‘Block, Unfollow, Delete’: The Impacts of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement on Interracial Relationships in Australia

Abstract

Interracial relationships are situated historically within a complex racial discourse. At the height of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2020, interracial relationships were tested, broken and repaired, whilst others were unable to withstand the racial destabilisation summoned by the Movement. In this article, we theorise how Blac/k bodies are organised and structured within systems of racial hierachialisation and the impact of this within relational contexts. Probing concepts of silence, fragility and allyship, which underpin the white racial frame, we provide critical argumentations of how processes of racialisation impact personal relationships where variables of blackness and whiteness are produced as sites of racial contestation. We argue that the political significance of race enters interracial relationships and theoretically transforms them into racial battlegrounds.