Racism in the court of public opinion: who gets judged and who gets a pass?

Racism is more than slurs and personal prejudice. It is about who is policed, who is trusted – who is heard and who is ignored. It’s a subject many of us have been turning over in the past week as we’ve read about the racially aggravated harassment trial of Sam Kerr, the anti-Semitic video featuring two NSW nurses, and the News Corp crew that attempted to provoke an anti-Semitic incident in Sydney.

When it comes to racism in 2025, who gets judged and who gets a pass?

From what I see, it depends on three questions. One: how do we define racism? Increasingly, we’re seeing racism conflated with personal prejudice or discrimination.

Take the case of Matilda’s captain Sam Kerr, who last week was found not guilty of racially aggravated harassment over an incident in 2023 where she called an English police officer “stupid and white”.

Racism is recognised as something systemic – embedded in institutions and social structures. It’s something that shapes opportunities and treatment in everyday life.

A white police officer, backed by institutional authority, has a fundamentally different experience of race than someone like Kerr, who is of mixed heritage and has likely faced racialised assumptions throughout her life.

This is where we hit our second question: what happens when prejudiced attitudes exist across communities who have historically faced racism themselves?

Take the viral video of two NSW nurses making abhorrent, anti-Semitic comments. Both nurses were from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, with one confirmed to be a former refugee from Afghanistan.

The outcry has been immediate and widespread. Politicians, faith leaders, union groups, and media commentators have condemned the nurses – who were stood down from their positions and put under police investigation.

But this wasn’t enough. There have been calls to revise Australia’s citizenship test and tighten up migration settings so we’re letting in the ‘right’ kind of migrants.

Senator Fatima Payman has rightly called out this pile on – and asked where the similar outrage was for Kelly Farrugia, who was charged in December with a racially motivated attack after attempting to mow down a Muslim community leader with her car.

At the time of my writing this, Kerry – a white Australian woman who actively tried to harm someone - had featured in 22 news pieces since December. In less than a week, Ahmed Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh have featured in over 1,640.

This is very telling and leads us onto the third question: when is racism racism, and when is it a ‘regrettable’ incident?

A story that might have slipped under your radar last week was an undercover operation where News Corp sent a man in a Star of David cap into an Egyptian restaurant in Sydney, as part of an ‘investigation’ into anti-Semitism, titled ‘UNDERCOVERJEW’.

The man ordered a drink, loitered in the restaurant, and eventually left without incident. A reporter subsequently entered the restaurant to confront staff.

For many of you, this is the first time you’re reading about this incident – that’s how little public interest it has generated despite being, in my opinion, a clear example of race baiting that would have further undermined social cohesion had the stunt gone as intended and provoked an anti-Semitic incident.

In what limited media coverage it received, the incident has been labelled a “regrettable decision” or “undercover drama”. ?

My reading of the events of the past week is that racism and racial inequality play out differently depending on where you stand in society. The idea that some groups are subject to systemic racism while others hold institutional power is not always a simple, linear concept.

What is clear, however, is that in the court of public opinion your skin colour, faith, cultural background and religion are the deciding factors in the sentence you receive.