I’m one of the good ones!!!!

As part of the Australian media’s long-running xenophobic campaign against African-Australian migrants, another assault was blamed on black-skinned assailants:

The only surprising difference here is that when, inevitably, the media reports assigning ethnicity to the attackers turned out to be wrong, the journalist involved published an apology:

In the ensuing conversation on Twitter, McCallum insisted that he has always been an avid supporter of the African-Australian community:

As Nyadol points out several times, the problem here isn’t the error, but the conditions in Australia’s media industry that allow for the spread of a blatant, largely unapologetic and incredibly brazen racist campaign that sets out to demonise and target specific communities.

It isn’t that the media wasn’t accurate in assigning skin colour tags to criminals — it is that they’ve never, ever questioned why and when they do it in the first place, and they react very poorly when asked to justify it.

This is an interesting case because it involves someone who is repeatedly insisting that they’re helping, rather than hurting. A quick search of his tweet history gives us a neat, simple elaboration of the meaning of the phrase ‘staunch supporter of your community’:

People who work in industries that can only survive by feeding on the blood of other people fascinate me. How do they manage the constant, unending pounding racket that basic human decency makes as it stands outside of their conscious mind, in the rain, begging to be let in? It’s incredible.

This is all important stuff. It’s a step beyond knowing that the people who shape information consumed by millions of Australians are free to commit acts of extreme hatred, with near-zero consequence, and near-zero introspection. It’s a peek inside the machinery that operates to avoid any moment of screaming self-awareness. It’s a cog in a very fucked up, and very Australian machine.