Left’s racist slurs inexcusable
WARREN Mundine is a great Australian and a great advocate for the indigenous community.
He deserves better than to be slandered and slimed by Leftist miscreants who think the former Labor Party president is not Left-wing enough and thus ripe for racial abuse.
Barely a day goes by when Mundine isn’t racially vilified on social media by terms used to denigrate people of colour: racist epithets such as Uncle Tom, house n-----, and coconut (brown on the outside, white on the inside).
The attacks are invariably from cowardly keyboard warriors, emboldened by the anonymity afforded by platforms such as Twitter. Mundine continually calls out this bigotry, calmly explaining to the abusers the language they employ is racist.
It’s one thing to be vilified by anonymous trolls, but when the “Uncle Tom” smear came from a veteran journalist, Mundine was sufficiently upset to make a complaint to the ABC.
The complaint focused on a tweet by Paul Bongiorno, Channel 10’s former national affairs editor, now a columnist for The Saturday Paper, and contributor to the little-read Leftist news site, The New Daily.
Bongiorno is also given a platform on the national broadcaster, where his predictably “progressive” musings can be heard on Radio National.
It was during his defence of the ABC that Bongiorno’s obtuse tweets descended from the irrational to the racist.
Responding to a tweet that asked: “How many Lefties does it take to say the same thing?” Bongiorno posted: “As many ‘righties’ on Dky (sic) after dark panels … and that includes ‘Uncle Tom’ lefties craving relevance.”
Mundine, who hosts a program on Sky News and regularly appears on “after dark panels”, reminded the former priest that “Sky isn’t taxpayerfunded” and that “Uncle Tom is a racial slur”.
In his complaint to the ABC, Mundine explained that the language tweeted by Bongiorno “has long been used to condemn and silence black people”, including Aborigines, and promotes the view that blacks must conform to certain opinions or be branded “a traitor to their race”.
“It is unquestionably a term of abuse and a bigoted expression,” he wrote. “In my view, it’s disgraceful that a paid ABC commentator should use the expression.
“It is also disgraceful that the ABC would continue to hire a regular commentator that uses this expression without requiring him to apologise as a condition of continuing to be a paid ABC commentator.”
But the ABC has dodged all responsibility, merely saying: “Bongiorno is not an ABC employee; his Twitter account is not an ABC account; any tweets are Mr Bongiorno’s own.”
But the ABC’s own social media policy states that it covers personal use of Twitter, and applies to “any person who carries out work in any capacity for the ABC”.
Last week, Mundine called the ABC’s response weak and pathetic, saying: “If anybody would stand up against racist rhetoric, you would think it’s the ABC. The idea you can say something racial, one of the most dreadful things you can to a person of colour, and get away with it is a total disgrace.”
Bongiorno did belatedly offer an apology of sorts, posting, “I never intended it as a racist slur” and “apologise for causing offence”.
The apology seemed even less sincere when Bongiorno went on another Twitter rant, indulging in rationalisations that grew ever more bizarre, even claiming those upset by his slur were “white supremacist trolls”.
Indigenous leader Marcia Langton tweeted to Bongiorno: ‘“Uncle Tom’ is on a par with the ‘N’ word, Paul. Just don’t use it about anybody. It has a terrible history. Even PoC whisper terrible insults like this because they are so fundamentally racist and extremely abusive.”
Mundine’s greatest “crime”, as with every minority figure attacked by the Left, from Kanye West to Ben Carson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is that he does not wrap himself in the cloak of victimhood.
Indeed, he rejects that toxic culture that condemns people of colour to life as downtrodden, marginalised and hopeless victims. For that sin, he cops racial abuse daily.