One man’s stand
In the US, it’s a word so offensive that white people, at least, only ever refer to it as the ‘N’ word. In that peculiar vein of Australian humour (where your best mate is a bastard and a mongrel), a blond, white footballer Edward Stanley Brown was nicknamed ‘Nigger’ and that word is emblazoned on the sports stand named in his honour. The term is also "repeated orally in public announcements relating to facilities at the ground and in match commentaries."
Stephen Hagan (left) is one who finds it offensive, to whatever or whomever it is applied, and has striven for eight years to get the grandstand renamed. A local footy fan who can’t bring himself to attend the ground, Hagan claims that using the word ‘Nigger’ in "a very public way provides the term with formal sanction or approval [and] may perpetuate racism."
Not all indigenous Australians find the appellation offensive, at least not in this instance. The Federal Court considered the grandstand’s name was not "reasonably likely in all the circumstances to offend", in part because it was not applied to a black person. The High Court refused an appeal.
Having exhausted all domestic remedies, and with the support of many who agreed with him, Hagan took the case to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, claiming that Australia had failed in its obligation to fulfill the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In 2003 the Committee — the world’s highest authority on the interpretation of the Convention — found that:
"[T]he memory of a distinguished sportsperson may be honoured in ways other than by maintaining and displaying a public sign considered to be racially offensive. The Committee recommends that the State party [Australia] take the necessary measures to secure the removal of the offending term from the sign in question."
The Australian Government, a party to the UN Convention since 1975, failed to comply with this directive.
Influential shock-jock Alan Jones, a strong supporter of the Howard Government, was not impressed by the UN ruling. In his characteristic rhetoric he railed:
"He was known all his life as ‘Nigger’ Brown. And now some dunce who calls himself an Aboriginal activist has been petitioning the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — thank you very much — to have the word ‘Nigger’ removed. Are you sitting down? An 11-page judgement by this same outfit — most probably made up of freedom-loving people from Cuba, the Middle East and the darkest and despotic parts of Africa — has said that the term is offensive and insulting. A bit like their 11-page report."
And that wasn’t the worst of it. Hagan and his wife, Rhonda, received threatening letters from the Australian chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
Undeterred, the Hagans and fellow academic Daryl Sparkes have made a 26-minute documentary about the saga called Nigger Lovers. It first screened to a packed audience at the Sydney Opera House recently and is expected to appear at Cannes and the Sundance Film Festival as well.
The E.S. Nigger Brown stand, in the ‘ultra-conservative’ provincial Queensland town of Toowoomba, has been so named since 1960. Last month the Toowoomba Sports Ground Trust decided it would demolish the stand — for safety reasons. That this announcement came two weeks after Hagan’s film premiere is mere coincidence, claim Trustees. Unapologetic, they are planning another tribute to the late Mr Brown.
Though he may be descended from "a long line of troublemakers", Hagan is now Aboriginal Person of the Year.
Nigger Lovers will appear on Australian television in July.
