I know your kind well enough.
You’re the one sitting there shaking your head because your afternoon has been interrupted by another parcel of reactionary, pinko print designed to extract an apology from the guiltless.
You’re the one who thinks it’s all a beat up. The one who thinks people need to get out more. The one for whom it’s all just banter in the heat of battle.
The one who’s ‘not racist, but…’.
By the time you read this perhaps last week’s hoopla will have died down. The issue will have filled a spinnaker, tootled off, and any new breeze will be devoted to a new round upon which so much rests for you and your proud club.
But problem is the wind always picks up again and the same the issue keeps sailing back on it.
Why? Because perpetrators don’t change. In their heart they’re never wrong. Instead they’re momentarily stung, inconvenienced into a mealy-mouthed apology forced upon them by a painfully pompous intellectual elite.
We’ve tried making things hurt a little, of course. Player racism has been leapt upon by rule makers.
But is the tail struggling to wag a stubborn, deaf hound?
Think of it this way.
If a player is accused of racial abuse, he is lambasted, subjected to mediation, suspended and/or fined, and then counselled before being thrust back into a peer environment in which there is every chance he will work closely with a teammate whose genetics inspired his original idiocy. His foolishness will follow him around. It is probable he’ll learn a hard lesson. It is unlikely he will reoffend.
But if a member of Joe or Joanne Public is accused of racial abuse, they’ll remain pretty much anonymous unless outed by social media or by a grainy image in some rag. A membership may be torn up (doesn’t that represent a cost saving to the guilty party? Discuss). And that’s about the extent of it until the next similar incident deems the last relatively redundant.
Meanwhile, Joe or Joanne will resume life in a peer environment that no doubt had a significant say in what carried abuse from head to mouth unimpeded by brain and uncensored by heart. Perhaps they’ll be comforted by sympathetic friends and family. Besides, footballers are paid a fortune and need to have a thicker skin. White footballers cop it every week, so black footballers shouldn’t be treated any different. Nick Riewoldt doesn’t complain about being called a weak albino. Gary Ablett doesn’t whine about being a called a Biblebasher. Hayden Ballantyne doesn’t moan about being called a midget pest.
No. The perpetrator will be reassured that they are the victim, that there was nothing in it, that the world’s gone mad around them, or that – as one Twitter user attempted to argue – it’s all just racism in reverse:
‘If Goodes kicks a goal next game and a Sydney supporter yells out, “Magilla, you f*cking ripper” will he be evicted and lose his membership?’
You know it makes sense.
For years we have heard of the unacceptability of racism at any level, but still it exists.
The AFL has done what it can to manage its own. But what of those who exist in the outer?
Those weekend warriors who douse themselves in merch and pump themselves full of overpriced mid-strength until they’re brave enough to spit vitriol?
Who really polices their behaviour?
Mothers? Fathers? Friends?
Birds of a feather flock together do they not?
Something is deadest rotten out there.
It is only you, dear apologist, who is impervious to the stench.
The Essendon member who dobbed in the latest racist dunce deserves the highest praise.
But what would have happened had that supporter not piped up?
What of the dozens of others within earshot not only then but every other time something like it happened? What inspired their silence? Fear? Or did they think it was funny? Did they think nothing of it at all? Had they heard it all before?
Is there a subculture within certain clubs that allows this sort of thing to fester? Booing an injured umpire is horribly ugly. Is that kind of mob cowardice indicative?
I remember only too well the bile heaped upon the under-equipped Gold Coast Suns when back in 2011, the Bombers had raced to near enough to 100 ahead at quarter time. The Suns kids – and mostly they were actual, real kids – were ‘weak c-nts’. Ablett was a ‘weak, scab dog’. Do I put two and two together as far as the Bombers are concerned? Is this just how that club is?
What aspersions should I cast on the Bulldogs in the wake of allegations of racism levelled at one of its members? Who inhabits that particular clan?
Troubled by my broad brushstrokes?
Maybe you should be. Maybe you couldn’t give a toss.
Or maybe it’s time to peel off the scarf and beanie we wear as armour and question what’s really in play.
It is not right to go on the way we are.
It is not good enough to rest upon the fact that the occasional bad egg exists in the odd pre-packaged dozen.
That is no defence. That is a total cop out.
We should be better than this muck.
As far as racism is concerned, a shredded membership card alone will not clean the soiled bedding.
Time instead to start tossing a genuinely heavy book at those pathetic few who can’t be told.
And while we’re at it perhaps it’s time for the rest of us to take a wander down a hall of mirrors and ponder what we want our kids to remember when we bring them with us to the footy.
Passion is bedrock in this game. But what have we let it become?
That is a question that needs some serious thought.
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