Yesterday something uplifting happened with race relations in Perth. But no sooner it could blossom, it was crushed by a vocal undercurrent of – yes, I'm calling it! - racist commentary.
On Thursday a Perth dad of two little kids, Jarred Wall, was having lunch with his fiancee at a child-friendly East Fremantle cafe. He happened to overhear the conversation of two women sitting on the adjacent table talking about Aboriginal people. So Jarred, who happens to be of Indigenous descent, described the conversation as distasteful.
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Aboriginal man responds to racism remarks with tea
A random act of kindness is receiving global attention, after an Aboriginal man overheard two elderly women making racist comments.
"It started with one saying 'I'm not racist, but...'", he told me on the phone on Sunday.
"Then they said '....he just got in because of the colour of his skin', and then it went into 'things Aboriginal people do'....like a lot generalisations. Pretty nasty things to be honest."
Jarred was very well spoken and I could tell he was not inclined to dish out every sensationalist, outrageous detail of this conversation. He just wanted to make it clear to me that the words had upset him.
Instead of shouting across the table and giving the chatting ladies a piece of his mind, he went to the counter, ordered a pot of tea for them, scribbled a friendly note and a smiley face on the receipt and left to play with his kids in the nearby park.
He posted the encounter on Facebook, because, so he told me, he wanted to show there was alternative way to deal with casual racism.
"Especially with that stuff in Kalgoorlie [the race riots], I wanted to show another way of dealing with that.
"Responding with violence would just reaffirm their view of Aboriginal people.
"I wondered: 'How could I make them think?'"
His post was widely shared on social media and garnered hundreds of positive comments on Facebook.
Applauding Jarred for killing hostility with kindness. Applauding Jarred for reaching out and crossing the divide. Praising Jarred for breaking the cycle of aggression.
... there is a very proud and very vocal minority seemingly determined to shift the public focus onto what Mr Wall had done WRONG instead of what he had done RIGHT.
At that moment I felt something uplifting had happened, something profound, a way towards a future of understanding each other.
But when I came back to work this morning, the focus had shifted.
Now, apparently, the most interesting point of discussion on talkback radio and Facebook was Jarred eaves-dropping on another conversation and a whole range of other side shows, such as the question HOW Aboriginal Jarred really is, WHY he chose to post the encounter on Facebook and HOW Much white people are also targeted by racism.
A little snapshot of what people thought was noteworthy about this on WAtoday:
"You have had you're 15 seconds of fame. Next time, enjoy the company you are with, stop Facebooking, and stop listening to others private conversations," one person posted on Facebook.
"He missed his 15 minutes of fame on the xfactor apparently...I guess by sending this story viral he's managed to catch it now!," another poster said.
"As a 1st Australian you'd also be aware that the amount of white people getting called racist chants all the time in Fremantle and other municipal areas along the lines of SOMETHING DOG and WHITE SOMETHING. Is this Wrong ?,"a comment on Sunday's story read.
Some were not subtle, not borderline, they were pure hate.
"Well thank goodness for the stolen gen your mother was educated,so you would be educated to protest about someone talking about your people as you are doing right now. Anyone with just a drop of aboriginie [sic] in them now states that they are the same .Get over it," said a particularly nasty comment.
"Sorry but doing something to potentially frighten two old ladies is not cool. Buy them tea and feel good about it but why grandstand about it?," said another.
I'm not denying and detracting from the overwhelmingly positive response from the majority of people towards to Jarred's post.
But there is a very proud and very vocal minority seemingly determined to shift the public focus onto what Jarred had done WRONG instead of what he had done RIGHT.
I will probably get slammed for this, but this reminds me of the whole public discussion about Adam Goodes, about him calling out a 13-year-old girl for her racist chants, about him doing a war dance at the start of a footy game.
And sadly, it feels like these voices are incredibly uncomfortable with "the uppity black man", how the late Sam de Brito so fittingly described it.
How dare Jarred make a point. How dare he POST ABOUT IT! How dare he point out the casual racism indigenous people experience in this country and in this state everyday.
I'm sorry if you are uncomfortable with the label, but if the point you get from this story of a young Aboriginal dad, whose mother was part of the stolen generation, is that he shouldn't eaves-drop, I believe you have a problem with a black man speaking up. And within that, that makes you a racist.
Not a flame-swinging, hood-wearing kind of racist – but a person that believes their race to be superior to another.
I shouldn't focus on the ugly side of this uplifting story, but what makes me more furious than anything else in this discussions are these readily uttered six words: "I'm not a racist, but ..."
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