Racial prejudice at the selection table

These people know who they are and should take a serious look at themselves and the harm their stance is having on young Indigenous footballers who are constantly missing out on representative teams and are looking for guidance from their sporting idols on how to remedy their predicament.

The most famous of all Indigenous Rugby League players was Australian representative player and coach Arthur Beetson. I know first hand the damage he did to my legal campaign to rid the E.S. “Nigger” Brown Stand of that offending word when he supported his mate John McDonald who was Chairman of the Toowoomba Sports Ground Trust (who fought me in court) as well as Chairman of the Australian and International Rugby League Committees and Beetson’s Queensland coach in the inaugural State of Origin Team.

How do you think I felt when I work up on the morning of July 13, 1999 to read in my local newspaper The Toowoomba Chronicle:

“I just can’t believe it.” Mr Beetson said yesterday, “I have heard about it and I’m absolutely amazed. I don’t know what’s going on in the world. I don’t have a problem with it and when I read about it I found it quite laughable. … But this whole thing is just stupid, that was the bloke’s name. … I can only think they have a lot of spare time on their hands. … I think you could ask anyone with Aboriginal blood in them and they wouldn’t have a problem with it. … I’ve got mates with nicknames like coon and things like that and they don’t worry. Soon I won’t be able to call them anything.”

So be warned all those Indigenous rugby league players who criticised Nathan Merritt for his courageous stance because one day you’ll have to justify your public position in 2007 to your grandchildren in much the same way as I’m sure Arthur Beetson will have to do with his for comments made in 1999.

To those detractors of Nathan Merritt I offer this advice from William James: “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”