Apropos of recent events, I found myself looking through the newspaper accounts Gary Osmond & I found for our history of Nicky Winmar's iconic gesture against racism in Australia.

And found this paragraph by Mike Sheahan which was published a week after Winmar's gesture:

So Sheahan himself had written that Winmar clearly said that he was Black and Proud to be Black.

Everyone who wanted to, knew at the time.

Even those who maybe didn't want to know, knew at the time.

The day after Winmar made his gesture, Australia just happened to be hosting a United Nations conference on racism.

Senator Nick Bolkus, then Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, rewrote his speech to highlight the importance of Winmar's call for justice.

Australia, Bolkus observed, was an ‘unsettled nation’ struggling with widespread racism that needed to be eliminated before a ‘fully Australian identity’ could be developed.

By declaring himself proud to be Black, Nicky Winmar ‘stood for the way ahead in Australia’.

But Herald Sun editors didn't want a caption mentioning race under the photo of Winmar pointing with pride at his skin.

Even though their photographer John Feder told them ‘No, he was pointing to the colour of his skin, it was definitely a racial thing & it’s really important!’

Instead the Herald Sun vaguely noted that Winmar was responding to taunts from the Collingwood crowd, and ‘copped plenty of flak’.

Yet even the Herald Sun reluctantly observed 9 days later that ‘Winmar lifted his St Kilda jumper to expose racism in football’.

Collingwood's then president Allan McAlister explained to Channel 9 that the club did not have an issue with Indigenous Australian's, with the horrifying but revealing proviso:

Much of this was covered in a blistering Media Watch episode a couple of weeks after Winmar made his iconic gesture.

In other words, it was covered by the one program that virtually everyone in the media made sure that they watched.

All of which goes to show, the amount of work required to foster & maintain the belief that Winmar's response to vile racist abuse was somehow not actually about racism.

To forget so much.

And still try and undermine this incredibly powerful symbolic call for racial justice.

For what it's worth, this was the headline of Sheahan's piece - John Worsfold expressing regret for racially abusing opposing Indigenous players.

(While he was captain of a team including Peter Matera & Chris Lewis among others...)