There is something of a pattern when it comes to people of colour in Australia talking about racism. There is a process of behaviour – a machine moving to silence whoever dares voice their opinion.
NBA star Ben Simmons has become the latest to have to deal with the weight of the machine, following in the footsteps of Adam Goodes, Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Osman Faruqi, after posting on social media about alleged racial profiling at Melbourne’s Crown Casino.
The allegations were denied by Crown, and Simmons took down his Instagram post, but that was to be the least of his worries.
Until the incident Simmons had been hailed as Australia’s greatest basketball hope. He is the first Australian to have been the NBA’s No 1 draft pick since 2005, and at 23 he is the country’s richest ever athlete.
Almost like clockwork, negative spins about Simmons started to roll in from the usual outlets after the casino incident.
News Corp told how Simmons left fans “devastated” by not stopping for selfies at a $200-a-head basketball camp. The positive anecdotes to come out of the event were a mere footnote.
His support of Essendon also came in for criticism. On Channel Nine’s Sunday Footy Show, the former AFL player Kane Cornes let it be known he was “sick” of Simmons after the Bombers fan was pictured in a Melbourne jumper.
The Murdoch media claimed it wasn’t because Simmons was black that he sparked outrage, but rather because he was too American. But his blackness, or his expression of it, is perhaps what has rubbed some up the wrong way.
This reaction is a hallmark of Australia. There is no handballing this as some sort of cultural miscommunication. Goodes was booed out of the AFL, Abdel-Magied hounded out of the country and Faruqi doxxed into social media hiding.
This is the way in which Australia enters into relationships with racialised bodies in this country – it is conditional. It is a relationship Simmons must know well, given his partnership with Goodes in the film The Australian Dream.
Like Simmons, Goodes challenged that precarious relationship when he began to highlight racism in the AFL and Australian society more broadly. His Australia Day speech took into consideration the history of the country we walk on, instead of being a vanity photo op to showcase how far Australia has come as a nation.
That perceived transgression, like that of Simmons, highlights the breaking of any kinship Australia had for Goodes. It elicited the howling of boos across all grounds, across all teams.
In her book, Black Looks: Race and Representation, bell hooks references Lorraine Hansberry’s play, Les Blanes, and describes the relationship between Charles, a white journalist, who longs for that connection with Tshembe, a black revolutionary.
“Yet [Charles] continues to assume that he alone can decide the nature of his relationship to a black person. Evoking the idea of a universal transcendent subject, he appeals to Tshembe by repudiating the role of oppressor, declaring, ‘I am a man who feels like talking’. When Tshembe refuses to accept the familiar relationship offered him, refuses to satisfy Charles’ longing for camaraderie and contact, he is accused of hating white men.”
Calling out racism broke the camaraderie either Goodes or Simmons were offered. They were no longer darlings in the sports arena, no longer national treasures.
Inevitably, Alan Jones chimed in saying, “Ben Simmons, I know you’re an Australian but go back to America and stay there.”
This reaction isn’t down to Australians not liking politics and sport to mix. When Jones says go back to America it is because Simmons’ allegations broke the contract of camaraderie.
Simmons and Goodes become like Tshembe in Hansberry’s play: they refuse to satisfy a relationship that doesn’t involve them.