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Racial Misrecognition and Micro-Practices That Undermine Dignity: Insights From [Black] Africans in Australia
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Racial Misrecognition and Micro-Practices That Undermine Dignity: Insights From [Black] Africans in Australia

Kathomi Gatwiri and Samara Kim
The Australian journal of social issues, Vol.First Online, pp.1-11
24/02/2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70080
Appears in  Recent Faculty of Health Publications
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Abstract

Social Issues Social Sciences
This article theorises experiences of racial indignity among [Black] Africans in Australia by examining how racial misrecognition (disrespect, dismissal, inferiorisation, silencing and erasure) systematically undermines, erodes and compromises their dignity and personhood. Using a dignity-informed theoretical framework, the study explores how dignity is racialised, constructed, denied and contested within the Australian socio-political context. It critiques the dominance of 'race neutral' and 'colourblind' discourses that obscure the routine operations of racism, particularly anti-Black racism, and their role in positioning Black Africans within marginal and liminal social spaces. The article argues that Australian political and social institutions have yet to meaningfully confront their embedded histories of anti-Blackness, and proposes 'dignity' as an essential consideration of 'doing' antiracism practice. By centring Afrocentric theoretical and experiential perspectives, the study offers a conceptual vocabulary for articulating the cumulative emotional, psychological and psychic impacts of racial misrecognition, and highlights how racialisation and anti-Black racism shape everyday experiences of in/dignity.

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