The untouchable Waleed Aly and racism

I have been shocked by some of the media this past week- Barrie Cassidy writing for ABC or Jenny Noyes writing for Daily Life are two examples of articles being regularl cited that exemplify the problem. Both contain speculation and lead to confusion, shedding more heat than light, and unfortunatly both are bereft of solid, rational, nuanced arguments or any kind of, you know, evidence to support their strong views. The worst one I personally read was the one on The Conversation by a lecturer in Sports Management from Sydney- it is legitimately jaw droppingly illogical in the sense that it makes huge statements without a shred of supporting evidence. Just big statement after big statement, supposing that Australia’s sporting culture is completely racist. It’s simply a horrendous and blatant example of someone picking up the Goodes issue and using it to jump on their personal soapbox. I find the article offensive- being a long time sporting fan who actually attends sporting matches of various sports and participates in them at community level- to read stuff like that from an ivory tower grandstander.

However, Waleed Aly has taken the cake by virtue of the sheer amount of people jerking off after listening to his comments, and the amount of people making statements like “Waleed has the final word”. Even an ex basketball teammate of mine- who has had a distinguished career in sports journalism and now holds a senior position on one of Australia's premier sporting websites- approvingly quoted Aly, claiming he'd hit the nail on the head. 

But what did the untouchable Waleed actually say? (You can watch the Youtube video but it only went for a minute or two- this is the crux of his view and what everybody has been raving about and quoting). As summarised in an Online Opinion piece: 

Waleed Aly has said that it reveals that Australians are generally tolerant of minorities "until they demonstrate that they don't know their place…the moment a person in a minority position acts as though they're not a mere supplicant then we lose our minds… we say you need to get back in your box."

But, let’s analyse this for a second.

This is a country who had an unmarried female, atheist, childless, prime minister. Those are all things –being childless, being unmarried, self-identifying as an atheist- that are minority positions in Australia.

This is a sporting code which was the first sport in Australia - in the 1990’s- to take the proactive step of enacting race legislation in its own code. A sporting code where over 10% of the players are of indigenous heritage (compared to their 2% representation in the population) and where reported events of actual proven racial discrimination are extremely rare- both on field and from spectators. This is a sport with about two or three times as many people attending matches compared to any other sport in the country. Yet how often is there a player making an official complaint of legitimate racism from another player or a spectator? Very rare. The previous CEO of the AFL- who reigned for 11 years and presided over what has so far been easily the most successful period in the game’s history- is the son of Greek immigrants.

Australia is the third most multi-cultural country in the OECD. Melbourne and Sydney – where Goodes plays 80% of his football- must be two of the most multi cultural cities in the world. The stats show that 80% of second generation Australians marry someone with a different ethnic background. I have experienced this myself! This is an extremely multicultural place, and by and large we live in peace. So in this context, what does “minority” actually mean? There certainly isn’t a clear “Majority” in Australia like there is almost anywhere else around the world.

Melbourne is where Waleed is based. It is the home of footy, and it is a place where we had a female premier nearly 30 years ago, where the most successful leader of this century is of Lebanese heritage, and where our longest ever serving Lord Mayor was an Asian with an accent so strong that at times he was hard to understand- but we loved him anyway. In fact, many of us loved him BECAUSE of that!

So what on earth is Waleed going on about? I’d honestly love to know. And more importantly, why are so many people fawning over his comments? Listening to him you could get the impression that minorities are despised or devoid of opportunity. But that’s not the case- the facts suggest otherwise.

I wonder who is is sowing seeds of division here- the sporting fans getting stuck into Adam Goodes, or our media commentators who are creating a hypothetical world where Australians hate minorities- a world that has little resemblance to the real world I’ve been describing above? Possibly both. The difference is, one of these groups will now stop.   

Secularism or Democracy?

A facebook discussion has piqued my curiousity.

The issue was gay marriage, which is irrelevant to what I'm about to write, but I want to quote the discussion to set the scene:

Person 1:
Sorry but your comment is very disappointing. Should a Christian girl who knows Gods word really have that opinion. Just sayin

Person 2:
To me, faith shouldn't be a part of the conversation - we are talking about a legal, secular institution in a free democratic society. Government shouldn't discriminate, pure and simple. And both bills before parliament guarantee religious freedom for churches to refuse to marry gay couples if they so wish.

Ignoring the question of gay marriage, I'd like to discuss the mentioning of "secularism" and "democracy". Both ideas are highly cherished by most people in first world Western countries like Australia, but my question is: Which takes precedence?

Democracy is based on the idea that ALL people must have an equal opportunity to have their say. Therefore, if so called "secularism" is going to ignore certain views, ANY views, a priori, before the public discussion even gets started, then to agree with that form of secularism is to admit that you're being undemocratic and discriminatory.

I believe people should always have a democratic right to argue on whatever basis they want to! Then let the majority decide if they're convinced or not- this is what democracy demands. It's the fairest way to do things. If secularism says that "faith cannot be part of the conversation" and therefore any faith viewpoints must automatically be ignored (as Person 2 implied), then that form of secularism should get thrown out, because democracy demands that people must be allowed to voice their opinion (1).

Here's another reason why democracy needs to take precedence over that form of "secularism": Otherwise, we'll soon have governments acting as thought police by deciding which people are actually allowed to speak their views, which views are allowed to be spoken and which views are not. Governments are there to serve the people, not the other way around!

I take it as basically self evident that we should all want to be living in fair societies where all people are allowed to voice their views. If so, then we cannot allow ourselves to uncritically accept the idea that certain viewpoints are to be ignored from the outset.

(1) Person 2 could be taken to be implying that, and this was how I interpreted their statement on my first reading. They might not have intended to imply that. Nonetheless, there are many people who do believe that faith should not be a part of bigger public conversations, and this post was addressed at that particular viewpoint and those bigger issues. The facebook comment was merely what got me thinking about these bigger issues.