Thread by @amymcquire

Watching @drcwatego speaking on black power #awfsa21

.@drcwatego: speaks of moving from statistical targets that never get met to Indigenous story... to Indigenous intellectual sovereignty as a means for affecting change. #awfsa21

@drcwatego: speaking of the fact neither silence or excellence will protect us in these violent spaces of the academy, only community will

.@drcwatego: speaks from a place of power, her own. She speaks from her empty office, on her last day at UQ. She speaks of a racial discrimination complaint she has had against UQ for the past two years. She walks away while declaring her power. #AWGSA21

.@drcwatego: speaks of standing in ones power - it does not mean to ignore the violence inflicted upon us... In this moment of walking away, Chelsea shares what she has learnt in the fight against race. She speaks of refusal in the context of Goodes:

..." 'refusal is a powerful statement in fight against race". : @drcwatego. she walks away from UQ with a strategising for a neverending fight against race. She cites @MuttonFatVille on sovereign divergence.

“Race must be named”

@drcwatego: "In speaking of racism even intellectually, I had become a problem" - she says of UQ, where she was denied a leadership appointment she was more than qualified for, in Indigenous health. instead it was given to a white male.

.@drcwatego: "There is no way of dealing with race with diplomacy or non violence in the academy" - "I now measure my success in fight against race, not by awards... but by weight of blows they level against my body"

.@drcwatego: This speaks to their fear about our power, and not our powerlessness. To name race means our preparedness to refuse their awards... it means accepting our scholaship even in our excellence will be dismissed as substandard, just like our racial positioning

.@drcwatego "We must stand in our power, for it is only in knowing ours that we begin to know the false claim of theirs. This is black power. Rage must be a register."

.@drcwatego: speaks of silence during the process of making racial complaints at work. " I realised even if I were to win, it would not be Black Power because so much had been ceded to white sensibilities' during the process.

.@drcwatego: The battleground, the mythical middle ground, is violent and designed for us to fight upon. It is through a performance of objectivity, a trait deemed exclusive to white people, that the power of racism is sustained. It is always white pple who are arbiters of racism

.@drcwatego: "... it always works to support the perpetrator"

.@drcwatego: supposedly neutral, impartial processes stack the decks against black people... the fight against racism is not served by the processes white people have designed to protect themselves from

.@drcwatego citing bell hooks on black rage - "This is my rage, this is black power", Chelsea says. White innocence is white supremacy, citing Kwame Ture

.@drcwatego UQ doesn't seem to have a stance against racism. instead it has a RAP ("real Rio Tinto energy" when considering its deal with the Ramsey Centre)

Kwame Ture

...honestly everyone has to listen to the entirety of @drcwatego - my fingers can't move fast enough to do it justice

@drcwatego citing Kwame Ture on black love

. @drcwatego speaks of the radicalism of black power, it is in our love for our people... which extends beyond a love of the self.