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Further implications
It has been argued that the racist taunts from cricket crowds affect not only players but all others of non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds living in Australia. In an opinion piece published in In The Sydney Morning Herald on January 11, 2021, Rosalind Dixon, a professor of law and director of the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales, noted the extent of racist abuse in Australian cricket and sport more generally and referred directly to the broader consequences of the abuse from the crowd during the second test between Australia and India played in Sydney.
Professor Dixon stated, 'There are also many Indian Australians studying and working in Australia for whom these words will have cut even deeper - to the core of their sense of belonging, not just welcome.'
The following is a comment
published in The Tribune on January 17, 2021, written by Indian sportswriter Rohit Mahajan, giving an overview of Australia's history of racial exclusion and denigration (which he argues is shared by all colonial nations) and calling on Australia's cricketers to set an example of tolerance and inclusivity.'FROM January 1, Australia sings a slightly tweaked national anthem - in the second line, "young" has been removed, substituted with "one", so now it goes: "For we are one and free."
With this change, Australians have officially recognised that their nation is not "young"; that it didn't come into existence only when it was discovered or colonised - that the Australian nation predates the waves of immigration over the centuries.
The change, minor in semantics but deep in symbolism, was not welcomed by all. Yet, it is a sign of modern Australians coming to terms with the past, which was cruel and bloody, as colonisation projects always are; it was racist, too, as colonisation projects always are. The beaten people, always, are deemed inferior, and everything is bad about them - their clothing, food, language, their morality. Conquerors make efforts to turn the enslaved people into an image of themselves - speaking their language, worshipping their god, wearing their clothes.
Right until the 1970s, mixed-race children of aboriginal women were being 'removed' - stolen - through government policy. The White Australia policy was officially ended only in the 1970s. This was not so long back - thus, it's a miracle that in such a short period of time, Australia has achieved a rich diversity of culture and people, and legal equality for all. This is enlightenment at work.
But mixing people isn't without problems. Scientists explain that caution and suspicion are built into our DNA because extreme caution gave human beings a better chance of survival. Outgroup suspicion and prejudice are universal and after millions of years of their existence, only now, over the last few decades, have human beings decided it's unjust to be suspicious of a group of people just because they're different.
[However, some] immigrants and visitors [to Australia] have told this writer over the years that in even cosmopolitan cities such as Sydney or Melbourne, you might be called a black something or the other by a white person across an isolated street, and it can be much worse in small towns. The perpetrators are mostly young and drunk - and constitute a small minority. From personal experience, one can say this is true. As Ravichandran Ashwin said the other day, Indian cricketers have suffered much abuse in Australia, sometimes racist. Australian cricketers, tough as nails, would sledge their own grandmother in a sporting contest - being tough in sport is central to the Australian identity. But abusive sledging is not in tune with the modern notion of equality and respect for all people.
Mohammed Siraj suffered abuse, a lot of it allegedly racist, in Sydney and Brisbane. The perpetrators were young and drunk. They need better models of behaviour - Australian cricketers, especially, must set better examples of non-abusive behaviour their fans could follow.'