Sunday's news in under 2 minutes.

As with the blackface incident last week, I'm amazed by the willingness by white Australians to admit to total ignorance about the lives of others. First it was "we don't have a history of 'blackface' in this country so how are we supposed to know", which is bollocks because several people and a quick google showed that the Black & White Minstrel show appeared in Australia too. Age is no excuse, I'm 39 and grew up a rural white area in the UK long after the show ended but I knew it was inappropriate. Also, the over-reliance on American TV shows here in Australia must surely mean that some of the messages about how offensive 'blackface' is to black people (African Americans in the US and Africans & Afro Caribbeans in the UK) must have been either totally ignored here ("we don't have a history of slavery here" - well, not African slavery no, but black slavery, absolutely), or if not ignored, dismissed ("not our problem"). See here: http://www.creativespirits....

Now to this latest incident. Again, do you people have your heads stuck in the sand? And if so, why do you wear your ignorance on your sleeves like you're proud of it? If its not happening in Australia it's not happening, right? I grew up supporting Liverpool, after Manchester Utd probably the second most popular English football team in the world. I know how popular English football is here, they give English Premier League results on the news sometimes before A-League results, so I'm sure many Australians will be aware of bananas, monkey noises and ape taunts being thrown at players like John Barnes back in the 1980s, as well as race riots all over the UK around the same time. Or closer to home, Aussie sportsmen like Andrew Symonds being subjected to similar abuse.

Of course, a 13yo can't be expected to know about this history, although I did, it was taught to me from very early in my life. If I came home from school with a new word I'd learned to describe someone of another race (usually learned from children with racist parents), I was told in no uncertain terms that I was never to use that word and why. I knew before I left primary school not to use the following words (the UK's immigrant makeup being different from Australia's): n***er, coon, boon (short for baboon), wog (short for golliwog - a character linked to blackface and used for black people in the UK as opposed to Italians and Greeks here, I know Italians who describe themselves as such but I can't bring myself to say the word), darkies (my nan's description, I still hate it), pakis, chinkies, etc etc, and also knew not to compare black people to monkeys and apes because of the history of whites believing and propagating the myth that black people where somewhat less evolved than whites. I didn't naturally know all this by age 13, I was taught.

Which brings me to Adam Goodes being 'gutted' - he didn't over react, he was right to be gutted that in this day and age he could turn to see who said such a thing and find himself looking at a 13yo. How disappointing it must be to think that society has moved forward and then be presented with evidence that in some places nothing has changed and there are still children not being taught that these things are wrong. Either she picked that stuff up from home or at school, in which case someone at home should be educating her that its wrong.

I can see how Australia was decades behind the rest of the western world for a long time, isolated as it is. That's obvious from some of my Australian peers' shocking attitudes towards women and ignorance of historical events (an Aussie mate in London once tried to tell me that more Australians died at Gallipoli than all the Brits combined in the entire WW1, luckily we were walking up the driveway to the Imperial War Museum so she was put right within minutes). However, access to the Internet means there is no excuse for ignorance, although my chavvy Brit cousins are just as ignorant and think the Internet is to read about the Kardashians, and as mentioned in replies to this and the blackface issues, even if you were ignorant before, if people have explained why something is offensive, why do you continue to insist it isn't? Are you a bit thick?

I was reading some of the comments below of readers who could not understand how Mr Goodes could "be so gutted" by the words of a child.
I was remembering the scene from Schindler's List when the Jews were being removed to the Ghetto and the locals were lining the streets yelling insults and vitriol at the Jews, and there were children joining in. I wish that was cinematic exaggeration, but there are pictures and recordings of German children doing that. They did not really know any better - they were just doing what everyone else was doing with no understanding of the implications of what they were doing. But that scene, and pictures I have seen, have left me as a German-Australian (not a Jew!) gutted. It makes me very sad that the culture my family comes from was so horrifically racist that even little children were abusing people for their ethnic status.

I can understand how Mr Goodes, who comes from a group of people who have been very badly treated, and who tries very hard himself to do all he can for the cause of reconciliation to be gutted by the words of an "innocent child" who is likely just repeating what she has heard others say with no real idea of the implications of her words. It is a kick in the teeth of reconciliation efforts. It shows that we are still not teaching our children about racism and how we have to be careful what we say because of the implications.

Yes, the treatment if this girl was probably a bit harsh. But I truly hope that she has learned the lesson her parents should have taught her about being culturally sensitive. I hope that this story will encourage parents and teachers all over Australia to dialogue about cultural sensitivity, racism and why this was not an appropriate thing to say.