MDA | Race Reporting Handbook How to Approach This Guide "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." — James Baldwin, American Writer and Civil Rights Activist. This Reporting on Race Handbook is designed to be inclusive and mindful, through an anti-racism lens, for the media industry. We understand that race intersects with other dimensions of a person’s experience, including class and organisational hierarchy, which influences decision-making power and experiences. This intersectionality means that your ability to enact change varies based on your position within an organisation. If you’re in a leadership role, you have a different set of responsibilities compared to those in more junior positions. However, everyone has a role in fostering an antiracist environment. UNDERSTANDING RACE AND RACIALISATION The definitions used in this handbook have been adapted from Key Concepts and Definitions for Building Racial Literacy (2024) written by Alana Lentin and Debbie Bargallie and The Australian Human Rights Commission Resources. Race Race is a mechanism of power based on the idea that people have shared heritable physiological and/or cultural characteristics. These are assumed to be fixed and unchangeable. Groups, conceived of as races, are located closer to or further away from an ideal vision of humanity constructed by Europeans. Race should be understood as an active, dynamic force (Sivanandan, 1990). It weaves together ideas from biology, culture, nationalism, and religion to make inferences about whole populations. It is, first and foremost, a technique for the management of human differences for the purpose of exploitation and domination. It is used by states, governments, and institutions, such as the police, education, healthcare and welfare, to organise and demarcate between people. Race is mobile and ever changing. But ultimately, it serves to maintain white supremacy, at both a local and global level (Lentin, 2018). Systemic Racism Systemic racism is the way that cultural norms, laws, ideologies, policies, and practices of a particular society, 10