commentary Sol Trujillo has, not for the first time and perhaps not for the last, ignited a furore, this time over his charge that Australians are racist. While his broader comments mischaracterise a country generally welcoming to people of different cultural backgrounds, there is also some validity to them when it comes to the way he was treated during his stint here.
(Credit: Suzanne Tindal/ZDNet.com.au)
From the moment he was appointed CEO of Telstra in mid-2005 Trujillo was caricatured — in print as well as cartoons — as a Mexican and the fellow-Americans he brought into Telstra as his "amigos". He isn't Mexican. While ultimately of Hispanic descent, he was born in Wyoming.
Is it racist to call someone from America's west a Mexican?
That depends on your perspective, and experiences.
Just as Trujillo's comments could be seen as containing elements of cultural misunderstanding — of the spiky Australian sense of humour, of the distrust and disdain for anything that smacks of arrogance or slickness, of the mock civility of public discourse and of the deeply-engrained "Tall Poppy" syndrome — Australians may have underestimated the sensitivity of an Hispanic American to being characterised as a cartoon Mexican.
Racial stereotyping doesn't have to be overtly offensive to offend, although it can be overtly offensive.
There's a scene from South Park, "The Hall of Stereotypes", which depicts a tour of a gallery of racial stereotypes presented in wax — the black American eating chicken and watermelon, the Arab presented as a terrorist, an Asian with a calculator, a "covetous Jew" and a "sleepy Mexican".
One of the characters says: "Here's a good one, the stereotypical sleeping Mexican." However, the Mexican is not a wax figure. He wakes, stretches and says: "No man, I'm the janitor. I was supposed to be working but I felt tired. I'm so sleepy."
Is portraying a race as indolent, low-skilled and perhaps untrustworthy racist? Is depicting Trujillo as a sombrero-hatted Mexican bandit riding off with bags of cash on a burro racist?
Trujillo, and some of his Australian colleagues, certainly thought it was. Anyone with even the most rudimentary familiarity with the racial tensions and sensitivities within the US would probably come to the same conclusion.
Whatever judgement one makes of his performance, the nature of the treatment he has received, and continues to receive, was uncalled for and grossly insensitive.
It may not have been the intention of the Australian journalists, cartoonists and even the Prime Minister — who bid Trujillo farewell with an un-prime-ministerial "adios" — to offend. Ours is not a society where the issue of racial stereotyping and the offence it causes has had much airplay, unlike the US; and our humour (and cartoonists) can be aggressive.
Given Trujillo's visibility in US business and political circles, his comments — and the evidence he can point to in his treatment by Australian media, politicians and some elements of the public — are damaging to Australia's reputation and our ability to attract executives and capital from the US, where the treatment of Trujillo will be filtered through the lens of American experiences and sensitivities.
Trujillo did misunderstand and misrepresent Australia and, it appears, most Australians, by extrapolating from his own experience and it is apparent from the earliest days that he struggled to come to grips with the fundamental differences that lie beneath the superficial similarities of American culture and ours. However, he too has been misrepresented and misunderstood.
Despite some attempts to rewrite history, Trujillo left Telstra in better shape than he found it, with better technology, better market positions and a better understanding of its customers and how to reach them (albeit with some work yet to do on service quality).
Telstra shares may have been hit by the financial crisis and further damaged by its decision not to participate in the ultimately aborted National Broadband Network tender, but they also have been among the better-performers in the market, and the company is in far, far better shape than most of its global peers.
Tactically, he may have made a costly mistake — and ensured an unhappy end to a controversial tenure at Telstra — in snubbing the NBN tender and publicly contemplating the alternatives, but no-one considered the possibility of a government pointing a cannon at Telstra in the form of an open-ended blank cheque from taxpayers to fund an uncosted fibre-to-the-premises network.
However, whatever judgement one makes of his performance, the nature of the treatment he has received, and continues to receive, was uncalled for and grossly insensitive. Racist, perhaps.
This article by Business Spectator's Stephen Bartholomeusz is reproduced on ZDNet.com.au courtesy of a reciprocal publishing agreement.
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In my view Telstra's biggest problem has always been rolling out good technology, with some short-sighted limitations, at too high a price, with poor customer service behind it.
I've never seen any sign that the heads of Telstra agree with my view and actively try to improve the situation, so I always choose alternatives when I can.