We just had a scenario where an Aboriginal footballer was called an ape by a young girl in the crowd. He heard it, reported her, she was booted out of the ground and all hell broke loose in the media. He was apparently seriously hurt and upset by the remark, really took it to heart as he considered it a seriously racist hurtful insult.
This confuses me a little. I’m aware of the situation a few years ago when Andrew Symonds, an Australian Cricketer of west indies origin was called a monkey by some Indian cricketers and a whole segment of the crowd jeering at him. That was obviously racist but I’m a tad confused by the term “Ape”.
I’ve been called a Big Ape before, in jest by friends who are shorter and slighter in build, particularly when I’ve knocked them around a bit physically. I have blond hair and white skin and aren’t overly hairy, I don’t consider it to be insulting when directed at me.
I’ve done a bit of googling and it’s inconclusive, so I’m interested in getting feedback from people in the USA and other countries.
The beard and brow does tend to be a little ape like in the facial features, but not overly. The young girl who called him an Ape said she didn’t realise it was a racist term. I can see why it could be construed that way but the instant angst has me thinking WTF, did I miss a memo, has this been a universally acknowledged racist term that I was unaware of?
So, as per the title, is calling a black person an 'Ape" racist?
Symond was a case of false friend. They actually said “maa ki” which mean "your mothers <insert body part here>
Plus for Symonds, I think “big orangutan would be more appropriate”.
And the answer is, it depends on context. If you call black child who is proficient at and indulges in climbing “a little monkey”, no thats not racist. If you call a black footballer one when he is playing…it probably is.
Undoubtedly racist in context. The mere fact that in another context, calling someone a big ape may not be racist doesn’t alter the reality that there is a long history of using language to suggest that Aborigines (and other victims of racism) are somehow subhuman. Some otherwise innocuous words have become loaded, like the word “boy”. Ape is one such.
It may or may not be meant as racist, but thanks to the history of it being used that way as Noel Prosequi points out, you can be sure that it’ll be taken as a racist insult.
This isn’t a question with a GQ answer. Adam Goodes believed the comment to be racist and he’s based that belief on a life time of racist taunts and bullying. The girl did not believe the comment to be racist and she based that on her life experiences. It isn’t just the word. Its the attitude behind the words. If you’ve never experience racist abuse then it will be hard for you to understand. I’m Samoan/Maori: and when people have racially abused me it isn’t really the words that were used that stood out.
I think it was racist, I could maybe buy a 13 year old (Australian) not knowing that.
After hearing Adam Goodes on the radio though I think he needs a spoon of concrete. A grown man and a professional football, who (in his words) was ‘very shaken’ by being called and ape by a little 13 year old girl. No excuse for racial remarks but harden up princess!
Cheers mate, I get that, I’ve never been racially abused but I get the concept that words have different meanings in different contexts and it’s all about tone and how the person on the receiving end interprets it. FWIW I’m not having a slap at Goodes, he seemed genuinely upset. I’m just curious as to when this became a common insulting term cos I must have missed that.
I think Goodes reacted the way he did because it was the Indigenous Round. Ironically at halftime Channel 7 had shown a short feature about the famous Nicky Winmar photo.
I don’t go to the footy, so maybe this is more common than I think, but in what universe is it appropriate for a kid to hurl insults at an adult of WHATEVER sort? (not that keen on supposed grownups sledging either, come to think of it)
I have no idea whether she was intending to be racist or not, but fully support her being thrown out on her ear anyway.
Go to the footy sometime. Your opinion of the average Aussie will take a pretty savage beating. You see some absolutely horrendous behaviour. My favourites are the people who take their kids along so that they can model poor conduct for them.
Totally dependent on the person saying it. Does the person regularly refer to only black people as ‘ape’ or does the person use it as a generic insult toward anyone large and physical? In the latter case it’s not racist, in the former it is.
A case like this lacks any history or context to identify whether the girl was being racist or not; only someone who knows her well would be able to honestly tell in which manner it was intended.
I think “ape” as an insult carries a well known connotation of racial slur in the United States. Reading people’s intentions - that is, reading their minds - is always an uncertain business. To read this young girl’s intentions I think one should be part of her age group and society.
Supervising a big event such as a game puts one in the position of having some responsibility for the atmosphere there and for what behavior one tolerates, and the message that supervision sends. In this light, at least using my American life experiences, I think it was proper to expel the young girl. People attending the game, or aware of it from outside news reports, will interpret this story and form an opinion like “they tolerate racial slurs” or “they don’t tolerate racial slurs”. Part of how we fix an appalling history of racism is sending the message that we don’t tolerate racial slurs.
If the young girl had no idea the term could be considered a racial slur, she still has a lesson to learn about being aware of and avoiding certain charged situations. The possibility that people may be misinterpreted as hurling racist insults is one of the many sad consequences of societal racism.
I used to use the term ‘chief’ when an acquaintance was giving me an instruction or anything that could lightly be taken to be an order. I once replied ‘You got it chief’ to a native friend, and he suggested I never call him chief. I just was not being aware of his ethnicity and didnt think about it. I did not mean it that way of course but I still felt uncomfortable.
I try to be more careful of such things now just to avoid misunderstandings. If someone finds something racist / insulting who am I to argue; the practical thing is to try to be aware not to argue about how a word should be taken.
This reminds me of when Muhammed Ali went on an Australian show and the host said something like “I really like this boy.” To the host it was just an innocent saying, but to anyone aware of racial issues is the US “boy” is a huge insult to Black, one which probably precedes trouble.
When studying history and the like one phrase has always served me well: when in doubt some racism.
It’s been common to insult or belittle black people by comparing them to (non-human) primates since long before you were born. I’m an American and can’t really speak to what sorts of insults are commonly used in other countries or by association football fans, but a quick Google turned up this Wikipedia article on racism in association football. Quite a few of the incidents described involved fans calling black members of the opposing team monkeys or apes, making monkey sounds, or throwing peanuts or bananas. Most of the incidents listed occurred within the past decade, so this isn’t ancient history.
What was really going through the teen girl’s mind when she called Goodes an ape is unknowable, but it seems quite reasonable to me to interpret it as a racist remark. If that’s not what she meant then best that she learn now that such remarks are going to be taken that way.
I wish I knew this guy personally so I could make fun of him for being a drama queen. He obviously needs to grow a thicker skin. Furthermore, he evidently said that her identity (age, race, gender) caused him to feel even more butthurt. If it had been, say a 70 year old Japanese man would that have been worse or not as bad? This implies he has a hierarchy of racial acceptability. He must be a racist. I wonder if he’ll apologize, I doubt it because he obviously doesn’t have the stones that the 13 year old has.
