The racial dignity research project: A summary of phase 1 findings

This report offers a summary of Phase I of a research project funded by the Australian Research Council through a DECRA Fellowship. The research locates belonging and dignity as social justice and human rights issues that are central to how well we live with ourselves and how we live with others. Specifically, this project surfaced how experiences of negative racialisation result in loss of dignity. Here, the concepts of dignity and racism are linked together to extrapolate how racialised experiences of humiliation, dehumanisation, devaluation, and minority stress result in diminished self-esteem, self-love, and self-image- and, consequently, fractured belonging.

In their landmark research, Elias and Paradies (2016) showed that race-based exclusion cost the Australian economy “an estimated $44.9 billion, or 3.6% of GDP, each year in the decade from 2001-11.” Their research documented how many years of healthy working life are lost due to the mental and physical health implications of racial stress resulting from what I refer to as compounding experiences of racial indignity. When people live their lives with a compromised sense of dignity, there are symbolic, social, material, economic and political consequences.

The research utilises the experiences of one of Australia’s most systemically disadvantaged migrant groups to explore an important contradiction: the idea that all people possess equal, inherent dignity versus the reality that race, a social construct, creates categories that assign unequal worth to those who are racialised within colonial modernities. To grapple with this contradiction, this research introduces the concept of Racial Dignity, which demonstrates how race profoundly shapes who is afforded dignity as a given and who must struggle for it.

It is possible for people to be “included” and yet still feel like they do not belong (Anderson et al., 2019; Gatwiri and Anderson, 2020). To date, there is a lack of consistent understanding within policy and public discourse in Australia about what belonging truly entails. In consideration of the experiences of marginalised groups, references to belonging are often synonymised with ideas of inclusion, social cohesion, and community harmony. Belonging, however, is an enmeshment of multiple factors, including structural positioning (citizenship, agency and identity) as well as emotion (safety, ease). It is the intersection between the structural and the emotional dimensions that foster the right to be.

Australian studies have shown consistently that despite the strong emphasis on “celebrating diversity” and “inclusion” in Australia, those who occupy marginal identities have narratives of ‘outsiderness’ that are interwoven through their daily existence. This suggests that while the law can legislate for inclusion, the law is not equipped to help people feel belonging because belonging is not just a matter of including other people’s differences but rather a “more powerful force than any [diversity and inclusion] strategy could ever be” (Sands, 2019: np). It is within this context that this research attempts to isolate the what and the how of felt belonging is produced or facilitated.

The research particularly focuses on the connection between belonging and dignity, bringing to an academic context a phenomenon I was observing in my clinical practice. When clients came to seek my support in a therapeutic context, the majority of people spoke about racism first and foremost as a form of indignity rather than as a trauma event. The trauma aspect was brought about if the indignities were ongoing, chronic and unresolved. At that time, I began to troll the internet looking for literature discussing the explicit interrelationship between dignity and race- or more aptly, dignity and racism. There was none. The literature that I accessed on disability and dignity and also aging and dignity was a good starting place.

This research attempted to uncover the indignities that Black people experienced and how they got in the way of belonging- or even more profoundly, feeling human. It is the first research in Australia to theorise the intersection between race and dignity. The people I interviewed for this research confirmed that dignity in Australia is a racialised phenomenon. Many stated that it is everyday experiences of indignities, which they believe were amplified by their Africanness and their Blackness, that got in the way of feeling safe, feeling settled and feeling like they belong.

The research undertakes Australia’s first in-depth inquiry into experiences of racial dignity and belonging, employing African-centered methodologies and theories. The analysis of the data demonstrates how racial dignity is operationalised through four primary concepts: (i) humanisation, (ii) everyday relational practices, (iii) sociocultural experience, and (iv) self-determination. Collectively, these concepts, discussed in my published article “Racial Dignity Framework: Advancing dignity-led thinking and practice in Australia” elucidate how persistent and cumulative experiences of racial indignity serve to diminish, devalue, and dehumanise racially minoritised/marginalised people.

From this research, a ‘best practice’ framework has been developed for practitioners who work predominantly with racialised communities and human services, with a view to minimising experiences of social, cultural and economic dislocation and disadvantage. The framework produced from this research can be expanded to most disciplines, including social work, health studies, education, and law. The framework itself can be used to consider and theorise the experiences of almost every marginalised group. The practice framework profoundly enhances our ability to critically understand and address the factors that enable and constrain social cohesion and, consequently, belonging. The framework is significant for policymakers, educators, organisations and practitioners working with members of marginalised communities who are working towards a more racially equitable and socially cohesive Australia.