Former triple j presenter Gen Fricker has called out the broadcaster for failing to condemn racism.
Fricker posted a six-minute video to Instagram, in which she called on triple j to “stop trading off as a progressive brand because it’s not real”.
“If you work at triple j and you’re white, you’re part of the problem. And I don’t mean this – I mean, people can write this off as angry former worker, I don’t care, I have nothing to lose. And I’m also saying this because having chatted to people of colour who work at triple j with triple j, want to be on triple j, these are the discussions we are having. So here it is,” she said.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBCt03bAfTm/?utm_source=ig_embed
“The difference between being not racist and anti-racist is calling out that shit. And I say it all the time. But I don’t think you realise how lonely it was to be one of two brown people in those rooms, having to explain why maybe a white woman singing a language with no black people was a bit fucking problematic.”
Fricker detailed multiple examples of such behaviour she had seen during her five years working with the broadcaster.
“Or having to ask white co-workers to stop doing African-American accents in the office, ‘blaccent’”, she added.
“Or, how fucking horrible it is to go into an office with a manager that has no problem recording a 30-minute long ‘demo-sketch’ of him prank-calling one of our co-workers doing an Indian accent, pretending to be an Indian call-centre worker.
“Like, yeah, maybe that was recorded a long time ago, but it’s been on the system for five years. I don’t know if it’s still there now but it was on there up until I left.”
