Saturday, August 12, 2006
FUSS RECALLED
“Race is a most sensitive issue,” writes Phillip Adams. “You’ll recall the fuss in Brisbane over a grandstand named Nigger for a thus nicknamed Aboriginal football player.”
Wrong and wrong, Phillip. The player was white and the grandstand isn’t in Brisbane:
His real name was Edward Stanley Brown, and in Toowoomba he was admired for playing in the 1921 Kangaroos rugby league side. He was better known by his nick-name, “Nigger”, which apparently he got as a child because he had fair skin and blonde hair. And in the late 1960s, a grandstand at Toowoomba’s Athletic Oval was named in his honour, the E.S. Nigger-Brown Stand.
Here’s another ABC report, from 1999. Adams should pay some attention to our fine national broadcaster.
(Via Clark G., who comments: “Perhaps he just didn’t want the facts to get in the way of good story. Wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last.”)