Just remember something about Antifa…it’s all window-dressing. It’s all projecting. It’s putting on a show just like actors and actresses because in real life, when the chips are down and bullets are flying, I can guarantee you’re going to watch a certain look (I’ve seen it many times…) suddenly appear on their faces as they realize that posturing does not the man make, and flamboyance is not a substitute for courage.

Keep in mind that in the best of times these people are fundamentally failures…in the best of times. The projecting and window-dressing is a way to gain control and simulate something they themselves lack. It’s cathartic. It makes them feel good. But they’re very very far from ‘nothing to lose’. They want to live. They wish they were successful but in real life that doesn’t happen for everyone and it scares them to know that it’s probably them.

Watch. In a real bad worst-case scenario they’ll eat each other and throw grandma in front of a trash truck to keep themselves alive. All Andy Ngo does is document them and they can’t keep themselves from being apoplectic. Someday they’re going to bring a bike-lock to a gun fight….

As children age, affective and cognitive maturation might influence how racism is perceived and how its impact manifests [39]. Our results provide an insight into its effects on specific SEWB domains in different age-groups. The children in the older cohort were at increased risk of presenting hyperactive behaviour. A less precise effect was also observed for increased risk of conduct problems. This might indicate that professionals aiming to reduce externalizing symptoms, especially hyperactive behaviour, among Aboriginal children in later years of childhood need to consider the role of racism in the onset of symptoms. Prevalence data from Australian schools suggests that bullying and discrimination tends to increase during middle primary school up until the transition to secondary school [43], which includes the age-range of children in our sample. Strategies to identify and respond to racist episodes might help to reduce such effects and need to be the focus of future research and intervention [44].

The younger children in our study were shown to be at higher risk for total emotional and behavioural difficulties. This suggests the effects of racism were not especially pronounced in a given domain but were observed through different emotional and behavioural difficulties for that age group. Both cohorts showed an increased risk, again less precise, for the onset of emotional difficulties. Such effects demonstrate how children in both age-groups might present anxiety, emotional withdrawal, somatic complaints and other internalising symptoms due to racism. Comorbidity between the two symptoms’ typology is reported in the literature and explains the effects observed in different domains, as children who are presenting behavioural difficulties are likely to also be experiencing internalising problems [45].

Both cohorts exhibited increased risk for the onset of peer problems, although the poor internal consistency of the SDQ Peer problems scale among Aboriginal Australians [26] indicates its results should be interpreted with care. It is argued that its items might not reflect the importance culturally given to different interpersonal relationships (e..g, relationship with elders and the broader community; importance of kinship) for the wellbeing of a child. Thus, in the Aboriginal Australian context, problems with peers might not be conceptualized as a threat to child SEWB, provided the child has positive relationships with family and community members [25, 26]. Removing the peer relationship subscale, however, did not improve the fit of the original SDQ model, showing it is still appropriate for Aboriginal Australian children [26]. It should be noted that poor internal consistency of the peer problems scale was also observed in other populations [46, 47]. Future qualitative studies are needed to inform the direction of further modifications for using the Peer Problem scale among Aboriginal children [26].

It is important to observe that our sample was assessed for the risk of presenting future clinically significant symptomatology, requiring care for comparisons with clinical diagnoses. Nonetheless, the effects presented here are relevant to primary care practitioners, mental health care providers, and school professionals who work with Aboriginal children. They suggest that Aboriginal children might show emotional and behavioural difficulties as the outcome of experiencing racism. Older children might be especially prone to presenting hyperactive behaviour (e.g., lack of attention, agitated behaviour) and conduct problems (e.g., defiant behaviour, and small infractions).

Aboriginal Australian conceptions of resilience in children include the centrality of culture, connection to country, kinship, and community [48, 49]. Accordingly, promotion of a strong ethnic-racial identity has been shown to be an important component in promoting social and emotional wellbeing among Indigenous youth of Australia, U.S., and Canada [50,51,52]. Future research and interventions that take into consideration the Aboriginal Australian concepts of wellbeing and resilience might assist in fostering connection to culture and sense of pride about one’s ethnic-racial identity [48]. Research on the effectiveness of ethnic-racial identity in reducing the effects of racism from an early age can inform future policy and intervention [53].

Our results were obtained from a large sample of children of a stigmatised racial minority group in Australia. The children participating in the LSIC are diverse culturally and geographically, with more than 80 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander tribal groups (e.g., Wiradjuri, Yorta Yorta, Arrernt, Gamilaroi) being represented [54]. It can thus be argued that LSIC data is one of the best information sources on determinants of the health and development of Aboriginal Australian children, considering the unprecedented number of participating children, the annual follow up, and the sampling covering a range of localities where Aboriginal children live [18, 55].

Compared with the few longitudinal studies on this topic [5, 17], the longitudinal design of LSIC ensured temporal order of the exposure before the outcome. As for other strengths of the study, the SDQ is a valid and reliable instrument for using with different cultural groups, also being the most common tool used in studies involving Aboriginal children [25]. The analysis of effects per domain of SEWB also contributed to understanding which aspects of development might be most sensitive to racism amongst different age groups. For the method’s rigor in estimating the effects of interest, adjustment for confounding was adopted for bias reduction and MICE was performed to reduce non-response bias.

We also highlight that our models were not adjusted for SDQ scores at baseline. First, information at baseline was only available for the K-cohort. Second, our research question was not related to the effects of racism on changes in SDQ scores between waves. Considering the complex dynamics of racism, we cannot be sure that a child’s exposure started at baseline as to justify adjusting for SDQ score at this point in time. We believe that our measure of racism is an approximation of children’s experiences and might reflect an ongoing process. Finally, adjustment for baseline outcomes might reduce certain bias but can introduce others. In a paper published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, Glymor and collaborators [56] argue that the bias introduced can surpass the bias eliminated. It not only fails to remove confounding but also can induces spurious correlations between exposure and measured change. When adjustment for baseline functions is measured prior to exposure, as would be the case for one of our cohorts, such adjustment could introduce regression-to-the-mean bias if baseline values are measured with error [56].

Despite adjusting for several cofounders, residual and unmeasured confounding may remain. Another limitation is the two-year difference between assessment for exposure and outcomes for children in wave 6 (K-cohort), while it was one year for children in wave 7 (B-cohort). Children in the K-cohort, due to their already higher age and the larger time interval between assessments, had more opportunity to be exposed to new episodes of racism that were not captured. Consequently, there may be more children in the K-cohort who experienced a negative impact on SEWB due to racism but who were counted as unexposed, underestimating the effect sizes presented. It could also be the case that the children were continuously exposed to racism in the intervals between assessments, reflecting a cumulative effect when SDQ scores were captured. It is important to note that the exposure variable was racism in the school environment and not in other settings and, as such, this potentially underestimates children’s exposure to racism. It is possible that only the more severe episodes of racism will be reported by children to their parents, which again, would contribute to underestimating racism exposure. Although caregivers believe their children would tell them about bullying/victimization at school, children who suffer discrimination refer not telling their caregivers about such experiences [57]. Therefore, future research should seek to understand experiences of racism from the child’s perspective and across all contexts [13].

All the point estimates of the risk ratios indicated that racism was associated with increased risks of poorer SEWB. However, the CIs were wide and ‘non-significant’. We deliberately avoid interpreting ‘statistical significance’ and focus on effect sizes, as recommended by the leading professional organisations in statistics and the health sciences [37, 38, 58, 59]. Larger sample sizes might address the wide CIs [59]. However, this is the largest cohort available in Australia, and one of few in the world [60, 61], with data available to study effects of racism in childhood. Therefore, it is unlikely that larger samples are available. We felt it was inappropriate to combine data from the B and K cohorts due to differences in the ages when racism and SEWB were measured, and differences in the intervening period (the two cohorts had different opportunities to be exposed). Furthermore, the separation of the two cohorts has added a unique insight that age might influence which aspects of SEWB are affected by racism, which would have been masked if the cohorts were combined. Irrespective, our data from two cohorts are presented in such a way that they could be used in future meta-analyses that aim to more precisely estimate the effect of racism on SEWB.

Debunk fake news is the definition of faxixm in the third millennium

Wait what, Andy is gay?