What's been missing from Saturday night television? Racism!

But it might be making a comeback.

Two incidents this week, from different shows, countries and circumstances. But one similarity: they didn't mean to offend, so they couldn't accept something was wrong.

Incident Number One.

In the aptly named "Red Face" segment of the Australian variety show Hey Hey It's Saturday a Jackson 5 tribute act performs, which has six incidents of blackface. Guest judge Harry Connick Jr is completely appalled.(Note: the link shows both Connick's reaction and the act itself).

After Connick awards them a zero, host Darryl Somers makes a hasty apology, not for the utterly racist spectacle, but because the show felt it had offended him. Not for cheerfully showing an outdated, offensive form of entertainment, but because they had offended their guest Harry Connick Jr (who again deals with it beautifully).

The next day Somers states "To most Australians I think it's a storm in a tea cup" .


Incident Number Two.

The hopelessly stupid dancer and tv presenter Anton Du Beke, who is currently appearing on Strictly Come Dancing, "jokingly" called his dance partner Laila Rouas a derogatory term for an Asian person after seeing her fake tan. Rouas is part-Indian and part-Moroccan. It is also rumoured that he asked if she is a terrorist.

Du Beke apologised. Both Bruce Forsyth and Len Goodman had outbreaks of Old White Man Syndrome, Forsyth telling everyone to get a sense of humour
and Goodman claiming things aren't like the old days.

The over-arching theme of these apologies (and later statements) is that what happened didn't matter,and to think about that is to linger unnecessarily on a subject that is closed.

Except this isn't just about tedious ballroom dancing and morons pretending to be the Jacksons. This is about blackface and acceptable language, and there is a history behind these things.

Calling an Asian woman a derogatory term is not the same as an American calling a Brit a "limey" because limey is not yelled at people in the street. Limey has not been written on the door of someone's home to intimidate them. Rambling on about how things are different these days does not help, because that is a good thing. Just because you are older does not mean you live in a bubble.

It is not acceptable to wear blackface if you are Indian: just because both African and Asian people are not Caucasian does not make them the same. It is not acceptable to wear blackface because you really love Michael Jackson. And it is not acceptable to show blackface on a television show. It is definitely not acceptable to show blackface on a reunion special when that act was originally featured in 1989. Not 1969, 1989.

The producers of the show seem to ignore this. It is not that an act was shown twenty years ago and they thought it would be nice to show it again. It is that a blackface act was selected and ok'd for viewing by several departments not once but twice, both in eras when such humour is not acceptable. At all. And once the initial apology has been made, the show's producer and presenter announces that "most Australians" wouldn't be bothered by it. Even the black ones?

We are not divorced from the cultures and history that created such slurs, even though we'd like to erase it from our collective memories. We can't pretend that individual actions don't count towards a wider consciousness, especially when those actions are broadcast.