How Tim Paine and Pat Cummins changed their views on racism

Tim Paine says the Black Lives Matter campaign opened his eyes, while Pat Cummins reveals reading Dark Emu opened his.

Tim Paine and Pat Cummins have spoke of how their views on racism changed

Australian Test captain Tim Paine has revealed the Black Lives Matter movement made him realise he had been living with his head in the sand.

And his vice-captain Pat Cummins says Indigenous writer Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu had a huge impact on his views about racism and Indigenous culture.

The pair were recorded recently asking each other questions in a video for the anti-racism website Reflect Forward.

The organisation behind the website aims to start “an ongoing conversation about racism in sport, and working towards eliminating it at all levels throughout Australia”.

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Asked about “the last time you had a shift in the thinking on racism” the pair were revealing in their response.

“Mine has only shifted in the last 12 months since the whole Black Lives Matter thing started to take off,” Paine said.

“I was probably someone who, if I am totally honest, had my head in the sand a little bit and because it probably wasn’t a part of my world I didn’t have it as a big issue.

“That’s really opened my eyes to things and issues our Indigenous people, black people and people of different cultures around the world go through.

“For me, again, I probably just turned a blind eye to it a little bit, but since this has got going I have taken time to speak to teammates — whether it’s in Tasmania or Hurricanes or club cricket — about how they feel about it and how it affects them.

“I didn’t realise how bad it was for people in our day.

“You saw it as something that was a long time ago and almost that attitude of ‘what can I do to help that’.

“For me my learning has come from speaking to teammates about how it affects them and how I can help them through that and the platform we have now as Australian cricketers, not that we can fix every problem, but we can use that platform to make more of us aware of it.”

Cummins’ eyes were opened by Pascoe’s 2014 work, which examined journals and diaries of early explores and found evidence of indigenous agriculture, engineering and buildings which the majority of historians had ignored or been unaware of.

“The biggest shift I have had in the past year or so is just around our Indigenous culture here in Australia,” Cummins said. “Obviously at school you learn a little bit about it, I remember reading about the Stolen Generation, small parts; the boomerang, the didgeridoo, dream time, but never really in depth. It was always ‘that’s the past’, not that it still exists.

“The biggest shift for me (was reading) Dark Emu. It’s a great book that came out a few years ago and it talks about how productive, how intelligent and how incredible the culture was at not only surviving, but thriving. How closely they were intertwined with the land.

“It shifted my perspective. I had just thought a lot of Indigenous people were foragers and just surviving from the land, but I found out they would burn certain fires to make sure the bush survived, they would look after certain flora and fauna, they had this whole eco system that was so finely tuned over 60,000 years.

“I have such huge admiration and respect for the history. Australia has all this history I didn’t even know about a year ago and I feel real proud to be an Aussie.”

The Australian men’s teams have been participating in a special Aboriginal barefoot circle ceremony before every game and wear the logo on the collars of their shirt.

Many players in the BBL and the WBBL have taken a knee to start games or removed their caps in support before play.

Paine and Cummins discussed how to deal with racism or ignorant comments in team environments.

“I’ve heard a few throwaway lines in the gym or at training over the years. The simple thing is to call it out,” Paine said. “For me it is just going over to them, rather than making a big scene over it, which can make the situation worse for the person that’s had the comment made to.

“A couple of times it’s been literally going over to a teammate one-on-one. The ones I have been around haven’t meant to insult the person, it’s been a throwaway line, someone thinking they have been funny because it is something that’s been in sports change rooms for a long, long time.

“Tap them on the shoulder and let them know the comment has probably been hurtful and harmful to the person it was aimed at. A quiet conversation and make them aware it is not on and make sure they speak to the person it was aimed at.”