Quinton de Kock is officially non-racist, I am delighted to say, the South African cricketer joining his teammates in taking the knee on Saturday at the Twenty20 World Cup clash against Sri Lanka. What began as a troubled week ended on a pleasing note when de Kock apologised for initially doubting the importance of players performing gratuitous and feel-good gestures that have absolutely nothing to do with sport.
“If me taking a knee helps to educate others, and makes the lives of others better, I am more than happy to do so.” Educate others? Well in one sense de Kock is correct. Pay attention boys and girls, because his humiliation is an example of what can happen when you exercise independent thought.
That said, it would be wrong to suggest anything but positive factors were responsible for de Kock’s backflip. Cricket South Africa officials would have explained to him that their directive to kneel in support of the Black Lives Matter movement was about tolerance and making the world a better place. And if de Kock was still opposed to taking the knee, well that was entirely his prerogative. All it took for them to change his mind was gentle persuasion and an appeal to reason, something along the lines of “You’re out on your arse if you don’t go along with this, and you’ll be lucky to get a job as a Joburg bus conductor” I imagine.
Snuffing out dissent
As they say, all’s well that ends well. “The team is feeling much better than we were a couple of days ago,” said Proteas captain Temba Bavuma. “Quinton is in a much better state.” He is cured of his illness, you see. All it took was the snuffing out of dissenting thoughts and a grovelling capitulation.
“Maybe some people don’t understand that we were just hit with this on Tuesday morning, on the way to a game,” said de Kock, who comes from a bi-racial family. “When you are told what to do, with no discussion, I felt like it takes away the meaning. If I was racist, I could easily have taken the knee and lied, which is wrong and doesn’t build a better society. I am deeply sorry for all the hurt, confusion and anger that I have caused.”
Some of his critics will need more convincing, including former West Indies cricketer Michael Holding, who said it was “dumb” of de Kock not to have complied with the directive in the first place. “There’s a worldwide movement going on,” he said. “The entire world has accepted a specific gesture, a specific action of supporting that movement.”
That BLM has the support of the entire world is incontrovertible. I challenge you to find a reasonable person who opposes the tenets of this benevolent movement, whether it be wanton destruction of public property, desecration of cultural icons, mass revisionism of education curricula, or the imposition of Marxism. Despite labelling de Kock’s apology as “confused,” Holding has announced he will give him the “benefit of the doubt”. The man is a prince, I tell you.
Purity porn
Likewise, it cannot be doubted that BLM has relieved the suffering of the oppressed. Each day we hear of another spectacular achievement in the fight against racism. For example, as the ABC reported yesterday, Ella Rowe, an Australian-Papua New Guinean woman, has established a salon in Melbourne for the purpose of “decolonising hair”.
And can I just say as a cricket fan I look forward to the pious spectacle of players kneeling beforehand being a permanent fixture. Great as the game is, it is incomplete without this magnificent and edifying display of woke purity porn – oh enough of this drivel.
Taking the knee is by no means the only virtue ritual that is replete with self-indulgence, cant, and insincerity. I was reminded of this recently with the retirement last week of Melton City Council chief executive Kelvin Tori. As the Herald Sun reported in June, he mandated that all council employees include the rainbow flag in their emails. “No variations to the endorsed standard are to be applied,” decreed Tori, whose taxpayer-funded salary was approximately $400K per year.
Sounds inflexible and rigid, wouldn’t you say? Now compare that with an interview Tori gave to The CEO Magazine in 2019. “My overriding philosophy is that one size fits only one,” he said. “The one-size-fits-all is not applicable in local government. You must treat every individual as an individual; you can never assume they’ll be like everyone else.”
To put it politely, many of us are familiar with the overriding philosophy behind such claims; you could say we have a nose for it. And talk about rich. “Kelvin’s favourite piece of advice is to be yourself, don’t try to be someone that you’re not,” read the magazine profile. “‘That really stuck with me,’ he says. ‘I don’t try to be things I know I’m not’.” As in an apolitical local government CEO, perhaps?
Presuming racism
The simplistic and binary mentality of wokeism is nothing new. To the zealot, one is either for or against the cause; there is nothing in between. What is new, at least in modern Western society, is the increasing susceptibility of institutions to this intellectually bereft notion.
One example of this was the reaction by ABC sports journalist Tony Armstrong to the de Kock story. “For him to not do that, all that I think … is how racist do you have to be, to not just take a knee and do that in conjunction with your teammates to show support, to even pretend to show support,” he said.
How narrow-minded do you have to be to presume racism, one could retort. Appearing on ABC News Breakfast on Friday following de Kock’s apology, Armstrong tempered his comments but tried to justify his original remarks. “What you saw in me was the direct impact of what racism can do,” he said. No, what we saw was an example of a journalist going off half-cocked. As for his statement that de Kock could at least have pretended to show support by kneeling, I can only say he has inadvertently happened upon the true value of this exercise.
Malleable simpletons
On second thoughts, why don’t we just apply the principles of express refutation to all facets of life? If you are a male who declines to participate on White Ribbon Day, you must be a wife-basher. You failed to turn off all the lights in your house for Earth Hour? Clearly your aim is to destroy the environment. If you decline to begin an address by acknowledging the local Indigenous clan and their incredibly gifted elders whose wisdom we can learn from, you must be a racist. You declined to dress accordingly on Wear it Purple Day? That is all the proof we need that you are a homophobe. It is nonsensical.
When asked to take part in these activities, I respectfully decline. That does not necessarily mean refusing to give an explanation as to my reasons, for I welcome discussion and even robust debate. But if the person making the request is not interested in my reasons and automatically assumes ill-intent on my part, then I will apply my own default logic. I will assume he or she is an authoritarian git or a malleable simpleton. Actually, I will assume both.
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