For reasons I have often given, I avoid using terms like ‘racist’ or ‘homophobic’.  They are too broad in their application and too often used as a form of abuse.  On their own, they are unfair.  If I do not know just what I am alleged to have done, how can I defend myself against whatever the actual charge may be?

It’s like saying I did something ‘inappropriate’ to a woman or a boy.  What?  Suggesting they should barrack for Melbourne Storm?  Eating spaghetti off a knife – or while on the mobile?

Charging someone with racism is often worse in my eyes than the conduct said to give rise to the charge.  Among other things, it is usually done in very cold blood, and with real malice – the intention to hurt another person.

Events in the sporting world this week show what mischief these charges can bring.

Sam Kerr is now about the most popular person in Australian sport.  She was charged with saying something to a police officer that was in some way ‘racist’.  A very sensible and experienced journalist spent a column discussing the implications.  He did not say what law was broken.  That would be likely to be in general terms and not detail the actual conduct alleged. 

When that was disclosed – ‘you stupid white bastard’ – the sane part of the nation was convulsed with laughter.  What a picnic for those who enjoy pure bullshit.  The ABC was driven to report on ‘a test case in the culture wars’.  In the prosecution of a crime? 

One paper went so far as to quote an ‘expert’.  Prof Fethi Mansouri, an expert in intercultural communication at Deakin University, said ‘it is very difficult to see how this can amount to being a serious racist incident’. 

Now I see that a public spokesman on the subjects of racism and soccer has publicly apologised to Sam Kerr.  His penitence derives from considering the Diversity Council of Australia’s definition of racism – it refers to ‘race-based societal power.’  The critic says ‘racism could not be committed against a white person as they are not a member of a marginalised group.’  Is it seriously suggested that judges should deprive people of legal rights by reference to this kind of Moonshine?

If the English are serious about this charge, can we ask what were the terms of imprisonment imposed on the flower of the English Establishment who jostled and abused a Muslim player of colour live on international television – thereby disgracing themselves, their nation, and the game of cricket?  (A one-way ticket to Botany Bay would have been ideal.)

A person of colour in the NRL used an unfortunate term during a match about another person of colour.  He has now repented.  He says everyone knows he is not ‘racist’ and that he did not mean his remark to be ‘racist.’  Some call for a twelve-match suspension.  It is likely that he has no other source of income.

A very experienced AFL coach made an abusive remark about the sexuality of a bruising idiot who could have killed the captain of the coach’s side.  He said he was sorry, and he copped a $20,000 fine.  That is about a quarter of the average income here.

These lapses of taste or judgment are a part of life.  Those responsible for responding to them judgmentally and with the weight of the law may think that they are high minded, but there is an aura of both unreality and unfairness in all the reactions now agitating the press.  Thinking that one race is superior to another involves a failure of logic.  Expressing that view to hurt others involves a failure of courtesy.  You cannot deal with those failures by legislation.  Unless you are in regimes like those in China, Iran, or Russia.

You debase the very currency you seek to preserve when you use the criminal law to whack people hard as a punishment for failures of judgment or taste at the fringe.  Punishment is a measure of despair.  Ask any candid judge.

And this is all blood to a tiger for the enemies of common sense and decency in the press.

Coppers are a bit like lawyers.  They may be a pain in the bum, but someone has to do it.  But those who do it for love are another matter.  As are those do who it for profit – like those who work for Rupert Murdoch.

The word vigilante comes to mind.  (Another bad one is ‘crusader’.)  The OED refers to members of a ‘vigilance committee.’  Brewer tells us that a vigilance committee was a privately formed citizen group taking upon themselves to assist in the maintenance of law and order – such as dealing with loyalists to the North in the U S, or whose function it was to intimidate Negroes.  And so we can see the seeds of the progress from the posse, to vigilante, to the lynch mob, and the KKK.  And now we have MAGA as an appalling throwback under a red baseball cap.

It is hard to think of a decent connotation.  The Macquarie is more up to date.  A ‘vigilante’ is ‘a private citizen who, usually as one of a group of such citizens, assumes the role of guardian of society in maintaining law and order, punishing wrongdoers, etc.’  That is to say, the vigilante usurps the power of the state – and in so doing, the vigilante becomes liable to being corrupted by that power.  Trump is just a hideous example.  

Ominously, the Macquarie says of ‘vigilantism’ – ‘the methods, practices, and attitudes associated with vigilantes, such as intolerance, bigotry, racism etc’.  (My emphasis.) 

In my view, the rot set in with talk-back radio, got worse with Facebook and Twitter and the like, and has now been made a most malignant cancer on us all by the spread of illiteracy and the influence of Fox News and the like here.

It is a great shame if those seeking to deal with ‘racism’ resort to means associated with its grosser culprits.  It is an old cliché, but a true one – the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Virgil put it more crisply, I see – facilis descensus Averno (the descent to hell is easy).

For myself, I would think that if any of this stuff has to be aired in public, it could be quickly resolved by common sense, tolerance and restraint, and plain human decency – and as far away as possible from anyone remotely resembling a preacher – or an intellectual.

But with Sam Kerr looking to a four-day jury trial two years after the alleged offence, the English have completely lost the plot.  The ageing mother country has finally succumbed to the evil of banality.

Sam Kerr – racism – homophobia