Toward creating spaces of belonging…
Today’s piece is the second in a two-part blog series by Dr. Talia Avrahamzon, on creating spaces of belonging for every child.
In the previous blog, drawing on the work of ‘Everyday Reconciliation’, I mention one of the assumptions that informs our approaches to celebrating Harmony Day whilst silencing the International Day of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is related to assumptions about children and childhood.
I guess the best summary about our approaches is we would always err on the side of protecting the children, being safe with our messaging so not to be political, that if there’s any question that it might cause any harm we don’t do it cause it’s going to happen later anyway, so let’s just leave it to a bit later.
(Non-Indigenous executive, interview, 2016)
This school principal’s reflection about intercultural understanding approaches reveals that the ‘protection of children’ assumes an innocence about children and childhood. It also suggests that children are coming to school as blank slates, and that they are inactive recipients of messages rather than already interacting, contributing and (re)constructing everyday racism. Or the perception that racism no longer exists creating a colourblind approach, and that the normalisation of white culture to which all Others are considered different. That approaches being undertaken are and should be apolitical (assuming ‘neutral’) so that they are safe to all children, implying that all children experience everyday reconciliation and racism the same way, which can be assumed as being the ‘majority Anglo-Australian way’. That approaches do have the potential to become political. That anything beyond celebrating the ‘other’ is political. And that political in this field is not safe and can cause harm to children.
Celebrating harmony day is protecting children. A particular child.
Yet my research and many others’ (such as the Bodkin-Andrews et al; Call it Out Register; Challenging Racism Project; SOAR: Speak Out About Racism) highlight that many of our children walk through the school gates with their own experiences of racism or vicarious racism informing their sense of harmony and belonging. Just take the past three months, some of those children may still be experiencing trauma or vicarious trauma from attending an Invasion Day rally in Boorloo, in which an attempted terrorist attack took aim at First Nations families; or still processing the antisemitic terrorist attack in December 2025; or impacted by threats and intimidation towards the Muslim community including children, in Ballarat and beyond - just to name a few events that have hit the media – no doubt there are many more. However, children are not only subject to the events, but the social media and community responses to it – both positive and negative.
The evidence also challenges the assumption that children are not colourblind. Rather, they do see, understand and contextualise race, racialisation and racism through sophisticated, complex ways. At times through contradictions and ambiguities. From the children in the schools I observed and engagement with children since, these include an interpretation that racism is between ‘black and white’; it is an individualised pathology of not being kind; there is a distinct hierarchy; there is an aversion to racism; unawareness of white-anglo cultures; racism is in the past; and not to speak about it because it is bad.
Assuming that children are colourblind also dismisses their agency in contributing to the solutions, in schools and beyond their school gates – not just for the future, but for the now. There were children in the study of Everyday Racism, from many cultural and ethnic backgrounds, that actively challenged the dominant celebratory approaches. They showed a willingness, and at times a proactive call to be more engaged in the exploring and navigating the complexities rather than as a passive recipient of silencing racism.
We need to elevate the urgency for evidence-led and informed approaches that centre the diverse experiences of children in the design and evaluation of the everyday as well as the ad hoc programs and celebratory days. But schools cannot address eliminating racial discrimination alone – we all have a responsibility to start by testing our own assumptions about children and their role and their rights to be centred in the solutions – families, local communities, sporting clubs (given they are now getting a guernsey at Harmony Day), the media all have a fundamental role.
In the words of Janusz Korczack, the Polish paediatrician and children’s advocate in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust stated - “Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today. They have a right to be taken seriously, and to be treated with tenderness and respect. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be. The unknown person inside of them is our hope for the future.”
They are also our hope in creating spaces of belonging for the now.
Author: Dr Talia Avrahamzon, Honorary A/P, ANU. Talia undertook her PhD at ANU as a Sir Roland Wilson Foundation Scholar. She acknowledges the participants in the original study, supervisors, and the guidance of First Nations Advisory Group