don't mention the skin color -
I mentioned it once but
I think I got away with it.










SBS are pretending that we live in some kind of post-racial world where it’s completely unnecessary and/or offensive to mention people’s skin colour or ethnicity. Despite a 70-year-old grandmother being stabbed to death in front of her six-year-old granddaughter in a Redbank Plains shopping centre car park near Brisbane, SBS refuse to give the complete description of the perpetrator. In their article about the event, “Manhunt continues after grandmother killed at shopping centre in ‘cowardly’ act”. They mention that “four men” as being the “people of interest”, so they’re happy to mention their gender. “A 70-year-old woman was stabbed in the chest by a man”. To be fair, they did provide a link to a video posted by Queensland Police showing the four males getting out of a 2009 Hyundai Getz in Springfield Lakes, not far from the crime scene, about half an hour after the lady was murdered. But they refuse to talk about the men’s ethnicity.

Thank goodness, police live in the real world. In a media conference, they gave as much description about the perpetrator as possible. The goal of the police here is not to avoid causing offence. The goal is to catch the crook. Detective Acting Superintendent Heath McQueen said, “I describe those four persons of interest as African males in appearance.” Okay, so that was easy, and it makes it a lot easier for people to identify the bad guy.

But here we are in a bizarre situation where SBS are confused which is more important: Avoid using racial language in order to not cause offence, or give as much detail to the community as possible in order to catch the bad guy. You’d think in a rational world, catching the murderer is more important, but SBS don’t seem to be living in the real world. SBS did quote the Acting Superintendent, but they seem to have purposely left out that line about the men being of African appearance.

What’s even more funny (I don’t know if this is intentional), but other media outlets have been describing the 2009 Getz as being “light-blue”, but SBS didn’t even mention the colour of the car! They’re so post-racial, they can’t even mention car colours now.

This reminds me of that Fawlty Towers episode, The Germans. Despite hotel owner Basil Fawly warning his staff about the upcoming quests, “They're Germans! Don't mention the war”, he keeps obliviously ignoring his own advice, which culminates in a goose-stepping impersonation of Adolf Hitler.

Just as a note, an ABC article about the shopping centre death did quote the Acting Superintendent: “I describe those four persons of interest as African males in appearance”, but SBS, for whatever reason, are trying to avoid offending the murderer, or their viewers, or who the hell knows who they’re trying not to offend! However, a couple of years ago, they were happy to mention people’s skin colour: “black man George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer”. Go figure.