Old-Fashioned Racism, or just Plain Knit-Picking ?

The Olympics is an International Sporting Arena respected the world over for it's highly skilled professional athletes, and it's determination to equalise all races, cultures and more recently even sexes, (women's boxing being introduced just this year), in providing equal opportunities for all to succeed in their chosen field.

It annoys me that in this day and age when we as a nation have recognised the stolen generation, and our role as a British colony in dismantling the foundations of Aboriginal language and culture, having recognised them as the original custodians of this land, that we still find issue in Aboriginal people expressing their cultural identity.

The fact that Damien Hooper wearing an Aboriginal shirt alone could spark controversy is just sad, I think, and is a backwards step in terms of "white Australia" accepting and acknowledging the Aboriginal people as a legitimate, equal and rightfully proud part of our modern Australian nation.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to express your heritage, your cultural identity.
Is it offensive to say "I'm Scottish" or "I'm an inuit"? These two cultures have been repressed also, and yet we would no doubt praise the Scottish man who was to wear a kilt into the boxing arena. So what's the difference?

What I think the real issue behind this shirt business is, like what Anthony Mundine suggested, is that by choosing to represent his Aboriginal heritage, some have taken that to mean he has denounced his "Australian" heritage, the Australian flag. Even if that were the case, is he wrong in doing so? It's true that the union jack and Southern Cross do not acknowledge Aboriginal people at all, not even modern multicultural Australia as a whole, I believe. I certainly have no strong emotional connections to it.
Hooper has every right to wear a symbol that he feels his true national identity represents.

Nathan and I were discussing the scenario were a Nazi to walk in wearing a swastika. Does he have the same right in being allowed to express his identity symbolically? And this is where politics comes in.
The main difference being, the swastika is a representation of a culture that by it's very nature is intentionally repressive, exclusive and also a lifestyle choice. It is offensive to those not recognised in their belief system.

Hooper is Aboriginal by birth, and the Aboriginal flag in itself does not represent repression, nor does it exclude. It is a symbol of a proud race. A race of people that have been repressed, and have every right to be acknowledged nationally and internationally, in a way that is uniquely theirs.

It seems to me like Hooper has been the unfortunate victim of the media in it's desperation for a good story in a flurry of knit-picking during a less-than-favourable run for Aussie athletes in this year's olympic games, and plain old-fashioned racism on the part of supremist assholes.

Of course there will always be politics in international sporting arenas like the Olympics, just like there is politics in everything else. The Olympics is no exception, as much as we'd like it to be.

To be proud of your repressed culture is not an offense.
To try and repress a proud culture on the other hand, is.