With the recent saga of Adam Goodes, an Indigenous
Australian football player and an Australian of the Year being booed at matches
over and over again for a few months, all camps are up in arms. A recent “revelation”
was because of his tough stand against a racial slur a 13 year old girl threw
at him at a match that ignited the booing because “he has no rights to have the
girl thrown out while she didn’t know what she was saying was racist”.
I personally do not buy the argument at all.
First of all the girl is 13 years old. Not 3, not 5, not 7
but 13. She is in high school and should have the understanding by now that
calling someone an ape is racist, unless the lexicon is a common language in
the family, such as she calls her mum and dad apes when she doesn’t like them
and they love her doing that. Was the
handling rough? Yes it was. Was it warranted? In my opinion it was because this
is to show to all other audience no matter what age you are you have no rights
to sling racial slurs against other people on the field whether they on the
team you support or not. I personally will request the same but then I never
have tolerance for misbehaving kids or teenagers, let alone the racial abusing
subset.
Other people were saying people had made it a trend without
actually meaning anything. They were doing it for fun and it was a sheep
following phenomenon. Yes it might be but it does not make it right either. If
we follow the same logic does that mean if man hunting became a fun thing to do
people can just go hunting other people down with their short guns without
bearing any consequences? Would that be
alright to rebuttal that fact that someone is hurt simply because the defendant
was following what other people were doing?
I found it quite extraordinary that people can come out with
such arguments without looking at the core issue here. Maybe these people who
are the token privileged white upper social class in the Australian society do
think that it is alright for them to slander people of other ethnic origins
because it is fun to do so, knowingly or not knowingly so. People like Alan
Jones who are serial abusers of other people except the Upper Class Right Wing
Conservative Anglo Saxons will never understand what it means to be abused or
bullies because they themselves are the abusers and bullies and they enjoyed
every single seconds, if not milliseconds of it. Alan Jones calling out Adam
Goodes as playing victims and using is ethnicity to play the racial victim
class demonstrates how little he understands (or how much he refuses to
understand) what racism is. What would people like them know about being
racially abused or racially attacked when they are never on the receiving ends
and in fact find it fun to do so to “lift their personal profiles” or for some
good old fun?
The issue with the Adam Goodes saga is not about footy or
the football field. What we saw on the field or at the stadium is a reflection
of part of our society and the fact that our society or some of the media
failed to see that is what is disappointing. It became just another media story
to milk for some and it lost the essence of really looking for long term
solutions to this problem. Would the League willing to tell the audience a
match can be terminated without refund if such kinds of abuse on players
continued? I doubt so because that will mean a huge cost to them and they are
in for the money not just the sport. The very core issue here is that there is
still a significant part of our society that failed to admit modern Australia
is a multicultural society and appreciate what good multiculturalism brought to
the Australian identity. I personally find it amusing and ironic that people
are fighting for a Republic without the Queen but then so many of these people
are actually still living in the Victorian era thinking that anything that is
not white is a stain of the society and so must be dealt with.
I personally think if Australia is going to stay as a
country based on Christian values; they need to revisit the values, which are
about love and acceptance. If our God can move on from his Chosen People to
embrace the Gentiles for his Salvation and use people originally seen as
outcasts to do His job, why could these Anglo Christians purists in our society
still think they are better than other people? Please bear in mind they are in
fact the Gentiles. Also social integration cannot be done through lip services,
which our current Government is all about when it comes things they don’t like
but have to do to appease for polls. Maybe it will take a drastic experience
like Saul to get people like Alan Jones who like to verbally crucify other people
who are not with them to understand that this world is not about them and what
they believe in but everyone who share this world with them.
The Adam Goodes Saga is not about Adam Goodes only but also about
how our society behaves and what our social values are as a nation. It is not
about some fiery media story and missiles shooting. The War Dance exhibited is
a dance to challenge the invisible Goliath called racism in our society.
Diminishing it in whatever approach will just provide a bigger breeding ground
to this beast and sooner or later we will see our leaders putting on a moustache
and posing in front of our flags in an army uniform.
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