North Melbourne CEO Ben Amarfio opens up about the lifetime of racial abuse he has suffered
North Melbourne CEO Ben Amarfio has suffered a lifetime of racial abuse, and it still follows him today - even when buying a sandwich. He opens up to Michael Warner.
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Ben Amarfio is 16 and trudging off a northern suburbs footy ground with a busted wrist.
He’s writhing in pain and heading to the bench in the hands of a trainer.
As he crosses the boundary, two hard-bitten women in their 70s hang over the fence and spit out the words that will haunt him for life.
“Go back to the jungle you f---ing dirty n-----. That’s where you belong. You deserve that broken wrist,” Amarfio recalls.
“After years of abuse, even I was surprised by that.
“When you’re a kid, you just don’t expect to cop it from grandmothers as well.”
As racism rears its ugly head in the football world yet again, North Melbourne’s newly installed chief executive choked back tears as he opened up on his own lifetime of pain.
As a man with black skin, Amarfio knows only too well the harsh reality of racism in Australia.
But it was not always as blatant as it was playing A-grade under 17s in the Essendon District Football League all those years ago.
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STAND WITH BETTS: CLUBS JOIN FIGHT AGAINST RACISM
Even as a younger boy, the son of a Ghanaian father (a professional boxer coincidently brought to Australia by former Kangaroos chairman Ron Casey in the 1960s) and Armenian mother, he felt the sting of prejudice growing up in outer-suburban Melbourne playing local footy and cricket.
“Back in those days the hygiene wasn’t what it is today — and you’d pass the cordial bottle around and everyone would take a swig from it … ” Amarfio recalled in June last year as his voice trailed off and he began to cry.
“And then, I’d swig from the bottle and the next kid wouldn’t want to touch it …
“So mate, stuff like that happened all the time.
“When I reflect, s---, it’s been tough sometimes.”
Amarfio said he was still confronted with the scourge of casual racism — the subtle side-step, the disdainful look and physical avoidance.
“I was walking down a major high street one day and a mother had her two young children on either side of her,” he said.
“I was walking towards her — and I was dressed smartly, so there were no cues for her to be alarmed — and she hurriedly clutched her children and pulled them under her arm, away from me.
“They look at you, they look you up and down and literally pull their children out of your way and visibly take a sidestep.”
The Roos boss said he had encountered “hundreds of those types of instances”.
“And I’m sure other black people have experienced the same,” Amarfio said as his voice broke again.
“I was getting a sandwich one day at a cafe in the Docklands. The server would place people’s change into their outstretched cupped hands. I put my hand out to accept my change, but instead of placing the change into my cupped hand, they put the change on the counter and pushed the money towards me and stepped back.
“Mate, that’s the sort of stuff that still happens.”
But his mother, Lily, taught him how to confront racism and persuade people to change their behaviour.
“I was in grade one and I used to come home after primary school crying every day because of the racial abuse and taunting,” Amarfio said.
“I remember my mother dragged me by the hand one day and she said, ‘I’m fed up with this’.
“She took me to the principal’s office and she said, ‘I want to see the boys who are picking on my son’.
“They lined up about four of the kids who had been giving me a hard time. She asked every kid, ‘Do you have a pet dog at home? And every kid said, ‘Yep’. She asked if they loved their pet dog. And every kid said, ‘Yep’. And she said, ‘Right, and what is the colour of your pet dog? What sort of dog is it?’
“One was a sandy-coloured labrador, one was a tan coloured bulldog, one was a little spotty-coloured dog and she said, ‘Right, do you care what colour your dog is?’
“And the kids were like, ‘No. We don’t care what colour they are’. And then she said, ‘Well why do you give my son a hard time just because he’s got different coloured skin to you?’.
“To five and six-year-old kids, that really resonated because they could see in a very simple way that she was right.
“I was standing there when she did that. And the kid who was my worst tormentor and used to give me the most s--- everyday eventually ended up being my best mate through primary school.
“I know my experiences aren’t unique. I feel for the many others who have had it worse than me.”
Appalled by last year's racial attack on Carlton’s Eddie Betts and inspired by his mother’s philosophy of dealing with racism front on, in June 2020, Amarfio and 12 of Kangaroos players of diverse backgrounds penned a club statement.
It talks about the faiths and cultures that make up the Australian community and the “punch to the gut” that is everyday racism by the “ignorant few”.
“Football and footballers can play such a crucial role here because of the standing the game has in our community,” Amarfio said.
“If people can see that this is what their role models are doing and saying, then maybe they will think there is some substance to it and something they should be taking notice of.
“And for me, racism and prejudice stems largely from ignorance, fear and familiarity. That’s the root of it and so you’ve got to deal with the root of it.
“We’ve got to break down the ignorance and fear and encourage familiarity.
“That’s how we’ll change it.”
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