Is the AFL racist?

The answer to this is, of course, no. Assigning human-defined qualities such as ‘rights’, ‘freedom’ and ‘racism’ to a non-human entity like the AFL is usually pretty tenuous and in this case to label it racist is a knee-jerk reaction that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Therefore no one should object if it is scrutinised closely when circumstances call for it.

Over the last month the AFL has had a lot to say about ethnicity and has had to reassure the public about its stance. In other words, it’s had to protect its image.

It has had to do this because prominent people within its organisation have said things which have generated a white-hot reaction in the press and provoked a rolling public backlash that just won’t go away.

This backlash has spanned the full spectrum from incredulous disbelief, to outright moral outrage, feigned and genuine, both for and against the AFL.

Kevin Sheedy kicked things off with his remark, “We don’t have the recruiting officer called the immigration department, recruiting fans for Western Sydney Wanderers. We don’t have that on our side” to which (to pick one example at random) Craig Foster and Phoenix captain Andrew Durante responded furiously.

Here’s what this statement was taken to mean: the reason the Wanderers get better crowds than GWS is because Western Sydney is full of foreigners or recent arrivals and they only want to follow football.

After all, if they wanted to be truly Australian they’d be going to GWS games and leaving that round ball game behind them in the old world. This may not be what he meant, but it’s what was perceived.

Defenders of AFL opined that Sheedy put himself in the firing line to detract from GWS’s thrashing that day in front of a home crowd that was reported as being 5000-strong.

If we accept this defence do we conclude that Sheedy’s remarks were unfairly framed as racist?

To do this is to remove the perceived meaning of what he was saying. If we remove that meaning from what he said, we presumably need to replace it with something else – I don’t know what.

Kevin did not appear to back away from his comments, instead opining that, “I think people just get a bit touchy on certain things, and I’m not touchy in that area at all.”

He’s right twice in this instance.

Sheedy is clearly not a racist but if he wants to encourage those Western Sydney locals along to a GWS game, it would be hard to think of a worse way to go about it.

To return to my central point, the AFL is not a racist organisation but perception is everything.

The timing of Sheedy’s remarks was perhaps unfortunate considering the build-up had begun for the AFL’s Indigenous Round, marketed as a celebration of the contribution of Aboriginal players to AFL.

This marketing included reminiscences about Nicky Winmar, the Aboriginal player who made a spontaneous and powerful statement about pride in the face of stupid hatred when he famously lifted his singlet and pointed to his brown skin beneath.

Sydney Swans indigenous player Adam Goodes had been eloquent in his praise for the AFL for its ‘spirituality’ and its ability to allow indigenous youth to connect “culturally” with the game.

As we know, events overtook the marketing onslaught even before the full time siren had blared. Goodes reacted to what he took as a racial taunt from a member of the Collingwood crowd.

The taunt was reported as “ape” and it turned out this taunt was delivered by a 13-year-old girl.

Collingwood’s president Eddie McGuire, one of the few AFL bigwigs who can genuinely claim to be known all over Australia thanks to his various roles on non-AFL programming on Channel Nine, was widely praised for his handling of the situation.

Nobly, he also tried to lessen the heat on the abuser by pointing out she had no idea it was indigenous round and was from country Victoria and so didn’t know it was racist to call a black man an “ape”.

As a positive PR story for the AFL, Indigenous Round was thereby rescued by McGuire and by Goodes himself who demonstrated class and tact in the face of a stark reminder of the worst aspects of his people’s history.

If we’re to accept this defence on behalf of the girl, we must ignore the historical weight that the term “ape” carries when used as a derogatory term against black people. We must instead assume she was calling him an “ape” because of some other reason. I have no suggestions.

Therefore, to ask the public to again ignore the implied meaning of McGuire’s next contribution to the topic of AFL race relations – suggesting that Goodes be used to promote the King Kong musical – is proving too much of a suspension of disbelief for most people.

Even if McGuire’s confusing and weak back-pedalling justifications of what he was really trying to say is believed at face value, his subsequent mea culpa is all the more confusing.

He either meant what he said the first time and apologised for it afterwards, or he meant something else entirely and has nothing to apologise for.

Remember this has blown up hot on the heels of the AFL’s Indigenous Round. Such an attempt to celebrate cultural diversity should make headlines around the world.

Instead the headlines from around the world scream things like: “First an ‘ape’ and now ‘King Kong’, Aboriginal Aussie Rules star stunned by second racist taunt”.

My point: the AFL is not a racist organisation but it has managed to at least invite scrutiny into whether it might be.

People expect blood to flow – whether they’ve been whipped up by a predatory media, or whether these same people are part of the ‘PC brigade’ or whether they’re ‘code warriors’ matters not at all.

The words and actions of a couple of the AFL’s most visible operators at a time when the AFL itself was highlighting the issue of race is just a supreme disaster in the way that matters most to any organisation that cares about its image– public relations.

Will Adam Goodes come to the rescue again?