Read on Twitter
1/ "Everyone at the club discredited Heriter Lumumba."
Veteran sportswriter Caroline Wilson recently confirmed that multiple people from @CollingwoodFC made a coordinated effort to undermine Lumumba while briefing journalists:
Veteran sportswriter Caroline Wilson recently confirmed that multiple people from @CollingwoodFC made a coordinated effort to undermine Lumumba while briefing journalists:
2/ I wonder why she’s saying this now instead of 3 years ago; Wilson is no stranger to standing up to the AFL boys' club. I guess it goes to show how much even senior journalists feared retaliation and/ or losing access to a massive club like CFC.
3/ Waleed Aly admitted to having one of these conversations with ‘senior’ people at Collingwood, and that he had no reason not to believe them. The results speak for themselves.
4/ The night the Project interview went to air, Lumumba and I were scheduled to fly to Brisbane for a panel with @amymcquire and @drcwatego at the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association’s 98.9 FM. A lot of the local community were at the station, eager to meet Lumumba.
5/ They had seen the Project interview and were outraged. They knew it was rigged. They welcomed Lumumba like family. I’ll never forget that night and what it meant for him to feel seen and have his truth understood after being discredited so badly on national television.
6/ 3 years later, look at the difference between the way Lumumba’s story has been told by First Nations and journalists of colour vs when he was left to the mercy of Australian sports journalists and corporate media outlets.
6/ @amymcquire, @ahmedyussuf10, @AvaniDias, @LatimoreJack, @Hocking_Rachael, @MrDTJames, @Williams__Carly, @lauramoates, Lorena Allam and others have reported on and discussed Lumumba’s story, as well as those of his other teammates who faced racism, with depth and compassion.
7/ Whiteness is not neutral, and neither are white journalists who assume they are objective when speaking about race. The experience of having faced racism allows people to have the empathy to know that someone is clearly telling the truth.
8/ Of course, there are exceptions to every rule: @chrisgatlarge who was one of the only journalists willing to pursue this in 2017, and @rustyjacko who recently wrote a brilliant, compelling portrait of Lumumba after his equally brilliant piece on Robert Muir.
9/ It’s also incredible to see the same sports media who, at their worst, revelled in ridiculing and defaming Lumumba, and at their best did nothing to defend him, suddenly take his side when the CFC Do Better report leaked.
10/ It’s sad that some of the worst damage done to Lumumba’s reputation was by a person of colour. If nothing else, that interview on The Project demonstrates the incredible pressure on black and brown people to prove their allegiance to white institutions.
11/ It also shows how being embedded in a structure that continually rewards you means you are likely to end up reflecting that institution’s values and ideology.
Remember this?
