From Lawson to Tunstall: our racist shame file
13.03.2006
THE shame file of Australians who stand accused of bringing racism into the sporting arena is diverse, stretching from bush balladeer Henry Lawson to more recent culprits Lleyton Hewitt and Arthur Tunstall.
Tomorrow, an Aboriginal academic will bring the alleged villains together in a book detailing the top 100 racist incidents in Australian sport.
Author and academic Stephen Hagan said he had written the book to ``show that racism is alive and kicking in this country'', focusing international attention on racism in Australia ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
Mr Hagan, a lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland at Toowoomba west of Brisbane, achieved notoriety in 2003 through his unsuccessful efforts to convince authorities in Toowoomba to remove the name ``Nigger Brown'' from the city's main football stadium.
Aboriginal activist Cliff Foley will launch the 358-page book, titled Australia's blackest sporting moments, at a protest rally at King's Domain in Melbourne tomorrow.
It includes published anecdotes, commentary and allegedly racist statements by some of Australia's most prominent sportspeople, police and media personalities.
The list of the ``top 100'' attacks Lawson, Hewitt, boxing official Tunstall, cricketers Adam Gilchrist, Darren Lehmann, Shane Warne and Jimmy Maher, as well as radio shock-jock Alan Jones.
The opening anecdote is from dual Wimbledon champion, Aboriginal Yvonne Goolagong Cawley, who told of winning a doubles match in Sydney suburban competition only to hear an opposing female player say to her partner ``that's the first time I've ever been beaten by a nigger''.
Lawson comes in at No3 for writing verse about the world heavyweight boxing bout in 1908 held in Australia between German-Canadian Tommy Burns, a white man, and black American champion Jack Johnson, a fight won easily by Johnson. The Lawson poem said in part: ``Take heed -- I am tired of writing, but O my people, take heed; For the time may be near for the mating of the Black and the White to breed.''
Queensland and Australian cricketer Maher takes seventh place for saying on a television interview after his team won the Sheffield Shield that he was ``as full as a coon's Valiant'' during post-match celebrations.
Mr Hagan yesterday said he established his own publishing company, Ngalga Warralu, to print the book because no Australian publisher touch the manuscript.
``I wrote the book in eight weeks because I was appalled at the Cronulla riots last December, and especially the reaction of Howard Government and others who claimed it wasn't an issue of race,'' Mr Hagan said yesterday. ``Australians are in denial about issues of racism.'' He said Australians were fanatical about sport.
``I set out to appeal to those fellow Australians by demonstrating that extreme levels of racism exist on our sporting fields,'' he said. ``If this book can shake people out of their lethargy and get them to think about how abhorrent racism is, then I will have achieved what I set out to do.
``It is not my intention to harm the Commonwealth Games in any way, and I will be cheering all our athletes, black and white.
``But it is important for international athletes and visitors to understand that there is a problem in this country with racist attitudes towards minority groups, and something has to be done about it.''
Mr Hagan has given the full text of the published incidents and quoted the source.
