Chelsea Watego
Always Bet on Black (Power)
‘The most transformative Black acts have taken place at the margins, on the fringes of towns, among Black communities and collectives, Black minds, souls and hearts rather than at white centres, whether they be boardrooms or tearooms or university chancellories. The exiled location they insist we occupy is not the place of marginalisation they would have us believe, for this land is ours, all of it.’
Munanjahli and South Sea Islander scholar Chelsea Watego recounts her recent decision to withdraw her race and sex discrimination claim against the University of Queensland and leave her tenured academic position. In this brilliant essay, she writes against the mythical impartiality of the white institutions through which Black individuals are told to seek validation and justice.
Always Bet on Black (Power)
In a powerful essay about her decision to withdraw her discrimination claim against the University of Queensland, Chelsea Watego impresses upon the audience that within the fight against racism and the call for a reimagined reality of shared humanity is a love for black people. For her, it includes the love for community.
The radicalism of Black power in its rage is its love for Black people, a love that extends beyond the self, yet centres a collective Black self-love, unconditional and unwavering. Thus at the heart of the fight against race are not individual grievances, wins or wealth, or what Cornel West describes as installing 'Black faces in high places'.
(Note: This essay was featured in The Circular’s very first issue. It appears again here, but importantly, framed in a different context.)