A Letter to Anyone Booing Adam Goodes

Hello!  Thanks for coming back!  I’m sorry I’ve been away so long.  I wanted to wait till I felt ready to blog on the regular, rather than sporadically like I’d been doing in the lead up to the break.  So here’s hoping I stick to that goal!

If I was going to obey the laws of the internet-lists, I’d give this blog a running theme (like wellness- ha ha!) and stick to it.  But that would mean being super organised and also caring about page views, which I don’t, so instead I’ll just write about whatever I feel like.  I’m ready to write about the situation with my sister, as well as a few other things that have been going on, so all that will be divulged over the coming weeks. 

But today I want to write about Adam Goodes.  I’m doing it here rather than pitching an article because I realise that as a white non-sports type person, I am uniquely unqualified to comment on the matter (doesn’t stop the people at News Corp!).  I’m also aware that there is a literal sea of voices commenting, and my drop in that ocean will likely add little.  I just feel like I might as well be one more voice contributing to the non-racist side of the debate!  For anyone who is more educated on the subject than me- please forgive my ignorance.  Also trigger warning because racism.

A Letter to Anyone Booing Adam Goodes

You are a racist coward.  I’ll tell you why.

You are participating in the most vitriolic and relentless booing campaign in the history of the AFL, and that booing campaign just happens to be aimed at the game’s most proudly Indigenous player.  According to you, this is a coincidence.  You have plenty of reasons for booing Goodes, and not one of those reasons is race-related.  

Well, I’ve got news for you.  Just because you don’t think you’re racist, doesn’t mean you’re not.  Listed below are each of your justifications for booing Goodes, along with simple explanations as to why they are racist as shit.  

‘Adam Goodes stages for free kicks.’

Let’s just give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is true.  Loads of players do this.  Yes, some of them get booed.  But not like this.  Not with the rancour and hate that has been directed toward Goodes.  That one was easy.

‘His singling out of the 13-year-old girl and his war dance were inappropriate and intimidating, and he didn’t deserve the Australian of the Year for that behaviour.’

The fact that Goodes himself encouraged the public to support, rather than vilify, the infamous 13-year-old, seems to have been lost to histrionics.  But no matter.  Either way, it is not up to you, a person privileged enough to be consistently regarded as human, to police how an Indigenous person should feel about and react to being called an ape.  This is simple stuff.  And for those who think he is a big star and couldn’t possibly feel personally discriminated against, fuck you, and also, that’s not up to you to question- decent people don’t question the authenticity of others’ experience, especially when that experience is born of a set of circumstances you cannot possibly understand because you’ve been lucky enough never to have to encounter them.

As for him not ‘deserving’ the AOTY award- this argument is regularly employed as a guise for discrimination.  Have you ever noticed that cries of, ‘There’s someone else more deserving!’ only crop up when the awardee is a member of an oppressed minority?  The same cries were levelled at Caitlyn Jenner recently when she was awarded the Author Ash courage award at the ESPYs.  Seriously, name one time when a white man was the awardee and the outcry reached the same fever pitch.  Didn’t think so.

I shouldn’t have to add this, but Goodes didn’t receive the award just for his pointing out of the girl who called him an ape.  He also participates in regular social justice work for the Indigenous community and is a champion of Indigenous rights.  So there’s that.

And finally, since when did someone ‘not deserving’ an award warrant this kind of animalistic jeering?

‘There are plenty of other indigenous players, and they don’t get booed.’ 

The Indigenous players who don’t get booed also happen to be the ones who don’t display anger at institutionalised racism.  So let’s get into that whole thing…

‘He whinges all the time.’

Here is a quote from the HUN’s Rita Panahi about his ‘whinging’:  ‘His comments about “Remember whose land you’re on” and his consistent bagging of the country that has given him such a high honour, are why he incites this treatment.’  (Emphasis mine)  Similar justifications are regularly employed by the likes of Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones.  Here, these commentators are openly asserting that Goodes’ audacity to be angry about racism is reason enough to abuse him.  Just digest that for a second.

There is an unwritten code of behaviour that Indigenous public figures are expected to behave by in this country, and Adam Goodes will not toe the line.  Unlike his fellow Indigenous players, he refuses to sit down, shut up and be thankful for the opportunity his white benefactors have bestowed upon him.  He shows anger.  And we can’t stomach it.

His anger is ‘intimidating’.  It’s ‘demonstrative’.  There’s ‘no place for it in the game’.  It upsets our delicate white sensibilities to be unceremoniously reminded of the systematic oppression this nation has visited on aboriginal people.  We don’t want to think about it.

But to not want to think about it is to deny it.  To call his anger ‘whinging’ is to imply that he has nothing to be angry about.  It is to put your fingers in your ears and shout that there is ‘no racism here so shut up!’

But guess what?  It’s not Adam Goodes’ job to shelter you from the truth by staying quiet.  It’s not Adam Goodes’ job to protect your poor white feelings.  Anger is a fundamental tool for the advancement of any civil rights movement.  It is healthy, it is necessary, and it is absolutely his right to show it.

You don’t get to tell Adam Goodes not to be angry about the plight of his people.  You don’t get to tell him to sit down and shut up about it.  The policing of oppressed peoples’ right to display anger at their oppression is a historical trope that has reared its ugly head again and again, and it is the absolute definition of racism.

And let’s not even get started on the irony of being ‘offended’ at the temerity of Goodes to show anger, while you spew seething vitriol at him from the sidelines. 

From the sidelines.  You coward.  Hiding behind the crowd.  Hiding behind the racist media.  Jeering in your mob, indulging in the most masturbatory and animalistic form of human behaviour.

I’m disgusted that I live in a country where this is up for ‘debate’.  Hello, welcome to Australia; where the most proudly Indigenous of our AFL players, a man who has won two Brownlows and worked tirelessly to advance the cause of his people, a man who was last year’s Australian of the Year; is relentlessly and viciously jeered at every touch of the ball.

I would politely posit that it is not Adam Goodes who is the ape.