Call racism out to stamp it out, says Melbourne University Professor of Sociology Karen Farquharson

“If someone is experiencing racism and want to stop it and make a complaint. It does not go well for them usually,” Farquharson said.

People’s claims are often denied or they were made to feel bad for raising the issue which caused them to either stop complaining or quit.

“The onus should not be on the players who are the victims of these things to make the complaint … everyone else should be making the complaint on their behalf and say what are you doing, we don’t do this around here,” Farquharson said.

“It actually needs to be the whole club making a decision that we have zero tolerance for this and we are just not going to tolerate it and it is not up to the person being victimised to actually make a complaint about it. If you see it call it out and there is good evidence that bystanders are more effective at stopping racism than people who ae victims of it.

“The [AFL and clubs] should at least trialling a zero tolerance approach where all the players are expected to call it out.”

She also said when people heard a racist nickname or comment, leaders needed to take responsibility to stop them and stamp such behaviour out of an organisation.

Farquharson, who is also the head of the School of Social and Political Sciences at Melbourne University, said there was a reason why leagues, clubs and individuals did not put in place zero tolerance policies and thought complaints policies were sufficient.

“The reason is because it’s hard to do and it also involves giving up a bit of power, so it requires some bravery to actually come out and say ‘we are going to make this change and we are not going to tolerate that’,” Farquharson said.

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She said under such a policy, action could have been taken when Swans champion Adam Goodes was being booed by fans, an action that the AFL eventually conceded was motivated by racism.

“The players on both teams could have said as long as he is getting booed we are not playing. We don’t tolerate that kind of abuse and as long as that is happening we are not playing,” Farquharson said.

Farquharson’s research into managing diversity in junior sport found that taking such action was hard but effective in tackling situations where a player was vilified in junior sport.