Trujillo and Mexicans: a few words on racial stereotyping
There’s been no response from the Herald Sun or cartoonist Mark Knight to my piece on Friday about racist and discriminatory depictions of departing Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo.
However, regular Aussies have taken it upon themselves to defend the tabloid and the Australian media generally in the Comments section of Crikey.
Of course, I didn’t accuse any of these individuals of being racist — I don’t even know them. My criticism was leveled only at the Herald Sun and the media more generally.
Yet some Crikey readers have reacted by taking issue with me personally, accusing me of being “behind the door when a sense of humour was being handed out” and telling me to “grow up mate”, “stop looking for things to take offence at” and “get a life”.
I’ve got broad shoulders (oh yes, they could have insulted me about my weight too) and I can take it, but I am worried by the implications, especially the apparent inability of some Australians to recognise racism when it’s in front of them and willingness to defend it when it’s not even their fight.
Some rationalised it. For example, one reader asked: “Since when is being a Mexican on a donkey a bad thing?”
Since it’s used as a racial stereotype, that’s when! It’s exactly analogous to drawing Marcia Hines eating watermelon and picking cotton because she’s African-American or former Ford CEO Jac Nasser as a kebab-eating Lebanese gang member because — well, you know, ha ha ha — that’s what THOSE people are really like.
Three Crikey readers raised technicalities about definitions of “race”, one offering me — condescendingly — a “Pro-tip: Mexican is not a race”.
I agree. Mexico is a multi-racial society. But the “cartoon Mexican” is a racial stereotype, as it portrays all citizens of Mexico as having shared behavioural characteristics. That is neither political satire nor fair comment.
And then other readers cited practical issues confronting the cartoonist: “So how would you depict someone you wanted to suggest was a ‘thieving bandido’, given they were of Mexican extraction?”
Why is anyone’s “extraction” in any way relevant to his performance as Telstra CEO? Did cartoonists feel compelled to draw former CEO Ziggy Zwitkowski (born in Germany) in lederhosen and eating a bratwurst? And would that have been fair game, just because he had a funny, foreign-sounding name?
By all means show Trujillo as a “fat cat” or a scoundrel, boarding a flight back to America with his pockets stuffed full of Aussie dollars — that’s satire. But don’t show him wearing a sombrero and riding a donkey when the guy isn’t even Mexican!
Maybe if Trujillo shows the US Internal Revenue Service his Australian press clippings he’ll be able to convince them that he really IS Mexican and avoid US taxes on his massive payout. Now that would be funny.
But if you won’t hear it locally, then be prepared to hear it from international observers. Eric Ellis wrote in Fortune magazine in 2006 that Trujillo “has become the foreigner Australians most delight in mocking. Cartoonists depict him in a sombrero astride a donkey, while shock jocks mimic an imagined Mexican accent, even though the Wyoming native’s family came to the U.S. 200 years ago.”
When one looks at the way Trujillo has been dealt with in the Australian media, there’s an important lesson here for Telstra’s Board. If they want to enhance the telco’s struggling public and media image then, when appointing Sol’s successor, the Trujillo experience suggests the Board should pay more attention to a candidate’s name and ethnic background than it does to his or her qualifications and experience.
Try telling me that’s not racist… and illegal.
The strength of the negative reaction to Dr Downes initial article gestures towards the following fact: many Australians share a healthy and proper scepticism regarding the liberal and loose usage of deliberately provocative, contestable and damning terms such as ‘racist’ or ‘paedophile’ or ‘genocide’ etc.
Dr Downes is correct in pointing out the impropriety of the cartoon in question; as he rightly says, Trujillo is not even a Mexican, he is an American. Nor is Trujillo’s nationality a relevant or appropriate consideration in the context of his actions at Telstra; to have raised it shows the cartoonist to be discriminatory and vulgar. This is all fair and good.
However, Dr Downes goes a bridge too far in raising the spectre of racism. It is quite simply an incorrect charge, and given the moral weight implied by any charge of racism, is also a reckless charge.
The cartoonist was lampooning a national and cultural stereotype, not a racial genotype. In other words, the focus of the stereotyping was on the customs and fashions attending to a particular place and culture; these are contingent, dynamic and mutable.
On the other hand, racism is based on attributes that attend the genetic properties of groupings; while cultural features are also the butt of racist bile, this is merely epiphenomenal; the motivating basis for the derision of the racist is always the assumption of a fixed, absolute and objective genetic inferiority.
The Nazis may have heaped scorn on the dress and customs of Jewry, but this is not what identified them as racist (in the abscence of any racial theory, it would simply have made them rude and parochial). It was the underlying assumption of racial superiority and inferiority that gives the Nazis their deserved place on history’s wall of shame.
With all due respect to Dr Downes, to draw the distinction between vulgar parochialism and racism is not to dwell on ‘technicalities’. Rather, it is to promote truth over hyperbole.
AHA!
Call me thick — but only NOW do I get the “Three Amigo’s” and Rudd’s “Adios”
NOW I finally understand why I live 90K from Sydney CBD and can’t receive a mobile phone message.
NOW I understand why I am such a good “business customer” to Telstra that they will give me a “special deal” on Broadband $79.95 a month for 1GB (That’s ‘one’ GB not TB)
I do think racial stereotyping is bad — It would NEVER happen under a true Ozzie Howard style government now would it?
I even hear on ABC 702 (TGIF) that we have also been very rude by not calling Sol by his proper first name!!
His first name is is Robert.
This is unforgivable as Ozzies are known for calling people by their first names.
It is a sign of our friendliness, and lack of the Brit style of class distinction!.
So in future please call him ” R. Sol Trujillo.”
so Adios R sol.
There’s nothing new about Aussies refusing to recognise racism; it’s practically a national trait. And it’s often noticed by others too. When i began travelling overseas in the late 70’s a number of people from different countries told me, at different times, that Australians were the most racist people they’d ever come across. There are a lot of racists in every country, of course, but Aussies have generally been much more open about it because we honestly don’t see it as racism…for us it’s very often “just a joke.” These days there are increasing numbers of people wanting to quibble about the definition of the word or whatever, but it’s generally a very rare thing to get us to admit to what’s obvious to so many others.
Continued…
By humorously referring to Victorians as “Mexicans” (i.e. from “south of the border”), Sydneysiders have long tapped into the “Mexican” racial stereotype in order to imply, albeit gently, that Victorians are intellectually inferior, slow and lazy.
I have interviewed many Australian consumers who, based on the cartoon and movie stereotypes on which they have been raised, and bolstered by the information they get from trusted contemporary media sources, believe that: (i) Sol Trujillo is “a Mexican”; (ii) “Mexicans” are intrinsically (culturally, genetically, whatever) inferior to other “races” in intellect, competence and trustworthiness; and (iii) as a “Mexican”, Sol Trujillo was a poor choice as Telstra CEO and an incompetent manager.
These people often have no basis for assessing Trujillo’s performance objectively. They see and hear others making fun of him because he’s “a Mexican” and, linking this to other (perhaps more reasoned) criticism in the media, make racially-based attributions about the reasons for his incompetence.
Average German citizens and soldiers probably didn’t consider Jews genetically inferior until encouraged to believe this by Nazi propagandists. Indeed, they had to reject evidence to the contrary, namely that Jews in Germany included academics, musicians, scientists and business leaders.
But the Nazis didn’t need genotyping to convince other Germans that Jews were racially inferior. They simply heaped scorn on their appearance and cultural and religious practices. These were the tangible artefacts that “proved” their genetic inferiority: “They look funny and dress funny, they act strange, hence they are inferior.”
I am disturbed to have been accused by Mavros of recklessness for having raised the issue of racism. To deny racism on the basis of a purist argument about definitions and motivations is to be recklessly indifferent to the potential consequences of racial stereotypes and derision in the media.
I have to agree with the proposition that using a racial stereotype as the focal point to infer negative characteristics does promote racism albeit unintentionaly
The fact that people seem to derive amusement from the physical appearance of othersat all is regretable and lacks class.see’ funniest home video’
where Harry is coming from is beyond me
I am afraid that I am the guilty party who has upset Stephen Downes by accusing him of a lack of a sense of humor. However he didn’t reply to my remark that the whole point of a cartoon is to caricature a perceived action or whatever of someone. I asked if it was racist to portray an Australian as a yob in a Jacky Howe singlet and stubbies or merely humorous.
I was also going to refer him to the Oxford Dictionary (Concise in my home) definition of racism; but I see that Harry Mavros has done it a lot better than I could.
Is this an elaborate troll?
Trying to take Godwins Law to it’s extremes?
Whoops, I just lost the game.
I suppose Speedy Gonzales is racist too. Not all American mice are sombrero-wearing Tabasco-eating Mexicans.
Well done Stephen, I, like you, am only too happy to seperate myself from those who are enjoy being regarded as a operating level Z morons. To approve a racial stereotype is pretty thick, to approve a racial stereotype that is premised on an incorrect assumption about the target’s ethicity is cretinous. Aussie, Aussie Oi … er uh sorry what’s the rest??
Stephen asks : Why is anyone’s “extraction” in any way relevant to his performance as Telstra CEO?’
Actually, Trujillo’s being a US telco executive is highly relevant to his performance : his experience was seen as a positive for the job and his imported aggressive style toward regulation [on which he had form too] has been widely seen as having been a negative, as it’s played out.
I agree that his being of Mexican “extraction” may be irrelevant to this; so may be his being male, but though sexism is alive and well but there was no complaint about the sex he was represented in the cartoon as having.
OPPs Crikey !
My head must have been “South of the Border”
That was meant to be $79.95 a month for 1MG.
I also forgot to mention the $1,500 I paid Telstra for installing a broadband compatible line (from 15M away) that will not take ADSL2 broadband..
I commend Harry Mavros for approaching the issue with some structure and intellectual rigour, and for playing the ball not the man.
However, I’m sure we both deplore and reject racism not because of its underlying motivations but because of its awful consequences. While I acknowledge the distinction Mavros draws between “vulgar parochialism” and racism, I am far less concerned about issues of definition (those to which I referred as “technicalities”) than I am about the effects.
Racism and vulgar parochialism are fellow travelers – Mavros acknowledges that both produce the same kinds of derision of culture and appearance – and most Australians can’t tell an epiphenomenon from an epiglottis. The argument isn’t about whether cartoonists and sub-editors are motivated by racism (I don’t believe they are) but whether their actions could promote racism.
We appear to be in furious agreement that Knight’s Trujillo cartoon is discriminatory and vulgar. But, as I made clear in both of my recent pieces (and my 2006 Crikey article), last Friday’s cartoon was just the latest episode in a long and troubling history. Sections of the Australian media have treated Mr Trujillo in this discriminatory and vulgar manner from the time of his appointment right through to the announcement of his departure.
This and other cartoons, “cute” headlines like “Si senor”, nicknames like the “Three Amigos”, and radio stations playing the Mexican Hat Dance whenever his name is mentioned may look benign when considered individually. But for a very significant proportion of the Australian population, each of these repeated pairings – of Trujillo with a false, vulgar and discriminatory (Mavros’s words) national and cultural stereotype – leverages existing prejudices and has the potential to engender fixed and absolute beliefs about racial inferiority.
(Coninued…)
In judging the ethical status of things, the problem with setting aside “issues of definition” and instead, focussing on effects is that you end up conflating the analysis of the effects with the analysis of the thing itself. In other words, you mistakenly surmise that the thing which brings about the effect is essentially the same as the effect.
Dr Downes conflates the idea that the cartoon may give succour and enjoyment to racists with the idea that the cartoon is, of itself, racist. An analogous conflation is made by those who judge erotica to be bad on the basis that it leads some people to commit sexual assault (which IS bad), or that football is bad insofar as it encourages tribalism in wild fans. It really does matter whether or not the cartoon is racist or just enjoyed by racists.
The other reason definitions need to be attended to is that, contra Dr Downes dismissive jibe regarding epiphenomena, most Australians have a pretty highly developed sense of moral indignation when it comes to being accused of things like racism. There are few more galling experience than being accused of something we know we have not done. And in this case, one must be careful to avoid overstating the charge lest we come across as caricatures of shrill ideologues seeing racism or patriarchy in every job appointment, gesture or cartoon.
For those of us who think that racism is a terrible thing, we need to pick our battles. There are enough truly heinous expressions of racism in this world, that we do ourselves a disservice by fixating on its satellites like parochialism and xenophobia. Sure, they’re bad, and they’re ugly, and they diminish us when they occur in our backyard…but racism is far, far worse…and it’s on the rise.
Dr Downes has his heart in the right place; I just think he’s off the mark here.
Oh, and by the way, when he says that “most Australians can’t tell an epiphenomenon from an epiglottis”, is he really being racist? I don’t think so.
Despite Harry’s hairsplitting, the cartoon referred to in the original article were racist. The same goes for the cartoon in Saturday’s SMH. They both sought to denigrate the subject based on nothing more that his name, as Stephen says. While it might not have implied genetic inferiority, it certainly was intended to convey an impression of cultural inferiority. I thought we got over this years ago.
Disappointing.