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Author: Sonia Nair

  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2017: Why 'white' isn't a racist slur

    • Sonia Nair
    • 10 January 2018
    5 Comments

    I hung out with a group of Indian-Australians while I was a university student who called themselves 'curries', but the unspoken camaraderie that ensued from this self-identification stood in stark contrast to that time I was called a 'f***ing curry' by a passing car full of white people.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Passport privilege entrenches inequality

    • Sonia Nair
    • 12 December 2017
    12 Comments

    The world is often characterised as porous and easy to manoeuvre in this age of unparalleled technology and a globalised economy. But it's only ever been this way to people who have a combination of a particular passport and cultural heritage, particularly in settler colonial nations such as Australia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why 'white' isn't a racist slur

    • Sonia Nair
    • 13 July 2017
    11 Comments

    I hung out with a group of Indian-Australians while I was a university student who called themselves 'curries', but the unspoken camaraderie that ensued from this self-identification stood in stark contrast to that time I was called a 'f***ing curry' by a passing car full of white people. You often hear from white people that they can't be called 'white' because that too is racist language. This reflects a flawed assumption that societal structures advantage and disadvantage people in the exact same way.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The unique labour conditions of millennials

    • Sonia Nair
    • 28 November 2016
    11 Comments

    Belonging to a generation where I was constantly told I could do anything I set my mind to, I was carted off to every class imaginable as a young child - art class, violin class, music theory class, English literature tutoring and so forth. But the advent of unparalleled choices that was constantly peddled to me did not coincide with an increase in the spaces that are available for young people to excel, or much less be employed, in the fields of their choice.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Middle class privilege is more than material

    • Sonia Nair
    • 24 October 2016
    15 Comments

    Social theorist Pierre Bourdieu posited the disturbing finding that academic underperformance in lower-class students could be traced back to their lack of cultural capital, defined as 'familiarity with the dominant culture in a society, and especially the ability to understand and use 'educated' language''. According to Bourdieu, the mainstream education system assumes a certain level of cultural capital and as a result, educators speak in a manner that is only understood by a privileged few.

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