Disclaimer: the following is a no-holds-barred rant by a very angry person.
This would be amusing if it weren’t such a slap in the face.
If you missed the news earlier today, The Australian is having its ass handed to it by every Aussie with a modicum of rationality for publishing an overtly racist cartoon by overtly racist cartoonist Bill Leak.
How racist is overtly? Oh, you know, just the suggestion that Indigenous fathers don’t remember or care to know the names of their own children because they’re deadbeats and / or too tanked.
We can commend ourselves for being a multicultural nation until our hands tire from all the back-patting, but the fact that Leak still has a job – and at one of the country’s biggest broadsheets, no less – is an all-too-real reminder that racism is alive and thriving in our country.
Yes, The Australian is a right-leaning publication – but how many editors gave Leak’s cartoon the nod, before it was stamped ‘approved’ and sent to the printers? Two? Three? Four?
Instead of bowing its head in shame, The Australian has not only staunchly defended Leak and its publication of his cartoon but attempted to pass itself off as heroic – like it’s braving some sort of new frontier, for going where others wouldn’t dare in publishing his work. And by where others wouldn’t dare, we mean into the backwards mindset of this country’s worst bigots.
Maybe its editors can sleep at night because they shove Leak’s cartoons under the banner of ‘satire’; never mind that the subjects of his cartoons, and the community at large, don’t get the ‘joke’.
However they justify it to themselves, there’s not one iota of regret or remorse in this piss-poor statement from Paul Whittaker, editor-in-chief:
“The Australian is proud of its long-standing and detailed contribution to our national debate over the crucial issues in Indigenous affairs.The current controversy over juvenile detention in the Northern Territory has lifted these matters to the forefront of national attention again.
Too often, too many people skirt around the root causes and tough issues. But not everyone.
This week on Lateline Noel Pearson said: “Blackfellas have got to take charge and take responsibility for their own children… That part of the message really struggles to get traction.”In our pages Marcia Langton said: “Instead of talking about personal agency, these people talk about self-determination. It drowns out any message about personal agency.”Bill Leak’s confronting and insightful cartoons force people to examine the core issues in a way that sometimes reporting and analysis can fail to do.”
Let’s just tear it apart piece by piece, shall we?
1) “The Australian is proud of its long-standing and detailed contribution to our national debate over the crucial issues in Indigenous affairs.” Look, we’ll give The Australian that one: they certainly have made a long-standing and detailed contribution to the national debate over the big issues in Indigenous affairs over the years.
A particularly good demonstration goes as far back as 2006, when it gave column space to these two Bleak specials.
A reminder that The Australian, a national broadsheet, has been publishing Bill Leak’s racist scribbles since ’06: pic.twitter.com/XzY6xANZzv
— Vanessa Lawrence (@nesslawrence) August 3, 2016
2) To try and pass off the mistreatment of youths at the Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre in Darwin – the subject of a report by ABC‘s ‘Four Corners‘, which launched a royal commission with its footage of teenage inmates‘ horrendous abuse – as an ‘Indigenous issue’ sails so far past the point that it’s embarrassing.
It also perpetuates the kinds of racial stereotypes that Indigenous Australians have fought against for generations. The blame for Don Dale should rest solely on the guards abusing their power in unconscionable ways, not re-routed to the hackneyed ‘absent/unfit black fathers’ formula.
3) Noel Pearson is a respected Indigenous academic whose ancestry gives him the authority with which to speak on parenting styles in Indigenous communities. The same goes for Marcia Langton. Leak? No Indigenous Australians in his family tree, as far as we know.
Say what you like about “anecdotal evidence”, but the lived experiences of a community matter and he has no place in this one.
4) There’s nothing “insightful” about Leak’s race baiting: it’s blatant hate speech.
If only there was a way to “force people to examine the core issues” without proliferating that kind of ugliness, things might have a shot at progressing.
But with a ‘respected’ national broadsheet so willing to sell out discourse for the sake of absolute crap like this, what hope do we have?
Cartoon: The Australian / Bill Leak. (Although why bother with a credit, ‘cos who would want to claim this?).
