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BLACKCURRENT: The rocky road of race relations
ISSUE 164 - 16 Oct 2008
ISSUE 164, October 16, 2008: What's in a name? Quite a bit, says AMY McQUIRE*. Just look at Rockhampton where residents are up in arms at a suggestion to change the name of a local road.
Generally speaking, there aren't many racist words to describe white Australians. The only ones I can pull out of my head are the terms "redneck" and "captain cook".
In contrast, you could probably compile a whole dictionary using the racist words directed towards Aboriginal people.
Or you could just take a look at an old map of Queensland.
Last year I was fortunate enough to be sent to the Torres Straits to cover the successful Indigenous-focused Croc Festival.
While there I took a sojourn in a small plane out to the outer islands and back, the pilot handing me a map so I could tell each tiny isle from the other.
Although the Torres Strait is undeniably beautiful, my focus soon shifted to the number of "Niggers" I could see marked on the map.
I know that the amount of racist place names in Queensland have been changed quietly and steadily over the years, but there are still several that remain the same.
For an example, all you have to do is head to Alton Downs, near my hometown of Rockhampton, where a debate is currently raging over whether "Black Gin Creek Road" should stay.
The debate was sparked by prominent Aboriginal campaigner Stephen Hagan, who visited Rockhampton earlier this month, labeling it one of the three most racist towns in Queensland.
Mr Hagan is best known for his fight against a Toowoomba football stand sign containing the word "nigger", a homage to the nickname of local rugby hero E.S. Brown.
After polarizing the local community, even the Indigenous one, Mr Hagan took his case to the Federal Court, where it was rejected, and then finally the United Nations, where the Council for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) agreed that the sign should be taken down. He began his fight in 1999.
Nonetheless, it was only last month that the Nigger Brown sign was actually taken down... not because everyone agreed that it was offensive, but because the whole stand was being bulldozed.
In a small victory, Mr Hagan finally received some sort of acknowledgment from the Queensland government, which had previously rejected his campaign, with Police Minister Judy Spence agreeing the sign was racist.
If it took nine years to take away the word 'nigger' from a public grandstand, then it should come as no surprise that Mr Hagan's latest comments in Rockhampton over whether Black Gin Creek Road should be renamed have caused furious stamp-licking as Central Queenslanders send off their opinion to the local Morning Bulletin newspaper.
The Bulletin reported on Saturday that "a flood of text messages and phone calls... criticised the University of Southern Queensland lecturer [Stephen Hagan]" over the incident.
"Mr Hagan's small contingent of supporters yesterday included a white woman but the critics included at least one aborigine," the newspaper reported.
"An anonymous caller said the road was named after the black-coloured gin bush that grew along the creek, but research yesterday failed to confirm that such a bush exists."
In a story on Friday, the Bulletin again reported another voice against taking the sign down, with Black Gin Creek Road resident Cameron Byrne stating that he would fight against Mr Hagan's suggestion.
Mr Hagan is planning to start a local campaign to change the name of the Alton Downs road, which is believed to date back to the 1800s, after visiting Rockhampton this week. But Mr Byrne said he should "mind his own business," the Bulletin reported.
"'He sounds like a hypocrite do-gooder it's only racist to people who put it in that context," the 21-year-old said.
"'Any word could be racist if you view it that way.'"
The Bulletin reported in the same story:
"Mr Hagan said citizens of Black Gin Creek Road 'need to stop living in the year of the white Australia policy'.
"He said we need to live in an inclusive society where everyone's views and values are respected."
The Bulletin quoted Mr Hagan as saying: "The response by this street is exactly why Rockhampton fits the bill of top three most racist towns."
It seems strange that we are still having this debate about what is and isn't offensive.
But I believe the reason that people so ferociously advocate for keeping these racist beacons of Queensland's past has a lot to do with the fact that many non-Indigenous Australians do not know what it feels like to be called a "gin" or a "nigger" or a "coon".
If we renamed Black Gin Creek Road something along the lines of "Redneck Road", maybe then they would understand.
blackcurrent@nit.com.au
* Amy McQuire is a Canberra-based journalist for the National Indigenous Times. She hails from Rockhampton in Queensland, and is of Darumbal and South Sea Islander heritage.
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