Carlton star Eddie Betts.Credit:Getty Images
Walker wassuspended for six games, required to donate $20,000 to an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander program and apologise to the Indigenous players at the Crows and again to the entire playing group,as well as undertake an education program.
“He needs to learn from this. He needs to own it. And he needs to work towards educating himself to be anti-racist,educating people around him,calling people out on racism when he hears it. Doing that is the only way we’re all going to move forward on this,” Betts said.
“And when it comes to racism,we’re not moving forward – we’re going backwards. The sad thing is that I’m used to it. That’s the sad thing. We as Aboriginal people are used to it. And we keep fighting,but it’s hard.”
Betts has agreed to publish several racist social media posts that had targeted him in the past fortnight,saying they had caught his attention due to the number of times each post was shared and commented upon. Among the slurs are the words “half-cast c--n,” a “black c--t” and a “true paint sniffing a---”
A social media post to Eddie Betts’ Instagram account in recent weeks.Credit:Instagram
“I need people to understand this is what we go through. This is what Aboriginal people deal with in our everyday lives. It doesn’t matter if you play AFL footy in the spotlight,or if you’re in the community,” he said.
“Racism does exist in Australia,and over the past 10 years of playing AFL footy,I have been racially abused every single year. It happened last week. It happened the week before that and the week before that.”