The Australian Financial Review has apologised for their decision to publish Advance Australia's cartoon against the Voice featuring the head of Westfarmers Michael Chaney, his daughter Kate Chaney MP, and Thomas Mayo.

Condemned by Kate Chaney MP who decried 'the No campaign stooping to personal and racist attacks when Australians are more interested in learning the facts about the Voice and how it can contribute to Closing the Gap.'

NSW state Liberal MP Matt Kean also denounced the ad for using a "racist trope of Thomas Mayo" and offering a throwback to the "Jim Crow era of the Deep South" of American politics. Notwithstanding the apology, the questions remain - how the AFR and its owners Nine decided it was acceptable to publicly promote such offensive racism in their publication?

Jim Crow may not be readily understood in Australia, a country that has largely failed to recognise its own civil rights history. Jim Crow laws through majority of US states, made legal the widespread racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans from the 1890s and for nearly three quarters of a century.

These laws were challenged by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples) and leaders such as Martin Luther King and Rosa Parkes of Alabama whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus set in train a national protest and powerful civil rights movement that refused to give up.

This appalling cartoon clearly drew from Jim Crow propaganda that justified hate against Black people, and ideology that enabled slavery over generations and widespread violence and lynchings of innocent Black men as well as rape of Black women. How could a major Australian news publication in this day consider it appropriate to publish such hate towards Indigenous peoples, the majority of whom support the vote for Yes and constitutional recognition?

The incident highlights race hatred in Australia, and how low the No campaign will go to oppose Voice, developed following conservatives' rejection of the constitutional prohibition of race discrimination urged by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in their 2000 final report. They want only symbolic recognition of Indigenous peoples – preambular with little else, a position resoundingly rejected by Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples.

Aboriginal people know that representation and advocacy are urgently needed, in the face of prevalent systemic and structural discrimination that continues to blight the lives of so many peoples.

And what to make of those individual Aboriginal people whose faces, and identities, are used in Advance Australia newspaper advertisements claiming, 'It's Ok To Vote No'? Divide and conquer is a well-known colonial tactic useful for maintaining Indigenous oppression, the Native police or 'Black Trackers' in WA a notorious example of this.

In 1995 the Race Discrimination Act (Cth) 1975 was amended to prohibit race vilification, although wide exemptions were given to publications in the 'public interest'. Very few cases under section 18C and involving Aboriginal people have ever succeeded. My own case against a notorious Liberal senator took five years to resolve and was eventually upheld in 2002.

During this same time Pauline Hanson and One Nation were frequently involved in public vilification of Aboriginal people, even making such racist claims as Aboriginal mothers committed cannibalism against their babies!

Fast forward more than 25 years and Hanson is now challenging the validity of 18C in response to a complaint brought against her by Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi. Surprisingly leading constitutional lawyer Brett Walker QC supports Hanson claiming this law is constitutionally invalid, although the prohibition of race vilification (as well as race hate crimes) is required under the Convention on the Elimination of Race Discrimination: a binding international treaty.

Hanson and Walker QC clearly understand the possible power of the Australian Constitution, which was developed during the White Australia policy era and lacks appropriate human rights protections to this day.

A First Nations Voice, if it existed today, could speak about race hate and vilification, well and truly alive and apparent in what Minister Linda Burney condemns as divisive 'Trump style' politics played out against First Nations people. The Voice could speak about the prohibition of racial vilification and why it is necessary, the need to strengthen and improve anti-discrimination laws and the serious harmful impacts of racism today, including loss of lives of our people.

In the lead up to the referendum we know many are still undecided, influenced by the noise, the disinformation and divisiveness. To them my advice is simple. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to meaningfully reform the Constitution, include our peoples and our right to have a say on laws and policies and their impact. To work towards a better future. It's that simple, say Yes.

Our country deserves better than misinformation and hate. We are all in this together.

Dr Hannah McGlade is a Kurin Minang human rights expert and member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.