Politics can meander down some strange paths sometimes, particularly when conflict is not the means to an end but an end in itself. Marcia Langton, one of the key architects of the voice to parliament proposal, found herself at the centre of a fracas midweek when comments she’d made last Sunday during a public forum at Edith Cowan University appeared on the Australian newspaper’s website shortly before question time on Tuesday.
Langton had responded (as she explained later) to a query from a woman who was “clearly considering voting no” on 14 October. Referencing messaging from the no campaign, Langton told the woman: “See, ‘Aborigines are bludgers, Aborigines steal everything, Aborigines aren’t entitled to the compensation that everybody else gets because they’re lying’. Do you see my point? Every time the no case raises one of their arguments, if you start pulling it apart you get down to base racism – I’m sorry to say it but that’s where it lands – or just sheer stupidity.”
The comment was reported first by the Bunbury Herald. That outlet’s front page carried a headline summarising the exchange accurately: “Racist or just stupid: voice author slams the no campaign”.
Langton’s remarks were also published by the Australian website with the inaccurate headline: “No voters branded ‘racist, stupid’ by prominent voice campaigner Marcia Langton”.
The Coalition had resolved to use the final parliamentary sitting week before the referendum to go full demolition on the voice, and the deputy Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, opened the batting in question time. “My question is to the minister for Indigenous Australians,” Ley said. “Moments before question time, the Australian and the Bunbury Herald reported that Prof Marcia Langton, a member of the referendum working group appointed by the minister, has accused no voters of opposing the referendum because of base racism or sheer stupidity. Will the minister for Indigenous Australians condemn Prof Langton’s comments?”
Even though the Australian softened its original headline and made it clear in subsequent news reports that Langton had characterised some of the arguments promulgated by the no campaign as racist and stupid (as opposed to no voters being racist and stupid), the genie was out of the bottle.
By early evening, Peter Dutton posted screenshots of the Australian’s initial headline on his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Dutton declared that the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, needed to “condemn these comments”. (These comments Langton had not made.) Video of the exchange was also shared by Advance Australia, one of the activist groups spearheading the no case, with the tagline: “Leaked. Voice author Marcia Langton calls Australians voting no ‘racist’ or ‘stupid’”.
Langton was out on the ABC early the next morning signalling she was considering legal options given the original headline in the Australian misconstrued her comments. The Australian issued a statement saying it stood by its reporting. Then a few hours later Sky News broadcast footage of an event in July where Langton made more direct observations about racism and no voters.
In the new clip, Langton said the surge of “racist nonsense” surrounding the voice debate was confined to a minority of Australians. She said hard no voters were the ones “spewing the racism”. Langton then argued Dutton and the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, were backing the no case to appeal “to their racist base with claims that the proposal will racially divide the nation”.
More outrage ensued. Pundits declared Langton had created her very own “basket of deplorables” moment – a reference to Hillary Clinton’s characterisation of Trump supporters in 2016. The Australian’s political editor fired off a column arguing that Langton had “no one to blame but herself” for the whole controversy because she had “dropped an incendiary claim into a febrile political atmosphere”.
Seemingly absent from this analysis was a frank assessment of the conditions contributing to this febrile political atmosphere. Had it just fallen out of the sky, like space junk? Or might it be the sum of escalating partisanship, sloppy or tendentious reporting, and the orchestrated amplification of conflict on social media platforms ahead of the referendum?
This whole stink bomb turned on whether or not Langton harboured views about the prevalence of racism in her own country, and whether her observations about this phenomenon amounted to a provable thought crime.
At points through the week it felt totally bizarre that we can be having a debate about enshrining a listening body intended to reset the dialogue between the original inhabitants of the continent and the settlers who turned up in waves after 1788 – and yet a necessary conversation about racism, led by people with lived experience of racism, be deemed out of bounds.
Let’s step through this. Indigenous Australians have proposed a voice to parliament. They’ve proposed a voice in part because institutionalised racism has sabotaged respectful listening to First Nations’ perspectives. Examples of institutionalised racism include but are not limited to: the lie that there was no one here when the British arrived; the documented atrocities of frontier massacres; the policies of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families – practices that have contributed to a prevalence of intergenerational trauma, a studied phenomenon in survivors of the stolen generations. Racism is one of the factors that explains a measurable gap between outcomes for Indigenous Australians and the rest of the population.
But talking about racism makes people uncomfortable. When the subject gets broached, an unsettling dynamic can ensue. People can appear more outraged by accusations of racism than about racism itself.
Talking about racism is a trap. When Indigenous leaders and other people of colour express frustration about its dogged persistence, they are often subjected to tone policing. They can be caricatured as angry, ungrateful, shrill. And gratuitous characterisations – the pernicious stereotypes of the angry black man or the irrational black woman – are another form of silencing.
So we end up in the ludicrous situation where the only politically acceptable way to combat racism at a structural level involves never expressing frustration about racism just in case someone weaponises community discomfort about racism against the group experiencing it.
We end up here because we live in an unequal world in which the majority sets the terms for how minorities are permitted to express any grievances. These arbitrary rules of acceptable discourse are then generally enforced with a disturbing level of viciousness and a stunning lack of self awareness.
Two vignettes from the week illustrate this phenomenon. Langton was howled down in the bearpit of the House of Representatives and across much of the political media complex for sharing a visceral personal perspective about racism. Meanwhile at the National Press Club the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, shared her more upbeat perspective – that Indigenous people had not suffered harsh consequences as consequence of British colonisation. Price was given a standing ovation in the room.
This same dynamic also takes us to a central trope of the no campaign. The accusation goes: this voice must be defeated because it will divide Australians “on the basis of race”. This a distortion, and a deliberate one. The voice will not divide Australians on the basis of race; it will facilitate truth-telling about the lived experiences of racism. And many other things. As the Olympian and former Labor senator Nova Peris argued this week, a constitutionally recognised advisory body will allow the lived experiences of First Nations people to be seen.
Langton was perfectly within her rights to posit that some Australians who are resolved to vote no on 14 October will do so because they harbour racist views, or are being influenced by a toxic sludge of negative messaging.
Racism persists. It has not been conquered. I’m confident that both Langton and Nampijinpa Price – and all my Indigenous friends – are experiencing the full force of that ugliness right at the moment. Knowing that makes me feel sick to my stomach.
But this isn’t the whole story.
Not everyone intending to vote no in the referendum is a racist, or awash in dicey TikTok agitprop.
Some Australians will reject the voice because they’ve thought about it deeply and don’t like the model.
Others will vote no because they can’t find the bandwidth to investigate why another body is needed. Still more will vote no because someone they trust convinces them it’s a bad idea. Our most recent Guardian Essential poll captures the current low trust environment with a simple metric. Information from family and friends was considered more reliable by many respondents than what they were reading in the traditional media or seeing on social media.
Voter perceptions and motivations are always complicated.
But a referendum staged as The Hunger Games isn’t a vehicle to untangle complication.
There is only one rule in the death match arena – glove up, lean in and land your knockout blow.
