I’ll weigh in.
I’ve been a champion of indigenous equality for a very long time. It started as my best friend from childhood was indigenous. As a kid you don’t think anything of stuff like that. He loved footy as much as I did and he lived 3 doors down. Done deal, Best friends. He’d come down from Alice Springs as part of a program in the 80’s called the Aboriginal co-op they moved families who were impacted by alcoholism to suburbs to allow their kids to get an education. This was the 80’s so its was a different time, and I do believe things are better now than they where then.
So we used to kick the footy every recess and lunch and until it got dark after school. Call it as it is, my mate, Joey was a jet. We had Glen Archer at my primary school and Joey ran rings around him. So I played club footy and I asked him if he wanted to play, he said no, because he didn’t think his family would let him. So I asked his mum, and she said “I don’t think they’ll let Joey play with the white kids, and I don’t want them to be mean to him” I was like he’s awesome, he should play.
There was a matter of money with them also, so my Dad offered to pay his subs, and tells his mother he will keep an eye out for him so he comes to the next training.
He’s been on the park for about 10 minutes and the club president comes over with a look of concern on his face, talks to our coach and then wanders over to talk to my Dad. Dad looks ■■■■■■ off. (Dad was a migrant and took anytime a kid that was different didn’t get a go, he took that sort of thing personally as it happened to him as a kid constantly, its actually the subject of a book https://books.google.com.au/books/about/By_the_Scruff_of_the_Neck.html?id=S97OBwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y you’ll see why I think Australia has a culture of racism from this book)
The end result is that the president had decided that before Joey could play it had to be put to vote to the parents of the team, whether they were comfortable with their kids playing with an Aboriginal kid. We were 10 at the time and I had zero idea what the hell was going on. The end result after a lot of lobbying by my Mum and Dad, the then local parliament member and the Rev from the local church. Joey was allowed to play.
Our teams supporters were kind of reserved, his family would watch him play from up on the hill of our local ground and I never saw them set foot near the canteen or anything. People stopped talking to Dad. But where I started to get the brutal understanding of what real racism was was hearing what parents of other kids would yell at this 10 year old kid from over the fence, and the better he played the worse it got. All the team mates started to rally behind him, anytime it was getting brutal we would make a massive deal about anything he did good, if he kicked a goal, not a kid on our team wasn’t stacks on him yelling like we had just won the grand final. If they were going to make him feel ■■■■, we were going to make him feel awesome.
The story didn’t end well for him unfortunately largely due to the fact he didn’t have the resolve or the people around him to help him through it all. As his family felt they needed to move to a more indigenous friendly area than ours after 3 years. Joey has brain damage now. He fell into the wrong crowd and was exposed to Chroming. On the bright site is his nephew plays for Melbourne, he got all the starts Joey didn’t.
What you all need to understand, is while things are better, they are no where near where they should be. From the day Indigenous kids step onto the field, to the last time the leather touches their boot. They will be diminished by people in broad daylight because of their aboriginally. Its the broad reason why all indigenous clubs like Rumbalara are formed. So every single AFL footballer who is indigenous has made it to the game weathering a storm of racial abuse. People tell them to just switch off from it, but it’s impossible, and it hurts them to the very core of their existence.
This is a problem still, crowds are awful, its 2019 and still all these guys cop it from pockets of the crowd every game. Trust me, these guys hear it.
I feel like indigenous people after a while just hear all noise directed at them as racist. Due to the fact that 98% of it was well before they give a cheapie or stage for a free.
Im not suggesting that you don’t boo a player who does something against the spirit of the game. Im just trying to get you all to understand why Goodes probably has a hard time processing it.