Gen Fricker has shared a video to Instagram, detailing incidents of racism from behind the scenes at triple j.
The former Lunch host has detailed the feelings of isolation she had to deal with being one of the two people of colour working at triple j, and the casual racism she witnessed during her time there.
“After seeing black tiles all over my feed and people sharing things about how the gatekeepers of the culture should be held accountable I’m just going to put this out there,” she shared.
“If you work at triple j and you’re white you’re part of the problem.”
Fricker explained that she has been engaged in conversation with former and aspiring triple j employees about the experience of being a woman of colour working at the company and constantly being put in a position where she felt it was her duty to call out racism.
“The difference between being not racist and anti-racist is calling out that shit,” she explained. “I don’t think you realise how fucking lonely it was being one of two brown people in those rooms having to explain why maybe a white woman singing in another language [perhaps a reference to The Preature’s song ‘Yanada‘] with no black people was a bit fucking problematic.”
Fricker details incidents of racism that she witnessed her from her colleagues including “having to ask coworkers to stop doing African American accents in the office, blaccents.”
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She continued to detail “how fucking horrible it is to go into an office where the manager has no problem recording a thirty-minute long demo sketch of him prank calling one of our coworkers doing an Indian accent, pretending to be an Indian call centre worker.
“We try and say shit about this in the room but you get tired. You get tired of having to fucking explain it all the time. It would be really great if any of these people posting black tiles literally did anything like that day to day.”
The former-host implied that much of the Black Lives Matter and First Nations solidarity activism from triple j employees was largely performative.
“That Indigenous ally tile is great, it’s awesome, I’m not going to diminish that work,” she explained. “But post a fucking picture of the management team at triple j and tell me that comes from a real place.
“It’s not enough to just put black people, Indigenous people at the front. Let them absorb all the horrific shit gets said to them by your audience and go ‘my work here is done.’
“It starts with you you’re gatekeepers of the culture you have a massive influence you need to stop trading off your progressive brand because it’s not real.
“If you’re an employee and you’re there and you’re wondering if they’ll fire you for saying something, odds are if you’re white, they’re not going to fire you.
“It would be far more damaging for them to fire you for speaking out against racism, then for you to speak out about racism.”
This weekend a slew of protests organised in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and to highlight First Nations deaths in police custody will unfurl across Australia. If you are healthy and able it is your duty to show up. You can find a guide to all the protests here.
