Conversation with Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg
By Sumarlinah Raden Winoto
Elsa is a queer, multi-racial, Jewish and Chinese woman of colour. Grown up in Naarm, she is a presenter and facilitator in schools with an anti-bullying organisation and develops & runs anti-racism workshops with Democracy in Colour.
She studies Social Work and Psychology at RMIT and is about to undertake her Honours thesis exploring how Australian, mixed race people of colour from mixed minority heritages engage with their ethnic identities and communities.
Elsa speaks about being ethnically ambiguous, working in social justice as a person of colour, and making community.
What does “being enough” mean to you?
To me, being enough means rejecting the narratives that are set up for mixed race people. Rejecting that I am only half Jewish, or half Chinese. Rejecting that I am too Asian to be Jewish, but too European to be Chinese. Rejecting what percentage of Muslim, Polish, Chinese or Jewish I am. Rejecting that I must be from somewhere else, or that I must define the intricacies of my ethnic identity to someone I’ve just met. Rejecting the projections of what people think my culture should look like or what my identity means. Rejecting the boxes and narrative people have created for me, and embracing my own instead.
Existing as a mixed-race person is something likened to being a bridge between two worlds, how does that analogy sit with you?
I sometimes feel like people see me this way, particularly because my mum is Jewish and my dad was raised Muslim, I think it’s easy for people to fall into this idealistic line of thinking. But honestly, I feel much more that my parents were the bridge much more than I am. I don’t feel like I help anybody understand or relate to either side of me. Sometimes it feels more like rivers running parallel than anything intersecting.
Has being ethnically ambiguous played a role in your life?
Being ethnically ambiguous has played a huge role in my experience of racism through my life. I’m sure if I looked less ethnically ambiguous, I would experience fewer micro-aggressions. Similarly, if I was a man. I feel that being femme and being mixed race play into each other a lot when it comes to people’s invasive questions, racist pick-up lines and conversation starters, fetishization, exoticization and entitlement to your information.
What do you find important for how you see yourself reflected in the world? what do you wish you would see more of?
I don’t really feel like I’m ever reflected in the world. Once when I was at uni in one of my first tutorials for the year, a tutor made us do an icebreaker which involved us telling the class “Who would play us in a movie?”. I was truly stumped by the exclusiveness of this question. I couldn’t think of anyone who even vaguely resembled me in the media (and people suggesting Lucy Lu to me were not helpful either). I have only recently started to notice people who remind me of myself in pop culture. To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before on Netflix brought a tear to my eye, I saw Yaeji at a festival recently which made me cry. But really, their identities are not that similar to mine, they’re just the closest I get to see, and I take what I can get.
How you feel towards the different cultures you’ve inherited? how do you sit with feelings of responsibility towards them?
I feel a huge amount of affection toward my Jewish culture. It was engrained in me through my upbringing, and is intensely significant to the way that I see myself, my culture, my quirks and my family. What I struggle with is people’s perception of what my responsibility should be to my Chinese side. Because my Chinese-ness is so visible, people want me to have a kinship and cultural tie to my Chinese heritage. I once had POC tell me that I was too assimilated, and I realized what they actually meant, was not Chinese enough. I am culturally Jewish, and that has always proudly and strongly differentiated me from the majority in Australia. Just because I do not relate to my cultures in a way that is conducive to how I look, does not make me assimilated or culture-less.
Interestingly, despite my Jewish family having the closest proximity to whiteness, they taught me the foundations of everything I’ve ever known about racism. Their experience of racism and their refugee background was the foundation to our social justice beliefs, and without them, I would not understand my place in the world under the systems of white supremacy. My dad, while also anti-racist, is not nearly as radical or emotionally supportive for me in my experiences of racism. He copes differently, and that’s okay.
How did your parents communicate your history, identity, cultures to you? Do you wonder if they could have done things differently?
While there were always Chinese influences in my life like my dad, food, some holidays, and some cultural norms, for the most part I was informed about my Jewish identity, as that was the culture and family I was most surrounded by. I am so appreciative for the way my parents and family raised me. I think they did really well in honouring multiple parts of my identity, whilst still being true to the ways that they related to their cultural identity and history too. For instance, my dad migrated to Australia in part because he didn’t feel a strong affinity to his Chinese and Muslim background. I think it’s hard being a second generation migrant, and missing the parts of your culture that you feel you’ve lost from colonialism and diaspora, that your parents may not have wanted in their lives anyway. The one thing I would change however is language. I wish my dad had taught me Cantonese when I was young, in part as a skill and in part as a culture.
What does it mean to you, to balance many different worlds in your self?
I do not feel like I have to balance different worlds within myself. I am and have always been, just, myself. It has never been a balancing act within me. The balancing act has always been outside of me. Balancing people’s perceptions and my reality, balancing people’s boxes and my fluidity, balancing the political with my personal. I have never been in conflict internally, just in conflict with the external world.
What does it mean to you to work with community, for community? What challenges do you face?
Working with and for community is incredibly important to me. To me, community work is the ultimate anti-capitalist and anti-oppressive act. In a society where we are constantly told to be self-reliant, self-sufficient, and to self-care, I am constantly trying to reframe to community reliance, community self-sufficiency and community care. However, I think the definitions of community are super complex, and way more nuanced than POC, Asian, or queer, especially when you are multiracial, and part of multiple oppressed and marginalised groups. You are unlikely to find community that share all your experiences. The biggest challenge I have faced has actually been finding community. Last year I started working to find more POC community, something I’d always struggled with, and in recent times, been told that I needed. In a conversation with some people of colour about this endeavour, I was told that not only was it imperative that I have POC community because the white people in my life would never really understand me, never really be able to empathise and could never truly support me, but I was criticised that the reason I didn’t have POC community, was because I had too much internalised racism, because I dyed my hair and leaned too much into the white queer aesthetic, because I had too many white people around me which would scare POC off, and because I was too assimilated.
I cried for days following this conversation. Not only did I feel like a failed person of colour (what a bizarre concept anyway!) but I felt like my lack of POC community was entirely my fault, like the strategies I may have used to survive all these years were now my downfall, and that the few people I may be starting to form POC community with, had already condemned me. They had also in one afternoon, made me question my relationships, my friendships, and undermined my supportive family relationships with my “white” (Ashkenazi Jewish) family. It wasn’t until days later that I realised, not only did I not have to agree with what had been said (these were not the POC gods I saw them to be, just—people) but it demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of my identity as a mixed-race person of colour.
I am not assimilated. I am Jewish. I am Eastern European. And maybe at times, I am erased. I am proud to be Chinese, but my dad is the only Chinese person I was raised with. My whole upbringing has been with my Jewish family, and I have no idea what an “unassimilated” version of me would look like. I am a loud, interrupting, and demanding Jewish woman, that does not fit into your Chinese cultural stereotype- and that does not make me less Chinese, or more assimilated. It makes me, me. And not everyone in community will understand that. But more and more I’m learning that some of your community share your experiences, and some may share your ethnicities, but all of your community needs to honour you for who you are.
You speak about how your Jewish and Chinese heritages are seen in the world, and how even within our own communities we’re sometimes ‘not enough’. What would you like to see change in the ways we treat each other?
I would love to see us treat each other for the entirety of who we are. The people in community that I feel the most connected with are people who I feel really see me. Even if they don’t know me that well, the people who have taken the time to resist putting me in a box and instead really honour me for all the things that I am. When we put down the boxes, the assumptions and the first impressions we give each other the opportunity to be seen for everything that we are.
I think a lot about what it means to be mixed race. Not every mixed-race person has a white family, in fact I don’t consider either of my cultural or ethnic backgrounds to be white. My dad is Chinese, and my mum is Ashkenazi Jewish. So often mixed-race narratives focus on or anticipate multiracial to people to have one white parent, and one non-white parent, a narrative that plays into the same binary thinking that stifles multiracial identities in the first place, and that leaves individuals from multiple minority backgrounds with less representation. This omission is also reflected in academic literature around mixed race experiences. In reality, there are plenty of mixed-race people who experience a unique range of challenges and experiences being part of two or more, non-white backgrounds, who have no ancestral connection to whiteness.
You work with Democracy in Colour; an organisation empowering POC communities and building a movement in Australia against racism and xenophobia. What is most challenging about this work?
Doing social justice work that draws upon your life experiences and trauma is equal parts energising and exhausting. On the one hand, having the opportunity to work with community, with people who are passionate, who understand your experience, and who are working towards a shared goal is liberating, empowering and inspiring. It makes you feel important and like you have a right and responsibility to work towards change.
But it is also incredibly tiring. Most of this work is grassroots and receives very little funding; there is very little structure and support, and if you want something done you need to see it through from beginning to end; and it is intensely personal. When campaigning, if someone doesn’t agree with you; they don’t just not agree with your view- they disagree with your existence. When you are trying to convince someone, you are putting your life experiences up for debate. And when you lose, you really lose. You have so much of yourself invested in these issues that it’s hard to separate yourself from the campaigns, your personal is inherently political. I think the most challenging thing is pacing yourself. Knowing when you need a break and when you need time to breathe. Because it can be really heavy work.
How do you encourage People of Colour to take part in Australian politics; an alienating and xenophobic landscape to engage in?
If you can, do it with POC run organisation. So many activist organisations are created and run by white people, and whilst some of them are amazing and do great work, being a person of colour in those spaces can be taxing, and can be an additional load to the work you’re already attempting to do. Working with Democracy in Colour was a relief from that in so many ways, where I felt like I could just be there and do the work, rather than being the person to insert an anti-racist narrative or receiving micro-aggressions whilst already working tirelessly. Furthermore, to lend your time and resources to other POC organisations and be an ally to other people of colour. We are not a homogenous group, black people of colour, asylum seekers and refugees and our First Nations people, experience terrible systemic discrimination that those of us we all need to fight against.
What is empowering and nourishing for you as a multiracial person?
The thing I feel most nourishing and empowering as a multiracial person is when I get to partake in activities or experiences that align with multiple parts of my culture and identity at once. There’s something really special and exciting about that, as it happens so infrequently for me. But when it does, it fills you up. The same feeling as when you see yourself represented on TV. It’s like someone has carved out a tiny little space just for you. I think the more opportunities we have to create those spaces the better, and sometimes, we need to do it ourselves.