Indigenous RMIT student Rachael Hocking was asked to speak at the RMIT Retired and Senior Alumni Luncheon about the benefit of scholarships and her experiences at the university. She chose to speak to the esteemed guests – a room, not surprisingly, filled with white men – about privilege.
Here’s what she had to say.
Thank you for having me here today, it’s an honour and a privilege to be asked to speak at an event like this. Actually, it is my great privilege, as an able-bodied person of the first world, a person with an education and option to further it, that has led to me standing here and speaking to you today.
While I cannot say I have led a life full of advantages, I do know when and where I have been privileged over others. As distinguished guests here today, no doubt you have all experienced degrees of privilege in your life that many others haven’t. Likewise, you have probably seen disadvantage, suffering, and setbacks. Those experiences are not diminished by your privilege.
Equally, I believe – and perhaps more pointedly – disadvantage does not negate the opportunities life has dealt you. Each individual will weigh up their life’s hardships and comforts; I am not here today to place a value on either. Merely to say, that in my final year of journalism and four months short of graduating, it has never been more important for me to understand how I have been privileged over others in my life.
When I first heard I had been accepted into journalism at RMIT at the end of 2010, the ATAR score was 94 to get in. On that basis alone I wouldn’t be standing here today. Through the SNAP program RMIT offers to underrepresented schools, I was able to prove my merit for the course through my written English skills and a reference.
After a year of late study nights and weekends working at Maccas, hearing I had been accepted into journalism was an incredible relief. I deferred my first year of uni, only to return in 2012 contemplating study with barely 10 dollars to my name. I had spent the previous six months on a GAP year, teaching English in Vietnam after working hard as an integration aid at my old high school for the six months prior to that.
By the time I landed back in Australia my savings had burnt a sizeable hole through my hemp khaki pants. I am by no means flippant with money, but I had not budgeted for an unexpected turn of events in my final month in Vietnam. Indeed, I had not intended on being broke the month before my first year of uni commenced.
This was a rough situation to land in. Being one of six kids with a single parent on a pension meant asking for a loan was not a choice I had. I knew if I ever needed money, I would have to work for it myself.
Before the hasty search for a part-time job began, it was my great privilege to hear I was the recipient of the Evelyn Boekemann scholarship in 2012. It was not a huge amount but enough to give me a good start to the year. With it, I could afford a bike to ride to uni on – saving me public transport fees – as well as textbooks for my classes. Beyond that, the scholarship took away the stress of starting the year under-prepared and bought me time to search for a job and focus on my studies.
Three years on, and close to being an RMIT graduate myself, I have very few worries about my own financial stability. At the beginning of the year I took on a cadetship with a 100 per cent Koorie-owned PR company called Kalinya Communications. I fell into the job while freelancing for the national Indigenous newspaper The Koori Mail.
Kalinya was started by one Koorie woman two years ago – its sole purpose is to provide an honest service and voice for the too often misrepresented Koorie community of Victoria.
What Kalinya does is precisely why I am studying journalism. While I ultimately want to end up in journalism – not PR – at Kalinya I am surrounded by people who want to ensure the Koorie community has a say in their media image. Kalinya provides the sort of meaningful consultation with Indigenous people that government bodies sorely lack.
Seeing how much effort a small business will go to ensure indigenous Australians are not mistreated by the media says millions about the work Kalinya strives for, and demonstrates a sad truth about the state of journalism in Australia today.
While working for Kalinya this year I have had in-depth conversations with young and determined Aboriginal people.
One conversation in particular has remained with me. My now good friend Nayuka told me that, as young Aboriginal people who are given the opportunity to speak about issues affecting our people, we need to remember that we are privileged, that while we discuss the issues of our people, our families and our friends, we are advantaged over every single person who does not have the means to do so.
Nayuka told me that we have a responsibility to use this privilege to do what we can to help those who cannot. And so today, and this past year, I reflect on every moment that has led to now. I work for Kalinya, I freelance for The Koori Mail and RMIT’s student paper, I am an assistant producer at ABC 774 radio and I am on the cusp of graduating from an undergraduate degree. As such, I am part of the 1 per cent of Indigenous students and staff at university in Australia. We make up 3 per cent of the population.
To call my position privileged in light of such woeful statistics might seem a stretch – but that is precisely why I call it such. Because it means I understand that not only am I lucky, but that I shouldn’t have to be.
It shouldn’t be sheer luck that I fell into a family who supported me making my way to university despite financial hardship. It shouldn’t be by dumb luck that I live in Melbourne and have the option to work hard in part-time jobs and apply for scholarships to pay my way to university. Luck that I have it easier than some of my Aboriginal brothers and sisters.
So many like me do not have the choices I have had. And to call out my privilege means addressing straight away those without it. To not call it privilege and instead label my journey inspiring, hardworking and even triumphant ignores women like myself who have worked hard but not been met with the same opportunities despite their work.
My journey has not been easy, by any means, and I do not think calling out my privilege takes away from the disadvantage I have known. I know that as a black woman I do not have the same prospects as a white man when it comes to safety, health and job security. My privilege has come through a series of good fortunes that means I am now looking at a serious job next year. This is certainly not because I am Aboriginal and a woman. It is because I have worked hard. But, more importantly, because I have been given the chance to work hard and then been rewarded for it. I have reaped the benefits of a system that has marginalised the majority of my people
So, if there is anything RMIT has left me with, it is this: I have responsibility. Responsibility to use what I know and have been given to ensure more Indigenous women are given the same choices I have. My aim – to influence the media in accurate, honest portrayals of Aboriginal Australians and their diverse cultures – is fairly utopian.
So, if I may, I encourage distinguished persons such as yourselves to make opportunities for Indigenous Australians in whatever capacity you can.
While I have spoken about privilege in the affluent sense of the word, I know that each Indigenous community of Australia is privileged in its own way. Individuals should be allowed to define their own success and loss. Simply because you have a higher education than some, does not mean those who don’t are not better off in other ways.
I believe in creating opportunity, but more importantly, learning from others. If we speak to Indigenous Australia in a way that does not place precedence on one form of lifestyle over another then we strip back the judgment that comes with allotting value to privilege. Privilege is the fact we all have choices in where we go – not the fact we have university degrees, office jobs with city views or mortgages.
I ask you to remember that privilege does not equal status. In doing so, not only do you accept your privilege, you dignify it. Privilege is borne of the sheer coincidence that your social circumstances meant you had choices.
Address whatever privilege you have, and seek to see others lifted so that they too can be privileged. RMIT’s generosity has allowed for me to stand here today, on my own accord.
Make it your generosity that ensures others have the dignity to choose where they stand.
Photo: Flickr
