Comedian and ex-triple j employee Gen Fricker has criticised her former employer for not calling out racist behaviour in the workplace, and accusing them of not holding themselves to the standard they preach.
Taking to Instagram in a six-minute-long video, Fricker said, “I think I need to say something because I’ve been complacent – because I’ve just been so beat down by it, and I didn’t say it before.
“But after seeing black tiles all over my feed and people sharing things about how the gatekeepers of the culture should be held accountable,” she continued, “I’m just going to put this out there.”
“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.”
In the statement, Fricker acknowledged her privilege in that she is a light-skinned woman of colour, she has an education and she got to work at triple j.
“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.”
“Or having to ask white co-workers to stop doing African-American accents in the office, ‘blaccent'”, she continued.
“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.”
Fricker left the station at the end of last year, wrapping up a five year tenure at the station.
Both triple j and ABC have yet to respond.
Watch Fricker’s full video below.
