In 2013 AFL club Gold Coast held a Mad Monday type event where players got dressed up in funny costumes and two of them painted their faces black. One player, Joel Wilkinson, of Nigerian descent, got offended about this.
That’s it, that’s the tweet, but the Herald Sun has expended over 4500 words with 27000 characters and plonked in about ten images for this gripping and socially important story.
A fresh footy racism storm has erupted, with the emergence of photographs showing two white players dressed in blackface at a club celebration, as well as a letter from AFL lawyers contesting an African teammate’s complaint.
The AFL and the two players issued formal apologies over the blackface incident to former Gold Coast Suns player Joel Wilkinson on Friday.
Wilkinson released the documents to the Herald Sun, because he said the AFL industry and legal process had failed to appropriately address his concerns regarding racism during an Australian Human Rights Commission case which ran from 2018 to November 2019.
The photographs show then-teammates Leigh Osborne and Alex Sexton painted with black faces at a Wacky Wednesday end-of-season event in 2013.
Apart from all the journowhore words there’s also going to be all the $$$ for lawyers, and what is unforgivable, making Human Rights Commission employees feel themselves to be useful and valuable human beings.
In any case, Joel appears still angry and traumatised by the events, and we can all feel for him.
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