Who are we to question this 'honourable' rage at Adam Goodes
OPINION: So, you’ve got the Western Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, telling you to keep any culturally provocative statements to yourself.
So, you’ve got tens of thousands spitting poison at you every time you go to work.
So, you’ve got a former A-League player calling for your deportation.
You’ve got media commentators saying you’re dividing the country, football fans furious, crowds crying. Country matters are being neglected.
Stop playing the victim, they say, shouldn’t you cop the blame?
Harden up, Adam.
They say you were malicious, and they are honourable men.
Before you brought up any of these racial issues, the crowds used to cheer for you. Something’s changed. You’d need to be blind to miss it.
In 2013 you were the one who was graceless enough to be offended by an often-repeated racial slur. That ape gibe was about your beard. If shaved you’d never hear that word again, promise.
It was an honourable sledge.
You were the one who in 2014 used the Australian of the Year platform to speak on an issue close to your heart (it’s irrelevant, apparently, that that is precisely what every Australian of the Year recipient does).
Be honourable, they said.
You were the one, who, in the face of a racially charged onslaught, chose to throw your cultural pride in the face of a baying Carlton throng back in Round Nine.
They were an honourable crowd.
And you were the one who finally had enough on the weekend. In this day and age we hound uncomfortable opinions into comfortable obscurity. Haven’t you been watching?
Harden up, Adam. This is a proud nation.
Calling out casual – and overt – racism isn’t comfortable for us: We’ve got an identity to live up to. We’re a brave, plucky bunch; larrikins who love a laugh, a fair go and who sanctify mateship above all else. We don’t take things too seriously.
Don’t you see how this makes us look? Not like an honourable crowd.
We’ve got blokes running around wearing Union Jacks and Commonwealth Stars around their necks like Clark Kent went Down Under. They’re working hard to keep the Aussie dream alive.
Aussie pride is good. Aussie pride is sacred. Aussie pride is everything: Just don’t ask us to think about it too deeply.
Just try to be the right type of proud Aussie.
Just because our stadiums are packed to the brim with thousands of fans screaming, booing and hissing at an Aboriginal man who dared show a glimpse of his cultural identity on the telly doesn’t mean there’s racism involved.
They’re just upset because you stage for free kicks. The timing is coincidental.
The other 150 or so players who have taken more free kicks than you this year cop it too.
It is an honourable crowd after all.
Harden up, Adam. You’re the one who refused to play nice when we up and declared you our most Australian of Australians.
By this stage you should realise you can feel however you want about some disgraceful chapters in Australia’s history that saw your people persecuted, killed and dragged from their families.
Just remember to smile for cameras.
It’s bad enough you expect such an honourable crowd to think about generations of stolen children. Now you’re upset someone calls you an ape. You’re upset if someone tells you not to act indigenous? Dance and play nice.
We don’t want to look at that.
This series of events unified AFL fans like no other issue in this increasingly divided nation seemed able. But don’t read anything into that.
It’s not how it looks. There’s nothing racial about any of this.
It’s just a coincidence that our rage over free kicks boiled over at exactly the same time you did something uncomfortably Aboriginal in front of all of us.
Morning news break – July 30
