SBS has a toxic mix of hypocrisy and obsession with race
Hypocrisy abounds at a publicly-funded broadcaster designed to cater to Australia’s multicultural society turns out to have a board that is all white, writes James Morrow.
NSW
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A few years ago there was a delicious moment when some snaggle-toothed white supremacist went on an American talk show, took a DNA test, and found out he had black ancestors.
It was hilarious and went viral around the world for obvious reasons: It’s hard to beat the scenario of a guy obsessed with racial purity finding out his background is mixed.
But the toxic mix of hypocrisy and obsession with race can cut both ways.
It turns out that a certain local race-obsessed broadcast network – government-funded, no less! – looks to be failing its own standards when it comes to ethnic composition.
On Wednesday The Daily Telegraph reported that SBS was at the centre of controversy over racial identity when it was revealed that its entire leadership team was … wait for it … entirely white.
Now, to most people, the racial makeup of any group of workers, be they senior bosses or front-line employees, shouldn’t matter.
The only consideration is whether they they get the job done.
But for SBS, which lives by and indeed has long been a chief evangelist for the church of multiculturalism, well, it was a bit like finding out the preacherman has been carrying on with his secretary.
When I worked at SBS more than 10 years ago, we used to say it’s becoming a lamington, black on the outside...
— Jaguar (@TheJaguaress) June 30, 2020
Michelle Law, who writes for SBS, tweeted, “What in White hell @SBS” about the makeup – though readers are left to imagine the reaction if she replaced “White” with just about any other ethnic descriptor.
Musician and academic Dr Lou Bennett wrote, “Jesus, Mary n Joseph that’s a white wash”.
And the ABC’s Louise Milligan asked “How does this happen in 2020?”
Who knows?
Of course, others might be wondering just how it is that the left became so completely obsessed with race, after telling the world for decades – quite correctly – that one’s sex or sexuality or skin colour doesn’t matter.
But things have changed lately with the left’s recent obsession with what academics call critical race theory, which is basically a nasty and nonsensical proposition that divides the world into victims, allies, and enemies, and sees “whiteness” as the root of all evil.
It’s the same ideology that is behind attempts to “purify” public spaces in the US, with no statue’s history left unexamined for offense or historical grievance, and which this week saw even the Democrat Party’s official Twitter account suggest Mt Rushmore might be a monument to racism.
And it’s the sort of thing the SBS and its fans absolutely revel in, given that the internet has done the network out of what used to be joked about as its mission to provide “Sex and bloody soccer”.
Hence the SBS’s interactive web guide, “how diverse is my suburb”, designed to give users data could be reliably gleaned by taking a walk along the high street.
Instead, at a cost of who knows how many taxpayer dollars, the website tells you how diverse your suburb is in terms of age and ancestry and religion, with the obvious implication that if it’s not diverse enough, there’s something wrong.
Likewise the network’s obsession with turning everything into a celebration of multiculturalism: There’s a whole section of SBS devoted to “Celebrating the diversity of sexuality in Australia and its multicultural communities”, “SBS cultural diversity study guides” for schools, and in a rare bit of usefulness, a multilingual coronavirus news and information portal.
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And of course the SBS’s hectoring news and opinion journalism which never fails to remind readers that, to quote one 2018 report, “Most Australian workplaces are failing to achieve diversity”.
While the first and most obvious response to that charge might now be to tell SBS to “heal thyself”, maybe it’s time to instead remind ourselves of what literally centuries of argument, fight, and struggle have taught us.
Namely, that it’s who you are, not what you are, that matters.
If SBS wants to beat the rest of us over the head for not ticking boxes the right way, they shouldn’t be surprised when they get called out for hypocrisy.
But neither should the rest of us listen to the sort of “thinking” that seeks to divide us all once again by the colour of our skin.
Originally published as SBS has a toxic mix of hypocrisy and obsession with race