Just A Spot Of Casual Racism On ‘The Project’ Last Week

[UPDATE NOVEMBER 21]:

Two statements have come through from Channel Ten this afternoon.

A spokesperson from The Project: “The Project very much regrets the impromptu remark made by Sam Mac live to air on Friday night. We do not endorse this and unreservedly apologise.”

Sam Mac: “I am deeply sorry to anyone who was offended by the segment last week & will learn from the experience to ensure it never happens again.”

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Corroboree Sydney is a ten-day celebration of local Aboriginal culture, with events taking place all around the city until November 24. From art exhibitions to film screenings, live music, dance, talks, tours and food experiences, it’s an inclusive, contemporary take on the sacred Aboriginal tradition of gathering to tell stories, sing and dance.

The Firelight Ceremony on Friday evening promised a solemn, spiritual start to the festivities, paying respect to the Gadigal nation, the traditional custodians of Sydney. But as Channel Ten’s The Project came to its final Whip-Around destination that night, Sam Mac — a white guy who’s recently landed the role of roving reporter for Ten’s hit new morning show Wake Up — did his best to dismantle any sense of respect for the traditional owners of the land on which he stood.

He started by giving the festival a quick plug, encouraging parents to “take the kids along, educate them”. Which was particularly ironic because of what he said next.

Pointing to “that brown thing down there” (the cauldron that would be lit during the ceremony), Mac claimed it was due to be lit at 7:29pm, and immediately proceeded to count down from three — after which time, surprise surprise, it didn’t light. “Aww, that’s an anti-climax, isn’t it? That’s not happening.”

In fact according to the Corroboree Sydney website, the plan was for the flame to be carried across the waves on a canoe, then welcomed ashore and received by Gadigal Elders and dignitaries before being ceremoniously lit at sunset. The plan was not for it to spontaneously combust at 7:29pm on Mac’s own count of three.

But the punchline to the set-up was even worse, somehow managing to tick both the sexist and racist boxes. Especially the latter.

“No, no, I’ve just been told it’s on Koori Time, which is like Girlfriend Getting Ready Time. I.e: it might never happen. So hopefully it will launch some time in the next week.”

Yep, he just used that awful “natives be lazy and disorganised” trope to promote a festival celebrating Eora culture. On national television.

The segment ended with host Charlie Pickering thanking Mac for a “beautiful anticlimax to finish the week”. TGIF, guys!

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Corroboree Sydney’s Response

This morning, I received a statement from Professor Michael McDaniel, the chair of the Corroboree Sydney working group and Director of Jumbunna, Indigenous House of Learning at UTS. He said that while the phrase “Koori time” is sometimes used by Aboriginal people themselves, it’s viewed by many as defamatory and stereotyping — particularly when used by white Australians in the context of a joke at their expense.

“The use of the phrase “Koori time” time by the reporter clearly meant to imply (as the phrase does) that Aboriginal people are culturally inclined to be unreliable, disorganised and, by implication, lazy. The  phrase occupies the same inappropriate place within white Australian society as the term “walkabout”,” Professor McDaniel said.

“The second unbelievable thing,” he said, “was that this was said not in private and with some caution, as many holding to inappropriate terminology and stereotyping are sensitive enough to do these days, but as part of a public broadcast.”

But the offense caused by Sam Mac at this event was not limited to what went to air.

“What was equally as inappropriate was the loud, intrusive and joking behaviour of the reporter, which caught the attention of myself, the elders present and, I understand, many in the crowd. Apart from the volume of the reporter, he seems to have either been ignorant to, or disregarded the fact that the ceremony was a serious and spiritually significant occasion.”

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The Benefit Of The Doubt

Yesterday over Twitter, I asked Sam Mac if he had any regrets about the comments. He sent me a DM in response, saying he’d apologised to those he had offended and learnt from his mistake, which he takes “very seriously”. That may very well be the case. But when I followed Mac’s DM up, asking for a link to the apology, he didn’t respond. When I followed up for comment this afternoon, I got nothing. His public Twitter feed currently bears no mention of it, I couldn’t locate anything via Google, and neither The Project’s Metro Whip-Around page, nor the video player where you can view the entire episode — racial slurs and all — has any apology or retraction to be seen (skip to 42:27 if you care to witness Mac’s performance for yourself).

It’s very possible that Mac’s joke was meant to be a bit of harmless fun. But that someone could stand up and make a joke like that on TV — and without public reprimand or apology — just proves how endemic casual racism remains in our country. All too often, what privileged folk think of as “harmless fun” manifests in the form of jokes that belittle and humiliate those whose voices are already marginalised. As Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane has explained, casual racism involves a fundamental “denial of respect and equality”, and it’s anything but harmless: “Racism’s harm lies in how it reduces its targets to second-class citizens,” he says, “and how it empowers perpetrators to humiliate others.” The effect is to silence those marginalised voices even more, and galvanise in their place existing stereotypes that privilege certain races over others.

Mac may have apologised to somebody, somewhere, but it’s not enough to apologise for a nationally broadcast public slur in private. Tolerating this kind of humour is tantamount to tacit approval – and airing comments like his without public apology or retraction implies the same.

[UPDATE November 21: We have received a statement from apology from Sam Mac: “I am deeply sorry to anyone who was offended by the segment last week & will learn from the experience to ensure it never happens again”. A spokesperson from The Project added, “The Project very much regrets the impromptu remark made by Sam Mac live to air on Friday night. We do not endorse this and unreservedly apologise.”]

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Jenny Noyes writes from Sydney’s inner west. She enjoys making opinions about arts and isms, which you can read on her Tumblr or Twitter: @jennynoise.