Roger Murdoch

Our company had another “celebrity” chat yesterday – one of our few black employees had a virtual chat with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Naturally, I hoped he would talk about his role as Roger Murdoch in the film Airplane (which is how I most think of him – in much the same way that I think of OJ Simpson as Norberg from The Naked Gun), but sadly that was never going to happen given the serious state of race relations in America right now.  Does it make me a racist that I wasn’t really interested in too much of the conversation about race?  On some level, maybe (and my overt racism is definitely more yellow than black).  I certainly believe that American society is still intrinsically racist, and it needs to change – and that just starts with policing.  And I believe in the right of peaceful protest – including taking the knee during the anthem.  And as much as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is one of the greatest basketball players ever, I also know him as an erudite and intelligent activist and author. I’ve read many of his columns in Time magazine.  However a lot of the topics covered in the chat were things I already knew or had inferred, and I think there are many more Americans in their small-minded white bubbles who would be a better audience for this than me.  This seems like an important time in the state of race relations in the US – will these sustained protests actually make a difference?  I suspect not under the current president.  But I think it’s right to protest and to keep these issues at the forefront of the American consciousness – unfortunately there are so many other issues that are just as important that also need to be addressed, I’m thinking particularly of the environment and climate change.  As someone of non-American white privilege, and someone without any black friends or colleagues, I feel very uncomfortable and uninformed about writing about race in any amount of detail.  But at least I can explicitly state that I support the black lives matter movement.


PS A big hooray for the New Zealand Super League being aired here last night - for what has to be the first time ever.  3 reasons why it's great: (1) it's rugby union, by far the best form of rugby, (2) it's rugby union, my second favorite sport to watch, and (3) because New Zealand is virus-free, it's the first sporting event I've watched for what feels like forever that actually had spectators.