How the Chosen Ones Ended Australia’s Olympic Prowess and Revealed A Secret Past
http://www.zcommunications.org/how-the-chosen-ones-ended-australia-s-olympic-prowess-and-revealed-a-secret-past-by-john-pilger
By John Pilger
Source: johnpilger.com
Thursday, August 09, 2012
The ferries that ply the river west of Sydney Harbour bear the names of Australias world champion sportswomen. They include the Olympic swimming gold-medalists Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould, and runners Betty Cuthbert and Majorie Jackson. As you board, there is a photograph of the athlete in her prime, and a record of her achievements. This is vintage Australia. Often shy and never rich, sporting heroes were nourished by a society that, long before most other countries, won victories for ordinary people: the first 35-hour working week, child benefits, pensions, secret ballots and, with New Zealand, the vote for women. By the 1960s, Australians had the most equitable spread of personal income in the world. In modern-day corporate Australia, this is long forgotten. We are the chosen ones, sang a choir promoting the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
One of the ferries is named after Evonne Goolagong, the tennis star who won Wimbledon in 1971 and 1980. She is Aboriginal, like Cathy Freeman, who won a gold medal in the 400 metres at Sydney. For all their talent, both belong to a carefully constructed façade, behind which Australias secret indigenous history is suppressed and denied.
The late Charlie Perkins, an Aboriginal leader who played first-division football in England, told me, Theres an ambivalence that consumes many of us. I was so pleased to be back home, seeing that wonderful light, hearing the birds, seeing my mates, but I felt the racism more than ever. For one thing, no white person ever invited me home for a meal, for anything. Blacks werent even allowed in the grandstands, not even in the blacks-only sections. ....
In his 1995 book, Obstacle Race, Professor Colin Tatz, who has charted Australias genocidal history, says that of the 1,200 Aboriginal sportsmen and women he studied, only six 0.5% -- had access to the same opportunities and sporting facilities as whites. I asked him what had changed. A few things are better. he wrote, The figure now is about one per cent.
It's such a shame the natural talent of those who equally deserved a chance was ignored for so long. I was actually a bit surprised by this though, I knew Aboriginal people in Australia have gone through some pretty horrible things, but wasn't aware the discrimination, in sports, at least ... was still this bad as late as 1995.