A vexing issue…
In case y’didn’t tune into the Tweed contest, the two-time world champion Tyler Wright dropped a knee for four hundred and thirty-nine seconds in solitary with Black Lives Matter, the number representing “one second for every First Nations person in Australia who has lost their life in police custody since 1991.”
The response on the WSL’s twitter feed has been, mostly, negative.
black lives matter .. but supporting a marxist group that is calling to defund the police.. shame… people can’t just do sports anymore… no room for racism and a link to the latest child shot by violence … ??Do you support Marxism?
Perpetuating a complete falsehood…sad…uneducated surfer does not even understand that the BLM organization is an extreme racist, Marxist, anti-family radical group, using violence and extortion to get their lie out. If she stands with them, so be it.
What about the rest of the ethnicities that have been persecuted. BLM isn’t about black lives it’s about riots and funneling $ to Act Blue. How about Polynesians Lives Matter. or Latin Lives Matter. Don’t drink the Kool-aid WSL.
And, so on.
A few fans fired back.
Hahaha. The amount of racists in the comments.
Comment section definitely didn’t pass the vibe check. An athlete isn’t just an athlete, they are an individual Soul. Using their platform to speak on what they believe.
Tyler correctly raised the issue of black deaths in custody, something that’s been in the public consciousness in Australia since a royal commission was called in 1987 after a horror run of indigenous Australians dying while in police custody.
The result wasn’t quite so clear cut.
The four-year long Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody “did not find higher rates of death of Aboriginal people compared to non-Aboriginal people.”
And, now, “Overall, the rate of Indigenous deaths in custody has reduced since 1991, as of June 2020 lower than the rate of death of non-Indigenous people.”
Of 2608 total deaths in police custody between 1979 and 2018, roughly five hundred of ‘em were indigenous.
Deaths in police custody doesn’t just mean getting hell beaten out of you by psycho pigs. It includes natural causes, driving yourself into a tree in a police pursuit, suicide etc.
A vexed issue, of course.
Indigenous Australians are overrepresented in prisons (so are short, bald men and transgender hotties, according to an ex-con pal) and subject to the attention of over-zealous cops.
Below, the relevant passage.
We talk a little about the opening scene in Charlie’s Country, the interaction with the cop Luke. I tell Gulpilil it gets me every time. The laughs, the pathos, the summation of black-and-white relations in Australia wrapped in a minute of dialogue.
“I’ll say something for the cops up north. They’re very lazy,” says Mary. “In the community, aren’t they David. They’re lazy. I know more about what’s going on illegally in the community than the bloody cops that live there. Yeah. They’re just lazy.”
What sort of lazy, I ask. I’ve never met a cop who didn’t balk at taking a report or define new standards of slowness when swinging on over to the scene of a crime.
“Going fishing, don’t they, David.”
“Yeah,” he says weakly.
Mary asks Gulpilil permission to tell a story about when he first came to Murray Bridge. They arrived home one day to a note on the door asking Gulpilil to report to the police station immediately.
Mary rang ‘em and the cops told her it was “something to do with the bank.”
Three days later, when they eventually got around to interviewing their suspect, the cops explained that an “Aborigine man” had grabbed a woman’s credit card from her while she was standing in line in the bank and had fled to the nearby bottle shop where he used it to buy booze and cigarettes.
“They showed us a photo and no way was it David,” says Mary.
“No way it was me,” says Gulpilil.
“Blind Freddie could’ve seen it was a desert man,” says Mary, who explained to the authorities that the distance between bank and bottle shop was too far for an invalid like Gulpilil, who has to crouch over a walking stick to make it from TV room to kitchen, to cover.
“But they said, ‘Someone said it looks like David.”
Mary fumes.
“Well, it wasn’t.”
These sort of accusations aren’t new to Gulpilil. He’s felt it his entire life.
His own regent’s uncle, Prince Edward VIII, who famously abdicated the British crown to marry the divorced American Wallis Simpson, wrote in 1920,
“They showed us some of the native Aborigines at a wayside station in the great plain yesterday afternoon, though they are the most revolting form of living creatures I’ve ever seen” and “the nearest thing to monkeys I’ve ever seen.”
Still, in the enlightened year of 2018, surely a black man can enjoy freedom of movement without molestation from authorities.
Mary looks serious.
“Want me to tell Derek about the night we got pulled over?”
“Yes, yes. Please.”
“We got pulled over one night, driving. It was about half past eleven, twelve o’clock at night, coming home, and they tried to get me to use a breathalyser and… I can’t… I have never been able to do it. Most cops are really good about it and then one of ‘em points at David, who’s asleep, and says, ‘Is he alive?’”
Mary told ‘em he was and shoved Gulpilil in the ribs, telling him to wake up.
“Is he drunk?” said the cop.
Mary explained that he didn’t drink.
“He looks drunk to me,” said the cop.
“And then they’re carrying on about this breathalyser that I should be able to do. They worked it out that I couldn’t physically do it after ten minutes. I was ready to faint. Then they asked for a licence. Not mine. David’s. They took it, went back to the car, checked it and…nothing. I was almost asleep at the steering wheel. Next minute, I heard the licence smash down on the dashboard, they told me we could go and they shot off like a bat out of hell.”
Mary darkens at the memory.
“And that same guy was telling us the week before that his friend was working up in Ramingining. ‘Oh he has a wonderful time,’ he said. He goes…fishing!”
Mary says she didn’t complain about being hassled ‘cause why bother when karma is going to spin its wheel and, besides, Gulpilil didn’t want any more trouble.
Exactly right. Its all a plan to divide and conquer by the super elites.
so which parts lame…Jesus was/is one of the most radical humans ever in the history of mankind.
He saw and preached that all people are equal , love your neighbor , do unto others as you would have them do to you, ……..what’s lame about that….unless your God is money /power and me me me ?
in other words you haven’t read the Bible, nor understand it……..which is fine….but see it from our angle…..if you haven’t read and understood the Bible , then how can you criticize something you know so little about?
Given or taken?
Therein lies the dilemma…….slavery in the USA, genocide of indigenous peoples….
Australia , genocide of indigenous people…..but did finally recognize the Blackfellas as humans in the mid 60’s……
So yes people have been flocking to the shores of the USA and OZ….but a heavy price was extracted and paid for by the slaves and indigenous peoples ……so to escape lives of poverty /oppression and persecution…..well hopefully you can see , both the USA and OZ had very dark history’s …..which we are starting to incorporate in our current day narrative,,
Wow my first thought was, i wonder how long she practiced that pose , my second thought was i wonder what actual thing of substance had she done to actually help a black life prior to taking up this pose.
Rip Curl The Search and exploit indigenous cultures ?
Wet suit made in a sweat shop under outrageous working conditions ?
Fins made in a third world factory where the workers lives do not matter and yep strangely enough they are non whites .
Travel to South Africa where thousands of non white children are dying.
Travel to Bali or Hawaii where the indigenous population is being assigned to a life of poverty.
Do black lives really matter to her , possibly not that much.
And careful i might actually not be all that white.
Good on her, most of the feedback I saw was extremely positive.
the Gullibles?
Dunno about you lot, but doesn’t the WSL seem way cooler knowing that they anger racist fuckwits?
But you realize those are 2 of many perspectives. Some people see their ancestors were violently brought here, and every day since they’ve still been treated with violence and lack of opportunities–often legally endorsed treatment, often by the hands of police officers. But if sports are about escapism, why bring nationalistic sentiments into any of it? Sports are for-profit commodities that make owners billions (including via tax rebates where cities build them arenas). Doesn’t that cheapen the sentiments you share above?
They get us every time!
I give up…
Nooooo , never concede/give up …he will and always become Mr Delete , because when he gets back on his medicine , he reads what he has written , an he turns into Mr D
I commend you on your interactions. You are now one of the good guys.
to be fair it took a few hundred years for that lot to have a proper melt down…
I’m kinda socialist, don’t recall being called into any war and although I like to consider myself “deadly” wouldn’t dream of killing anyone or I would’ve migrated to Murica and joined the police force, no?
So for all we know she cleared her action with them on site and all this is for click bait?
Poor thing must have hit her head like lurch did. I’d still help her come back around…..
The smoke from the fires. Have you set any today? Or are you just busting out working people’s store windows?
Symbols of those things, for whom?
I love that ya keep scrapping after all the pummeling ya getting
You think everyone in this country is split into two types of people? That shows your ignorance. You’re an unwitting soldier of Rupert’s idiocies. It shocking to me how someone in this country could get mad at black people for protesting. Incredible. And the fact that you claim Hawaii as your home is insulting.