A recent spat on daytime television in Australia pitted conservative Kerri-Anne Kennerley with activist Yumi Stynes on the politics of protest within indigenous affairs thereby raising the question of what is mean by race, racism, and the ‘racist’. My view is that they are either dumbed down to nothing (depoliticised) and or misunderstood not just by Kennerly but within Australian discourse more generally.    Kerri-Anne Kennerley