The Goodes and the bad

'The Goodes and the bad'

Being a Swans supporter since I can remember, stemming from a long family tradition, I have grown up around the game and throughout I have come to see that it isn’t just about football for these guys. Many of the Sydney players I have watched have represented a lot more than muscles and marcho-ness. It is easy to forget as we hurl abuse at these men that they are all someone’s sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, nephews. They are not only representing themselves when they run out on the field, they’re representing their families, their backgrounds and everything that they stand for in life. This has never been more apparent to me than when the Swans played Collingwood earlier this year, where one word from a spectator completely altered this match’s importance.

Adam Goodes is one of the AFL’s most valuable players and this was no different during this game of the AFL’s Indigenous Round which he is so proudly a major part of due to his Indigenous heritage. So when a spectator labelled him an ‘ape’ as he zipped passed the barricades of the boundary line this went from being about who would win a measly football match, to being about racism, the “gap” that Ford, (2013, pp. 80) refers to, and specifically the lack of respect and education on the importance of our Indigenous history and the value that should be shown to these Australians.

Why is this still an issue? Why do people think they have the right to call someone that is different to them such a derogative name? Why is it just because someone may look different to another does this automatically make it ok to insult them in such a powerful manner? And why was it, in this situation, a 13 year old girl?

Education. Or lack thereof should I say.

When I say education I do not mean education in a literal sense, I do not mean the intelligence of an individual like what mark they score on their IQ. I am talking about social intelligence. ‘Norms’ in society are extremely powerful things. Without any realisation we’re all affected by social norms every day in some way. They are subconsciously passed on to us and without even realising many of us take them as truth and run with them (no pun intended). To act or not to act, to stand up or to not stand up, to taunt or not taunt, to go with the trend or go against the grain, these are the questions. And it is through people like Adam that issues such as this one are thankfully become apparent, as cited in the Ladson-Billings, (1995) “individuals who have lived through the experiences about which they claim to be experts are more believable and credible" (p. 472).

Vass, (2012) makes a point that was the main reason in why I thought of this Adam Goodes situation in context with this course, “a school can be viewed as a location that deploys racialised ‘grammars’ that not only develop individual and group knowledge about racialised subjects, they are significant as they concurrently contribute toward the making of racialised subjects” (pp. 2). Schools are the first stepping stone in creating racial appreciation and if this stone is missed then the rest are irrelevant, and will disappear. I, as a future teacher, really realised the importance in setting these values in the classroom. Not letting a sly comment by a student about race of any kind slip by which is so easily done these days. The difference in stopping, evaluating and making a point of that sly comment could be the difference in the way in which that student, and even students around him/her view racism and in turn how they behave regarding this issue in the future. It is so important to show students these norms and challenge them to break them, and not just recite labels that they have heard around them, because maybe one day views like this 13 year old girls’ will cease to exist.

7News . (2013, May 25). Girl apologises for abusing Swans’ Goodes. [Video File] Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg9ehFjrEjo

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American educational research journal, 32(3), 465-491.

Vass, G. (2012). The racialised educational landscape in Australia: listening to the whispering elephant. Race Ethnicity and Education, (ahead-of-print), 1-26.

Ford, M. (2013). Achievement gaps in Australia: what NAPLAN reveals about education inequality in Australia. Race Ethnicity and Education, 16(1), 80-102.