Blak

blak identity

Every now and then a troll calls me white. It’s a violent colonial tactic: call me white if I identify as blak, call me blak if I wanted to identify as white. […] I am not quite white, not quite blak enough. I wish I was blakker on the outside; as blak on the outside as I feel on the inside.

The right-wing media, and even some of the more centrist media, draws an artificial line between the bush and the city, the urban blaks and the people from the bush. The division is often coded to skin colour, urban is shorthand for ‘not black enough’ and bush is shorthand for ‘real Aboriginal’.