2012) point out that ‘[y]ou might think of counterstories as critical autoethnographies’ (p.152). In the same way that counterstorytelling is unashamedly political – ‘a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told (e.g. those on the margins of society) … a tool for exposing, analysing, and challenging the majoritarian stories of racial privilege’ (Solórzano and Yosso, 2002, p.32) – autoethnographies aim to ‘speak back’ by making the personal political (Holman Jones, Adams & Ellis, 2016). Indeed, this political agenda is enriched through the use of critical autoethnography, particularly because of the methodology’s intimate relationship with theory. Holman Jones (2016), in her essay using performative and queer storytelling techniques, outlines what she considers one of critical autoethnography’s central commitments: ‘that theory and story work together in collaborative engagement’ (p. 229). This commitment is based on the view that: theory and story share a reciprocal, inter- animating relationship. Theory asks about and explains the nuances of an experience and the happenings of a culture; story is the mechanism for illustrating and embodying these nuances and happenings. Because theory and story exist in a mutually influential relationship, theory is not an add-on to story. We cannot write our stories and then begin the search for a theory to “fit” them, outside of cultures and politics and contexts. Instead, theory is a language for thinking with and through, asking questions about, and acting on—the experiences and happenings in our stories. (Holman Jones, 2016, p.229) As Mackinlay (2019) highlights, the notion of the critical stems ‘from a place of personal-political- pedagogical-philosophical crisis’ (p. 203), and critical autoethnography is where we tell stories (i.e., what is intuitively felt) about theory (ergo what is named and analysed) and theorised through the autoethnographic stories told. Indeed, the critical in critical autoethnography reminds us that theory is ‘alive, fluid, and current’ (Orbe, 2005, p.66) instead of just a given, static and autonomous set of ideas, objects, or practices (Holman Jones, 2016). Consequently, we use ‘the vocabulary—the ideas, concepts, and languages of theory—and the mode of story—the forms, the relationships, and the worlds stories create—to tell complex, nuanced, multiple, and critically reflexive narratives’ (Holman Jones, 2016, p.231). Tangling up Theory One such option that foregrounds the ideas, concepts and languages of theory while allowing for critically constructed narratives, and that is particularly germane to ‘Asian’ migrant teachers, is AsianCrit. Owing to critical race theory’s predilection for intellectual continuity, new perspectives and scholarship focussed on greater racial and ethnic specificity were soon born. This new wave of scholarship was conceived on the premise that racial oppressions among different minorities ought to be understood according to their unique geopolitical, temporal-historical and cultural contexts (Chang, 1993). As a result, AsianCrit was born. Much like its critical race theory counterpart, AsianCrit emerged in the 1990s in the field of law (Lawrence & Matsuda, 1997), drawing on counterstorying narratives as the primary tool for social change. AsianCrit, like critical race theory, also shares a commitment to intersectionality, praxis and subverting privilege and oppression (Iftikar & Museus, 2018). The subsections below outline two specific AsianCrit tenets, which also function as the foci for the next parts of the autoethnographic story. At the same time, it is crucial to remain mindful of Iftikar and Museus’s (2018) reminder that since the common political goal is to facilitate larger discussions of racism in society, AsianCrit is intended to complement, and not replace critical race theory. Indeed, while the temptation exists, to assume a complete sameness between AsianCrit and critical PRISM (2022) Teo (2022) PRISM 90 4(1) race theory would be to contradict their fundamental purposes. Asianisation Asianisation, nativism or nativistic racism is pervasive in society, which racialises Asian Americans (and arguably, Asians writ large) in unique ways. Drawing closely from Higham’s (2002) work on Strangers in the Land, Chang (1993) refers to nativistic racism as ‘an intense opposition to an internal minority on the grounds of its foreign connections’ (p. 1253). In particular, nativism is concerned with how, instead of acknowledging the unusually wide heterogeneity of characteristics due to diverse class, ethnic, and immigrant experiences (Yu, 2006), Asians tend to be subsumed into a monolithic ‘cultural’ whole based on the stereotype of / vilification as ‘the yellow peril’ and/or overachieving model minorities (Espiritu, 2008; Yu, 2006). Chang (1993) explicates the two denotations of the term model: 1) praising superior performance as a way of denying ‘present- day discrimination against Asian Americans and the present-day effects of past discrimination’ as well as 2) suggesting that other minority groups emulate the model example in order to legitimise the continued ‘oppression of other racial minorities and poor whites’ (p. 1260). As a result, Asian Americans face a peculiar type of perpetual foreignness (Chang, 1993), which tends to be ‘based more on what is perceived as not-American than on the realities of another nationality of culture’ (Saito, 1997, p.80). Strategic (anti)essentialism AsianCrit’s tenet of strategic (anti)essentialism is based on Spivak’s (1987) notion of strategic essentialism, and also has close links to Feminist Standpoint Theory (Collins, 1997). According to Collins (1997), Standpoint Theory simultaneously emphasises the unique epistemological value of the shared stories and experiences of historically marginalised groups while accounting for individual agency within those groups. Consequently, strategic (anti)essentialism highlights that Asian individuals can act agentively and engage in a variety of ways that affect inherently oppressive socio-politico-economic discourses and processes. As Kwok and Khoo (2017) put it, the resistance of objectification through subjectivities. This key AsianCrit tenet further ‘recognises that complete rejection of racial categorisation and uncritical reification of racial categories can both yield undesirable outcomes’ (Museus & Iftikar, 2013, p. 26). Strategic (anti)essentialism is also aware that social justice praxis can have the twofold effect of advancing Asian community interests while reinforcing constructions of the population, which means that research should have a twofold focus on understanding the entire community as a means of fostering unity within the racial category, while also developing involute knowledge of intra-group diversity. Indeed, as Liu (2009) cautions, disaggregation is important, but not at the expense of collective political voice. Looking in Having touched on the methodological and theoretical foundations of this paper, I provide a brief word on my positionality before I continue with the story. I am a middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied male – the firstborn grandchild of both my maternal and paternal extended families. Prior to my migration journey to Australia for higher education, I attended two of Singapore’s most elite private schools, all while receiving a large degree of social, emotional and financial support from friends and family. As a result, I never had to worry about the colour of my skin, did reasonably well at institutionalised schooling, and was never in want of opportunity. I am fully cognisant that these privileges have limited my experiences and, on this basis, do not profess to represent the experiences of all Asians or Asian Australians, or attempt to speak for all migrants of colour. Instead, I use this paper as a space to share personal stories and reflections that may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of race and racism in the context of high school education. Something’s Gotta Give It was nearing the end of summer, but in typical Queensland fashion, the heat remained unforgiving. I was sitting at my new desk in the Head of Year Level PRISM (2022) Teo (2022) PRISM 91 4(1) office, a promotional position I had secured at the end of last year. At long last, all my hard work and industry had paid off. I had, for instance, built the College debating team from the ground up with no additional remuneration, as well as spearheaded an excellence program for my subject areas with no additional recognition. Worst of all though, I had agreed to teach mathematics even though it was not one of the subject areas I was trained in – to my White school administration and colleagues, my skin colour meant that I was subsumed into a ‘cultural’ whole (Yu, 2006) that magically conferred an implicit aptitude for the subject. I was finally reaping the rewards of a meritocratic system that rewarded model behaviour (Chang, 1993) such as hard work, initiative, and flexibility, or so I thought at the time. In the interest of getting work done at work, I loved that my pedestalled office space was shared with only two other people (who also happened to be the two other senior secondary Heads of Year). There was Michelle, an ‘Asian’ music teacher and eternal optimist, and Kourtney, a White Maths teacher and classic ‘glass half-empty’ character. As I sat alone in the office engrossed in my lesson planning, I suddenly notice the usually chipper Michelle glide in at the end of period four looking a little flustered. “You okay?” I venture, as Michelle slumps into her chair. “Yeahhh, I guess? Not a great lesson, but not much you can do if you haven’t taken the class before and it’s the last lesson of the day I guess.” “Were they just disinterested, or disruptive as well?” “A mixture of both! What really got my goat was how one of the boys kept asking at the top of his voice if I was from Choi-nahh while I was trying to deliver content. I grew up in Malaysia but have been here since high school, for goodness’ sake! That makes my experience as a migrant completely different from, say, someone from Thailand who moved here just for university or someone whose parents are legitimately from China but was born here (Yu, 2006) … Mind you, this kid’s hand wasn’t raised either. When he realised that I wasn’t going to pause the lesson just to address his disruption at that point in time, he started sniggering to his mate beside him – SOOO vexing! But okay, it’s nearly the weekend and I’m not going to let some kid with poor decision-making ruin the rest of my day! I am a picture of zen!” I chuckle as Michelle rearranges her tiny frame into a meditative pose, takes a deep breath and half shuts her eyes. Something tells me that this is a good time to build solidarity by sharing something similar that happened to me. I proceed to relate the story of my first day at the College and the unfortunate run-in with the three White male students. I tell her about how it all unfolded, as well as how I stood there completely aghast and at a loss for words after their little racist greeting. I tell her about how I didn’t (couldn’t) react quickly enough, and about how the White male students ran off in different directions laughing. As I conclude my story, Michelle lets out a huge sigh and lets her eyes roll to the back of her head. “That’s really frustrating. I totally feel your pain, especially after today’s joyful encounter. It just ticks me off that no matter we do, we’re always going to be seen as people who don’t belong here (Chang, 1993). At the same time, I guess these are such minor inconveniences in the grand scheme of things. I mean, us Asians can’t really complain. We’re not Indigenous and comparatively, we have it really good, don’t we?” She was right. Us ‘Asians’ did have it good – I felt a slight tinge of guilt at the fact that I had even bothered to bring my story up. What then, was the way forward? I Can See Clearly Now I had since moved on from the State College. According to most of my Anglo-Australian teaching colleagues, I had struck the proverbial teaching jackpot moving from a racially diverse, lower socioeconomic coeducational state school to a predominantly White, upper-middle class independent girls’ College located in one of the most affluent suburbs in Brisbane. There would probably be no need for behaviour management, and there would certainly be no necessity to address racism, right? PRISM (2022) Teo (2022) PRISM 92 4(1) “Alright, so are we all happy with how this game works? Just to reiterate – when it’s your turn, you need to do your best to get all four questions on each of the question cards correct. Your turn ends either once you answer all four questions or if you get any of them wrong, and your counter moves the corresponding number of correct spaces around the board.” My Year 11 Business girls nodded their heads in unison. It was that awkward last couple of lessons after assessment and before the end of the term, so I figure we’d “revise” what we had learnt earlier in the term by playing… *drumroll* the Logo Game. I pull out question cards about the first Ford car model to be introduced in Australia, the different flavour ranges of John West tuna, as well as one that asks which of the following is NOT a Pine O Cleen scent: eucalyptus, lavender, lemon lime or fresh laundry. We eventually get to the Dare Iced Coffee question card. The opposition teams groan as I ask Sarah, Nikita and Em what the brand of iced coffee in photo A is. “That’s SOO unfair, sir! They’ve got it easy – we had such difficult questions!!” The groans reach a crescendo as I acknowledge Em’s correct response and ask what the normal volume of coffee in the bottles stocked in Coles supermarkets is. Sarah pulls her weight and the team are immediately on to their third question. “What is the colour of Dare Ice Coffee’s Double Espresso flavour – green, yellow, or black?” After much squealing and deliberation within the group, Sarah (Australian born, African descent and budding entrepreneur) pipes up. “Look, sir, we can’t decide. I think black is too straightforward of an answer. I reckon since I’m black and Nikita’s yellow, I’m just going to go with green – we’re surely not going to give the other groups a chance to steal our response!” “Sarah!! You can’t just say that…” Anglo-Australian and future college captain Em interjects. “Guessing an answer? We’re already out of time anyway!” “Not that… the other thing…” Em’s face is completely flushed, and I soon realise that she’s chastising Sarah for talking about colour, chastising her for bringing up race. Having read up on colour blindness in schools (Dent, 2010) the previous weekend, I was galvanised into reacting differently this time – into not being at a loss for words. In that moment, I find that my head takes a while to catch up with my heart, and flounder on with what I think could be a good personal-political-pedagogical (Mackinlay, 2019) opportunity. “Hmm, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with what Sarah said, Em. I mean, Sarah is obviously of African descent and Nikita and I are both of Asian descent – I don’t see any issue with calling it like it is; after all, there’s nothing wrong with being a minority or not being White Australian. It does become an issue when we start lumping all minorities into indistinct, monolithic groups though – as in assuming that everyone in that group is exactly the same (Yu, 2006). Even worse, conferring certain negative stereotypes or assuming some degree of deficit or lack of everyone in that particular group on the basis of that sameness (Yu, 2006). That’s just going to be downright damaging for a range of minority groups (Chang, 1993).” “For example, my wife constantly reminds me that I tend to be quite a reckless driver, so I suppose I fulfil the ‘Asians are bad drivers’ stereotype to some extent. But, compare that with what you told me about your road trip over the holidays – how Nikita was probably the smoothest and safest driver in the group. Now imagine how terrible it would be if all driving examiners immediately assumed Nikita was a bad driver before she even hopped behind the wheel!” I can see the well-oiled cogs in Em’s brain spinning and use that as an opportunity to push a little further to resist the essentialising objectification (Kwok & Khoo, 2017) that Em had subconsciously reified. “So yes, I think we need to be able to speak plainly about colour to be able to address inequity (Dent, 2010) – if we link that back to the Business context, what other ways are businesses going to be able to recognise deep-seated disadvantage among certain PRISM (2022) Teo (2022) PRISM 93 4(1) communities and subsequently act on it as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility? Remember the Palaszczuk Government’s ‘Advancing Indigenous Businesses’ initiative we discussed in class that day? Anyway, that’s my two pence worth at least.” By this point, Em’s cheeks had turned from a scarlet red to a mellow pink – I could see that she was still pondering my little speech, possibly realising in that very moment the colour discomfort that stemmed from her Whiteness. However, before either of us could say anymore, we are abruptly interrupted by the lunch bell. (Doing it) My Way? As I mentioned earlier, I’m writing here to share my (counter)story, and in so doing, re/ad-dressing the dearth of minority (teacher) voices in the literature. In sharing this story, I have alluded to the importance of critical race theory (and Asian critical race theory in particular) in equipping me for this journey at the intersection of social justice and praxis (Museus & Iftikar, 2013). Indeed, as intimated to through the previous sections of this paper, theory is alive and fluid in the very act of storytelling (Orbe, 2005), and a language for contemplating and conceptualising the very stories that are told (Holman Jones, 2016). When theory is used critically in tandem with autoethnography, this collaborative engagement (Holman Jones, 2016) foregrounds and empowers personal knowledge in a way that can promote dialogue (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) while addressing a personal-political-pedagogical-philosophical agenda (Mackinlay, 2019). As I conclude, I would also like to take this opportunity to think and wonder out loud – to continue the dialogue (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) – about what I believe deserves much more meaningful deliberation – that is, if, in my vocation as a high school teacher, I truly am on the right track to ‘jar the comfortable dominant complacency’ (Delgado, 1989, p. 2438) perpetuated by the ‘overwhelming presence of Whiteness’ (Sleeter, 2001, p. 94) that pervades the Australian classroom. Am I doing the very best I can at this stage to ‘fuse theory and action to challenge processes of domination’ (Boylorn & Orbe, 2014, p. 20) and expose ‘majoritarian stories of racial privilege’ (Solórzano and Yosso, 2002, p. 32)? Is this how I best tackle racism and build solidarity with the goal of Aboriginal sovereignty in mind? I wonder, what else would you do in my situation? PRISM (2022) Teo (2022) PRISM 94 4(1) Disclosure statement The author declares no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Acknowledgements The author wishes to express his deepest gratitude to Associate Professor Elizabeth Mackinlay and Dr Susan Creagh for their guidance and constructive suggestions during the planning and development of this paper. Their continued willingness to give their time so generously has been very much appreciated. Open Access Policy This journal provides immediate open access to its content with no submission or publications fees. This journal article is published under the following Creative Commons Licence: This licence allows others to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to this article (and other works in this journal), and/or to use them for any other lawful purpose in accordance with the licence. 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DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. https://doaj.org/toc/2514-5347?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22filtered%22%3A%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22bool%22%3A%7B%22must%22%3A%5B%7B%22terms%22%3A%7B%22index.issn.exact%22%3A%5B%222514-5347%22%5D%7D%7D%2C%7B%22term%22%3A%7B%22_type%22%3A%22article%22%7D%7D%5D%7D%7D%2C%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%7D%7D%2C%22size%22%3A100%2C%22_source%22%3A%7B%7D%7D https://doaj.org/toc/2514-5347?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22filtered%22%3A%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22bool%22%3A%7B%22must%22%3A%5B%7B%22terms%22%3A%7B%22index.issn.exact%22%3A%5B%222514-5347%22%5D%7D%7D%2C%7B%22term%22%3A%7B%22_type%22%3A%22article%22%7D%7D%5D%7D%7D%2C%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%7D%7D%2C%22size%22%3A100%2C%22_source%22%3A%7B%7D%7D https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doaj.org/ PRISM (2022) Teo (2022) PRISM 95 4(1) References Ai, B. (2017). 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