Rita Panahi: Collingwood’s odd appointment for racism probe
Collingwood has appointed a highly controversial and divisive activist to head the investigation into allegations of racism at the club. So why were more fitting indigenous campaigners ignored, asks Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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The Heritier Lumumba saga has taken another twist with the appointment of highly controversial activist and academic, Larissa Behrendt, to head the independent investigation into allegations of racism at Collingwood football club.
After years of claims and denials, tortured interviews and thought pieces, Collingwood has promised a thorough review that will reveal what really transpired at the club between 2005 and 2014, a period in which Lumumba, formerly Harry O’Brien, claims he was the victim of a culture of racism and bullying as chronicled in the documentary, Fair Game.
Collingwood has entrusted the investigation to Prof Behrendt, whom they described as “a distinguished barrister, researcher, writer and filmmaker”.
Some of the media reporting on Behrendt’s appointment was fanciful stuff describing the Sydney University academic and ABC host as “coming with an unimpeachable reputation in indigenous affairs”.
The truth is that Behrendt is a highly divisive activist who made headlines in 2011 for describing respected indigenous anti-violence campaigner Bess Price as more offensive than bestiality.
Behrendt tweeted: “I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I’m sure it was less offensive than Bess Price.”
The comments devastated Price and prompted indigenous academic Marcia Langton to describe Behrendt as assuming “the role of superior thinkers whose grand education and positions in the metropolis qualify them to heap contempt on the natives”.
Price is a heroine in the eyes of many; she has overcome terrible disadvantage and violence to be a fearless warrior for at-risk indigenous women and children.
Price has seen family members brutalised and killed and knows well the depths of despair experienced in remote communities.
She has little time for inner city activists who obsess about Australia Day and the flag instead of the plight of abused, neglected children or the fact that indigenous women are around 35 times more likely to be hospitalised due to domestic violence than other Australian women.
But it is the likes of Behrendt, not Price, who win media accolades and are appointed to run inquiries.
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