Thank you for signing the Collingwood Fans Care petition!

Really quickly, we need YOUR HELP.

This week we felt it appropriate to make comment after the response to Taylor Walker's racist remark brought the issue of racism in our game to the fore once more.

We issued a statement earlier today and this is where YOU can help! It is attached here and please feel free to share it on any social media or other networks you may use. Or just keep an eye out for our posts on Twitter and Instagram - by following the accounts - where you can like, share and comment as you see fit.

Thanks again for getting on board and helping fight racism in our great game!

Sincerely
Toby B Hemingway
and the rest of the Collingwood Fans Care Founders

Our Message to Fellow White Australians:

Every Indigenous Australian (and person of colour) was born with no choice but to be a victim of racism. Whether a slur, joke, employment discrimination, or the hard truth that society and a lot of media position them as the “other”, they live in that reality.

It has been that way since the British arrived. Meanwhile, every white Australian is born with the ability to change that. 

This problem is created by white people, and therefore needs to be fixed by us, too.

Furthermore, the reliance on Black people to publicly support, console and educate white people, represents its own unique burden and form of racism. We must also lift that weight. First by owning “whiteness” as a race and accepting the role it has played, and benefits it has bestowed upon us, in colonial society.

As an organisation of Collingwood fans, we have witnessed this problem for decades.  It was only 18 months ago that Collingwood’s president — who is still a major figure of power and influence in Australian media — begrudgingly resigned after years of overt racism, combined with overseeing an organization that is systemically racist.  To this day, the Taylor Waker incident and endless other examples of shame, remind us that racism is a long way from being fixed.

So what should white people do?

Our view is that you cannot simply refrain from being racist or disagree with racism, or take symbolic action. You have to proactively eliminate it. Racism allowed “secretly” between white people is not just cowardly, it is devastating. It gives racism protection, allowing the disease to incubate and strengthen. It needs to be attacked anywhere that it finds safe harbour.  Eliminate it online, in your chats, at the pub, at the ground, at the dinner table, and any other space where white people feel safe to be racist. Kill it where it breeds. If that makes you uncomfortable, imagine how a non-white person would feel if they were present.

Victims of racism cannot and should not bear the burden of fixing it. Yes, they can help explain the hurt and open our eyes to their reality, and if you need that to get motivated, by all means listen. It is never too late to learn, to do what is right and begin the healing. But make no mistake, this is a white problem.  And as white Australians, we are either part of the problem or part of the solution.

We choose the latter.