Let me tell you about an experience so horrible and profound it has taken me years to speak about it publicly. It began innocuously with a trip to the local shops. While wandering through the aisles I came across the beer fridge and saw a new brand. Curious, I opened the door — as I write this I am steeling myself at the thought of what happened next — and picked up the six-pack to examine it.
Then I saw the brand. To safeguard your mental wellbeing, I shall not elaborate, other than to say the name begins with “C” and is synonymous with white supremacy, imperialism, and the subjugating of native peoples. As I looked in dismay, my surroundings blurred and I began to experience race memory flashbacks.
There I was, looking upon my ancestral home, watching helplessly as Oliver Cromwell’s armies rampaged their way through Ireland, slaughtering all who stood in their way. Suddenly this vision changed, and I looked upon a massive field of blighted potato crops. Traumatised I discarded this six-pack and stumbled past the next fridge compartment door only to see a can of Victoria Bitter, a name that triggered memories of a monarch known as the “Famine Queen” for her indifference to the sufferings of the Irish people.
Overwhelmed by this panic attack, I looked for a way out, only to see another compartment was stocked with Crown Lager. That was too much for me. When I regained consciousness I was lying on a bed, being wheeled to an ambulance. To this day I still undergo counselling, my condition greatly exacerbated by the fact the producers of these beers refuse to acknowledge my hurt or agree to my requests they change the names of their product.
If only this idiocy were fiction. To be clear, I do not necessarily condemn people for dropping their bundle over beer. I may have even done the same myself over things such as discovering I have run out, or worse, realising the only thing left is light beer. But this brouhaha over the Western Australia-based Colonial Brewing Co, which has unwittingly been targeted following the co-opting of the Black Lives Matter movement by Australian activists, is truly ridiculous. The company was not built on the sweat of kidnapped Kanaks, nor does its logo depict a caricature of a beaming African-American with exaggerated facial features.
No, Colonial’s sin is its name, which apparently has racist connotations. “While we appreciate that the people behind Colonial Brewing [Co] had no malicious intent in their choice of brand name, words have power,” announced boutique bottle shop chain Blackhearts & Sparrows in a statement last week. “‘Colonial’ is still a problematic word that speaks to a broader history of colonialism and colonisation, which has caused irreversible harm to the First Nations people in Australia and Indigenous populations around the world,” it said.
I don’t suppose it occurred to the owners of Blackhearts & Sparrows that the introduction of alcohol — their core business product — also caused irreversible harm to indigenous populations worldwide. Or if it did, their business ethics were sufficiently flexible that they carried on trading nonetheless. Admittedly though if your bottle shops are based in the trendy areas of Melbourne, Hobart and Canberra, your priority is demonstrating your progressive credentials to inner-city sophisticates as opposed to considering the plight of alcohol-ravaged indigenous communities located thousands of kilometres away.
The inanity of this decision, even for those who indulge in purification porn, is incredible. As pointed out by Lawrence Dowd, Colonial’s Brewing Co managing director, the present owners inherited the name when they bought the company in 2008.
“The name Colonial was given to the brewery as it was one of the first to establish itself in the well-regarded wine region of Margaret River, colonialising the wine region with one of the first craft breweries,” he said. Ah, but neither he nor his predecessors ever considered the grapes of woke wrath. His position is invidious. If he resists changing the name of the brewery, he risks further campaigns and additional boycotts. If he rebrands, he potentially reverses the product’s outstanding sales record. Who benefits from this confected outrage?
Answer: Melbourne freelance writer and music critic Shaad D’Souza, or more specifically his inflated ego. “This is small in the scheme of things, not like anyone has solved racism lol and I know that corporate change is generally meaningless without structural change but I appreciate it,” he wrote on Instagram last Monday as he took credit for Blackhearts & Sparrows’ decision, saying Colonial’s name was “stupid and degrading”.
Why he has such hatred for the name “Colonial” is puzzling, especially given, if his social media posts are an example, his fondness for other words beginning with “c”. Last year he urged his Twitter followers to “smack any c**t holding a can of colonial pale ale”.
He also holds that the English language is “fascist” and said last week his ambition is to “abolish the colonial state entirely”. These are the ramblings of the first-year undergraduate activist.
grammar is fake and "english" is fascist
— hi (@shaaddsouza) March 13, 2018
Keep the dictionaries but yes, I’m pretty sure the idea is that we do eventually abolish the colonial state entirely
— hi (@shaaddsouza) June 15, 2020
But here is the delicious bit: for the last four years D’Souza has been writing for The Guardian. Quelle horreur! The same paper, originally called the Manchester Guardian, that was founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor who profited from a cotton plantation that used slaves? The same paper that sided with the slave-owning Confederacy during the American Civil War and said of US President Abraham Lincoln “It was an evil day both for America and the world when he was chosen President of the United States”?
Nearly 25,000 people have signed a petition demanding The Guardian be shut down over its racist origins. But look through D’Souza’s tweets and you will find no mention of it, or of Taylor for that matter. Instead of foregoing a quid and disavowing his association with an institution that had actual links with slavey, this supposed anti-racist bullies a legitimate and successful Australian business for the crime of using an innocuous brand name.
That is cowardly hypocrisy. Perhaps this music critic could find a band to play him songs such as “Some People Ought to Get a Life”, or “I’m a Perpetually-offended Pipsqueak,” or even a rewritten version of The Bee Gees’ classic “It’s Only Words”
Talking of desperately looking for racism, you would have to give a big shout-out to ABC radio presenter James Valentine. On Tuesday the producer of his afternoon show rang bemused former Australian chess representative John Adams to discuss in the context of racial discrimination the appropriateness of white going first in chess.
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
— John Adams (@adamseconomics) June 23, 2020
I just received a phone call from an ABC Sydney based producer seeking a comment about the game of chess!
The ABC have taken the view that chess is RACIST given that white always go first!
They are seeking comment from a chess official as to whether
WOW! ðŸ‘
— John Adams (@adamseconomics) June 23, 2020
Good to see former world chess champion @Kasparov63 take aim at the @ABCaustralia over their NONSENSE coverage of the game of chess!
Common sense can prevail across the world! https://t.co/hJKVvuNd3m
Not the best move to make so to speak. And in any event Sydney Morning Herald columnist and author Peter FitzSimons was way ahead of Valentine. Appearing on ABC’s Q&A in 2010 he stated “And with my son, not long ago, I was playing chess and I was white and he was black and I was winning and he started crying. And I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘Because this reminds me of what happened to the Aboriginal people’.”
I have numerous times written on similar obsessions regarding race, but I could not put it better than the gruff yet friendly proprietor of the Chinese restaurant where I dined this week. As my friend and I waited for our meals, he chatted with us about current affairs and expressed his annoyance about race-baiting. “The media is driving a lot of this bullshit,” he said bluntly.
He is right. If you want to know how objectively the media canvasses these issues, think of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where The Knights of Ni menace and browbeat travellers with meaningless and repetitious exclamations, assign them impossible tasks, and finally collapse in a catatonic fit when one of their number accidentally says the forbidden word.
As noted African-American economist and economist Thomas Sowell stated, “Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists’.”
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