Four Corners: Journalist Stan Grant reveals cruel racist schoolyard taunt

Australian broadcast legend Stan Grant has opened up about taunts and bullying from his childhood in an emotional moment on Aussie television.

Australian broadcast legend Stan Grant has revealed horrific details of his own experiences with racism in an emotional Four Corners episode.

Monday night’s program was dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement and was titled “I Can’t Breathe”, a reference to the last words spoken by George Floyd , whose death sparked a wave of protest against racism and police brutality in the US and across the globe.

The episode largely covered Australia’s own racial divide, and the acclaimed Indigenous journalist opened up about a disturbing schoolyard incident which occurred when he was a teen.

“I didn’t get to discover the world through my eyes. I was the one discovered … I learned at school the hard lesson of life. I lived in a world where white lives mattered, white was normal, and I wasn’t normal,” he said.

“The schoolyard taunts, the laughing, the pointing, the mocking, the heads turning – these are the little things that stay with you. Once our eyes are open to the world around us,

we can never see the world in the same way again.

“I was 15 when I learned another lesson – no matter how close I got, I could never truly belong. One day, I was asked in class to stand up and talk about myself, to talk about my life. I told them where I was from. And I told them who I was, I told them about my family, about my parents. I told them about our history. As I walked out of the class, one of my friends turned to me and said, ‘Why do you have to always talk about that Abo shi*?’”

Grant explained that when the students returned to class, a cruel taunt was scrawled on the board: “Be kind to Stan. Abos need love too”.

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Stan Grant shared his own hurtful experiences with racism at school. Picture: ABC

“This might seem like just a little thing, it might seem like something you can shrug off. Sitting here today, why should that matter? But you can never let go of those things. People know just where to hurt you. They know just how to tell you what your place in the world is. And what the price of belonging really is. Just shut up. Just go along. Don’t talk about it,” he continued.

The emotional episode also shared other devastating insights from other Indigenous Australians, including Latoya Rule, whose brother Wayne “Fella” Morrison died in September 2016 after being found unresponsive in an Adelaide police van.

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Latoya Rule's brother Wayne died in custody. Picture: ABC

“What happened in those final moments during Wayne’s last breaths? There are so many unanswered questions. Why, in the first instance, did they have to detain Wayne? Why wasn’t there surveillance in the van? … You know, there are so many unanswered questions about what really happened to Wayne,” she said.

Youth justice worker Keenan Mundine also spoke to the program about the death of Thomas “TJ” Hickey in 2004.

Mr Mundine was 17 at the time, and was with Mr Hickey the night before he died after falling off his bike and being impaled on a fence, with his family claiming he was being pursued by police at the time.

He said he was haunted by the death of his friend and was now dedicating to keeping other young Indigenous kids out of jail.

“I’m more scared. Scared that it’s going to happen to my boys. I’m scared that my children are gonna grow up in a country that thinks there’s no racism,” a visibly emotional Mr Mundine said.

Keenan Mundine broke down while speaking about the death of his friend, TJ Hickey. Picture: ABC

“But they’re more likely to end up in the criminal justice system than their other fellow friends in daycare. I see them being chased by police. I see them in a cell, crying. I see them in an adult prison cell, and having no-one to visit them, because they’re MY children and they’re MY blood, and that’s MY experience.

“I have every right to be angry, but angry kept me …. angry kept me in a place, man, that … was doing more damage to my community than healing it.”

Grant spoke to his own parents, Stan, and Betty, about shocking incidents they had personally experienced – including the arrest of his own great-grandfather Wilfred for simply speaking his own language in public in Griffith NSW.

Stan Grant's father has opened up about the family's experiences with racism on Four Corners. Picture: ABC

“They arrested the old bloke and they locked him up. And every weekend, they’d put dad in jail, and some of the others, too,” the elder Mr Grant said.

He also revealed that a policeman once attempted to arrest his father and his father’s cousin for drinking – but when he could only fit one at a time in his sidecar, he took the cousin with him – leaving Mr Grant’s father handcuffed to a tree.

“Then he didn’t come back all day, and dad was there in the heat, and he piddled himself and it was all down his trousers. And he didn’t come back till … hours and hours later. And said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot you’.”

The episode ended with a poignant explanation of why Grant and other Indigenous Australians can’t just “forget about it all”.

“Because it still exists. Because it is there. Because it can touch my life at any time. Because I know there are people in my life whose lives are framed by the colour of their skin, for whom history is a dead weight,” he said.

“There is nothing I would want more than to be free of the chains of history. There is nothing I would want more than for my children to live in a world where they can be all that they want to be. But we’re not there yet.

“But it is us, it is black people in America, it is black people in Australia who have walked the longest road and carried the greatest burden for all of you … And our people who ask all of you to walk the last part of that journey with us.”