Identity politics a race to the bottom

Soccer superstar Sam Kerr’s trial and journalist Antoinette Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case against the ABC highlight the absurdity of identity politics and the twisted idea that we are defined by our skin colour, writes Joe Hildebrand.

There are two types of virus in the world.

The first is the kind we know all too well but at least its symptoms are easy to define and diagnose.

The second type is a more insidious and ubiquitous miasma. It is a virus of the mind, something that spreads via susceptible hosts who offer no resistance. The disease of ideology.

The doctrine of identity politics is just such a virus. And it has now been put on trial.

As I write this there are two court cases dominating the nation’s attention. The first is the prosecution of football superstar Samantha Kerr in the UK for an alleged racial sledge against a British cop, the second an unfair dismissal case in Australia brought by journalist Antoinette Lattouf against the ABC over a social media post about Gaza.

Obviously I cannot possibly pass judgment about the merits of either side in either of these two ongoing matters.

But the fact that they even exist is a sorry exposition of the narcissist naval gazing that has beset the affluent West in recent years.

Why are they are even happening? What a waste of the justice system’s time and resources when there are so many more injustices in both countries, let alone the rest of the world.

Incredibly, at the heart of both are questions about just how white or not the protagonists are.

This should be a skit on a comedy show or a Dulux colour guide by an 18th century eugenicist.

Body-worn video of Australian footballer Sam Kerr being interviewed in a London Police station when she allegedly called a policeman “f---ing stupid and white”.

Instead this absurdist guff is clogging up the courts in two supposedly First World nations in the year 2025. It is honestly beyond embarrassing.

And yet it is as embarrassing as it is inevitable. Somehow a late 20th century American campus culture, dopily misapplying the deconstructionist wankery of French intellectuals, came up with dross like “Critical Race Theory” and then managed to export it around the globe like Covid-19 on a Contiki tour.

Somewhere within this turgid sludge the concept of “identity politics” was born, a concept that too many pro-choice activists failed to abort.

Somehow the sick idea that people should be judged or categorised on the basis of their race, once extinguished by enlightenment abolitionists and decried by Martin Luther King, is the cause du jour for academics and activists in the 21st century.

But finally these two cases, whatever the outcome, have exposed its ridiculousness. The fact we have enabled a culture in which such things are actually argued in a court of law is in itself an indictment.

Moreover when the cool language of legal reason and logic is applied to these concepts their fragile absurdity is immediately made clear. All the parties look faintly ridiculous.

And so whatever the outcome of either case the court has already done its job merely by applying these concepts to judicial scrutiny.

Kerr’s trial exposes the absurdity of identity politics.

Historical scrutiny too has also been applied, and it has not been kind.

It is profoundly telling that both these incidents occurred in 2023. The emphatic shift in public attitudes since then — best captured by the re-election of Donald Trump and his declaration that “woke is dead” — only makes them seem even more petty and silly.

And not just for the protagonists but for all involved.

Long-suffering ABC Managing Director David Anderson had to defend his handling of the Lattouf matter compared to other controversial comments by ABC presenters, including Laura Tingle’s infamous declaration that Australia is a racist country.

Anderson said he was able to let that one slide because it was “based in fact”.

Phew! Well, that puts the matter to rest then.

Journalist Antoinette Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case has became bogged down in ludicrous questions about racial identity. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

As the howls of outrage swept through the outside media — and rightly so: if Australia is racist then so is every other country on the planet — a quieter curiosity dawned on me.

Yes, apparently it will be left to an unfair dismissal hearing to inadvertently pass legal judgment on whether being Middle Eastern is a race or not or whether Australia is a racist country or not.

By now the sheer ludicrousness of all of this must be becoming clear to even the most diehard social theory postgrads. Surely anyone with two sparking neurons can see how utterly humiliating this is for the human race.

We were given the miracle of life — possibly the only or most advanced life in the universe — and now we’re using our courts to argue about how white or non-white we are. If our whole species had a CV this would be a good thing to leave off it.

It’s time for the whole stupid and ugly idea of defining people by race to get back in the dumpster fire of history — which no one should have let it escape from in the first place.

Originally published as Identity politics a race to the bottom