Australians keep booing this football star, and swear it’s not racist

Is booing an indigenous athlete racist?

The question is at the heart of a heated debate that has been raging in Australia for weeks and has polarized the country. 

Here’s a bit of background to bring you up to speed. 

Adam Goodes is a star player for the Sydney Swans, one of 18 teams in the Australian Football League — the equivalent of the NFL in the US, but for Australia's rough and tumble version of football, which to outsiders looks like rugby.

The 35-year-old is a two-time Brownlow Medallist, the highest individual honor in AFL that goes to the best player of the season. He was named Australian of the Year in 2014.

He’s also an indigenous leader and is considered a role model for Aboriginal children. He has used his high profile as a platform to speak out about racism and social injustices in the country.

Yet many football fans appear to hate him. 

Earlier this year, Goodes performed a war dance after kicking a goal during the AFL’s Indigenous Round, a special event held just before the start of the official season to celebrate the contribution of Aboriginal footballers to the sport.

The fans of the opposing team took umbrage at the impromptu performance they believed was targeted at them. Since then Goodes has endured relentless booing every time he runs onto a football field. 

Check out the controversial dance here.

But is the booing racially motivated? 

It's a question that has dominated mainstream media, social media and dinner-table conversations in the sports-mad country, and has prompted some uncomfortable introspection among non-indigenous Australians.

Defenders of the booing claim the taunts are not racist and that it's the footballer’s own “theatrical” style of play that has irked fans. 

Radio shock jock Alan Jones told his listeners that football fans “just don’t like the fellow.”

The ill-feeling toward Goodes has also been traced back to an incident in 2013 when he had a 13-year-old girl removed from the spectators stand after she called him an “ape.”

The teenager was questioned by police, but Goodes declined to press charges. He later described the incident as “shattering,” but said it wasn’t the first time he had been the target of a racial slur.

Despite being the victim of blatant racial vilification, Goodes was accused of humiliating the girl. 

While some football fans may have taken a dislike to Goodes following the highly publicized incident, the persistent booing appears to have only started this season following the controversial war dance.

To many, the heckling of Goodes is flat-out racism and those who suggest it’s anything else are in denial.

“The problem with racists is that they genuinely don’t believe themselves to be racists,” wrote Robbie Blowers, an American legal practitioner living in Melbourne.

“During round 17 of the AFL fixture, a fan supporting the West Coast Eagles was ejected from Domain Stadium in Perth for yelling at Goodes to ‘go back to the zoo.’ Upon being questioned about the incident, the fan defended his actions as being part and parcel of the game. He genuinely believed that what he said wasn’t racist in any way, but rather, he’d been singled out by the Political Correctness Police. And this is why racism is such a deep-rooted problem.”

Whether you think it's racist or not, Goodes' treatment by some AFL supporters appears to have taken its toll on the footballer.

“It’s frustrating just to have all that bad energy targeted towards me,” Goodes said. “It’s disappointing. I’m coming towards the end of my career and if I leave the game this year and that’s the aftermath of my career then I’ll be really disappointed with that.”

Goodes took last week off, fueling rumors that he was considering quitting the game.

But he was back at training this week following an outpouring of support from Swans fans, fellow footballers, company bosses, politicians, church leaders and ordinary people.

Goodes said he felt "very loved." 

Time will tell if he still feels that way this Saturday when he runs onto the football pitch.