There’s been no response from the Herald Sun or cartoonist Mark Knight to my piece on Friday about racist and discriminatory depictions of departing Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo.
However, regular Aussies have taken it upon themselves to defend the tabloid and the Australian media generally in the Comments section of Crikey.
Of course, I didn’t accuse any of these individuals of being racist — I don’t even know them. My criticism was leveled only at the Herald Sun and the media more generally.
Yet some Crikey readers have reacted by taking issue with me personally, accusing me of being “behind the door when a sense of humour was being handed out” and telling me to “grow up mate”, “stop looking for things to take offence at” and “get a life”.
I’ve got broad shoulders (oh yes, they could have insulted me about my weight too) and I can take it, but I am worried by the implications, especially the apparent inability of some Australians to recognise racism when it’s in front of them and willingness to defend it when it’s not even their fight.
Some rationalised it. For example, one reader asked: “Since when is being a Mexican on a donkey a bad thing?”
Since it’s used as a racial stereotype, that’s when! It’s exactly analogous to drawing Marcia Hines eating watermelon and picking cotton because she’s African-American or former Ford CEO Jac Nasser as a kebab-eating Lebanese gang member because — well, you know, ha ha ha — that’s what THOSE people are really like.
Three Crikey readers raised technicalities about definitions of “race”, one offering me — condescendingly — a “Pro-tip: Mexican is not a race”.
I agree. Mexico is a multi-racial society. But the “cartoon Mexican” is a racial stereotype, as it portrays all citizens of Mexico as having shared behavioural characteristics. That is neither political satire nor fair comment.
And then other readers cited practical issues confronting the cartoonist: “So how would you depict someone you wanted to suggest was a ‘thieving bandido’, given they were of Mexican extraction?”
Why is anyone’s “extraction” in any way relevant to his performance as Telstra CEO? Did cartoonists feel compelled to draw former CEO Ziggy Zwitkowski (born in Germany) in lederhosen and eating a bratwurst? And would that have been fair game, just because he had a funny, foreign-sounding name?
By all means show Trujillo as a “fat cat” or a scoundrel, boarding a flight back to America with his pockets stuffed full of Aussie dollars — that’s satire. But don’t show him wearing a sombrero and riding a donkey when the guy isn’t even Mexican!
Maybe if Trujillo shows the US Internal Revenue Service his Australian press clippings he’ll be able to convince them that he really IS Mexican and avoid US taxes on his massive payout. Now that would be funny.
But if you won’t hear it locally, then be prepared to hear it from international observers. Eric Ellis wrote in Fortune magazine in 2006 that Trujillo “has become the foreigner Australians most delight in mocking. Cartoonists depict him in a sombrero astride a donkey, while shock jocks mimic an imagined Mexican accent, even though the Wyoming native’s family came to the U.S. 200 years ago.”
When one looks at the way Trujillo has been dealt with in the Australian media, there’s an important lesson here for Telstra’s Board. If they want to enhance the telco’s struggling public and media image then, when appointing Sol’s successor, the Trujillo experience suggests the Board should pay more attention to a candidate’s name and ethnic background than it does to his or her qualifications and experience.
Try telling me that’s not racist… and illegal.
The strength of the negative reaction to Dr Downes initial article gestures towards the following fact: many Australians share a healthy and proper scepticism regarding the liberal and loose usage of deliberately provocative, contestable and damning terms such as ‘racist’ or ‘paedophile’ or ‘genocide’ etc.
Dr Downes is correct in pointing out the impropriety of the cartoon in question; as he rightly says, Trujillo is not even a Mexican, he is an American. Nor is Trujillo’s nationality a relevant or appropriate consideration in the context of his actions at Telstra; to have raised it shows the cartoonist to be discriminatory and vulgar. This is all fair and good.
However, Dr Downes goes a bridge too far in raising the spectre of racism. It is quite simply an incorrect charge, and given the moral weight implied by any charge of racism, is also a reckless charge.
The cartoonist was lampooning a national and cultural stereotype, not a racial genotype. In other words, the focus of the stereotyping was on the customs and fashions attending to a particular place and culture; these are contingent, dynamic and mutable.
On the other hand, racism is based on attributes that attend the genetic properties of groupings; while cultural features are also the butt of racist bile, this is merely epiphenomenal; the motivating basis for the derision of the racist is always the assumption of a fixed, absolute and objective genetic inferiority.
The Nazis may have heaped scorn on the dress and customs of Jewry, but this is not what identified them as racist (in the abscence of any racial theory, it would simply have made them rude and parochial). It was the underlying assumption of racial superiority and inferiority that gives the Nazis their deserved place on history’s wall of shame.
With all due respect to Dr Downes, to draw the distinction between vulgar parochialism and racism is not to dwell on ‘technicalities’. Rather, it is to promote truth over hyperbole.
AHA!
Call me thick– but only NOW do I get the “Three Amigo’s” and Rudd’s “Adios”
NOW I finally understand why I live 90K from Sydney CBD and can’t receive a mobile phone message.
NOW I understand why I am such a good “business customer” to Telstra that they will give me a “special deal” on Broadband $79.95 a month for 1GB (That’s ‘one’ GB not TB)
I do think racial stereotyping is bad–It would NEVER happen under a true Ozzie Howard style government now would it?
I even hear on ABC 702 (TGIF) that we have also been very rude by not calling Sol by his proper first name!!
His first name is is Robert.
This is unforgivable as Ozzies are known for calling people by their first names.
It is a sign of our friendliness, and lack of the Brit style of class distinction!.
So in future please call him ” R. Sol Trujillo.”
so Adios R sol.
There’s nothing new about Aussies refusing to recognise racism; it’s practically a national trait. And it’s often noticed by others too. When i began travelling overseas in the late 70’s a number of people from different countries told me, at different times, that Australians were the most racist people they’d ever come across. There are a lot of racists in every country, of course, but Aussies have generally been much more open about it because we honestly don’t see it as racism…for us it’s very often “just a joke.” These days there are increasing numbers of people wanting to quibble about the definition of the word or whatever, but it’s generally a very rare thing to get us to admit to what’s obvious to so many others.
Continued…
By humorously referring to Victorians as “Mexicans” (i.e. from “south of the border”), Sydneysiders have long tapped into the “Mexican” racial stereotype in order to imply, albeit gently, that Victorians are intellectually inferior, slow and lazy.
I have interviewed many Australian consumers who, based on the cartoon and movie stereotypes on which they have been raised, and bolstered by the information they get from trusted contemporary media sources, believe that: (i) Sol Trujillo is “a Mexican”; (ii) “Mexicans” are intrinsically (culturally, genetically, whatever) inferior to other “races” in intellect, competence and trustworthiness; and (iii) as a “Mexican”, Sol Trujillo was a poor choice as Telstra CEO and an incompetent manager.
These people often have no basis for assessing Trujillo’s performance objectively. They see and hear others making fun of him because he’s “a Mexican” and, linking this to other (perhaps more reasoned) criticism in the media, make racially-based attributions about the reasons for his incompetence.
Average German citizens and soldiers probably didn’t consider Jews genetically inferior until encouraged to believe this by Nazi propagandists. Indeed, they had to reject evidence to the contrary, namely that Jews in Germany included academics, musicians, scientists and business leaders.
But the Nazis didn’t need genotyping to convince other Germans that Jews were racially inferior. They simply heaped scorn on their appearance and cultural and religious practices. These were the tangible artefacts that “proved” their genetic inferiority: “They look funny and dress funny, they act strange, hence they are inferior.”
I am disturbed to have been accused by Mavros of recklessness for having raised the issue of racism. To deny racism on the basis of a purist argument about definitions and motivations is to be recklessly indifferent to the potential consequences of racial stereotypes and derision in the media.
I have to agree with the proposition that using a racial stereotype as the focal point to infer negative characteristics does promote racism albeit unintentionaly
The fact that people seem to derive amusement from the physical appearance of othersat all is regretable and lacks class.see’ funniest home video’
where Harry is coming from is beyond me