IN THE wake of the AFL's lifetime ban for vilification, Tanya Hosch has reflected on the importance of consistency in responding to racism.
Hosch, who is the executive general manager of inclusion and social policy at the AFL, is optimistic about the improvement being made both nationwide and within the game in response to racism, but remains aware of the long road still to be trodden.
"I know that racism is alive and well in society," Hosch said on the League Leaders podcast.
"We're a huge game with a massive footprint and we're so privileged that so many people come to our game, so of course it's going to turn up in football."
Finding consistency, not perfection, in the response to racial vilification is now the challenge.
"There's so much goodwill about wanting to see this out of our game, but we've still got a huge way to go yet in terms of really being able to get that consistency," Hosch said.
Still impacted by racism she experienced as a child, Hosch is all too aware that it's not always the biggest incident that will "push you over the edge", instead it builds up over time.
"You have to pick your fights, you've got to pick which ones you're actually going to challenge. You can't be challenging everything all the time, otherwise you'd never get anything done," Hosch said.
Born to a Torres Strait Islander father and Welsh mother, Hosch was adopted at three weeks old. Her adoptive father, an Aboriginal man, and mother, who is white, were very open with her from an early age about the adoption.
For First Nations people, cultural identity is "central to everything", so exploring connections to her birth parents has been an important part of Hosch's life.
"Trying to find out what my cultural roots were was important and it was something that was weighing very heavily on me, and it was when I started to think about having a family of my own that I thought, 'OK, I've got to get past the fear of this going badly in some way and start that process'," Hosch said.
"There's a service called Link-Up, which was specifically designed to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had been forcibly removed from their families, or moved under other circumstances to find their family. So, I started that process and it was pretty scary. I've got to say, it's still scary. I haven't found out my father's name, but there is information about who he was, and the kind of relationship he had with my birth mother."
Born in 1970, her adoption took place while Indigenous children were still being forcibly removed from their families, and as part of the policy, the names of their Indigenous parents were erased. As a result, tracking down her father's name has been a challenge.
"Finding my father is something that continues, but it is painful," Hosch said.
Throughout the podcast episode, Hosch also touches on being the first member of her family to attend university, her first job that allowed her to help others and her work with Recognise.
