Adau Mornyang case a lesson to anti-discrimination army that racism works both ways

The recent case involving Adau Mornyang should convince people such as former discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane that racism works both ways.

Many of us know all too well what it is like to be stuck in public transport alongside a drunk and obnoxious idiot, but for those unfortunates on a United Airlines flight bound from Melbourne to Los Angeles in January this year, Australian model Adau Mornyang, 25, was truly the passenger from hell.

Around nine hours into the flight, fellow passengers complained about her erratic behaviour. When a flight attendant told the intoxicated Mornyang to stop yelling, she replied she did not care as she was a “strong black woman”. She also hurled abuse such as “f..king white trash bitch” and “white-ass bitch”. When she was refused alcohol service, she slapped a flight attendant in the face and kicked an air marshal in the chest, resulting in officials handcuffing her.

In March a Californian jury found the 2017 Miss World Australia finalist guilty of a felony charge of interference with a flight crew member and a misdemeanour assault. The maximum penalty is 21 years jail and the prosecution sought a term of imprisonment; however, when sentenced this week she received only a $2840 fine, which was waived, and 100 hours of community service, which she is unlikely to perform as she is to be deported. The judge also noted in mitigation Mornyang’s traumatic background, including that she was a child refugee from South Sudan.

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It was a remarkably lenient sentence. Likewise, her racially vilifying white people has not attracted the usual “hate crime” label that one would expect to see if the races were reversed. Amazingly she also seems to have escaped the opprobrium of progressive commentators. Fair enough too. I mean it’s not as if she committed a heinous crime like say white university students protesting at being told to leave an “indigenous-only” computer lab, or an artist who caused offence by depicting the stark reality of many outback indigenous families.

Indeed at one stage, Mornyang considered herself the victim. When a flight attendant tried to calm her, she accused him of being racist “because he was not talking [like that] to any of the white passengers”. That could be to do with the fact the other passengers, white and otherwise, were not engaging in a drunken foul-mouth tirade, but that’s oppression narrative for you. So shaken was the flight attendant she assaulted that the court noted he “could not physically do anything except sit for nearly half an hour to process what had happened to him”.

It is not the first time Mornyang has claimed racism. Last month A Current Affair revealed footage of the model stating prior to the plane incident: “When I walk down the street … people see that I’m Sudanese and automatically assume that I’m a criminal.” Could it possibly be that part of the reason for her behaviour is that she has been conditioned to believe by various groups, including human rights officials, a progressive media, and Greens politicians, that racism is entrenched in the white Australian psyche and that all minorities are victims?

Perhaps this would be a good opportunity for our plethora of anti-discrimination officials to acknowledge — shock horror — it is not just white people who are capable of racism, and that allegations of discrimination are sometimes made opportunistically and without evidence. After all, if left unchecked this offence-taking binge only makes it harder for people to believe genuine complainants. Remember, we have had five years of the divisive and arrogant former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane incessantly proclaiming “If you don’t want to be called a racist or bigot, start by not doing something that involves racism or bigotry.”

If you don't want to be called a racist or bigot, start by not doing something that involves racism or bigotry

— Tim Soutphommasane (@timsout) July 18, 2016

But we would be kidding ourselves if we thought it possible that those riding the grievance gravy train would concede it has gone too far, especially in Mornyang’s home state. This week the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission announced a new project “Reducing Racism”, the intention being to engage “Victoria’s African and Muslim communities to help them understand their rights and how to exercise them and make it easier for them to report racism”.

According to VEOHRC, this project is necessary as “There are barriers preventing people from connecting with us”. The agency does not elaborate on what prevents these people from picking up a telephone or lodging a complaint online. But whatever these formidable blockers are, they can now be overcome by aggrieved parties being able to make these reports to participating councils.

That’s right, councils — you know, those local government bodies responsible for collecting rubbish, filling potholes and installing parking meters. If ever you wondered why your rates are exorbitantly high, just remember some councils have expanded their traditional roles to keeping the municipality clean in a metaphorical sense.

Among the six councils participating in this pilot are those you will be familiar with. For example, there’s Moreland City, which in 2014 became the first council in Australia to divert investments from financial institutions that fund fossil fuel developments. In 2017 it voted to remove all references to January 26 as Australia Day, as had Yarra and Darebin councils, which are also participating in the pilot.

As for Darebin, its councillors are well-placed to lecture about bigotry and discrimination. During the same-sex marriage plebiscite in 2017, the Greens-dominated council allocated its office space and facilities to “yes” campaigners free of charge, while denying this privilege to “no” campaigners. It also decided to issue a “warning” to local churches not to campaign against same-sex marriage, but backed down only after learning this would be unlawful. As you can see, the council’s philosophy of tolerance does not extend to those who disagree with municipal decrees on what beliefs are unacceptable.

Leading this charge to involve rubbish-collectors in the fight against xenophobia is VEOHRC commissioner Kristen Hilton, who told the Herald-Sun this week she feared that much racist behaviour towards people of African background and Muslims is going unreported. “Traditionally there are fairly low instances of reporting of racism,” she stated. “It becomes a silent, normalised form of discrimination and racism that these communities tell us they put up with all the time.”

Nothing galvanises a highly paid, taxpayer-funded human rights bureaucrat more than the absence of complaints about discrimination and racism, but it would be mean-spirited of me to suggest this move to solicit more complaints — which incidentally are slightly down from last year — has anything to do with justifying the agency’s existence.

Mind you, VEOHRC appears more concerned with receiving discriminatory allegations as opposed to confirming their veracity. The portal for registering these complaints poses the ambiguously wide-ranging question “Have you been treated unfairly in Victoria?” Complainants can also opt not to be contacted, which conveniently reduces the opportunity to quash misdirected reports. Yet according to one of its four guiding principles as outlined in its 2018-20 Business Plan, VEOHRC’s efforts “will be informed by a rigorous evidence base drawing on our own and comparative research”.

But let’s face it, being seen to fight bigotry rather than quantifying it objectively is what it is all about. “I see structural inequity all of the time,” Hilton told The Age in 2016 following the announcement of her appointment.

That’s quite a revealing statement. Conversely, I see this country as the most harmonious and prosperous on earth, and one that properly differentiates between equal opportunity and equal outcome. Then again, my livelihood is outside the grievance industry. Yet I could not help but wonder, despite being lowly-attuned to wokeness, about gender disparity in VEOHRC itself. According to the agency’s annual report for 2017-18, it has 57 employees, comprising 45 women and only 12 men. Does that not indicate a significant “structural inequity” at the core of the agency responsible for countering discrimination, or is that merely one of the many acceptable forms of hypocrisy covered by the euphemism of “positive discrimination”?

But do not let me distract you from VEOHRC’s many achievements. As proudly detailed in its last annual report, these include “warning that restrictive school uniform policies may be gender discrimination,” as well as “standing up for the African community amid racist reporting of a gang crisis,” and finally “explaining how to remove barriers to female participation in golf”. Don’t laugh: this agency receives nearly $10 million per year in taxpayer funding.

For the sake of peace of mind, try not to dwell on this charade. If you do you will be seeing structural imbecility all of the time.