Adelaide Spirit Festival

I went along to the Adelaide Spirit Festival this morning to do a few interviews for the racism show on The Stand.

It was a strange entrance at first. I think it was the first time in my life that I have entered an area and felt myself to be in the minority. A great sea of black folks enjoying the beautiful weather and great entertainment.

Very soon, this faded. A great welcoming feel greeted me, and within minutes I was just another member of the crowd, and thoroughly enjoying myself. I met up with Natasha Wanganeen who was interested in doing an interview for the show. She had no time in the end as she was hosting the festival at the time, but she put me onto some wonderful folks who handed me around like the media noob I am, until I got a great interview for the show.

Then, after a great Aboriginal hip-hop act, a comic came up on stage. He did a bit about aboriginals which made me quite uncomfortable. Every negative Aboriginal stereotype got an airing, and I squirmed in my shoes for the entire time. It may be that I am just an uptight white guy, but I really felt that he was being quite racist towards his own people!

It wasn't until later when Rod Lewis pointed out to me that this is a common thing amongst certain minority comics. They utilise the stereotypical view of their race/creed/minority group and poke fun at it. The members of that same group KNOW that the stereotypical view is incorrect, so can laugh at it.

Can you guess the next realisation?

I was uncomfortable listening to the Aboriginal comics material because I BELIEVED THE STEREOTYPES!!!! Here I was, a modern intelligent guy doing a radio show exposing racism, and I was behaving in an incredibly racist way!

I learned a lot today, and that's what I love about this radio show. Every subject we cover, I learn a LOT about. When left to one's own devices, the tendancy is to intellectually stagnate. The old thoughts, unstudied, unrefreshed, go unchanged. With the calibre of the GSS panelists, how could I help but learn?