Star of "historically white supremacist sport" captured for posterity and yours for ninety-nine dollars!
Six months ago, at an exhibition event funded by a white American billionaire, 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.”
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.
To celebrate the moment, factually correct or no, the World Surf League, a sort of media house for the Vulnerable Adult Learner surfer, has released an eighteen by twenty-four inch poster, which you can buy for twenty-nine dollars unframed or ninety-nine framed, hanging hardware included.
The poster is modelled by a thin blonde woman, a nod, I suppose, to the League’s legendary diversity.
