Ive been battling with my feelings for Adam Goodes for a while now. No one can deny that he was one of the greatest players of the modern era, 2 Brownlows and 2 premierships speak for themselves. He is an ambassador for the under represented aboriginal community and is a role model for a lot of people. So why then is it that he gets such a bad rap, gets booed and always seems to be in the news for all the wrong reasons? Why is it that watching him, I cant help but have a bad taste in my mouth and don't particularly enjoy his successes? Been tossing round ideas for a while now, and then the events of Friday night finally made it clear to me.
Instead of just being proud of his heritage, and being proud to be an Australian, Adam Goodes uses his race to elevate his standing in society and uses it as a platform to, at every opportunity, say "Look at me". Morgan Freeman once said when asked about how to get rid of racism in relation to black history month, the answer was to "Stop talking about it, I need to stop calling you a white man, and you need to stop calling me a black man", and for me, I think this is the passive approach that needs to be taken to a long standing social issue. Adam Goodes could not be further from the mark in this regard. Every opportunity to make it "us" vs "them", he jumps on. Every opportunity to let Australia know that he is different, and that his people are different, he jumps on. I mean, how many times do I need to be reminded that your aboriginal? The mouth guard the constant quotes, and now the dance. This figurehead for racism in Australia, has been quoted saying "Aboriginal people have been here a lot longer than anybody else, so just remember whose lands you are on", is this really something that is going to help fix the problem?
Instead of bringing two communities together Adam Goodes has a habit of dividing the the community in a time where, yes, there are some people the harbour racist views, but for the large part and the majority of the community and in particular the footy community, your every day footy go-er is doing their best to address these issues. Look at other players over the past 10 years when they have run in with idiot supporters and players, we get a "Yeah they were being a dickhead, but they have apologised and I'm happy with that and i wanna move on", whenever anything happens with Adam Goodes it goes on for over a week and the whole community gets lectured about how racist we all are?
It really just makes me questions his motives, and why he does the things he does, and for a person that does so much for the community, he's really letting himself down. When you go out of your way to set up an "us vs them" mentality, you cant at all be surprised when the "them" feel as though you're the enemy, and that you're not working with the majority of the supporters, but against them.