Last weeks's QUT Symposium met in the staunch tradition of the Brisbane Blacks, who have fought for sovereignty, land rights, liberation and an end to racial violence for decades. It was a gathering of Elders, academics, organisers and frontline community workers who speak, theorise and embody the truth about race and racism in this place. It refused to clothe itself in multicultural platitudes about tolerance, or to speak about racism only in terms of individual prejudice.

As an Aboriginal woman with politically active parents, I know all too well the hallmarks of ‘multicultural society’: put simply, non-whites are there to be tolerated, used as political footballs and feared whenever they step out of sync with the rest of White Australia.