One thing I really want to talk about, and improve, is that we get the most hits by far on articles where we call out racism, especially in the media. It’s important that we stand up to racism, but other important stories get much less traction... and that worries me.
I think stories calling out the more overt racism become easy rallying points for outrage that is rarely sustained towards systemic change, and they allow ppl to create a category of ppl who are the ‘real racists’ and distance themselves from the realities of societal racism...
They’re also much easier to engage with - here is something racist someone said, and this is why it’s racist. Done. Whereas - here is a complex story of decades of malfeasance but without a single villain to point at, and with no clear cut solutions to it - not so much.
Part of the solution, I hope, is encouraging to think about how they engage with content... but the other part is thinking about how we present such stories; providing context, background, depth of understanding etc, and that will take a lot more time, energy, and $ to get right.
And even then, thinking about how to affect positive change is another side of the same coin... a big story might lead to a royal commission, like with the Don Dale story, but it probably won’t lead to positive systemic change. See RCIADIC, Bringing The Home, Uluru statement etc.
