The anger at the appalling statement recently by Collingwood president Allan McAlister that as long as Aborigines “”conduct themselves like white people, well, off the field, everyone will admire them” should now be channelled into constructive change.
The reason for the poor record of Australian rules is a combination of its Melbourne base and the nature of psychological warfare in sport.
Psychological warfare has always been part of sport. Undermining your opponent through taunts and muttering is part of the sport from the highest to the lowest. Often the crowd joins in, and the crowd can be worse than opponents.
The central weapon of crude football-crowd psychological warfare is to seize upon personal points of difference of players. Thus players have been taunted for being short, bald or hairy. Victoria has a low Aboriginal population. Unlike Western Australia and the Northern Territory, people are not used to many Aborigines in the community. So in Victoria, being Aboriginal is a point of difference, and thus has been a point upon which some elements of Melbourne crowds have based their taunts.
The taunts have been made worse by the proximity of the crowd to players; only a low-level fence and a metre of ground separates them. The taunts can be close and personal.
Aussie rules began in 1859 and it was 70 years before it got its first first-grade Aboriginal player. There were only a few in the 20s and 30s. Doug (later Pastor Sir) played for Fitzroy for five years to 1937, after being hounded from Carlton by essentially racist commentsform fellow players. As a Fitzroy player he still suffered taunts from the crowd. There were a few Aborigines playing in the Victorian Football League in the 1940s, but none in 50s and only one in the 70s.
Essentially, the premier Australian rules league was white Melbourne, until the 1980s. Then a combination of four factors brought more Aborigines into the game. National live colour televising, better air travel, the decline of boxing and, ironically, racism.
Australian rules was also the main code in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory. In WA especially, racism cut off employment so football became a way to a secure income. This has been pointed out by Professor Colin Tatz of Macquarie University.
The good players (hounded by racism from good jobs at home) went to Victoria where there was better money, and better travel made that easier: the Krakouer brothers went to North Melbourne and Derek Kickett and Michael Long to Essendon. Maurice Rioli came from the Tiwi islands north of Darwin to Melbourne. And there were others.
They had seen, through televised games, the way to national stardom or at least decent employment through football. Boxing, till then the main sporting way to good income, was in decline.
The addition of the West Coast Eagles to the till-then exclusively Victorian league in 1987 gave Aborigines a more direct entry point. Western Australia has a proportionately higher Aboriginal population and it has many more first-class Aboriginal players.
With more Aboriginal players in a city not used to Aboriginal residents in the same number as other Australian cities, the racial taunts as an element of crowd psychological warfare was bound to increase.
A month ago Collingwood supporters taunted St Kilda’s Nicky Winmar with disgraceful racist remarks.
At best it is only half the time that an Aboriginal player can reply with the effectiveness that Winmar did on that occasion. His team won and he proudly lifted his jumper pointing to his black skin gesticulating to the concentration of Collingwood fans near the goalposts. You don’t always win, and it shouldn’t be necessary to prove the point.
Importantly, the game was being televised live to the nation, including the Northern Territory, which has the highest percentage Aboriginal population _ 25 per cent.
The Winmar and other incidents were discussed on a television sports show during which McAlister added injury to insult ÿ(subs: plse leave it as injury to insult not the other way round)@ with his statement about Aborigines conducting themselves “”like white people”.
It wounded to the quick. It undermined the very essence of multiculturalism because it undermined its two mainstays: respect for different cultures (behaviour off the field, if you like) and recognition that we share national endeavour (behaviour on the field, if you like).
The reason the McAlister comments were so profoundly offensive were because they (probably subconsciously) reverted to a 1950s assimilation mentality: black boys can play football if they become de-facto white boys.
For a powerful figure in the administration of Australian football to say this consciously was bad enough. To defend it as a slip of the tongue was worse. It confirmed some of the worse fears among Aboriginal people: that some people in power had no genuine respect for Aboriginal culture, self-determination and desire to live their lives independently as they see fit. What an irony that Collingwood’s colours are black and white!
To his credit McAlister has recognised the damage he has done and done something to repair the damage. He has gone to the Northern Territory to meet Aboriginal footballers and others and promised to hold a Collingwood vs Aboriginal all-stars team match for a Rioli Cup.
There can be no better way to rid the Melbourne-dominated AFL of racism than for officials of clubs who have a bad record in getting Aboriginal recruits (Collingwood especially) to meet, listen and talk to Aboriginal people on their own ground.
The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, got it right in his Redfern Park statement. It is not about sympathy, but empathy. Imagine what it would be like to be in Ricky Winmar’s position. Playing sport, your sport, with all the spectators black and nearly all the player black, in black world and someone taunting “”white bastard”.
Tough that does not capture well enough. It does not embrace the jobs, housing and education aspect as well.
A better analogy is to recall the times when the boss has ignored your work, or worse condemned your most ardent efforts with a “”whddyadothatfor”.
Your response is: “”Bugger it, why do I bother.”
Your enthusiasm, spirit and productivity slump. Excluded not included. That is the crime of racism: wasted talent. Some of the clubs of the AFL are plain stupid as well as immoral or blind not to draw on the great talent of Aboriginal football players.
With some goodwill, the national anger at McAlister’s “”slip of the tongue” can be directed at changing that.