Success Quote by Arthur Murray

“White lies” is usually the soft-focus phrase we use to forgive small deceptions in the name of comfort. Arthur Murray weaponizes it by welding it to a brutal reality: Aboriginal deaths in custody in New South Wales and the families left to carry that grief. The intent is accusatory, but it’s also diagnostic. He’s pointing at a particular kind of harm that isn’t just physical or bureaucratic - it’s narrative. The lie doesn’t merely cover up the event; it re-injures the people who survived it.

The phrase “will suffer again” is doing heavy work. It suggests trauma as a repeating loop, reset each time the state, police, or media machine produces a soothing version of events: procedural language, “no wrongdoing,” “unfortunate incident,” the quiet implication that the victim’s life somehow made the outcome inevitable. Murray’s subtext is that deception functions as policy. A lie becomes an instrument for delaying accountability, draining public outrage, and exhausting families into silence.

Calling them “white lies” also pulls race into the frame without euphemism. It’s not just that the lies are told by white institutions; it’s that whiteness claims the authority to define reality, to decide which deaths deserve clarity and which can be blurred into administrative fog. Murray’s line is less a lament than a warning: when power lies about violence, it’s committing a second act of violence - one aimed at memory, dignity, and the possibility of justice.