Instagram video transcript

Let's address the cost of speaking out because I've been asked some questions lately and I think it's incumbent on me to be honest. I'm regularly asked how I stay calm when people abuse me online. They'll say they can't believe I responded so eloquently or that they would have just told the person to go fuck themselves. And I understand that instinct because believe me, sometimes I

want to say the exact same thing. But the truth is, I don't feel like I have that luxury. As a brown man speaking publicly in Australia on the issues that I speak about, I know that I'm not always judged as an individual. I become a scapegoat for all brown people and I'm conscious of that.

If I respond too sharply, then I'm living up to a stereotype of aggression. If I push back too hard, I'm just another hostile immigrant. And if I lose my temper, it can become confirmation for people who already have a stereotype ready before I've even said a single word. And so the cost of speaking out occurs because abuse is not happening in a vacuum.

It's happening in a country where racism is becoming more emboldened, where people who look like me are being abused in public, and where political figures, hello Pauline Hanson, are still building careers by making certain communities feel like outsiders. And so if you wonder, I don't know how you stay so calm, part of the answer is that I

understand the consequences of not being calm. And it's because I'm careful, not because I'm never angry, not because the abuse doesn't affect me, and not because I think that marginalized people should always have to be gracious in the face of harm. I'm careful because I know how quickly the story will shift from what was done to me