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Keywords: Asian Australian

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Time for nuanced Asian representation

    • Carolyn Cage
    • 06 February 2020
    8 Comments

    Growing up I cringed at Asian representation in film and television. More often than not we were cast as nerds, martial artists or second to the plot. We had little depth to our characters, which continuously perpetuated racial stereotypes — stereotypes that still exist today.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dancing in the dark of western culture

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 09 December 2019
    6 Comments

    Politicians love to remind minorities to integrate. Minority kids by and large resent these calls, because they are desperate to integrate. South Asian kids like me and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor were among those wishing to be Australian or British. Our idols were Bruce Springsteen and Jim Kerr, not Abu Bakr Baghdadi or Osama bin Ladin.

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  • MEDIA

    Engaging thoughtfully with racist Disney

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 28 November 2019
    7 Comments

    While there is value in pointing out incorrect or inappropriate behaviour, we are also at a point where we are perhaps a little too quick to declare someone or something 'cancelled'. Many problematic depictions have occurred over the years, and we do ourselves no favours by ignoring them or pretending they did not exist.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    I'm not anti-China but pro democracy

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 27 November 2019
    6 Comments

    I have the luxury of laughing off jokes that make light of the power dynamic between mainland China and Taiwan and Hong Kong, but for many of my friends, it's not such a light matter. I struggle to put myself in their shoes, and I feel a sense of hopelessness that I'm not able to do more.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Seeking balance in diverse Indonesia

    • Devana Senanayake
    • 30 September 2019
    4 Comments

    With Widowo's decision to reconsider the proposed updates, policymakers should seek to initiate balanced and nuanced reforms that help liberal lifestyles and conservative values coexist. While appeasing the conservative portion of the electorate is a good tactic, ignoring a diverse electorate is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Labels can be useful for diversifying the arts

    • Sukhmani Khorana
    • 26 August 2019

    A recent report on the lack of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) representation in arts leadership recognises the limitations of the label. In an era marked by media bubbles, it is more vital than ever that we use categories such as CALD to build bridges, while not losing sight of our differences and varying levels of disadvantage.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A migrant living on stolen land

    • Dinali Devasagayam
    • 25 July 2019
    8 Comments

    I wasn't born here. My family migrated to Australia when I was young and so I enjoyed the privilege of growing up without the war and discrimination that has marred my birth land, although there is a different type of discrimination that I have had to face being an Asian in Australia. In being here though I know I am living on stolen land.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The radical implications of 'they are us'

    • Genevieve Lloyd
    • 04 June 2019
    8 Comments

    When Jacinda Ardern uttered the words 'They are Us' in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, a powerful vision hovered over the impending debates on the meaning of what had happened. Something hitherto invisible came into view and was repudiated: a conceptual structure underlying the operations of social power.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Bob Hawke's post Tiananmen legacy

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 30 May 2019
    4 Comments

    The events of 4 June 1989 in Beijing were horrific, but then prime minister Hawke's leadership and the skills, passion and sacrifice of the generation of Chinese that stayed in Australia in Tiananmen Square's aftermath have consequently made Australia a more vibrant society.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    AOC speech not racist, just code switching

    • Yen-Rong Wong
    • 12 April 2019
    6 Comments

    US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was accused by some of 'verbal blackface' due to her manner in a speech last week. But she wasn't being racist — she was code switching, defined by linguists as the act of moving back and forth between two or more languages or dialects. It's something I know a lot about from experience.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    More myths about migrants and work

    • Devana Senanayake
    • 11 April 2019
    4 Comments

    Former NSW opposition leader Michael Daley was much maligned for his remarks that 'Sydney's young children [are] being replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs'. The statement is symptomatic of a larger issue, reflecting the extent to which the community is misinformed and misled about these issues.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In dialogue with China's avant-garde

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 06 February 2019
    2 Comments

    The exhibition stands as a celebration of the work of Xiao Lu and her contemporaries, who continue to clothe their lived experiences in images, acts and utterances, and in so doing communicate with others about the state of their lives as women and artists, their society and their nation.

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