Key Points
- The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has launched a new anti-racism campaign
- The "Racism. It Stops With Me" campaign features several ambassadors - including Ms Lamb, former Socceroo Craig Foster, and cross-cultural consultant Tasneem Chopra
Keyarny Lamb has experienced racism for much of her life.
It’s left the Kamilaroi and Yorta Yorta woman feeling “alienated”, and “on edge” about the image she projects to the wider community.
"It's such a heavy thing to carry," she told SBS News.
"I feel like I really need to be cautious of who I am, how I'm talking, my body language, everything."
The 27-year-old model and mother-of-three is hopeful a new national anti-racism campaign will help to change that.
Launched on Tuesday by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), it encourages people without any lived experience of racism to reflect on its causes and impacts, and take action to address it.
"A lot of the community would not understand the challenges that we do have to face, and how we have to face those challenges," Ms Lamb said.
"It does definitely affect your mental health.
"Unless we have these conversations … we're not going to get anywhere."
Former Socceroo Craig Foster is among those featured in the Australian Human Rights Commission's new anti-racism campaign. Source: Supplied / Australian Human Rights Commission
Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan said the campaign, which is part of a larger anti-racism strategy being implemented by the AHRC, is "long overdue".
"Racism is a long-standing problem in Australia," he said.
"It denies people the opportunity to access justice and equality, whether we are in the arena of employment, health, or the legal justice system.
"By standing together against racism, we can then build a more just, fair, equal, and safe society for us all."
The campaign is a response to recent events that were posing a barrier to racial equality in Australia, particularly the "continued anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, in the surge of anti-Asian hate during the pandemic, and in the rise of far-right extremism," Mr Tan said.
A new Racism. It Stops with Me website has also been launched, featuring educational resources about structural and interpersonal racism, as well as a tool to help organisations evaluate and improve their inclusion, diversity and anti-racism practices.
"If racism is about well-being, and if by being racist, we compromise each other's well-being, then we need to stop it," Ms Chopra said.
But that won't happen unless "a really conscious effort" is made to challenge racist individuals and systems, she said.
"It's about interrogating structures, it's about calling to account those who perpetrate racism or holding them to account, and holding them to a standard that they would hold their peers to if it was an issue of integrity in any other capacity," Ms Chopra said.
"If this campaign goes some way towards making those who may be unaware of the racism that they're perpetrating, or if they see it, know how to respond, but even more than that, if they understand the impacts of what that feels like, and therefore change behaviour, then that's a good thing."
