A block north of South Sydney Leagues Club is a pizza shop, but they do a
good lamb kebab, too. Three months ago I was outside inhaling a nicotine entree
when a black man walked up to me.
This bloke, who looked to be Maori, saw me reach for my pack before he spoke.
He smiled and said, "Thanks, bro" for the cigarette, walked to the corner and
then turned back. Grinning now, he tried some amusing amateur psychology.
"Bet you never heard no black c--- say thanks for a smoke before, eh?" he
said, breaking into laughter as I shook my head.
Without me thinking in terms even remotely like that, this stranger had
caught me adopting his own racial slur. There's a case for suggesting I'd just
contributed to perpetuating the use of this language by letting it slide.
If we say in the wake of Bryan Fletcher calling Dean Widders a "black c---"
that such an insult is unacceptable anywhere, anytime, there's no get-out clause
to make it OK sometimes. Fletcher, like Justin Jagamara Harrison before him,
seems to have suffered a brain snap rather than been caught expressing a racist
view he secretly held. Souths punished him for general deterrence, not
rehabilitation, and we're reaching a point where public exposure is punishment
enough.
By now we all know how a footballer says he feels when sprung wielding
racially demeaning words as weapons. We've heard it over and over again. But is
there any benefit left in punishing the guilty and would contrition be more
convincing if the offender dobbed himself in?
Like drink-driving, homophobia or domestic violence, racial vilification
won't be eliminated permanently but has long been an exception rather than a
rule.
Arthur Beetson indicated on Monday he was sick of commenting on specific
incidents: "I'd prefer to say nothing. I've been through it all before."
Searching for where this takes us next individually, I sought Gary Foley this
week.
One of the most militant of the young Kooris drawn to inner-city Sydney in
the late 1960s, he's been through all this before. Born in Grafton, Foley grew
up at Nambucca Heads and at 15 was expelled from school. He arrived in Redfern
as a 17-year-old apprentice draftsman and was soon part of the black power
movement growing there. He helped form the Redfern Legal Service and pitch the
Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
About the same time, Foley was among those Aborigines who protested against
the 1971 Springboks tour of Australia - a tour that divided this country on
racial grounds in a way that sport never has since. Foley's website www.
kooriweb.org details its impact on indigenous activism and records some of his
group's audacious stunts.
One of the most successful began when former Wallaby Jim Boyce supplied South
African jumpers to the group. Foley, Billy Craigie and others paraded them
outside the Springboks' motel.
Believing Foley and Craigie to have stolen the jumpers, Special Branch
arrested the pair. Inside the Squire Inn at Bondi Junction, police tried to find
the victims of this theft. Instead they found the Springboks outraged by two
proud young black men wearing the colours of their team.
Foley was just out of his teens.
Just out of my teens, during a stint in Melbourne as part of my cadetship, I
called Gary Foley a black c---.
Technically, what I did was send a story tagged "BLACKC---" to my newspaper
office in Sydney on a wire that could be accessed in other capitals. You can
assume it wasn't deliberate but I won't revisit all that now.
Likewise, there were sudden and lasting - but not insurmountable -
consequences that I don't intend playing up or down. I was not in Melbourne the
next morning and wasn't working at the same paper the next week. It was
fair.
Thirteen years later, my first email to Foley requesting a chat about
something personal to do with racism in "the greatest game of all" found Foley
marking papers at the University of Melbourne.
His reply stated he detested league due to its "racist, sexist culture" and
his only comment on the latest controversy was to ask why anyone would be
surprised. "I might send a more considered response later but, then again, I may
not," he wrote. "Feel free to press me if you want."
What I felt like was throwing up.
I wrote back and told Foley I'd once called him a black c--- and now wished
to apologise. Nothing had ever made it so clear that those words were impossible
to justify. Foley's reply was deeply moving and began: "Dear Stephen, Thank you
for your email … Now I understand, and appreciate your apology."
There was an invitation, and a great closing line: "I can also try and
educate you a bit about which is really the greatest game of all, which was
probably the greater faux pas that you committed."
Until reading Foley's reasoning for accepting my apology, I don't think I
properly understood how much I needed to apologise.
