A WHILE ago I got into an argument with a member of Sydney's rich white Labor community. He decided that something I'd written about Islam was racist.
Trouble was, he couldn't precisely identity what particular race I'd offended. Islam isn't a race. You can test this at home by converting to the faith, which is substantially simpler than converting to black or Asian or white. Even David Hicks, no genius, managed his Islamic conversion easily enough.
My opponent ended up proposing a definition of race based more on religion, culture and background than on skin colour or genetic factors.
By those terms, then, he was satisfied about my racism. But by the same terms, any critic of Catholicism or Buddhism would also be racist. To say nothing of certain protesters who earlier this year marched through the city holding signs that read: "Behead all those who insult the prophet." They might be racist against everybody who isn't Islamic.
Similarly violent intimidation emerged this week on YouTube of Melbourne residents abusing European women during a suburban bus ride. Profane fury was apparently prompted by the women singing in their native French. Memo to Plastic Bertrand: don't book Frankston gigs.
Clear threats are made in the clip, most of them unprintable. "Everyone on the bus wants to kill you and you're going to have to get off eventually, bitch," warns the main idiot. "You worked that out yet?"
That's an interesting line from a dope who clearly hasn't worked out it's 2012 and everybody carries recording devices. He's likely to face some court time for his trouble, if not a period of reflective confinement. Hopefully in the company of a roid-raging 120kg skinhead cellmate with a complete knowledge of Charles Aznavour's discography and profound intimacy needs.
Australian media quickly decided that the attack for such it was - one goon smashed a window next to where the women were sitting - was not only hateful and bigoted but also racist. Internationally, the website Huffington Post first reported the video "shows the terrifying moment that white passengers on a Melbourne bus threatened to 'f...ing boxcutter' four black French women." A correction soon followed. The man who shot the video told ninemsn: "Pretty much all the French girls were white, and there was just me who was brown and another dark guy on the bus."
The attack was disgraceful, frightening and shameful. Other passengers either stood by as the abuse took place mostly from enraged men against women or joined in.
But it wasn't racist. French isn't a race. This isn't to defend racists or racism, but to defend accuracy in language. If anything, the comments made by the foul Frankston fellow towards one woman in particular indicate a deep misogyny, in the way it was understood before that word underwent a recent Macquarie Dictionary makeover. (I'd add that other remarks allegedly made by this bloke prior to his anti-French tirade apparently do show he is indeed racist. He hates black people or "darkies", to use the term he is alleged to have shouted. That line isn't in the actual video. Again, accuracy is key. This is distinct from his abuse, and the abuse of others, towards singing bus passengers.)
My News Ltd colleague Tory Shepherd won't be happy with this. Last week Tory, an excellent writer who nonetheless sometimes leans a little Adelaide University, wrote that any correction of racism claims in this case was "a strange and pedantic way to miss the point". She continued: "I call bullshit on these apologists. What they want to do is declare racism non-existent so they can say whatever vile crap they like about people who are different from them."
Really, Tory? Way to read minds. Perhaps some of us are simply weary of racism being invoked so frequently and so inaccurately that the accusation has been utterly devalued.
Prefer asylum seeker policies that don't lure people to deaths at sea? Racist. Opposed to Barack Obama's economics policies? Racist. Think welcome to country ceremonies are tokenistic and insincere? Racist. Alarmed by demonstrations calling for the destruction of Israel? Racist. Can't locate a racial component in some white guy's savage abuse of a white French woman? Racist again.
According to a British magistrate, it is racist to describe someone as Australian. Judge Brian Donohue ruled last week in the case of Petra Mills, accused by a New Zealand-raised neighbour of calling her a "stupid fat Australian bitch". Said Chelsea O'Reilly: "She was trying to be offensive. I was really insulted."
Donohue agreed, finding that "the word 'Australian' was used. It was racially aggravated." Mills was fined for racially aggravated public disorder. So now, by various analyses, Islam, French and Australian are all separate and distinct racial types. Somewhere in Sydney a bloke named Jacques suffers a massive identity crisis every time he drops in at the mosque.
We could do with a moratorium on compulsive accusations of racism. It won't be easy to wean obsessive users away from kneejerk calls, so maybe an alternative accusation might be employed. I suggest regicide. If you're going to aim anywhere, aim at the top.
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