“Same old Aussies, Always cheating” Rascist or not? Acceptable, or not?
I just read this thread and am firmly AGAINST KiwiHatter's opinions. I feel that the comments made at the game were entirely inappropriate, and I'm surprised and dismayed to see him doubling down in this thread.
HOWEVER, you've got to say he's got a point with this.
It is technically a racist chant is it not?
And before someone tries again with the "australia is not a race" technicality, that's absolute rubbish sorry. It's entirely comparable to the Singh comment that was made, which was clearly putting all Indians in a generic box in order to produce the humour, in the same way the Australian chant is.
The Australian one SEEMS less derogatory, and more humorous, but I can't actually see how it's much different in reality.
Context.
It’s a sporting fixture against an Australian side, where we perceive them to have just cheated in some way.
Historically there is a friendly sporting rivalry between the two countries, the defining incident of which involved perceived cheating by the Australians. It’s basically just a reference to the under arm incident.
I don’t think that’s even close to being the same as the Singh comment.
It’s also not so much the comment that was made, but the aggressive reaction after someone pointed out that they found it offensive.
I mean this is just silly. I'm sure KH will argue (and he has), that he also had context for his "humour", in that an unusually large porportion of dairies in NZ were/are owned by people from the sub-continent.
His sense of humour would once have been considered funny, but is now outdated, and is really not accepted at all. For example, I was at a cricket match at the Basin Reserve in the mid-nineties, against Pakistan, and two guys literally carried an enormous banner round the ground that said "Who is minding the Dairy". Nobody complained, many laughed, and people moved on. This is also unacceptable, and thankfully would never be condoned today.
I imagine us calling the aussies cheats, and them calling us sheep-shaggers, will also be frowned upon, and not done at some point in the future, if our culture continues its current trend of moving further and further away from the tacit acceptance of this sort of thing.
Also, agree with Tegal on the last sentence there. This is totally fair enough. You really need to pull your head in KH and realise that times have changed, and this was actually not cool at all bro.