By Frances Mulcahy (she/her) MBBS
The wheelchair access at Roma street station was easy and it was Saturday quiet. The path from the King George Square to the station was pretty average; construction work had resulted in broken concrete footpath in places and the intersection crossings were just okay. My body did not like the ‘shake, rattle and roll’ that results from the motorised solid tyres, and the light-weight suspension of my wheelchair interacting with the bumpy surface. The resultant angina was mild, the path ahead looked smooth, I choose not to use my anti-angina spray.
The rail station concourse was flat and even, the lift to the platform slow and gentle, and by the time I stopped at the designated accessible entry point for my train (due in about seven minutes) my angina had settled and I was pleased I had held off using medication.
I chatted to the very helpful station worker and the ‘system’ now knew I would require a ramp at my point of disembarkation.
I was reasonably comfortable and was taking in the moment and the surroundings. A few paces down the platform I could hear voices exchanging questions and answers.
The exchange caught my attention for two reasons. The content related to the rally I had just attended. The rally was protesting systemic racism affecting First Nations Australians and specifically the continuing over-representations of First Nations folk in prison and the awful statistics of deaths in custody. Apart from the content being very much at the forefront of my thinking, there was a puzzling mismatch between the voices and the appearances of some of those participating.
The questions were being asked by four young adults standing next to the respondent, who was seated. She was a mature-aged Aboriginal woman (she later introduced herself to me as Mavis*). She was seated next to a pair of young adults of Asian appearance, who were obviously traveling with the other four. Of those standing, two were white women in their early twenties, most probably sisters. Their speech was very much younger than their appearance, they sounded like pre-teen girls. That said, the bright knee length floral dresses with puff sleeves looked young as well. Of the other two joining the conversation, one was a similar aged woman of colour, who was wearing a bright wrap around dress and matching duku, my best guess was her ethnic and cultural heritage was of sub-Saharan Africa. The fourth standing in the group was, in her own way, more striking than the brightly dressed young woman of colour. She had a very wide based stance and her legs were short for her height. From behind, her webbed neck was obvious, as was her flattened skull. When I could see her face-on, she had a small face and a disproportionately long frontal element of skull. I recognised her patterns of physical difference as probably belonging to Noonan’s syndrome.
She wore an ID lanyard and carried herself with confidence.
The young white woman asked Mavis if she had been at the rally. She replied yes. They then asked, ‘it was to support the Black man in the USA wasn’t it?’. Mavis patiently responded that the rally was about the treatment of POC in Australia. She mentioned the 434 aboriginal deaths in custody since the Royal Commission (1991). The young woman looked blank – their non-verbals suggested profound ignorance. At this point, the woman of colour stated she did not know Australia had any problem with racism. I found myself shaking my head in dismay and disbelief in exactly the gesture Mavis was using. Mavis seemed to notice my head shake.
I felt I had intruded on the conversation and shifted my gaze away from proceedings. I did hear Mavis use the word ‘slave’, at which I turned my gaze towards her again to see the young woman of colour shaking her head in apparent incredulity at Mavis’ words.
Only a minute or so later, the train arrived. I motored forward two meters to the blue ‘wait in wheelchair here’ square painted on the platform. The station assistant stepped forward with the folding access ramp. As the train doors opened, the little group who had been talking to Mavis pushed past the railway worker, he was annoyed, as was the last member of their group. The young lady with the lanyard was trying, without success, to coach the other five that waiting for people to alight the train, and waiting for the mobility impaired, was social etiquette. It was now apparent to me that she was supervising an outing for group of young adults who either required, or would benefit from, assistance.
I manoeuvred my chair into the allocated space for wheels in the carriage and as I looked up, having completed my parking, Mavis walked past, gestured to me with a small warm social nod and sat immediately behind me.
The train headed off. The sisters stood near me and were full of stares and giggles. The couple of Asian appearance stood unremarkably silent. The WOC had sat down and did not take her eyes off the supervisor who was very discreetly indicating to her charges that staring at the grey-haired lady in the wheelchair was not the ‘done’ thing.
I considered the scene, five adults of various ethnic backgrounds, with quite significant, yet invisible intellectual challenges, under the care of an obviously competent professional who had the lifetime lived experience of marked physical difference. They had been interacting with a First Nations woman, and were overheard by a grey-haired lady in a wheelchair. That very disparate group represented a wide range of intersections. We were fairly safe and reasonably unremarkable on that inner-city train platform. The broad community tolerance of difference worked for us all. The lack of acceptance that each of us are equal value humans works against us.
As soon as the group left the train, Mavis asked in a firm voice ‘Did you go to the rally?’. I answered yes, rotated my chair, and introduced myself. Mavis asked ‘how did the crowd behave?’. She had been in town for a different purpose, and had only seen the very large crowd as she walked to Roma Street station. I told her I was impressed with the health sensitivity shown by the organisers and the peaceful show of solidarity within the crowd.
Mavis continued, ‘Did you hear what they asked me? How could they not know anything about the aboriginal story?...The pretty Black lass was born here, her parents came from Africa. She had no idea we have had slavery in Australia. How can that happen?’.
Writer Arthur James Vogan included this ‘Slave Map of Modern Australia’ in his 1890 novel ‘The Black Police: A Story of Modern Australia’.
I pointed out that I strongly suspected the group was intellectually challenged, and that I hoped their lack of awareness was not as prevalent in the mainstream.
Mavis was quite surprised at my assessment. She saw young adults with all the appearance of (not being First Nation folk) privilege. I did not have a chance to learn from her about the cultural nuance of how she experienced the Q and A at the station.
I asked Mavis where she was from and she said most of her mob were from Rockhampton, but she had moved to the western suburbs to assist a niece.
She asked why an old white lady was at the rally. I told her I had heard a First Nations woman speak at a feminist rally last year and had been inspired to try and learn more about intersectional feminism in general, and intersections with First Nations peoples and racism.
We talked about racism for a while and Mavis said, ‘the most important thing is for everyone to get educated about our history’. She also said, ‘ people do not know how much they don’t know’. You can try your best to be self-aware, but you need knowledge about the treatment of First Nation People. That knowledge will shape your understanding about how a distorted, absent, and often untrue history has contributed to racism. That knowledge will help you identify internal beliefs that contribute to racial biases.
Finding out the extent to which we don’t know important stuff is very humbling.
*This content is closely based on actual experience – some details, including names, have been changed.
Suggested resources:
http://shareourpride.org.au/sections/beyond-the-myths/
http://shareourpride.org.au/resource_sections/further-reading/index.html
https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/introduction.php