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First of all, let me say I am not racist. This is an important point to make right from the start, because too often people fail to specify that they are not racist, and this causes confusion among those who think they might be racist because they never said that they are not.
But let me be clear: I am definitely not racist. In fact I saw an Aboriginal man at Coles just the other day, and I did literally nothing to him. At least I think he was Aboriginal. I didn’t ask him, because I do not see colour.
With that established, let’s talk about Adam Goodes and his – yes, let’s call it what it is – declaration of war on Australia last Friday night.
Never did I think I would live to see the day when a professional Australian Rules footballer would behave unpleasantly in public, but that day arrived last week, and it made me weep for the innocence my country has lost.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for players celebrating their achievements during a game. I remember in my own playing days, my teammates would often follow up a goal by offering a hearty handshake to the scorer.
On some occasions they would even place a firm, manly hand upon the shoulder and say, “Well played”. And I raised no objection then, as I raise no objection now, to such understandable boisterousness in the heat of battle.
But this sort of thing has its limits, and though those limits are sometimes hard to define, a good rule of thumb is: what Adam Goodes did is terrible. Surely that leaves none of us in any doubt as to what acceptable behaviour is – in a nutshell it is not doing what Adam Goodes did.
I mean, a war dance? Surely a war dance is what you do when you are at war. It can only be assumed that Goodes believes himself to be at war. With who? Clearly, with white Australia – the very same white Australia that invented football!
The very same white Australia that lets Adam Goodes play football and doesn’t even make him use a different change room or anything! The very same white Australia that shows such tolerance towards its non-white brethren that even when sorely provoked by deliberate and intentional dancing, it does not arrest the dancer.
Yet how is this tolerance rewarded? By unrepentantly spitting in white Australia’s face.
Let me reiterate here that I am not racist. In fact I went to school with several Asians and talked to them in a calm, non-confrontational way on many occasions.
But let’s be honest: Goodes has form on the provocatively ungrateful front. Remember when he jumped the fence and punched that little girl in the face?
All because she was having a great night out at the footy and he didn’t want her to. A young girl pays her money to sit in the crowd, cheer her team on and label opposition players as primates of her own choice, and somehow Goodes thinks this gives him the right to follow that young girl home and set fire to her garage. Who’s the real racist here?
It’s certainly not me – the man who mows my lawn is from Croatia.
It’s a shame how many in our so-called media are so pathetically beholden to political correctness that they can laud Goodes’s dancing – which was, as we have established, essentially a promise to murder all white people in their beds – as an “expression of indigenous culture”.
How ridiculous! Indigenous people get to express their culture all the time – haven’t these people seen The Sapphires? But there is a time and a place for the expression of indigenous culture, and that time and place is certainly not on the football field during Indigenous Round.
Because Indigenous Round is a time to celebrate what unites us, which is football, and not what divides us, which is Indigenousness. But Goodes is a born divider – look at the way he divides people into “racists” and “non-racists”, completely oblivious to the fact that we are all simply people, and none of us are racist. Particularly not me – my best friend is Persian or something.
But Goodes wants you to believe that not only are people racist, but that some of them live in Australia, which is a transparently idiotic allegation. Would a country with racists in it have allowed Kevin Rudd, a man who by his own admission speaks Chinese, to become prime minister?
The real scandal is the blind eye so many are turning to safety. Would a white man be allowed to threaten others with a spear on national television? “Oh yes yes,” cry the reverse racism apologists, “it was only an imaginary spear.”
Does that make it better? Do you think a person can’t be killed by an imaginary spear? Perhaps you do, but remember, Goodes is an Aborigine, and they have mysterious powers. The power to make people feel guilty who are not racist, for example.
Do we have to wait until a spectator dies from imaginary wounds before we take action? The even grimmer possibility is that this will spark an imaginary arms race.
Goodes brandishes an imaginary spear; Chris Judd draws an imaginary revolver; Joel Selwood drives onto the field in an imaginary tank; Matthew Pavlich imaginary cluster-bombs the entire St Kilda team. Once the imaginary weapon genie is out of the bottle, it’s awfully hard to stuff it back in.
The real question is: do we want to a live in a country of harmony and peace, or do we want to live in a country where people think they are free to dance wherever and whenever they like?
Do we want to live in a country where we refuse to judge others by the colour of their skin, or do we want to live in a country where people keep reminding us of the colour of their skin and making us feel all uncomfortable?
Do we want to live in a country where we accept people of all cultures, or do we want to let people ruin everything by having cultures?
The answer is clear, and I say that as a person who has never been in any way racist – in fact I am fairly sure that my ongoing research on Ancestry.com will soon reveal that I am actually black.
All I want is for everyone – black or white, man or woman, footballer or fan – to come together as one nation and respect every Australian’s right to keep their cultural identity to themselves. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.