Kerr and Lattouf: Questions of race, justice and power

There is an inverted-world quality to footballer Sam Kerr’s trial for racial harassment and journalist-activist Antoinette Lattouf’s claims that she may have been dismissed based on race, which is precisely what makes the concurrent cases an important cultural moment and puts in question the wisdom of Australia’s newly passed hate-crimes law.

Kerr is accused of being racist towards a white man, a police officer who was questioning her after she and her fiancee were brought to the station by an aggrieved South Asian taxi driver. One of the women had thrown up in the taxi after a night out drinking. After they allegedly refused to pay for the clean-up and the cab driver locked the car to take them to the police, one of them broke a window and damaged the divider that is supposed to protect the driver from aggressive passengers.

Footballer Sam Kerr and former ABC radio presenter Antoinette Lattouf.Credit:

At the police station, Kerr was recorded on video calling a police officer “stupid and white”. Now she is on trial for “racially aggravated harassment”.

The case is rightly sparking a discussion about racism and power. It is generally tacitly understood that the UK law was intended to protect racial minorities from abuse by members of the white majority. However, in this case, a white man is deploying the charge against a woman of mixed-race descent (Kerr is a bit Indian, a bit Filipino, a bit English, and Perth all over) who claims to have been afraid of the South Asian cabbie – probably a newish migrant to the UK based on his “strong accent”, as described to the court. In this dynamic, Kerr was, relatively speaking, the “white” one.

Kerr and fiancee Kristie Mewis sobbed in court on Thursday – they claim to have feared the taxi driver was kidnapping them. If the case were just Kerr against the cabbie – as it was before he drove them to the police station – the scene might have provoked the disparaging hashtag “white women’s tears” and been seen as a cynical appeal to the “white damsel in distress” narrative. In 2020, Ruby Hamad, author of White Tears/Brown Scars explained this concept in The New York Times: “Historically speaking, when white people are afraid, it is usually people of colour who get hurt.”

But it’s not the cabbie who is bringing the case. He just wanted the women to stump up about £100 (about $200) – £60 for the fare and £40 to clean up the vomit. When Kerr subsequently transferred money to him for that plus the damage to his taxi (but only after two hours of talking to the police) he faded into the background. It’s the white police officer who is holding Kerr to account for her behaviour that night.

This situates the case right in the middle of the discussion over whether power dynamics are fixed or shifting, determined by gender, skin colour or cultural currency. It’s not just Sam Kerr on trial but the idea that victim and oppressor can always be identified by what our ancestors did – who we are born as – rather than who we become and what we do. Indeed, the very question of the usefulness of the victim-oppressor framework for ordering society is on trial before the eyes of the world.

In a coincidence of timing, Kerr’s trial is taking place in parallel with Antoinette Lattouf’s unlawful termination case against the ABC. Alongside the technical arguments mounted by the competing legal teams is the accusation by Lattouf’s counsel that she was fired based on race.

Regardless of dismissal claims or the bizarre legalistic debate over the meaning of race sparked by the case, it puts the matter in the victim-oppressor framework, again questioning whether that paradigm is still relevant and useful. As explained during the trial, Lattouf was hired not despite her race (perceived, real or whatever) but because of it. As one executive put it, Lattouf had been identified as a future potential presenter, “selected in part having regard to the ABC’s diversity policy”.

People from diverse backgrounds have been under-represented at the ABC. Still, the policy doesn’t negate the fact that Lattouf had cultural currency derived from the ABC’s need to platform people from groups perceived as having less power. And that this may have added to her incentive to align with groups the ABC was identifying as oppressed – in the context of the war in Gaza, the oppressor role was given to Israel and its supporters. Perversely, it could have been the ABC itself that influenced Lattouf to make social media posts perceived as antisemitic by outgoing managing director David Anderson.

Largely because antisemitic words and acts have become a frequent evil in Australia since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, federal parliament has just passed the Hate Crimes Bill, which creates new offences for “threatening force or violence” – intended or reckless – against groups subject to discrimination. The danger that the new law will be weaponised is more acute because it carries mandatory sentencing.

Such laws are always born of a moment, in which who is weak and who is strong seem certain. Kerr is arguing that she was expressing – poorly, she admits – her perception that she had less power than the white policeman. Perhaps that’s what the celebrated Chelsea player really felt.

Such cases remind us that power dynamics rarely stay fixed and are entirely context-dependent. The only good protection for society’s most genuinely vulnerable at any given time are laws that the strongest among us would be comfortable having the weakest wield against them.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.