I remember one pitiful incident that happened in Dublin before I left which made me quite ashamed to call myself Irish. Getting off the tram outside my apartment, I saw a black security guard ask a skinny, greasy, track-suited teenager to please get of the tram as he had not paid for a ticket. The troll turned, lunged at the security guard and bellowed, repeatedly – “Go home! Go back to your country. AIDS came from your country! Get out of our country and go back to your AIDS country you f**ing black bastard!” The guard escorted the troll onto the platform and the tram pulled away. The two of them just stood there on the platform with the troll still yelling and the guard just standing there staring at him expressionless. Another guard came over fairly quickly to help and the troll disappeared with his tail between his greasy legs. I walked away hoping that that poor guy, who dealt with the situation so calmly, didn’t let the incident cloud his view of Ireland. But how could he not? I thought how it would have felt if it were me. I thought of a 20-year old Dublin girl I met the previous week who said she would never get in a taxi with a black driver – not because she was racist you understand, but because she was concerned for her safety. I thought about some Irish taxi drivers deciding to promote their whiteness by putting small green lights on their cars. I thought you know what, while the vast majority of people would also be disgusted, Ireland is a little bit racist.

So with that in mind let me tell you about Adam Goodes. Goodes is an Aboriginal Australian Rules football player who represents the Sydney Swans. He’s played more games in his career than any other Aboriginal player. He’s won two AFL premierships. He’s twice been awarded the Brownlow Medal – AFL’s highest honour for the player judged the “fairest and best”. He’s as close to a legend of the game as they come.

All was going well for Goodes until 2013 when he got sick of a 13-year-old girl in an opposition crowd repeatedly calling him an ape. He pointed at her and asked security to remove her from the ground. Afterwards he said he was gutted that a young girl could be absorbing and regurgitating racism like that. The media went wild, the girl apologised, and we all moved on.

In 2014, Goodes became Australian of the Year. This is a fairly big deal – awardees tend to use the extra attention as a platform to highlight concerns close to their heart. Goodes set about doing exactly that, with several interviews in newspapers saying he thought that Australia did have a problem with racism towards its native population and it needed to be addressed.

While many people would agree with his statements on this issue, it appears that some others do not. Around the time his tenure as Australian of the Year wound up, some people on opposition crowds started booing him during games. This continued for several weeks and seemed to get worse. It all came to a head during a game which I attended at the SCG in May. Certain sections of the opposition crowd were booing every time Goodes touched the ball. It was depressing. Not sure what was going on I asked my AFL-mad mate who was with us – “Why are they booing?” He responded sympathetically “Em… I think they don’t like the colour of his boots.”

After scoring a goal half way through the game, Goodes performed a quick traditional war dance in celebration. It was defiantly directed at a specific section of the crowd who had been booing. Some critics in the media who’ve obviously never seen an All Blacks Haka thought his dance was overly aggressive and unnecessary. They thought it was inciting fans – whereas to anyone who was there on the night it was obvious the fans were inciting him. Irish ex-GAA and AFL player Tadgh Kennelly tweeted a picture (above) of himself doing a jig in a Sydney Swans strip saying “Proud of my heritage just like my brother.” To me, Goodes’ response was lively and justified. You can watch it below and judge for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBljMnLw9-4

Things came to a head again last week June when Indigenous team-mate Lewis Jetta performed a similar war-dance after scoring a goal in a public show of support for Goodes against constantly booing West Coast Eagles fans in Western Australia. Right now everybody is writing about the booing and asking the question – is it racially motivated, or are people just booing Goodes because they don’t like his behaviour?

This is where it gets tricky. Having read many interviews with Goodes and having a friend who works in the AFL and has met him several times, I can tell you he’s an intelligent, highly respected and well-liked guy. There is nobody who has worked with him who has a bad word to say about him. So what reasons are people giving for the booing, if it’s not racially motivated?

Conservative talk-show host Alan Jones, who you might remember from last week’s blog piece as the go-to personality for a controversial opinion, said people don’t like Goodes because he “always plays the victim.” Here’s an excerpt from an interview covered in the SMH:

“Ask the little 13-year-old girl how she handled that. She was paraded over the national media as a person who really had to apologise. She wrote a letter and apologised. I mean, the poor little thing, 13 years of age, disabled mother. I mean, give me a break.

“The bloke’s a rich Australian athlete. He humiliated a 13-year-old girl who didn’t even know what she was saying, and the public haven’t forgotten it. Someone’s got to ask the question: why are they booing Adam Goodes and not the other 70 Indigenous AFL players? Adam Goodes can fix this by changing his behaviour. He again today plays the victim.”

It must be noted here that Jones has not exactly been a person speaking up for racial harmony in Australia. For more on this read about another shameful event in recent Australian history – the 2005 Cronulla Riots. It must also be noted that after the initial incident, Goodes called on the media not to vilify the girl and refused to press charges.

“She had no idea what she was saying”, said her mother in a recent interview where she called on Goodes to apologise – “picking on a 13-year-old child I thought was absolutely ridiculous.”

While it is somewhat conceivable that a 13-year-old would not know that screaming “ape” at an Aboriginal man was racist, it is totally inconceivable that her parents did not. I don’t know if her parents were at the game, but some adults must have been with her, and allowing her to repeatedly scream racist slurs is, you know, a little bit racist. Also, the worrying part is – where did she hear it from?

As for Jones’ argument that there are 70 Indigenous players and none of them get booed – well none of those players were given the opportunity to speak out about race issues in Australia while being Australian of the Year and highlight the obvious fact that Indigenous people face a very uneven playing field. As Aboriginal journalist Stan Grant puts it in the Guardian :

If good fortune or good genes means you are among the lucky few to find an escape route then you face a choice: to “go along to get along”, mind your manners, count your blessings and hide in the comfort of the Australian dream; or to infuse your success with an indignation and a righteousness that will demand this country does not look away from its responsibilities and its history.

Pretty much all of my friends in Sydney are disheartened by the booing. But was it racist? I don’t really know. What I do know is that Goodes is a proud Aboriginal man who took the opportunity to stand up for his people despite knowing it would be controversial – and what could be more Australian than that?