COMMENT
In the past week, several media networks, production companies and distributors have been hard at work. From Australia’s to global power , executives have taken time to publicly distance themselves from racism. In an entirely condemnable expression by US actor Roseanne Barr—let’s not bother reprising that ugliness—they give their companies the appearance of opposition to racism.
I guess if you’re in the entertainment business, which sells the opposite of reality, appearance is what matters most.
Disney, the parent company of US network ABC on which Barr’s Roseanne aired, now appears as an opponent of bigotry.
There are Disney productions which suggest a different take on tolerance. We have moments decried by informed critics as , as anti-, or as . While Australia’s Network Ten could not be charged like Disney with a long history of , it was on Ten’s The Project we saw Hèritier Lumumba subject to an indignity he later . On that same program, an absent Adam Goodes was accused of parading “”. It is true that this last view was countered. It is also true that the view was broadcast, and (predictably) reproduced.
The tweet by Barr has also been reproduced countless times. Sometimes, we do need to see such, ugly, indefensible rot in order to believe that it is real. But, there’s a point at which it no longer serves as an instruction in the shape of racism and begins to serve the big companies distancing themselves form it.
In an immediate sense, it’s great that Ten, local distributor of Barr’s sitcom, has been moved to action. It’s over the longer term, though, we must judge it. If saying “no” to Roseanne based on one of its creators’ vile tweets is part of a long-term commitment to anti-racist broadcast, awesome. It will take time to see if it is a case of keeping up appearances, of laying the blame for all racism with one currently unpopular woman while excusing one’s own past.
There are moments in Australian and US media and entertainment some of us would call racist. These same moments, others would call “free speech”—perhaps part of a “contest of ideas”.
These moments, I suggest, are not made in freedom. Whether moments of racism are decried or promoted, they are made in service to profit. I do not believe it is a “free” decision to broadcast “provocative” speech. I do not believe it is a “free” decision to quit broadcasting a “provocateur” like Barr.
To invite a “contest of ideas”—i.e. elect to broadcast a racist statement—is not “free”. It’s as “free” as the columns of an Excel spreadsheet.
Roseanne Barr is punished justifiably, but not “freely”. The big institutions punishing her do so largely out of self-interest. As this piece of accounting in the has it, it may very well have been more profitable to take Roseanne off the air than risk more global revulsion for its star.
This is not to say we should exempt Barr for her filth. We can, of course, condemn the comedian and we can even feel a little relief that her vile words were so widely unacceptable. But, we must not lose sight of the difference between our own revulsion for such racist speech and the revulsion big companies might express.
When it suits a Ten or a Disney or a US network like ABC to condemn racism, they will. When it suits them to promote it, call it “free speech” or claim it is part of a “contest of ideas”, they’ll do that, too. A corporate decision to oppose racism is very different from your decision to oppose it. Today, it’s the right business decision, the most profitable decision, to condemn racism at the corporate level. Tomorrow, racism could be broadcast or defended.
You are not a company. You oppose racism every day. Your motive is never profit and your goal is not to appear like a good person. Your goal, I am certain, is to produce a good reality.
The goal of the company must always be to remain a company. Your goal is to remain as human as possible in an era where big companies and big media pretend that they are also human and not, in fact, enormous structures with influence unprecedented in human history. Disney is not a human person any more than Ten. What these organisations condemn today they may not condemn tomorrow.
Remain human. Join other humans and fight the dehumanising ill of racism. Don’t wait for big business to fix it. Condemn what you know is wrong every day.
Business cannot afford to be compassionate and stay in business. You and me? We cannot hope to remain human without holding on to our compassion, and seeing that business is just not human like us.
