Yumi is wrong about Kerri-Anne

Accusations of racism are easy to make. Real racism is fussing about a date while indigenous Australians are abused, battered and sexually assaulted, writes outspoken and controversial Alice Springs councillor, Jacinta Price.

The handful of protesters outside the Channel 10 studios today should not have been calling for the sacking of Kerri-Anne Kennerley for telling the truth.

They should have been calling out Yumi Stynes using the oldest and most cowardly trick in the book, shutting down debate by crying ‘racism’.

My white grandmother — yes I had a white one who loved me, as well as a black one — used to say that patriotism is the last resort of the coward. Now accusations of racism are the first resort of the coward who doesn’t want to face the hard and terrible truth. That’s how you immediately shut down the debate, signal your own virtue and your occupation of the moral high ground, and completely discredit your opponents — that is, if they are white. This is a form of racism in itself. No folks ... you don’t have to be white to be racist.

MORE FROM JACINTA PRICE: Change the date is a superficial empty gesture

Yumi Stynes told Kerri-Anne Kennerley she was sounding racist for raising the shocking statistics about indigenous Australians. Picture: Studio 10

The really dangerous racism is turning a blind eye to the facts of the matter, so that Aboriginal women, children, yes and even men, continue to suffer horrific lives.

Aboriginal women nationally are 35 times more likely than the average to be hospitalised by DV, 80 times more in some communities, those where the old languages are still spoken and the most traditional ceremonies are still carried out.

Nationally Aboriginal men are 23 more times more likely than the average to be hospitalised by DV. The problem is the far higher level of acceptance of interpersonal violence in our culture — yes that is part of our culture. Everybody suffers and it has to stop.

It’s not going to stop by blaming Captain Cook and Arthur Phillip or through long term, symbolic gestures that one day, just maybe, might improve things.

We need to make the perpetrators of today’s horrific crimes take responsibility now.

The protesters and virtue-signallers, who are mostly white, claim to have the well being of our people at heart. They all sprout the same rhetoric. They use trigger words like ‘white privilege’ without acknowledging the huge privileges they have in comparison to the most marginalised of Aboriginal people.

Protesters gathered outside the Channel 10 Studios in Sydney's Pyrmont following Stynes and Kennerley’s disagreement. Picture: Paulie Bover/Facebook

They speak the national language, have access to the media, have been educated, hold the jobs. Their message is divisive and they try to tear us apart instead of trying to bring us together to deal effectively with the crisis facing us.

This is not about a divide between black and white. It is about the gap between the marginalised in regional Australia and the urban elite.

I invite those people, as I have invited others, to come to remote indigenous communities — or even to towns like Alice Springs — and see the appalling domestic violence, the alcoholism, the addiction, and the sexual assault.

Leave your fashionable homes and your chic cafes. Come and spend a few nights in the war zone of violence and degradation that is a reality for so many Aboriginal children, women and — yes — men.

Don’t be distracted by a demand to be given a voice by government. Don’t be distracted by trendy ‘activism’ that has you marching in the streets on Australia Day while ignoring what happens every day — not just one day a year — in the streets of Alice Springs and communities like it.

Stand up for the abused, the battered, the sexually assaulted and shout ‘Enough is enough!

For once in this country, let the voiceless be heard. The urban elite need to take the cotton wool out of their ears and put it in their mouths.

Jacinta Price is an Alice Springs councillor.