Top Aboriginal journalist quits Australia TV channel after racial abuse

Stan Grant – award-winning journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Company, quit the ABC after facing non-stop racism. Grant belongs to the aboriginal community that faced brutal subjugation and conversions under British rule in Australia.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that Grant, one of the top television journalists in Australia and of indigenous ethnicity, shared he faced “relentless racial filth” which prompted him to quit his show.

Grant says that he was subject to racial abuse as he pointed out about the colonial persecution of indigenous Australians by the British during the ABC’s coverage of King Charles III’s coronation. Grant was quoted as saying: “I pointed out that the crown represents the invasion and theft of our land… Police wearing the seal of the crown took children from their families. Under the crown our people were massacred”.

In an article published on the ABC’s website, Grant said: “Australia is the only Commonwealth country not to have signed treaties with First Nations people. Under the crown we remain the most impoverished and imprisoned people in the country. We cannot live in the fantasy Australia that pretends we have transcended this history. We owe it to ourselves to be better”.

The television journalist said that the ABC has not supported him despite the severe racial abuse that he faced. He added that his wife also faces abuse.

He has also complained to social media platform Twitter about the racial abuses that he had to suffer because he highlighted the darkness of colonial rule upon his people.

British newspaper, The Guardian also reported about the ‘unrelenting racism’ that Grant faced during King Charles III’s coronation.

The last few years have spotlighted the process of annihilation of indigenous people in the US, Canada and Australia over the past few hundred years. Their lands were taken away, children snatched by the church, a systematic destruction of culture took place and rampant conversions were enforced to take away their pagan identities.

The marginalisation of local communities continues to this day as they have been kept in poverty and out of power corridors.

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