Last semester I had the pleasure of tutoring eight Indigenous Australian students, some were at University for the first time. Part of what I was attempting to instill in these bright young people was a sense of pride for their indigenous heritage and culture; so, I was infuriated yesterday when I heard that former Richmond footballer Mal Brown had referred to Aboriginal football players as cannibals and that Brownlow medallist Robert DiPierdomenico, had referred to another AFL player as an abo. Both have said 'sorry' ~ that word that flows so easily off the tongue after someone has made an unkind racist remark.
In Katherine Biber's paper entitled: Cannibals and Colonialism (University of Sydney, Law Department) she maintains: The discourse of cannibalism is a repeated and powerful trope in colonial contact and conflict. Fascination with — and accusations of — anthropophagy, ritual sacrifice and survival cannibalism disclose the fear of the native ‘Other’. It seems as though this postcolonial fear of 'being eaten by the other' continues. It may be anxiety surfacing about our fear of being devoured by cancer or some other debilitating disease, or perhaps it is in our mindset since cannibalism has been practised in many cultures including our own since time immemorial and has become a trope of our fear of being overtaken and dissolved by strangers. But since the term was used recently by a person within football circles, it seems to me that his utterance demonstrates an underlying disquiet that highly skilled Aboriginal footballers maybe actually better than other players.
I thought that those like Pauline Hanson ~ you know, the extremist One Nation politician who said 'please explain' when she was asked by a reporter in 1996 if she was xenophobic and who most recently said that she would NOT sell her million dollar mansion to a Muslim because she considers them incompatible with our way of life and culture, were becoming extinct. Not so! Islamaphobia is on the rise throughout the world. Muslims feel socially excluded, stigmatised and discriminated against; they become victims of stereotypes, social marginalisation and political extremism because of their different religious and cultural traditions. At the same time, Islamic radicalism and manipulation of religious beliefs for political reasons oppose human rights and democratic values. Both phenomena reinforce each other. (Committee on Culture, Science and Education Rapporteur: Mr Mogens JENSEN, Denmark, Socialist Group, 2010).
DiPierdomenico might be well served by remembering that it was not long ago that Italians were considered by Australians as Mediterranean scum and it was only after WW2 and the internment of many Italians, particularly in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia that they began to be more fully accepted by Australian people. But I'm wondering if this is entirely true because when I was a child in the 1950s it was people from Greek and Italian ancestries who were considered alien to us 'white' British descendants and DiPierdomenico would surely remember what it was like to be a defiled outsider! Indeed, Pauline Hanson, who claimed that this girl here is 100 per cent Australian (The Sunday Mail, Queensland, 2007) was recently shocked by the news that after DNA testing she was shown to have Middle Eastern heritage.
The point of all this was simply to show that we are all from mixed blood some where down the track and name calling says more about us than the people were are defacing. I'm hoping that my students take these racist remarks about their people as indicative of the rampant stereotyping that continue to be proliferated about indigenous Australians as well as peoples of other cultures.
In Katherine Biber's paper entitled: Cannibals and Colonialism (University of Sydney, Law Department) she maintains: The discourse of cannibalism is a repeated and powerful trope in colonial contact and conflict. Fascination with — and accusations of — anthropophagy, ritual sacrifice and survival cannibalism disclose the fear of the native ‘Other’. It seems as though this postcolonial fear of 'being eaten by the other' continues. It may be anxiety surfacing about our fear of being devoured by cancer or some other debilitating disease, or perhaps it is in our mindset since cannibalism has been practised in many cultures including our own since time immemorial and has become a trope of our fear of being overtaken and dissolved by strangers. But since the term was used recently by a person within football circles, it seems to me that his utterance demonstrates an underlying disquiet that highly skilled Aboriginal footballers maybe actually better than other players.
I thought that those like Pauline Hanson ~ you know, the extremist One Nation politician who said 'please explain' when she was asked by a reporter in 1996 if she was xenophobic and who most recently said that she would NOT sell her million dollar mansion to a Muslim because she considers them incompatible with our way of life and culture, were becoming extinct. Not so! Islamaphobia is on the rise throughout the world. Muslims feel socially excluded, stigmatised and discriminated against; they become victims of stereotypes, social marginalisation and political extremism because of their different religious and cultural traditions. At the same time, Islamic radicalism and manipulation of religious beliefs for political reasons oppose human rights and democratic values. Both phenomena reinforce each other. (Committee on Culture, Science and Education Rapporteur: Mr Mogens JENSEN, Denmark, Socialist Group, 2010).
DiPierdomenico might be well served by remembering that it was not long ago that Italians were considered by Australians as Mediterranean scum and it was only after WW2 and the internment of many Italians, particularly in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia that they began to be more fully accepted by Australian people. But I'm wondering if this is entirely true because when I was a child in the 1950s it was people from Greek and Italian ancestries who were considered alien to us 'white' British descendants and DiPierdomenico would surely remember what it was like to be a defiled outsider! Indeed, Pauline Hanson, who claimed that this girl here is 100 per cent Australian (The Sunday Mail, Queensland, 2007) was recently shocked by the news that after DNA testing she was shown to have Middle Eastern heritage.
The point of all this was simply to show that we are all from mixed blood some where down the track and name calling says more about us than the people were are defacing. I'm hoping that my students take these racist remarks about their people as indicative of the rampant stereotyping that continue to be proliferated about indigenous Australians as well as peoples of other cultures.
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