Skip to main content

Racism on Breakfast TV?

I don't watch breakfast TV.  I have better things to do with my day.  On the odd occasions I've seen these shows, usually sitting in a waiting room somewhere, they strike me as cheap filler for the time of day when no-one is really watching.  People sitting in a studio talking about stuff, much of it inane; paid product promotion; news updates; stunts.  On the odd occasion a host says something controversial it is tempting to see it as a publicity stunt, a way of creating the illusion that the show has some substance.

So I was tempted to leave Kerri-Anne Kennerley's spat with Yumi Stynes alone.  I know little about Kennerley, and had never heard of Stynes before their argument hit the headlines.


I was also tempted to leave the issue to the various articulate Aboriginal people who have objected to the comments.  However, I remember that years ago when Pauline Hanson first achieved fame on the back of racist comments, a senior Aboriginal person said to a group of us that she didn't see why Aboriginal people should be left to deal with Pauline.  They have enough issues to deal with in their own communities.  She is one of us, so she is our responsibility.

So, Kennerley being one of my lot (at least, Irish to my English, which is close enough for this purpose) let me point out why I think her comments are racist.  Note, please, with care - I don't say Kennerley is racist.  I don't know her, I don't want to damn her whole person with a label.  But her comments on Studio 10 on January 28 were racist.

In saying this I am very aware of the glass house in which I sit.  I myself am not immune from racism.  Non-Aboriginal people like me shouldn't use her comments as way of making ourselves look rosy.  Instead we should use them as a way of examining ourselves and our own attitudes.

First here is the relevant part of the dialogue.  It was preceded by some discussion on the five-person panel about the Invasion Day protests and the counter-protestors who were confronted for waving an Australian flag.

KAK: "OK, the 5000 people who went through the streets making their points known, saying how inappropriate the day is. Has any single one of those people been out to the Outback, where children, babies, five-year-olds are being raped? Their mothers are being raped, their sisters are being raped. They get no education. What have you done? Zippo!" 

YS: “That is not even faintly true Kerri-Anne and you’re sounding quite racist now.”

KAK: “I’m offended by that, Yumi, SERIOUSLY offended.  These people are desperate for help. Aboriginal elder women are desperate for help, and they’re not getting it. Where are these people (other than) one day of the year? You’d be better off doing something positive..."

At this point Sarah Harris, the hostess of the show, intervenes to calm the waters and move on.

So here are five reasons why I think Stynes is right.

1. Kennerley assumes the right to set the agenda.
The Invasion Day rallies in each city are organised by Aboriginal people.  Non-Aboriginal people attend at their invitation and play a supporting role.  The speakers at the Meanjin/Brisbane rally which I attended included a number of senior Aboriginal men and women as well as younger people, and speakers came from various parts of Queensland, Northern NSW and the Northern Territory including Aboriginal communities.  They have said that this issue is important to them.  Why does Kennerley, a non-Indigenous person, get to tell them what should be important to them?  This is racism.

2. She trivialises their concerns.
I'm not sure if she attended any of the rallies but her comments sound like she didn't.  She has assumed, based on some superficial media reports, that they are protesting about the date.  This issue is only one among many things discussed at these rallies.  They are protesting about the invasion, and the as yet un-righted wrongs that flow from it.  Speakers in Meanjin were lamenting the rate of suicide among their young people, the rate of incarceration, their treatment at the hands of the police, the destruction of their country by mining companies.  To acknowledge that celebrating this date is problematic is to acknowledge that the invasion is problematic.  It is racist to trivialise these concerns.

3. She assumes the issues are unconnected.
Kennerley presents the protestors with a false choice - protest Invasion Day, or address child abuse and domestic violence.  Why not do both?  The levels of abuse in Aboriginal communities are directly connected with the history of invasion and dispossession.  Stolen land, stolen wages, stolen children, a long history of human rights abuses - all of these are the background to the levels of abuse, as they are the background to other issues - poverty, homelessness, incarceration, youth suicide.  Aboriginal families and children have been repeatedly traumatised, over a number of generations.  Abused people abuse others.  This doesn't excuse the abuse, but it suggests that to combat it we need to address these historical wrongs.

By decoupling these issues, Kennerley blames Aboriginal people for their own plight.  She doesn't do it explicitly, she may not even be aware that this is the implication of what she says.  However, by denying the link between invasion and abuse she leads us towards the conclusion that Aboriginal people have done this to themselves.  It is all their fault.  This is racism.

4. She perpetuates a racial stereotype.
Kennerley could be seen as suggesting that all Aboriginal people are abusers, but I think we could give her the benefit of the doubt here.  Her comment also mentions Aboriginal women who are fighting the abuse.  The stereotype she perpetuates is the notion that 'real' Aboriginal people are those who live in remote communities.  In fact, about 20% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in remote areas - some on Aboriginal communities and others in remote towns.  The other 80% live in urban and regional areas.  Urban and regional Aboriginal people are not somehow less Aboriginal than people living in remote areas.  Their issues are just as important, their voices just as worth listening to.  These are the primary organisers of the Invasion Day rallies, although the speakers, as I say, came from all over including some from remote areas.  Kennerley is trying to silence the voices of the majority of Aboriginal people.  This is racism.

5. She finds the suggestion of racism deeply offensive.
Kennerley's reaction to Stynes' suggestion that she was 'sounding quite racist' was very strong.  She saw it as a grave insult.  It was as if this is the first time anyone had suggested this about her.  This tells us that she has not thought very deeply about her attitudes to race.

Anyone who works cross-culturally has to quickly learn to deal with their own racism.  Humans, it seems, are hard-wired for prejudice.  I remember Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, discussing the test in which people are presented with two faces, one black and one white, and lists of positive and negative characteristics.  The task is to place the positive and negative characteristics under one or other of the faces.  Inevitably subjects are able to put the positive characteristics under the white face and the negative under the black one much more quickly than the reverse.  Gladwell, whose mother is African-American, reports trying the test repeatedly and being consistently slower to assign positive qualities to a black face than to a white one.

Aboriginal activists know this problem well.  Before last week's Meanjin Invasion Day rally the organisers posted a very blunt notice to non-Aboriginal participants, asking them to respect Aboriginal voices and not talk over them, not try to take over the platform, and not presume the right to join in traditional dances or songs.  Their long experience told them this warning was required, that even their committed non-Aboriginal supporters need to be reminded to avoid racism.

It would be nice if we were not racist but the reality is that racism is deeply ingrained.  We learn it throughout our lives, from our parents, our friends, the media, the general attitudes of society.  No-one explicitly teaches us to be racist, it is something we absorb without even knowing it.  Our task is to become self-aware enough to recognise it in ourselves, and to be humble enough to accept others pointing it out to us.  As Barbara Wilson says, it's not like being told you have syphilis, it's like being told you have snot coming out of your nose.  You say thankyou, wipe the snot and move on.  Next time it happens, you do the same.  This is a lifetime process.  The person who points it out is helping you, not insulting you.

Kennerley's reaction suggests she has yet to begin this journey.  Perhaps Stynes is not the best person to help her begin it, and the glare of national TV is not the best place to do it.  But I hope, given the breadth of her platform, that she is able to begin it sooner rather than later.  Her passion for the wellbeing of Aboriginal women and children, shorn of its racist baggage, has the potential to do good.

As for the rest of us, we should be careful not to be to self-righteous about this.  We are all capable of the same.  But we are also capable of better.  Let's keep trying to be better.

Comments