“There ain’t a white man in this room would change places with me, and I’m rich,” Chris Rock says in his Bigger and Blacker performance in regard to what it truly means to be black in America.
“There’s a white, one-legged busboy in here right now that won’t change places with my black ass.”
The crap Eddie Betts has had to put up with this week, for the umpteenth time in his glorious career, says to me that Rock is on the money.
MORE: Crows star still traumatised by pre-season camp | Adelaide's season on the line against Hawthorn
Who, reading the AFL pages of Sporting News, wouldn’t want to be a 287-game, three-time All-Australian footballer on somewhere around $600,000 a year for playing the game he loves?
Even without the rewards, most of us would be happy just to be able to do what Eddie can with a ball.
But as has happened so many times before, a racist ‘fan’ took the internet this week and called Betts a “monkey”.
Why?
Because the Adelaide star had taken time out after the Crows’ loss to Fremantle to pose with a Dockers fan.
Why no inverted commas around the word fan the second time around? Because that kid is a genuine lover of the game, to the point they’re rapt to be in the presence of one of footy’s biggest stars regardless of what team he plays for.
And that’s not something many of us do.
Alex Rance sends a powerful message of support to Eddie Betts and encourages other players to speak out against racism and bigotry.
— 7AFL (@7AFL) June 12, 2018
(via Alex Rance/Instagram) pic.twitter.com/0h4ZR9kRQj
I’ll be the first to back your right to throw abuse at opposition players all match for the way they play, calling them ‘weak’, ‘dirty’, ‘overrated’ and basically useless, and then the day they get traded to my team I won’t hear a bad word said about them.
You can abuse someone for the jumper they wear, it’s what our game’s all about, as long as you keep the language family friendly and as soon as they change that jumper or hang it up for good we tend to soften our opinion on their previously questionable character.
But we can’t change the colour of our skin.
We can’t hang up our heritage and try something different.
Every time this shit happens it makes me think ‘how long are we going to have to put up with it?’
Only now, after god knows how many racist incidents have tainted crowds and fans, have I realised that I’m not putting up with it at all.
Betts is. And it doesn’t matter what the AFL does to try and stop it, the racist imbeciles in our society will find a way to vent their pointless and worthless crap.
If they can’t yell it over the boundary anymore they’ll get the job done through social media. If they get blocked they’ll move to another platform. If they can’t get away with words they’ll settle for being racist in who they employ, where they sit on the train, how they vote at federal elections.
Martin Luther King junior is sometimes credited with using the phrase ‘walk a mile in my shoes’ to see what another person’s life is really like, but it can’t be done.
If I was to ‘kick a goal in Eddie Betts’ boots’ I’d be thinking of the impossible angle, watching the ball bend through the thinnest of gaps, raising my arms to the crowd as surprised as them by what just happened.
I wouldn’t be thinking of the insults being screamed at me from the opposition cheer squad or the social media trolls venting through day and night purely because of the colour of my skin.
Thank god it falls on the head of a better man than me, and a much better man than the monkey with a keyboard who decided to show the world his stupidity this week.
More than a game.
— Adelaide Crows (@Adelaide_FC) May 28, 2018
Straight after yesterday's 91-point loss, Eddie Betts spent almost an hour signing autographs and taking selfies with our fans in Alice Springs.
💙❤️💛#weflyasone pic.twitter.com/qgc6uiUywn
