Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / UNLOCKED PREMIUM: Racism & Sam Kerr
Transcript
- 0:00Get our humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, and what does it mean
- 0:07to be racist? Can a person of color ever be racist towards a white person? Can a person
- 0:13of color be racist towards another person of color, or is racism just prejudice plus power
- 0:20as the new definition insists? This is all coming to a fore in Australia at the moment.
- 0:25For the past few weeks, amid a fewer or over one of our greatest athletes, in some respects
- 0:30everything that can be said has been said about this incident. And in other respects,
- 0:37the deepest questions that it raises about bigotry and tolerance and identity haven't
- 0:44really been touched in an authentic way as far as I can tell. So I feel like I ought
- 0:52to touch them. My feet have just landed in Australia after a big overseas trip. So I
- 0:58was stunned by this news and disappointed at the way that it's been treated in the media
- 1:03and the conformism, I suppose, the ease with which people's opinions about it have formed
- 1:09along neat ideological lines. If you don't know what happened, if you're not Australian,
- 1:15basically the allegation, which has not yet been proven in court, the allegation is that
- 1:2014 months ago in January of 2023, Australia's greatest sports star, Samantha Kerr, the captain
- 1:27of the Australian women's soccer team and the star of its performance in the women's soccer
- 1:33world cup last year, which was hosted in Australia, spent a night in jail in southwest London
- 1:39after being charged with the racial harassment of a police officer. Now Sam Kerr is Australian,
- 1:48but she has some Indian heritage on her father's side. She would probably pass for white. I
- 1:54didn't know. She was not white until I, until she rose to fully national prominence and
- 1:59became an icon. Nonetheless, the cop was definitely white. And after an altercation in a taxi
- 2:06in the wee hours of the morning, she, the allegation is that she volunteered in a taxi
- 2:10and I was arguing about the taxi fare, the police were called. And she called one of the police
- 2:14officers, quote, a stupid white bastard according to the police's allegation. Now her legal team
- 2:21say she didn't say people were stupid white bastards. She said stupid white cop. Nonetheless,
- 2:26the relevant point is that the British authorities charged her not only with harassing a police
- 2:32officer, but with the additionally critical charge of being racially aggravated, racial harassment,
- 2:41because she said a stupid white bastard or a stupid white cop allegedly. The question has
- 2:48arisen in Australia. Is that a bad thing to say? Is it true to say that it's racist if a person
- 2:57of color, partly of color? I suppose if you have one drop now, you're considered being of color,
- 3:04punches up towards an officer of the law. And the New South Wales Premier, who's like the governor
- 3:10of the most populous state in Australia, was asked about this and he gave a simple one word
- 3:14answer as to whether or not it's racist. No, he said no. What she did was not racist.
- 3:19The Premier of Western Australia, which is where she is from, was also asked about it. He said
- 3:24not racist, full support for Sam Kerr. What's interesting, and perhaps the most telling about
- 3:30face, came from one of Australia's greatest ever living football players, soccer players,
- 3:36Craig Foster, who is now a prominent anti-racism campaigner. He played 29 games for Australia's
- 3:45national soccer team, the Socorruz. Of course, they called the Socorruz. Regidage mate, crack out
- 3:52the didgeridoo and let's play some Socorru. He was appointed a very prestigious member of the
- 3:57order of Australia for his service to multiculturalism and human rights and refugee support
- 4:02organizations and to football. So he's involved in the anti-racism space. And yet he was not
- 4:08sufficiently aware of the new dogmas about racism. And so when the news broke, he was interviewed
- 4:18on television about it and he said this. If I was the chair of football Australia, this is a
- 4:24live issue right now. We're talking about racism, which is really serious. Players have
- 4:29repeatedly been stood down and you have to answer that question right now. So that set a cat
- 4:37among the pigeons, a white man saying that it's racist for a quote unquote woman of color
- 4:45to allegedly call a white person a stupid white something or other. In fact, he blended even
- 4:53further according to the, I suppose the orthodoxies and the dogmas of modern social justice,
- 4:59by urging football's governing bodies, soccer's governing body in Australia, football Australia,
- 5:04to potentially strip Sam Kerr of her captaincy. She's the captain of the women's soccer team
- 5:10if the charges are proven in order to make a strong stand against racism.
- 5:16Craig has since had a change of heart. He posted an about face on Twitter, which I don't
- 5:22want to get stuck into Craig. This is not an attack on him. It is just evidence of where we're at
- 5:29in the culture wars that you can come out with what seems like a fairly common sense
- 5:34at the point of view and be forced in a short period of time to essentially write a
- 5:41screed, a big about face, pledging your allegiance to the orthodoxy that you transgressed.
- 5:47I should emphasize also, I think it's ridiculous that Sam Kerr would be charged by a cop.
- 5:53I think there are all kinds of conversations we should be having about police officers and their
- 5:59power and perhaps arguably their thin skin in not tolerating the rough and tumble of a fairly
- 6:05rough and tumble job. So my support is with Sam Kerr either way. I think it's ridiculous that
- 6:12she's found herself in this situation, but that's because it's petty, not because it wasn't
- 6:18necessarily racist. So let's take a look at Craig Foster's about face, which he posted on Twitter.
- 6:25I won't read the whole thing because it's two entire pages long, but he says the need for
- 6:30national racism education is critical. The evident gaps in much of our knowledge when approaching
- 6:37the same Kerr case alone should be the spur we need to make it happen. I fully support a
- 6:44national with a capital N, anti-racism with a capital A, capital R, framework, capital F for this
- 6:51reason. I fully support a national anti-racism framework for this reason. Already there's a little
- 6:59alarm bell going off in my head. Anytime someone says something and then has to retract it by
- 7:04pledging their allegiance to a, quote, capital national anti-racism framework. I mean, sounds a
- 7:10sounds a little bit sort of Stalinist doesn't it? Anyway, let's go on. Craig then goes on to muse
- 7:17about what racism is and says could a person of color even be guilty of racism? Are there double
- 7:25standards? He asks. And he answers himself saying all important questions like many, I'm mistakenly
- 7:34thought that comments that referenced any color and were discriminatory, demeaning or hostile,
- 7:41were a form of racism. I apologize to Sam for that mistake. He apologizes to Sam for the mistake
- 7:50of thinking that comments that reference any color and are discriminatory are a form of racism.
- 7:57He goes on to say racism can only be, and by the way, I'm cutting out bits here,
- 8:01but I'm not sort of, I'm not changing the meaning of what he's saying, but it's just for time.
- 8:06I'm jumping a couple of paragraphs ahead. Racism can only be perpetrated against a marginalized
- 8:12person or group. And then he cites the definition of racism from the diversity council of Australia.
- 8:19Again, always a little bit fishy to me when someone says something from the heart that it's,
- 8:26you know, it's wrong and that they regard those comments as having been racist. And then
- 8:30immediately turn around and say, actually, there's an official dogma that's been handed down to me.
- 8:35I mean, it's a bit like Russian state television of them, isn't it? Actually, I've just been informed
- 8:39that the diversity council of Australia has a different definition from what my common sense
- 8:44said. Therefore, allow me to recite the dictionary definition rather not the dictionary definition.
- 8:50Actually, the dictionary definition will be closer to what Craig Foster originally said,
- 8:53but the diversity council of Australia's definition, which says racism is when an individual
- 9:00organization with race-based societal power discriminates, excludes or disadvantages, a
- 9:06racially-based person because of their race color, the nationality, ethnicity, religion, or immigrant status.
- 9:12Race-based societal power has to be involved.
- 9:17So one of Australia's most successful athletes does not have that particular type of power
- 9:25because although she grew up in Western Australia, her father has some Indian heritage,
- 9:32therefore she lacks race-based societal power. She's a multi-millionaire, she's one of the most
- 9:37successful Australians in the world, but she lacks power because it's not race-based.
- 9:43Craig Foster goes on to say, definitions of racism were not designed to protect me as a white
- 9:49Anglo-Australian male, nor a white police officer who has even greater legal and racial power.
- 9:58Setting aside for the moment, whether or not it's true, the police officer has greater racial
- 10:03power than a successful white Australian former athlete who has a middle of the order of Australia.
- 10:12You know, the working-class Bobby keeps head up against him. Don't know why that person
- 10:16has greater racial power, nonetheless. It's true to say. I mean, the weird thing is,
- 10:23definitions of racism absolutely were designed to protect white people against people of color
- 10:31right up until the 1960s. You know, it's not a new thing that we have had unfair racial structures
- 10:39and an anti-egalitarian attitude towards race and minority groups. Up until the civil rights
- 10:46movement, you know, the finger of the state was very forcefully on the scales of injustice,
- 10:53rigging everything in favor of white people and using definitions of race and identity and
- 10:59immigration. So I mean, they haven't said, Australia had an official white Australia policy
- 11:04for decades up until the middle of the 20th century. Well, you know, middle is generous. I think it
- 11:10was the late, I think it was 1969 that we've gotten rid of. So of course, there has been racial
- 11:17definitions that have suited white people. What happened was that between the 1960s and the 2000s,
- 11:24the sort of first decade of the 2000s, we decided that the way to get rid of racism was to get rid
- 11:29of racism and effectively to stop considering race. We had a Martin Luther King, Jr. Barack Obama
- 11:36attitude towards race. Let's let's try to turn down all of the dials on considerations of race
- 11:42and treat everybody equally. It's only in the past 10 years that this new diversity council of
- 11:48Australia definition of racism has insisted that it's only racism if you have prejudice plus power,
- 11:54it's only racism if the person who is committing the offense has race-based societal power.
- 12:02So God bless Craig Foster and everybody who has been sort of forced to step in line and lock
- 12:07step with this new orthodoxy in the wake of the Sam Kerchage and allegations. But it's not true
- 12:14to say that definitions of racism were not designed to protect white Anglo-Australian males.
- 12:21They were right up until three seconds ago in cultural time at which point we did away with that
- 12:25and now it's the social justice left that's trying to bring them back in the opposite direction.
- 12:30Nonetheless, Craig goes on to say, that is because, in other words, that racism was not designed
- 12:37to protect him. That is because I cannot experience racism in Australia. I cannot experience racism
- 12:46in Australia. I mean, is this some kind of 1984 big brother or well-earned word play? We're
- 12:55basically just redefining the word, right? We're just taking the word racism, animus towards race,
- 13:01and we're saying it no longer means what the common sense meaning is, therefore,
- 13:07Craig Foster or white male cannot experience this new thing that we're now giving the same name
- 13:12as a thing that we all understood in the past. I cannot experience racism in Australia. Why?
- 13:18Because we just change the definition of racism. All right, well, that's convenient, isn't it?
- 13:22Let's just change it to something that a white man can't experience.
- 13:26I'm not at all surprised, writes Craig finally, at having made a mistake. And I'm very pleased
- 13:32to be able to learn. After all, he writes, I often tell people, these conversations are challenging.
- 13:38Just approach it in good faith. Learn correct mistakes and grow.
- 13:45A beautiful sentiment. Learn correct mistakes and grow. I agree. Can we also add another word
- 13:55like think? Can we also add another word like reason? Could we say learn correct mistakes,
- 14:03grow, think, reason, debate? Are you? Hashtag out perhaps? Have uncomfortable conversations.
- 14:14You have to learn correct mistakes and grow. According to the dogma,
- 14:20according to the orthodoxy, according to the diversity council of Australia's definition.
- 14:24If you don't, the mobs are going to bloody come for you. Again, I'm not having a go at Craig Foster,
- 14:30who wants to be the target of the social justice mob coming for you because you said what you
- 14:36thought was the right thing in calling out racism. Then they said, no, no, no, that's not racism.
- 14:42It's not racism when we do it. And he goes, oh, shit, I don't know why, I want to get cancelled.
- 14:48And look, maybe he has really learned, maybe this is a genuine change of heart. Maybe all of the
- 14:52people who thought that they had a definition of racism that no longer applies and that feel like
- 14:58they're being threatened by exclusion from polite society and from, I suppose, the social justice
- 15:06club of well-meaning university educated mostly white elites. Maybe they really have had a change
- 15:12of heart and they thought this through carefully and it makes sense to them. Maybe also some of them
- 15:19are just afraid, some of them are just cowardly and some of them are not, I suppose, keen enough,
- 15:25or maybe as keen as I am, and actually wrestling with big ideas to add to their learning and
- 15:30their correcting of mistakes and their growth, the possibility of thinking, arguing, debating,
- 15:37and reasoning. So that about face I just thought was instructive because it reads like someone
- 15:44has just come out of a malice reeducation camp, repenting for thought crimes of the past.
- 15:50But it's not just crate foster, it's so many people around Australia.
- 15:56This is the sentiment of experts. Racism can only be perpetrated against a marginalized person
- 16:02or group. So is the powerlessness of the recipient relevant or the power of the perpetrator
- 16:13more relevant. According to the Diversity Council, the relevant thing is that a person with
- 16:20race-based societal power is saying the harassing thing, the demeaning thing, the prejudiced thing.
- 16:30And yet there's another case going on in Australia at the moment in which you have two rugby league
- 16:38players, one of them some on Australian, Spencer Laneu. He has received an eight-week ban for calling
- 16:45a rival player who's an indigenous bloke, a monkey. This was at the season opener they were
- 16:52playing in Las Vegas and apparently there's a long history of racially coded abuse on the field
- 16:57in rugby league, especially towards First Nations Australians. It's appalling. The some on Australian
- 17:04rugby league player says he didn't realise that calling him a monkey was racial in nature and he has
- 17:11apologised, nonetheless he's been given this eight-week ban. But hang on a second, I thought that
- 17:17the Diversity Council of Australia, whose mandates everybody now seems terrified to parrot,
- 17:26says that you need to have race-based societal power in order for it to be racism.
- 17:32How does the some on bloke? How does the some on footy player have greater societal power
- 17:38than an indigenous bloke? Like what if the indigenous player had found out just before they
- 17:43went on the field that actually wasn't indigenous he was of Indian descent like Sam Curries? Well
- 17:50Indians do a lot better. They're a lot better off in Australia than indigenous Australians do.
- 17:56In fact they earn more than white Australians do. Would that then mean that it's not racist because
- 18:02he's in a better position like I don't understand. You've got two people of colour who are
- 18:10slinging each other, harassing each other in you know probably a good-natured way from at least
- 18:15the harassers perspective doesn't excuse it but nonetheless it's part of the rough and tumble.
- 18:21And it abays a different logic, different laws of gravity so to speak culturally than the alleged
- 18:29Sam Curr incident does. So imagine for example like I'm just trying to wrestle with what power means
- 18:39in all this right. Imagine you've got a white homeless woman crossing the road and being cut off
- 18:47by a BMW that's driven by a wealthy Pakistani Australian cardiac surgeon on his way to a round
- 18:54of golf and the homeless white woman calls him you know I have some racial slur. Or imagine
- 19:04a Chinese Australian corporate lawyer who grew up in the Hong Kong private school system being
- 19:10ripped off by a Greek Australian mechanic about whether it was overcharged for repairs to his
- 19:16Mercedes. Are we sure that we're talking about only race-based power like is that the only salient
- 19:24variable here? The white homeless woman is capable of racism towards the rich Pakistani Australian
- 19:32cardiac surgeon on his way to a round of golf in his BMW because she's white and he's a person
- 19:39of colour. I mean that's what the Diversity Council of Australia's definition says. racism is when
- 19:42an individual organisation with race-based societal power. It doesn't matter in the Sam Curr incident
- 19:50that she's a multi-millionaire successful athlete and the cop is essentially a working class like
- 19:55take cop out of the equation because I think it muddies things here as I said I'm really uncomfortable
- 19:59with the police using the power of the state and their power has privileged officers of the state
- 20:04to pursue petty vendettas but imagine that the cop was instead any other lower middle class government
- 20:11employee who's a white man and is faced with abuse, racial abuse from a wealthy woman of colour.
- 20:21Are we certain that the power cleaves only according to race? I thought the point of intersectionality,
- 20:28original intersectionality was that there were lots and lots of different ways in which power,
- 20:33prejudice and privilege all coincide so that if you're a homeless person and you're a lesbian and
- 20:39you're a trans person then all of those things kind of coalesce into a mosaic a network of
- 20:47of disadvantage that is greater than the sum of the parts. Isn't the real point here the sort of
- 20:53elephant in the room class and status? Everything is being reduced down to this one single variable
- 21:01of race without consideration of other variables that are surely relevant. I mean the reason
- 21:08why it's being reduced in this case is because England has laws on the books which actually make
- 21:12an additional crime if harassment was racially motivated but what if the harassment was class
- 21:19motivated or was about denigrating a poor person and kicking down over and over and over again and
- 21:25making their lives more miserable is that kosher? Do you get off scot free for that? It strikes me
- 21:31that there are only a few ways of coming down here either you say race is the salient factor
- 21:40and calling a cop a white bastard is as bad as calling as a cop calling a young aboriginal
- 21:47kid a black bastard and that seems just silly right? I mean if you were to take a purely racially
- 21:52purest point of view and do away with the diversity council definition do away with all these
- 21:57definitions and come back to look any racially tinged comment is equally bad that can't be right
- 22:03you know you have to have a power imbalance or privilege of some kind it's obvious that a cop
- 22:08calling a poor indigenous kid a black bastard is worse than a cop being called a white bastard
- 22:15but the alternative would be to say that power is actually the salient factor and people who have
- 22:22lots of ways of achieving their goals they might have a powerful job title like cop or they might
- 22:26have lots of know how like a lawyer or they might have lots of connections like a politician or
- 22:31they might just have lots of money like a neurosurgeon or a cardiac surgeon you might say that
- 22:36their fair game and they ought to shut up a bit when it comes to denigrating other people but
- 22:42cop a bit of denigration themselves that doesn't seem crazy to me as a social norm it doesn't
- 22:48seem crazy to me that say to say that morally people who have all the chips should have to tolerate
- 22:53a little bit more shit than people who have no chips who have no one in their corner who have no
- 22:59cards to play but as a criminal matter surely it's impossible to legislate that which is why
- 23:05the state should probably just keep out of such things and the UK probably shouldn't have laws on
- 23:09the books like the one that Sam Ker has been charged with because how can the law be nuanced
- 23:15enough to possibly capture all of the multifarious ways in which bigotry can express itself and
- 23:20prejudice and power can express itself instead what we've got is this weird hybrid that
- 23:27you know the new social justice elite have come up with and Craig Foster has been forced to
- 23:30parrot and the diversity council of Australia is insisting that everyone go along with otherwise
- 23:36they're dinosaurs this prejudice plus power model it seems like like it makes a certain amount
- 23:46of intuitive sense but the problem is that it defines power exclusively along racial lines
- 23:52it defines power as whiteness I mean that definition is right there racism is when an individual
- 23:57or organization with race based societal power now I'm not denying that white privilege has existed
- 24:04if your white then you may have had lots of problems but one of those many problems was not that
- 24:09you were persistently judged by your race although you can argue that Greeks and Jews were whites
- 24:16who were always a bit suspect to traditional Anglo society and even you know communities like
- 24:20the Polish in the UK or Italians in America were as well um so historically yes there's been
- 24:28white privilege today it's a slightly harder case to make I mean I'm on very sensitive territory
- 24:36here aren't I treading on all the egg shells and you know potentially triggering all the
- 24:40tripwires a white man saying that racism is not the most fundamental motivating injustice in society
- 24:47right now call me old-fashioned I would say the class and status and economic injustice are more
- 24:52salient right now um but let's I mean let's just think about this clearly right what what are the
- 24:57racial differences in modern society in 2024 there are more you know look Indian Australians earn
- 25:07more than whites in Australia in the UK South Asians hold more wealth than whites do Asians earn
- 25:15more than whites do in America you know non whites do brilliantly in lucrative fields like medicine
- 25:23and the diversity targets that most corporations have to hire more minorities are so intense that
- 25:32it is inconceivable these days that a woman of color with identical skills and experience to a
- 25:38white man does not have a slight advantage I mean come on of course they do a friend of mine was
- 25:46speaking with a very very experienced and talented high flying Australian woman of South Asian
- 25:54extraction of Pakistani Australian and she was talking about leaving her job and she said you
- 25:59know well if I left I have to find another job and then she said I mean of course I'd get hired
- 26:03look at me and my friend said well I mean you'd also get hired because you're really good at what
- 26:10you do and she laughed and said yeah yeah of course that as well and she was a bit embarrassed
- 26:15but that's where we're at right a highly qualified highly experienced good worker who's a woman
- 26:24a Pakistani Australian woman knows we all know that she has a slight edge at the moment given
- 26:31diversity dogmas in corporations then a white man now I'm not crying foul about this you know
- 26:38that is a legitimate way to redress cultural and racial injustice if we want to go down
- 26:45that route but the idea that the main thing that creates inequality and justice and discrimination
- 26:52in society at the moment is racism as conceived exclusively of white people targeting people of color
- 27:01is just out of date it is just bonkers why is race the sole arbiter of a person's supposed power
- 27:10in the prejudice plus power matrix I mean coming back to those two footy players those two rugby
- 27:17league players right one of whom was suspended for calling the up for you know racial slurs
- 27:22against the indigenous one there was no racial imbalance there there was no prejudice plus power
- 27:29but we rightly understand that there should be a consequence there should be I mean if instead of
- 27:36both being football players what if the target of the slur the indigenous bloke
- 27:42was the CEO of a mining company or a corporate tax accountant would the slur be equally wrong
- 27:49I'm not sure I don't think so I think if it was you know Elon Musk or I don't know the
- 27:56prime minister of the UK or something who was receiving a racial slur then that is less bad
- 28:02than if you're punching down to someone who has less power even if the racial outlook is exactly
- 28:07the same I mean the so what's the what's the plausible or most generous response that you might get
- 28:14from an identitarian social justice activist here it might be something like it would still be
- 28:20just as wrong because the CEO or the accountant who of color still belongs to a community that has been
- 28:26historically disadvantaged they don't enjoy white privilege they might enjoy other privileges
- 28:30but they don't enjoy white privilege which opens up a lot of other questions like why do they get
- 28:38to be the beneficiaries of wrongs that were done to people in the past who they didn't even know
- 28:44or why is white privilege the privilege to trump all other privileges or isn't it a bit
- 28:53condescending to say to a successful non-white person that they're still fundamentally
- 28:58downtrodden because of the color of their skin and most controversially perhaps it raises the
- 29:05question if racism by whites is the supreme explanation for the power imbalances that we see
- 29:14in society whether you're defining that as personal animus towards people of another race or
- 29:19just structural racism that hold back people of color if it is the salient factor the explanation
- 29:26for differences in outcomes between racial groups then why do some non-white races thrive
- 29:34and others can't get ahead like why do Koreans do well everywhere why are Nigerian Americans
- 29:42doing so well if anti-black racism is the sole explanation for black dysfunction in America I mean
- 29:49take race out of it all together and you get a clearer picture you know it may just be muddying
- 29:53the waters so to speak why do Dutch and Armenian migrants make good money but Irish and Brazilian
- 30:02migrants don't make much money surely we're not just talking about race here we're talking about
- 30:07some combination of self-selection in terms of who comes to countries and how their communities
- 30:13are structured well you know there are kind of cultural rhythms like the norms that exist in
- 30:19those cultures norms around education around financial restraint around sobriety and work ethic
- 30:26and family or whatever it might be for social justice dogmatists this all just doesn't compute
- 30:33every unequal outcome is evidence of prejudice you know this is now a massive industry in the
- 30:38United States Ibrahim X candy is a best seller he even has a book called anti-racist baby
- 30:45that social justice socially justice minded you know Americans are buying to teach their babies
- 30:51about how important it is to understand that we're all divided inexorably into racial groups and
- 30:57that the history of the world is a history of those racial groups squabbling and fighting over
- 31:02and ever shrinking pie um you've got these you know these sort of dinners where white women pay
- 31:10thousands of dollars to learn how they're racist so that people can come and talk to them
- 31:16over dinner about racial injustice you've got robin d'Angelo running corporate seminars about
- 31:24how racism underpins you know white racism against people of color underpins essentially all
- 31:31communal and cultural interactions in a workplace there's big money in this and big vested interests
- 31:37in this they don't want to be told that racism is not prejudice plus power yet the crazy thing is
- 31:45they fundamentally make that term effectively total logical because the social justice advocates
- 31:53who are pushing racism is prejudice plus power define both prejudice and power as being
- 32:01determined by your race prejudice is all about race power is all about race so when you say racism
- 32:08is prejudice plus power you're really just saying racism is racism plus racism i thank you for that
- 32:12enlightening point i mean they rigged the deck they sort of redefine everything they redefine racism
- 32:18to mean only something that someone with race-based societal power can do they redefine privilege
- 32:24to mean that you're in a race that is privileged they redefine power to mean that you have racial
- 32:30power therefore it's racism racism racism racism racism is racism is racism is racism is racism is racism
- 32:36now you can apply this same model to any other identity group sexuality gender uh but here it's
- 32:42most salient because we're all talking about race because of the ridiculous UK charge against
- 32:47San Kurt what is missing here the piece of the jigsaw that actually makes sense of our intuitions
- 32:57the thing which the modern identitarian left has erased from the conversation about what is bad
- 33:03and what is worse about different ways of being held back or denigrated is class economic power
- 33:13cultural status pasha do you get invited to long lunches at high end restaurants and do you have
- 33:21the phone number of a fancy high hat lawyer who owes you a favor class do you have a position
- 33:30where you can send an email or lodge a complaint and institutions will get a move on the wheels will
- 33:38actually start turning in your favor or to get anything done do you have to go to a government
- 33:44service center and take a ticket and wait in line and be told that computer says no that's class
- 33:51did you go to school with people who now work for corporations and governments or with people
- 33:56who work as checkout cashiers and Uber drivers that is class that is the real injustice that is
- 34:04where discrimination and difficulty in getting ahead genuinely stems from in 2024 it didn't always
- 34:12it didn't always we rightly did away with overt racial discrimination and for the half century
- 34:18between the 1960s and the first decade of the 2000s it was heading in the right direction now we've
- 34:23all drunk the cool aid and decided that what we really should be doing is what white people
- 34:27had been doing prior to the 1960s but just in the opposite direction this is why the same curve
- 34:33incident allegation has been so confusing a cop is lower class than a world champion multimillionaire
- 34:43athlete and coach but the social justice hierarchy down grades the world champion multimillionaire
- 34:52athlete tells her that actually she's she hasn't oppressed status because her father is of
- 35:00Indian descent therefore she gets to play this card and the working class lower middle class
- 35:09cop is the oppressor as I say the fact that he's a cop does complicate things because
- 35:16cops really do have additional power to being an ordinary white man but the idea that a multimillionaire
- 35:23athlete and coach world champion is the oppressed person in this scenario is a little bit weird
- 35:32I mean if the cop was any other flavor of lower middle class government employee it would be
- 35:36ridiculous to say that he's the powerful one because he's a white man and that is what's being said
- 35:42the allegation is not that that sam cures alleged slur was not racist because he's a cop
- 35:48the allegation is it's not racist because he's a white man and in order to be racist you have to
- 35:53enjoy and I quote from the diversity council of Australia race based societal power yet when there
- 35:59are actual real world examples of racism such as the between people of color that is such as the
- 36:06racism that we saw on the field from a some Australian player towards an indigenous player
- 36:11we all sort of quietly throw that rule book out the window because deep down inside we know
- 36:17that we're just talking bullshit and that racism is more complicated than that so I would have
- 36:22three takeaways from this firstly don't make these kinds of laws England don't police being mean
- 36:29and being an asshole it's too difficult it's too complicated if you're going to enforce them
- 36:34uniformly then you end up with ridiculous situations like sam ker finds herself in it's absurd
- 36:40she shouldn't spend a night in jail and she you know she shouldn't be charged look at if the that
- 36:44is if the allegations even that the police say are true are true I mean charger with being unruly
- 36:50or whatever but don't add the additional wrinkle of racism it shouldn't matter why you're being
- 36:54mean to somebody why you're harassing somebody harassment should just be harassment now there can be
- 36:59incitement to violence laws so if you go out and you say oh let's all go and you know
- 37:05beat up people who look like such and such that should be a crime because they're going to lead
- 37:09to actual real-world harms but simply expressing some slur a slur is a slur regardless of the content
- 37:15of it don't start getting inside people's brains trying to figure out what they meant
- 37:19the second point I would make is that cops just need to cop it a bit more like you've taken that
- 37:24job on you're gonna cop it a little bit we don't mean to be mean to you but suck it up to some
- 37:29extent and the third point I would make the most important one after saying that there shouldn't be
- 37:33laws that govern speech and that cops should have thicker skin is that class and power and resources
- 37:42the ability to achieve your goals are what matters your ethnicity doesn't matter as much as that
- 37:48the color of his skin does not matter in 2024 as much as the way you walk the way you talk who
- 37:54you know how much you earn what your education is like these things sometimes overlap of course
- 38:01because you know equality is not spread equally so you'll have race mapping onto economic injustice
- 38:09but the way to resolve those racial disadvantages is to address the economic injustice and then
- 38:14anyone's happy everyone's happy rather like if you want to fix inequality go straight for
- 38:22inequality you'll have more buy-in the middle class you know the whites will be more supportive of
- 38:29policies that try to lift people up on the basis of their disadvantage rather than policies that
- 38:34try to lift people up because they belong to a historically marginalized community and they look
- 38:38a bit like people who were wronged in the past don't use divisive racial signifiers as proxies
- 38:44for injustice just go at the injustice target the injustice directly with what the left used to be
- 38:50about providing opportunity for everybody regardless of who you are so I wish Sam Kerr all the best
- 38:57I wish Craig Foster all the best and I wish anyone who actually wants to wrestle with these issues
- 39:03thoughtfully using reason instead of simply reciting dogmas that they've been handed
- 39:08at the threat of a mob coming for them definitely all the best see you soon