Introduction

• Published in: Transition (Kampala, Uganda) Uganda), 2018-01 (126), p.2-163
• Main Authors: Fernandes, Sujatha, Thomas, Jared
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Black Lives Matter movement; Cultural identity; Diaspora; Immigrants; Migrants; Native peoples; Politics; Refugees; Self concept; Social activism; Sociology; Sovereignty; White people
• ISSN: 0041-1191; 1527-8042
• DOI: 10.2979/transition.l26.l.0l

Other groups in Australia have also identified as Black, including African-Australians, African migrants and refugees, South Sea Islanders, Pacific Islanders, and many Afro-diasporic groups. Since the early 1990s, the alternative term Blak has been used by Aboriginal people to claim their own unique histories and identities independent of limiting phenotypical and romanticized conceptions of Blackness. In gathering these voices, we hope to show the expansiveness of what it means to be Bla(c)k, but to also highlight the complexity of projects of Bla(c)k solidarity in this settler colonial nation. Since the moment of colonization in 1788, personhood and property have been defined by what the scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson refers to as the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty through the theft of Aboriginal lands, the bestowing of property rights on whites, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, and the White Australia policy that restricted non-white immigrants from entering the country. [...]this recognition can be the basis for new kinds of community, healing, and politics. ® Sujatha Fernandes is a professor of political economy and sociology at the University of Sydney. Jared Thomas, PhD is a Nukunu person of the Southern Flinders Ranges, a novelist, Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art and Material Culture at the South Australian Museum, and former lecturer.