The ancient Greeks were a wonderful people, whose reliance on slaves and women to do all the actual work meant they could devote themselves to increasing the size of their brains, and 
then devote those gigantic brains to the asking of brilliantly pointless questions, many of which still entertain and irritate philosophy students today.
One such is the sorites paradox, or the little-by-little problem. The best known example is that of the heap. Briefly, imagine a heap of sand (or salt, or sugar, or other small and heapable thing). Let’s say that heap contains 1,000,000,000 grains. Subtracting one grain from this heap to leave 999,999,999 doesn’t mean it’s no longer a heap. There would be no practical way to tell, just by looking, and you would be happy to describe either number as a heap. And the same is true when subtracting another, and another, and another, and so on. This means in principle that a heap, minus one, is still a heap.
Yet keep removing the grains, and you’ll end up with a heap of one grain, and that, well, that ain’t no heap at all. Worse, the application of the rule implies that you could have a heap composed of no grains, or even negative amounts of sand. So where’s the dividing line, and why is that dividing line minus one not a heap? The problem – that of vague predicates – is a persistent one and crops up in all kinds of fun places. My favourite solution is the blanket denial of such things as heaps. Heaps? Don’t be ridiculous. Simply impossible. No problem here. La la la la la …
So with this in mind, how many people making monkey noises do you need to make a crowd racist?
Evidently, if they all were, then it would be a racist crowd; if only one of them was, or none, then it wouldn’t be. This came to mind watching the recent second leg of the Spanish Supercopa, as a small-but-audible minority of Barcelona fans decided the best way to respond to the sight of a black man playing for the opposition was with the notorious oo-oo-oohs of the depressingly ignorant.
Now, everybody was at pains to stress that this was a minority, and rightly so; if the entire crowd had been at it, there’s no way that Sky’s commentator could have described the chants as “unfortunate” (and, while you kind of know what he meant, it’s not as though the chants were the result of a terribly coincidental series of Larry David-style misjudgements – a casually picked up banana here, a too-hot cup of coffee there – culminating in that horrible moment just before the credits where you have to hide behind a cushion. Pom pom pom POM, pa-pom …). Those responsible have been condemned by some right-thinking Barcelona fans as “not real cules”, while the idiotic few have been roundly condemned by the Spanish press, politicians, officials from both clubs, and the players.
That sentence is only true if you delete everything from “while” onwards.
The thing with racism is it doesn’t require a majority. As Batman said, all that is required for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing, and similarly all it takes to make any collection of people – be it a football crowd, a political party, or a country – appear racist, at least to the target, is an audible minority couched in a silent majority. Saying nothing isn’t doing nothing; it’s tacit acceptance, or at least acknowledgement. Unlike a heap of sand, individual members of a crowd are independent moral agents, with free will, and while the very nature of crowds perhaps diminishes that sense of freedom, it would be weak indeed to suggest that it could lead to a justifiable and complete abrogation of responsibility. If someone’s being a prick, you really should be calling them on it.
It was suggested to me that the reason the Spanish press have remained largely silent on the issue is that it serves to encourage rather than diminish racism, which seems to be linked to the idea that the abuse is not at heart motivated by bigotry against black players but by fans seeking to put off members of the opposition. Don’t report it, and they won’t think it effective. This allows football associations and newspapers to pretend that the problem isn’t one of race but simply one of footballing antipathy, and as such not something that needs to be legislated against in particular. It’s nonsense.
If you’re using racist abuse to distract, then you are aware that the power of distraction derives from the racism. This is why you make monkey noises rather than, say, mimicking a walrus. You’re seeking to distract your target by making a noise that conveys the message: “you are like a monkey because you are black”, which in turn implies “you are inferior to me, because you are like a monkey”. Which is, I would suggest, incontrovertibly racist. That you’re being racist for what you consider to be a more noble cause is of little relevance, in much the same way that an honour killing is still murder, even if you’ve got the family’s best interests at heart. At best, the defence amounts to “I’m only racist when I see a black person playing for Real Madrid [or whoever] and want them to fall over”, which is the complementary bromide to “some of my best friends are black”, and only means that you’re a hypocrite as well as a bigot.
I don’t for a second want to imply that all Barcelona fans that were in the stadium are seething bigots; I have absolutely no idea and wouldn’t presume to presume. Nor do I want to imply that any fan who heard the chanting but did nothing is, themselves, racist; that doesn’t really follow. What I am saying is that the racism of a minority and the tolerance of a majority amounts to what I suppose we can characterise as a racist experience, specifically for Marcelo and generally for everyone else. And we know that this isn’t limited to Barcelona, or even to Spain; this surfaces in Italy, throughout eastern Europe and Russia, and even bubbles up from time in the English game.
It would be stupid to pretend that some people aren’t racist; we’ve probably all watched football in the company of bigots. But writing off the problem as one of sporting rivalry or as simply the actions of “not proper fans” is unhelpful. Indeed, there’s no fundamental reason why you can’t be a “proper fan”, whatever that means, and be a bigot as well. Being a decent human being is not a precondition of a season ticket, and security can’t pat down your soul.
What matters is ensuring that those with bile in their hearts don’t feel able to pour it into the air. In management-speak, you need to de-incentivise racism; in normal-human speak, you need to give them a reason to keep their mouth shut, their arms out of their armpits, and their bananas in the fruitbowl. And I will happily admit that I have no idea how to do this, in Spain or anywhere else – this piece is not building up to a practical suggestion about banning orders, or stadium surveillance, or the appropriate level of fines, or how many monkey-apers it takes to close a stadium. (Try that last one, and you’ll run into the heap problem going the other way.) This is basically a long-winded “oh dear, something must be done”.
But while I don’t know what to do, I do know that it won’t get done in an atmosphere of quiescent silence. Racism, abstractly, resembles the ghosts in Mario; turn your back and it creeps up on you, evil-eyed and slavering; turn around, and it squeaks and hides its face.
What are you doing?
I’m asserting that the player with the ball, the Brazilian one, is inferior and of diminished worth both as a footballer and a human being due to the colour of his skin.
Dude, the fuck?
Or sometimes it kicks the shit out of you, which is where that analogy breaks down. Challenging people is hard – it runs against the grain at the best of times. Challenging people as part of a crowd is a risk – a gamble that the larger mass will come down on your side, not theirs. And challenging a six-foot-five skinhead with bloodshot eyes and ‘ARSEHOLE’ tattooed across the back of his neck is reckless to the point of stupidity. The other option – going to the stewards – requires a courage of its own, as well as the belief that the stewards will act, which in itself requires that the club be taking it seriously, which then needs the club to have a reason to take it seriously, which ultimately means that there must be something financial in it for them, which takes us back to the fines and the stadium bans, and then the problem of the heap and the drawing of the lines.
It would be wholly unreasonable to expect football to solve racism, since not only is racism is born and nurtured outside football, but the radical social, economic and educational reforms needed to ensure that people don’t become bigots are probably beyond even Barcelona’s reach, however much more than a club they are. At the same time, the disproportionate global focus that football enjoys means that there is a correlative responsibility of sorts, not necessarily to define what is right, but certainly to take action concerning what fundamentally isn’t. The international audience for Wednesday’s game numbered in the millions, and every one of them could have heard. This isn’t a question of being preachy, but of basic human decency. And it’s also a question of self-interest. Of image. Of brand preservation. Or at least it would be, if only it were reported.
Because whenever Marcelo picked up the ball, one of the great and sacred spaces of football was defiled by its own congregation. Not all of them, perhaps not a heap of them, but enough to constitute a problem. A problem that’s more than a little heartbreaking, and that could threaten Barcelona’s – and anybody else’s – international reputation, if only the world wasn’t twisting itself into knots over Mourinho’s latest lunatic twitching. There is no problem. There is no heap. La la la la la …
Andrew Thomas edits Twisted Blood and can be found on Twitter here.
I understand that the same may have happened during the first leg at the Bernabéu, a game that I watched on mute, with Dani Alves the target and Madrid fans responsible. If so, feel free to swap the relevant names around.
I’ve always wondered if racist creationists refused to indulge in the monkey comparisons because of the obvious evolutionary implications.
Well, not happily, obviously. Stupid figure of speech, that one.
At least one person in the world actually has this tattoo.
Read More: Barcelona, racism, Real Madrid
by Andrew Thomas · August 19, 2011
Busquets called Marcelo a monkey and went unpunished, why wouldn’t a section of idiots think that goes for them as well
Nice piece, and you even managed to sneak a batman quote in there, well done sir. I’ll never forget poor Sammy Eto’o pleading “why me?” with the supporters at Real Socieadad or wherever it was, when having a couple African players of their own didn’t stop them from the whole banana-monkey routine. Disgraceful. We’ve got a ways to go yet as a race…
It does happened in the the Bernabeu just 3 days before this match, racist chants towards Alves.
Not MAY, but surely have happened.
Why is the text solely focused on Camp Nou ? it’s the same problem on every other stadium in Spain.
If another “insult” of sorts hit home as monkey chants do, it would be that. What if instead of monkey chants the camp insulted him with your breath stinks? Nobody would care but the point of the insult would still remain. The racism card needs to stop, South Americans get insulted with “sudaca” all the time, Ronaldo called gay, and everyone sweeps that under the rug. Get off the high horse either control all ignorance or stop judging an institution that knows ignorance and poor mentally cannot be changed by a football club.
Not to sound like a paranoid Madridista, but could another reason this goes so drastically under-reported be due to what seems like the anathema to most soccer press that is negative reporting on Barcelona?
A very nice piece, Mr. Thomas.
@Someone I’m afraid the “racism card” is more than just a silly card as you describe. It’s nowhere near the same as such breath-stinking insults. Inside football, perhaps it’s not “meant” as anything more than a cursory insult, but as intimated here, it’s indicative of a larger and, indeed, a quite dangerous problem. Other problems simply existing doesn’t blink this one out of existence, and it doesn’t fade its impact in the slightest.
I’ve got to wonder, did you read the piece? Because I think all of the points you’re trying to make are addressed. Perhaps a second read would be of some use.
Enjoyable piece.
But regarding your “proper fan” reference, I would suggest that however we define the phrase, a racist cannot earn the title.
One doesn’t have to like all the players in their team’s squad, but surely one can’t dislike a footballer due to the color of his skin and be considered a proper fan. I think, and hope, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone of another mind. If you do, make sure you ask them again in private, you may get a different response.
In this sense, your season-ticket holder reference is way off the mark. He’s not a proper fan, he’s a bigot who has enough dosh to attend every match.
@Someone Are you seriously arguing that racism in football is okay because it’s effective at hurting people?
Very unfortunate display – I feel sorry for Marcelo and all black players, and also feel embarrassment for all non-racist Cule fans. People who are not minorities, and thus privileged, could do a better job of replacing inaction with action in the face of this nonsense. If you see an act of racism, at least shush or saying something. Silence is compliance.
Ugliness recounted beautifully. Thank you.
nice article, well thought out. but it does need another proofread just to get it cleaned up all the way. racism comes out of a group identity where it is still acceptable amongst a group of people to express feelings of ingroup/outgroup. this seems odd to me considering the cultural overlap of spain, portugal with brazil where both alves and marcello originate. or not odd if you consider the history of colonialism and the racism that justified the exploitation of lands and people. racism, has in many ways, always been about the exploitation of in/out as justification for exploitation. this is still ongoing and accounts for acceptable attitudes around world poverty. so then, is sport an extension of our group identity, or a substitution for it? a particular dilemma for barca with its “more than a club” mentality, which suggests that the team is an extension of an ingroup. i suspect that how you relate to a sporting team as either an extension or a substitution of group mentality determines whether you think it is appropriate to bring racism into the stadium with you as a fan.
Funny that you single out the Camp Nou, when same days before Alves had to suffer monkey chants in Madrid. If you single out racism (rightly so), then at least do it for all, and not paint some cules as the only villains
Messi’s lucky. He has two taunts to enjoy: either enano de mierda (approx. “fucking dwarf”) or sudaca de mierda (although he often has to share that one, currently with Mascherano). Zidane got calvo de mierda (approx. “bald cunt”). Bojan, presumably only because he was a bit better-looking than his taunters, got maricón de mierda (approx. “fucking faggot”) – and it surely won’t be long before he learns whatever its equivalent is in Italian. And, yes, with Marcelo – as with Abidal, Alves and Keita when Barcelona play away from home – it’s the colour of his skin that gets picked on.[1]
But it’s not only black players who get this. The taunters have also zeroed in on the melanin-lite condition of Andrés Iniesta’s complexion, with zombie de mierda and “Casper” (after the cartoon ghost – geddit?) being called into play the country over to thank the man whose goal won Spain the World Cup.
So universal is the practice that just because of the colour of his hair (well, and perhaps also his alleged prima donna temperament), Diego Forlán gets called the belittlingly female La Rubia, not by opposing fans but by his own teammates.
In other words, as Someone suggests above, the taunting of players in Spain isn’t limited to black players, but is part of a whole raft of “specky-four-eyes”-writ-large jibes that are used to pick on the first aspect of an opposing players’ otherness to come to the home fans’ attention. As such, rather than being evidence of a specific racism problem within Spanish football, the monkey chants that are all-too-often heard at all grounds – it’s unfair to pick out the Camp Nou or the Bernabéu – are really just another manifestation of the thoughtless, puerile heteroism that has characterised all football crowds in all countries for as long as it’s been a popular spectator sport. Offensive? You bet. Symptomatic of a deeper malaise in Spanish society? I don’t think so.
_____
1. According to the Pantone chart I keep handy for such occasions, a side-by-side comparison shows that Pep Guardiola is actually darker-skinned than Dani Alves, but since he already has yonqui maricón de mierda (approx. “fucking junkie faggot”) specially reserved for him, nobody seems to have felt the need to point this out yet.
The biggest problem with the monkey chants is that everyone seems to spend the time pointing the finger at someone else. Madrid points the finger at Barca. Barça points the finger at Madrid. During the whole Marcelo/Busquets thing last year, Barça never made a statement condemning that kind of behavior, everything was about “well you can’t prove anything.”
It’s completely embarrassing. Until Barça and Madrid (and the rest of Spain) clean up their own houses, they need to shut the hell up about their treatment in other stadiums.
What if, hypothetically, the entire Barca crowd (ie. the “silent majority”) started a new “thing” where they make monkey noises whenever a Madrid player has the ball? Then the statement becomes “I’m asserting that the player with the ball, the Spanish/Portuguese/Brazilian one, is inferior and of diminished worth both as a footballer and a human being due to the colour of his shirt” (and the response, presumably, “Dude, fuck yeah!”).
(I’m not proposing this as a solution, I’m just curious as to what would happen.)
The issue becomes one of club (a voluntary allegiance) rather than skin colour (something beyond anyone’s control). Would this still be perceived as unacceptable, since the chant will still have racial undertones in memory?
Is judging and insulting an entire sub-set of the human race OK if it’s based on the club they support rather than race or sexual orientation? This is, after all, the thinking behind any other kind of insulting chants in stadia (or “banter” *shudder*), so I’m just wondering where this kind of thing stops being loyalty and safe, good-hearted fun and becomes bigotry and abuse. I guess it’s the heap problem again.
What’s funny is that calling someone a monkey is ‘magically’ worse than calling someone donkey or horseface or similar things that are widely done in relation to football. Not only by fans both in stadium and on the the internet but also by journalists. It is taken as jest. But calling someone a monkey is the sin of modern man.
The reason this is so is because it is taken in the context of racism ie it is not viewed independently as an action to be judged on its own. Mocking someone on their looking like an animal is the thing being judged here.
In similar vein, how can one separate the context in which these racist chants are done? In the heat of the moment against a hated rival when the player in question is a serious threat to your teams players physically and exploiting the laws of the game to basically commit assault.
But writers such as yourself do not question this assault on a human being yet focus on this name-calling which at best (or worst rather) hurts the player and others mentally.
Crowds in Argentina infamously spit, yes you read that right, SPIT, on the opposing team’s players. Riquelme was spat upon yet no one talks about that do they? Accomplished writers do not wax lyrical on such issues. If there are hypocrites here you sir, are one of them and so are numerous reporters and bloggers like you.
As a Barca fan, I just want to pipe in and say I completely get that this article is about more than Barcelona.
Anyway, bravo. The one thing I would add though is that if anyone should be brave enough to attempt that corrective conversation, make it the “That thing you’re doing/saying is racist” not the “You are racist” one. Conversations on the latter course, especially if you’re right, are really really short.
The reason he mentions the Camp Nou racist chant specifically is that it’s probably the incident that sparked this article. In the article you’ll find footnote #1, which says: “I understand that the same may have happened during the first leg at the Bernabéu, a game that I watched on mute, with Dani Alves the target and Madrid fans responsible. If so, feel free to swap the relevant names around.” The problem isn’t specifically that Barcelona or Real Madrid fans or fans of any other individual club engage in racist chanting, but that it happens at all in any football stadium.
As to what to do… the only way I can think of dealing with it in a football ground would be to somehow get the crowd to respond with a chant of “no racism.” Actually, now that I think about it, “no racismo! no al racismo!” has a nice rhythm to it.
@lobotics I actually kind of liked Eto’o's solution when he danced like a monkey after scoring goals. There was something very Dick Gregory about it and I found myself thinking about what would happen if you could turn the monkey chants into a pro-Eto’o/Barça thing rather than an anti-opponent thing.
@MacAdoo I’m certainly no Madridista, but I’d say that’s certainly the case.
For people who are mad about the “hypocrisy” of criticizing Barcelona fans for racism while not criticizing Madrid fans: Are you seriously reading this post as a tacit endorsement of racist abuse that happens outside Barcelona? The post uses a recent event to make a general point, applicable to racism in all soccer stands, and actually goes out of its way to explain why it doesn’t focus on the Madrid leg of the Supercopa as well. I realize that nothing matters more than proving your club is right in all possible circumstances, but there is no favoritism angle here. Particularly given how much flak this site takes for being pro-Barcelona.
For people who are normalizing racist abuse by depicting it as part of a larger tradition of fan taunting: You really, genuinely can’t see any qualitative difference between picking on a black player’s skin color and picking on Messi’s height? Simultaneously, do you really read this post and conclude that the author would be fine with e.g. homophobia, much less spitting on players? The post isn’t alleging a malaise specific to Spanish society, or even Spanish football; it’s about how to act when you see racist abuse in the stands, which happens — as the post points out! — all over the world. “They tease Iniesta for being pale, so it all works out” is only a valid context if you think that the larger context — the history and persistence of racism — is that easy to shrug off.
This stuff is worth opposing wherever it happens. I would like to think that most of you know that.
I’ve never seen such witless and mindless defenses of racism before. Some people here need to get some perspective and get it fast.
Sorry, Brian (assuming that your second paragraph was mostly aimed at me). I just think that focusing on racism as the one big no-no when it’s part of a whole long-standing pseudo-macho culture of them-and-us abuse of all kinds is short-sighted and mistaken. I don’t care whether it’s monkey noises or chants about Munich or Hillsborough or making gas-chamber hissing noises at Spurs fans. It’s all wrong, it’s all offensive, hurtful and unnecessary, and I don’t understand why we only seem to focus on one part of it. Terrace culture is sick in general, and racist taunts are just one symptom of that sickness.
@Brian Phillips *Stands and applauds*
I don’t see how just because certain players get taunted for being pale or their hair makes it somehow comparable to comparing a person to a monkey when that person’s race has been under attack for however many hundreds of years. The apologists, here and in other parts of the internet, continue to astound me. The author makes a good point with this:
which ultimately means that there must be something financial in it for them, which takes us back to the fines and the stadium bans, and then the problem of the heap and the drawing of the lines.
UEFA had multiple opportunities to do so during last years’ CL, not only with RM and Barca, but also Spurs (and I am a Spurs fan, so don’t imagine I have a grudge) but at no point, when racial abuse was very publicly seen and heard, did they do anything. If UEFA will not do anything about it when it entirely their responsibility, why should the RFEF bother themselves about it, knowing they’re accountable to no one? Black players in Spain can make all the PSAs they want but if clubs do not have to pay a substantial amount of money/lose ticket revenue with closed door games then no one will learn.
Great post. Very depressing how many people seem to come out with the “it’s not really racism” defence.
The problem in Spain (and Russia and several eastern european countries) surely starts with the governing bodies. By denying that there is a problem, there are tacitly approving of people’s behaviour.
I know that England hasn’t always been a beacon of fair play and decency around football, but the Let’s Kick The Racism Out Of Football campaign has done a lot to show supporters that attitudes and behaviour of this nature are no longer acceptable, and the FA – together with the clubs and the police – have made it unpalatable for people to behave in this manner; racism at a football match (actually anywhere in England) can get you arrested. Until governments and governing bodies stop putting their fingers in their ears and singing ‘la la la la that is not racism everything is ok’, nothing will change.
I confess to being rather stunned by some of the reactions here. “They did it, so we can, as well” isn’t a valid argument, no more than “It happens in other places, so ….”
If someone hits your car or steps on your foot, do you say “Well, someone else just had their car hit, so it’s all good?” No.
In the case of this specific incident at the Camp Nou, there is nothing at all good to say about it, no way to defend it. Same for the Bernabeu, and other place where monkey chants are used to insinuate that black players are sub-human.
To the black players on the pitch, obviously, it’s a safe bet that they aren’t saying “Oh, they mean THEIR black players, not us. Whew!” They’re just ashamed and disgusted. And you wonder how conflicted Abidal feels, after such an immense outpouring of love and respect after his cancer scare last year. Does he console himself with the fact that the monkey chanters probably weren’t the ones wishing him well? Maybe.
Football can’t solve racism, any more than countries can. People must make decisions that stand against taking someone’s humanity, as a collective. Until that happens, the problem will persist.
I wrote a piece about my thoughts on the Sergio Busquets/Marcelo incident, and the club’s silence on the matter. As with this comments space, there was a lot of defending and covering up, when the matter is simple: Sometimes when you’re silent, that silence is perceived by some to be a tacit endorsement, even if it isn’t in reality and is the farthest thing from the truth.
The next time a commenter reads Andrew’s thoughtful processing of stadium racism as an invitation to conduct some sort of thought experiment about racism’s lack of badness relative to x/y/z, please. Feel free to read THIS comment as a rude demand for silence. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. There is no wheel. If you would like to muse aloud about why racism is not bad relative to x/y/z, please remember that there are others reading your comments who can only envy you your privilege.
@Archie_V Fair enough. I think it’s easy to understand why racism draws more concern than short jokes or calling players by women’s names (although the latter, especially, is deeply insidious). But your larger point about terrace culture is well-taken — something that might change if people took Andrew’s suggestions in this piece.
@Archie_V The fact that the bigoted chants are spread across all of the different stadiums within Spain would seem to suggest that this is an example of a “deeper malaise in Spanish society.”
The fact that the chants and intimidation techniques are not aimed solely at the black players does not excuse the act itself.
I’m not in a position to know how deeply affected Messi, Zidane and Mascherano are by the chants you described, and am in no way condoning that sort of behavior.
That being said, I feel that monkey chants (and bananas thrown at black players) are clearly a step beyond the normal vitriol spewed by groups of fans in the stadium. I’m fairly confident the majority of other people feel the same way.
@Archie_V I should have read your second comment before posting. I wholeheartedly agree, the repulsive behavior by these groups of fans need to be cleaned up, not simply the racist contingent but the “Munich” “IRA” etc. chants as well.
Given the topic of this post, the racism seemed to be a solid place to start.
Great post, Andrew. “Security can’t pat down your soul” is marvelous.
To the hyper-partisans: the argument that football fans transcend racism, because they just love taunting people so much, is a ridiculous one to swallow.
Good point about the relative silence of the press in Spain. Would it not be fair to say that the press (or at least some of it) in England has been waging a campaign of sorts against racist chants for almost 20 years now? When newspapers and pundits take a stand and push mainstream opinion it’s much more likely that the “silent majority” in the stands will side those brave enough to challenge racist chanters.
I could be completely ignorant here, but I don’t recall ever reading much in El Pais condemning racism in the stands or in Spanish football in general, at least not with the same frequency and force you would read it in, say, the Guardian. But I don’t read Spanish newspapers nearly as often as I do English ones.
Jesus, the fuck, Jesus. I mean Jesus.
Dear Andrew: great post.
Dear several people on the comments: being very very very very very very very very very very pretentious does not make it ok to be racist. It really doesn’t. Not even a little bit. It makes you a pretentious racist.
Dear several other people in the comments: thank you.
@Brian Phillips Are these people in the comments fucking serious? It becomes a little clearer why the compliance, might be a little more than that.
I remember being especially delighted when I toured the Camp Nou and saw a black Madonna with child in the chapel off the hall connecting the locker rooms to the field. I thought, “THIS is why I like this team.” Now I’m especially saddened and confused by nasty taunts from Barca fans. Not that it is their responsibility in any way, but I would like to see Alves, Abidal, Keita, et al. publicly rebuke these hypocritical sub-morons.
@Grant (And Brian) Everyone seems to be talking about implications when what I’m talking about is meaning. Yes, monkey chants imply that the chanters do not consider black players to be human. But, in Spain at least, I genuinely don’t think that’s what they mean.
Spain has a very small black population (2–3%), only a small proportion of whom are Spanish citizens or permanent residents. As a result there are next to no black MPs, judges or public figures. Spain today is effectively like Britain in the late 1950s in terms of black people’s position in society. But the corollary of that is that there are no KKK, NF, BNP or EDF equivalent institutions in Spanish society either, and there have never been any Watts- or Oldham-type riots. Racism simply isn’t an issue to the extent that for historical and social reasons it has been and still is such a pressing issue in Britain and America. And because of that, most people here really wouldn’t position racist taunts on a higher plane as a societal taboo than any other kind of discriminatory insult, be it based on a person’s origin, sexual orientation, height or anything else.
Most of those idiots who were making those noises at Marcelo (the same people, we should remember, who only a few months ago stood to applaud in the 22nd minute of a match when Eric Abidal was being treated for cancer) probably don’t even know any black people. (The “some of my best friends are black” defence isn’t an option in Spain: nobody’s best friends here are black, because you never meet any black people to make friends with.) The marginalisation of black people in Spanish society is so acute (few speak more than rudimentary Spanish and most are socially excluded, working as semi-slaves in and living in total isolation in deserted rural areas, or in cities, selling DVDs on the street and living in mob-controlled accommodation) that they are practically invisible. What this means is that their otherness is far greater than it is in countries, like Britain, that have a sizeable, assimilated black population of several generations’ standing. And that otherness – yes, just like Messi’s height, Cristiano Ronaldo’s fashion sense or Zidane’s shiny pate – is picked on at football grounds. I’m certaimly not condoning it or excusing it. I’m just trying to explain why Spain is still where it is on the race question while Britain and other countries clearly “moved on”.
Given this context, stamping it out at Spanish grounds isn’t going to be as simple as starting a campaign that seems to have been successful in the UK. If you tell people that racism is no longer to be tolerated, while calling Cristiano Ronaldo a maricón is still presumably an available option, the chances are that they won’t appreciate the difference of scale or implication – because, in their own life experience, they have no reason to.
good points about incentives, and the need for the clubs and the newspapers to take it seriously. how about that refreshing example from a few years back when sol campbell was abused? the response from the portsmouth authorities was fantastic:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/dec/10/ukcrime
are similar efforts in spain logistically feasible (cameras, etc.) given the size of the stadiums and wider swathes of the crowds that are engaging in such behavior? i think it may be worth finding out.
even from a pure scare tactic standpoint, maybe people would think twice if there was even a possibility of their picture appearing in the paper the next day.
another system that might be employed is supporters being able to anonymously text stadium security to alert them of troublemakers in a particular section.
i know practical suggestions are boring. and yeah, like you said it all goes back to the heap and the drawing of the lines. but is it really that difficult? can’t UEFA threaten a ban from the “money-spinning” (my favorite prefix) champions league or something? and isn’t the threat of closed door matches enough of a financial incentive for them to do something about this scourge?
@Archie_V You sir. Need to stop.
@Someone
I agree with you 100% percent. Some Real fans did the same in the first game, Sociedad fans against Eto’o and almost on all the other Spanish stadiums some racist shouts are heard. Some people see what a big fuss everyone makes when you make monkey noises so they think it’s fun to do that. That makes them idiots but I thing since slavery was abolished, people seem to think that they need to make amends to the black community therefore everything that is even slightly considered racism is off the table.
People need to grow up, black people in America even call one another “nigger”, the only way it would be offensive is if someone used it to imply that the recipient is somehow part of a inferior race. People trying to get attention this way don’t qualify as racists, just as morons.
wow. it gets worse.
The first paragraph is why people invented numbers. In some primitive cultures, the only numbers are none, few, and many.
none + none = none, none + few = few, none + many = many, few + many = many, many + many = many, few + few =?
The question of when few + few amounts to many is one of the original problems in mathematics.
On top of that, a reference to Curb Your Enthusiasm and Batman.
Great article sir!
@Evan People don’t think racism is off the table because they want to “make amends to the black community” for slavery. (Like if black people would just cool it about slavery we could all get back to being cheerful racists?) People think racism is off the table because racism needs to be off the table. Racism is terrible, and people who recognize this don’t want to flirt around the edges of racist implications because racism is still a concrete presence in society.
Also, I can’t believe I have to spell this out, but if you are comparing a different race to a non-human animal species, you are implying that the “recipient is somehow part of a inferior race.” Maybe you don’t mean it that way, per Archie V above, but what you mean isn’t the entirety of what you communicate, and if you want to be a decent person you pretty clearly need to think about both.
@Archie V: I don’t buy the contextual argument you raise, simply because “otherness” doesn’t necessarily imply superiority, usually just curiosity/fear. So that Spaniards probably don’t get to meet or know any black people doesn’t necessarily connect to the success (or lack thereof) of any organized campaign to eradicate, or at least tone down, racism.
Racism is thoughtless. And as noted previously, I would bet that the folks making monkey noises weren’t taking part in that 22nd-minute Abidal ovation, either. Hatred (which is what racism usually is, at its core) transcends club affiliation.
Recall the year in which Barca started Thuram, Henry, Abidal, Eto’o and Henry. Then next season, Thuram went and Toure Yaya came, followed by Seydou Keita. It’s easy for a supporter to say that this is a club that doesn’t believe in racism, right?
Or is this just a club who wants to get the best players possible in the necessary positions? Recall Sandro Rosell’s comments about African kids in La Masia before any of you answer.
It’s also worth noting that Barca is a very open, cosmopolitan city. I visit every year, sometimes for matches, other times just to go. And my wife and I always have a great time. As a curious point, I’m pretty much a dead ringer for Lilian Thuram, and the reactions are very interesting. Sometimes, people ask, then are amused by my pidgin Catalan. Other times, they just stare. But I have never been uncomfortable or made to feel unwelcome because I’m black.
Returning to the “otherness” point, that status usually brings with it nervousness if not outright fear, and eventual curiosity. You’d be surprised at how many Americans haven’t met or talked to a black person. I’ve stopped being surprised by it.
I can say that never in an instance where I have encountered such a person, have they responded with xenophobic bile. Because they don’t know. So you fear the unknown, but you don’t know that you actively dislike it, yet. That is learned behavior.
Racism is bad. We all agree on that. It’s the solutions, if any are at all possible, that are the complexity. Couple that with the sporting issues of non-race (someone can call me a “nigger,” yet cheer for Michael Jordan), and it’s a crazy, unfathomable problem that might never get solved in any of our lifetimes.
@Brian I wasn’t trying to suggest anything about this site’s partiality, and I was struck by the author’s questions about why this subject has been so under-reported in Spain. I think he raised good points about the press potentially not wanting to ‘encourage’ the fans. I also perceive a reification of Barca in the (non-Marca) European press. I think that may play a role in how it is addressed. The racism is always sickening, from any club. I think the players should step up that campaign against racism that Nike branded a few years back. They should walk off the field in protest when they hear those chants and give the fans nothing to chant at.
@MacAdoo I like that suggestion very much. Thanks for raising it. It would never happen, but what if, for one match, it did?
@MacAdoo Walking off the field only works if it’s the home team that does it when the visiting team is getting abused.
Lord God… Can we all agree racism is bad and that it needs to stop? Yes, everything else needs to stop too (e.g. Homophobia) but thats not the point of this specific article. What does everyone want? A book? Hey! Good idea! Write a book on this subject Andrew!
fantastic article.
@Brian Phillips
My wife sometime refers to me (caucasian) as a monkey in an affectionate manner.
The exception that proves the rule?
Internet discussion on racism goes awry, how shocking …
I’m rather new to the soccer fandom. As a n00b AND and an American, I don’t feel entirely confident about commenting football culture in other parts of the world. But I always assumed that the Civil Rights Era here in the United States did a good deal to set society-wide expectations about respecting other people and cultures at least in outward behavior (of course, that says nothing about our actual thoughts/feelings and the sublimation of anything considered “unseemly”). For example, my roommate was pretty appalled when the Welsh booed their way through “God Save the Queen” in a Euro qualifier against the English this spring.
Of course, a big asterisk here for the USA-Mexico rivalry. I don’t think Yanks fans are as ruthless with the Mexico stereotyping, but the recent fracas over the Rose Bowl fan behavior was not encouraging in regards to how this rivalry might turn out in the future …
@Aaron Stollar You’re absolutely right. This has nothing to do with the team you support. Nobody is going after your team. The fact is, all teams hire players based on talent, and employ players from all over the world. It’s not Real Madrid or Barcelona themselves that need to get with the program. It’s the fans, and the commenters who are stuck on who is getting most of the blame – check yourselves in the mirror.
The point is that it’s disgraceful that people like Eto’o with all his talent choose not to bring their children to matches because of the trauma they’d get hearing supporters make racist chants and noises at their father. Marcelo’s tendency for nasty fouls aside don’t make it acceptable, either. He’s an actual person and doesn’t deserve to be equated to an animal due to his skin color. Racism is a foul pattern of human behavior that is socially destructive, and it needs to be rooted out.
@Oxnard I think perhaps you responded to the wrong comment.
The roots of racism are ignorance. Every single bigot I’ve known (and, coming from a family whose roots are in Mississippi, that includes a lot of folks) has had limited, superficial contact with the minorities they despise. It’s the only way they can perpetuate their stereotypes.
Living as I do in a very cosmopolitan, very integrated* city on the West Coast of the US, I’m exposed to all sorts of cultures and races and religions on a daily basis. I couldn’t escape diversity if I tried. Perhaps not surprisingly, overt racism (and homophobia, and religious intolerance, and…) in these parts is a rare thing. It exists, surely, but because there is no real segregated pocket of WASP fraternity, we are all forced by circumstance to mingle.
My point is that, as we come into frequent contact with people of different backgrounds and makeups, we’re forced to judge them, as MLK so eloquently said, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. It’s my belief that racial tolerance can only really be achieved by integration; that this current unpleasantness will be but an ugly chapter in soccer’s history once every fan has grown up cheering for a team that included at least one black/chicano/asian/gay/whatever athlete.
I think that our experience in America with baseball, basketball, and more recently football shows that, while not a cure-all for racism, familiarity goes a long way toward eliminating at least the outward vestiges of racial abuse. Epithets and monkey chants are just not something you hear in an American stadium these days, largely because we had a 50 year head start on integration.
Europe will catch up just as soon as clubs start bringing in more minority athletes and borders loosen up. Until that happens, I’m not sure there’s much that UEFA, FIFA, or individual FAs or governments can do about things.
* I won’t get into the structural racism that continues to pervade even progressive cities, giving San Francisco its Oakland, Chicago its South Side, LA its South Central, and even my beloved Seattle its ironically named White Center.
There’s also stuff like this: http://blog.angryasianman.com/2011/07/fking-facebook-idiots-womens-world-cup.html
or the random comments about Coulibaly’ s referee chops SPECIFICALLY because he is from Mali (as opposed to his individual faults).
It’s bad, but it’s not like one can effectively police people’s thoughts and feelings, especially after a high-stakes, emotional competition.
Then there’s the stuff that walks a very fine line:
The continuous commentary about African NTs (men’s and women’s sides) who have speed and size, but lack the technical/tactical skill of their counterparts in the North.
Comments about age, eligibility, and fraud (again, African teams, but I heard it last year in re the U.S.’s U-20 team at Northern Ireland’s Milk Cup, where we had guys like Agudelo, Salgado, and Agbossoumonde — the commentators actually apologized for the implication that the players were too large for their age).
The “Latin” style and the permutations thereof.
I guess I’m saying that the bananas and the namecalling are all very obvious forms of racism that need to be gone, but can they be separated from all this other stuff that’s rooted in the way the game itself is played/watched/experienced?
@Paula Proof positive that the Internet doesn’t inherently improve debates…even if it does make them louder.
Also—burgeoning racism/hyper-ethnic identity identification amongst USA fans in the USA-Mexico rivalry is proof that my earlier RoP piece might be a little bit wrong about American sports culture. I hadn’t heard about this, but I’m not cheered to hear it now.
http://www.runofplay.com/2011/07/27/reenchanting-the-world/
“And sometimes, when an opposing black player commits a foul, or misses a good chance, or doesn’t miss a good chance, or argues with the referee, you sit quivering in a panic of liberal foreboding. ‘Please don’t say anything, anybody,’ you sit muttering to yourself. ‘Please don’t ruin it all for me.’ (For ME, please note, not for the poor bastard who has to play just feet from some evil fascist stormtrooper–such is the indulgent self-pity of the modern free thinker.) Then some neanderthal rises to his feet, points at Ince, or Wallace, or Barnes, or Walker, and you hold your breath…and he calls him a cunt, or a wanker, or something else obscene, and you are filled with an absurd sense of metropolitan sophisticate pride, because the adjectival epithet is missing; you know this would not be the case if you were watching a game on Merseyside or in the West Country or in the North-East, or anywhere that has no multiracial community. It’s not much to be grateful for, really, the fact that a man calls another man a cunt but not a black cunt.”
–Nick Hornby, “Fever Pitch”
Nice post, Andrew.
@Mike “He’s an actual person and doesn’t deserve to be equated to an animal due to his skin color”
While it’s okay to be equated to an animal because of the length of your face and structure of your teeth? Racism is given its pedestal position only because of the history and context of the abuse not in name-calling. And lets be clear, racism against blacks is held at a pedestal position compared to discrimination of other races and even discrimination in general.
All discrimination is bad. Racism esp. towards blacks is not worse or better in anyway.
Now at the stage where I’m hoping that all the trolls here are secretly just one wrong-headed person posting under different names.
@Snyde While I agree that discrimination in general is bad, I’m going to tiptoe out on a crazy-skinny limb and venture that discrimination that is backed by a centuries-long history of systematic violent oppression that has only comparatively recently been put to rights is, in fact, more dangerous than discrimination based on not liking someone’s teeth.
@Someone Brilliant rationale there Sir! Because people were oppressed and enslaved for hundreds of years for having smelly breath and not because they were deemed inferior due to the colour of their skin!
Some insults carry way more baggage than others; tell me I have smelly breath I will be embarrassed and will rush to get gum or brush my teeth, call me a nigger/monkey/make monkey noises at me and I will be offended and I could punch you in your mouth.
Forgive a boy from the South as I’m a bit dull — no Ivy League for me — but does Marcelo actually make monkey noises? No? Then the basis for the mockery is the color of his skin? Yes? Well, that’s racist. The silence of the majority of the crowd isn’t racist, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t cowardly. And cowardly insists on complicity. Not sayin’, just sayin’.
preferring black kits over white kits is okay, though, right?
JOKING
I realise I’m a little late to my own party here, but thanks for reading all. I don’t think there’s much to add beyond what Brian and others have said in response to some comments, but thanks also to those who have got what it is I’m trying to say here.
Sadly, the fact, mentioned in the article, that football clubs need a financial reason to solve problems such as this seems to be totally overshadowed.
We’ve replaced ideologies with the universal bourgeois righteousness that enjoys complaining about racism before waffling on about how ‘they’ (the government, financial institutions, basically, anyone who isn’t poor, powerless, semi-detached house ME) should do something about it.
Why should Barcelona have to wipe up society’s mess? That’s taking Mes Que un Club a little too far…
There are two points this article and the subsequent commentary here that I feel require further exploration. The first is that Spanish football specifically has a problem regarding race. It is not unique in this, nor does La Liga have a worse problem than, say, Serie A when the Curva Nord is at its worst, or what goes on at Dynamo Kiev (I recall a banner with two chess pieces that said ‘We only play with white’ at a Champions League match not long ago) or other Eastern European clubs. That it has a serious problem, though, is undeniable. To drown it in context by saying that it’s all part of the rivalry or to cite that Spain has a much more relaxed attitude to racial insensitivity (the Spanish men’s basketball team making slanty eyes in their team photo before the 2008 Olympics, and Pepe Reina referring to Marcos Senna as ‘nuestro Conguito’ as a playful compliment during the Euro 2008 victory celebrations are examples) is simply missing the point. This shit is unacceptable, period. Discrimination on any basis is flat out stupid, and so ‘Your Stupid Rage’ is a lesson unlearned each time someone tries to excuse blatant discrimination as just another form of boorishness. It’s not. It’s a willingness to deny someone their basic identity as a human being, and that is an indignity that has no place on a football pitch or anyplace else. Wrong is wrong.
Sometimes, I wonder how things would have turned out if Eto’o had just kept walking off that pitch.
@Augusto Neto Yes, it would be unreasonable to ask a football club to solve racism. But this line of thinking relies on the assumption that all the racist chants in the stands are fundamentally external to the stadium, that they are essentially baggage brought in by people from the outside world, over which the club has no control.
However, I wonder if there is something about the experience of being in a football stadium itself that breeds or encourages racism, along with other obnoxious behaviors (xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, etc)
Isn’t it quite likely that some of the monkey chanters are people who would never dream of making monkey noises at a black person the other six days of the week, but something about being in the stands brings it out of them?
@Brian Phillips: Clearly you’re not one of the countless who are continually oppressed due to the length of their face. How dare you belittle our struggle for facial equality. You facist!
@Augusto Neto: I disagree. There is a clear disparity between what I, as an individual, can achieve in the fight against racism and the impact/responsibility borne by institutions such as, oh say, a football club adored by millions. Barcelona won’t eradicate racism on its own but a firm ‘kick it out’ attitude from one of the biggest clubs in the world would be immensely helpful
But then I’d suggest that it’s nothing but bourgeois individualism to shift the focus away ‘them’ (ie, massive state/corporate/cultural institutions that operate on a social level) and towards individual action
@Ronit: That’s what they call ’90 minute bigots’ in Scotland. That said, while it’s worth examining the role of the stadium in encouraging such sentiments, racism in football does typically reflect existing faultlines in society. Sectarianism in Scotland wouldn’t disappear if the Old Firm derby disappeared (although it would certainly become less visible). Doesn’t mean that football can’t play a role in addressing these issues though
Really is this trivia the only thing you have to worry about? Did anyone die? A very rich man has some, not so nice, chants directed at him – I’m sure he will be OK.
Given the ‘intellectual’ background to this site could we not ask is it possible to be a post-modern ‘racist’. Maybe Zizek has written on this topic? By the way most real football fans hate all this PC crap.
As an Old Firm fan in Scotland I’m about to be put under a proposed law that allows for 5 years jail time for saying something un-PC like ‘I don’t like the Pope’ at a football game!
Enough with the bogus PC piety.
Carnivalesque is a term coined by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin…maybe, just maybe, football can allow adults some space for very minor behavioural transgressions? You know like saying rude things…shocking!
@Japan74: Whereas I, as a football fan in N Ireland, can’t go to quite a few grounds due to the risk that someone might express their ‘dislike of the Pope’ in my direction. It’s not that I don’t /like/ the sectarian chants* and threat of violence, naturally, but I do find that it detracts from the whole matchday experience.
But hey, I apologise if /I’m/ inconveniencing your ‘very minor behavioural transgressions’ with my ‘PC piety’. It’s clearly my fault that you might face jail time for getting tanked up and spewing sectarian slurs. Sure, it’s all a bit of fun, right?
*Really, who could fail to fall in love with songs that promise that ‘the boys’ will be ‘up to their knees’ in my blood? Or stigmatise an entire community as thieving, traitorous rapists? Only PC-mad idiots, that’s who! (And Catholics and immigrants and black people and anyone else that you decide to insult or threaten.)
@Fast Eddie It would be best bests that Japan74 has never been at the end of a racist or sectarian tongue lashing. His utter cultural ignorance smacks of a sheltered existence. The fact he also just proved the author’s point by “speaking” for the otherwise silent majority is farcical.
@Japan74 Consider me shocked… a Rangers fan, with the pristine image their fan base carries, would take the opposing view here.
@Fast Eddie I believe you have to share some of the blame seeing that you don’t recognize the humor in their playful antics.
the title for this post is becoming more and more fitting as readers like @japan74 post replies.
Heaps of Woe.
As much as I wish that I could say this once he’s left the room, I feel Japan74′s contribution is somewhat welcome to this discussion. By reinforcing the severity of the issue raised by this piece and therefore highlighting it’s relevance, as well as, perhaps, batting the ‘blame’ away from Spanish football that has somewhat unfortunately arisen, his point is not only fair as it’s an expression of his views, which indeed do need to be confronted if any of us wish to see the back of such ignorance.
Personally, I don’t think racism can be erased by campaigns and corporate disapproval; unfortunately I believe it is a phenomena that will prove to be ‘phased out’ in a generation or two as the world’s cultures continue to grow alongside, understand, and accept each other.
The passion pit of football simply highlights our most volatile of emotions. Isn’t that what makes it great?
Allow me to take Mr Thomas’ good example and say to the likes of Japan74…
Dude…the fuck?
So I must genuflect before your religious sensibilities at a football ground? I’m not talking about disrupting the mass.
Whatever happened to Voltaire and free speech?
Personally I’m a free-speech maximalist.
Of course many black children will die from famine and abject poverty during the typical football season but no my my my a very rich black man was booed inside a soccer staduim; how can this vile crime against humanity go unpunished?
@Fast Eddie
They are talking of making the song ‘Derry’s Walls’ against the law. It’s about a historical event without any obvious ‘sectarian’ content.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUCFS50WpQM
I don’t care if you hate Scottish Protestants or wish to sing the IRA songbook. I can deal with it. Being occasionally ‘offended’ is the price we all pay to live in societies with some form of free-expression.
@japan74 Shut up, asshole
Come on you guys are all very clever literary types and know about intertextuality and all that stuff. So should merely singing lyrics like these in a football ground result in 5 years in jail?
I often wonder where they would have been
If we hadn’t have taken them in
Fed them and washed them
Thousands in Glasgow alone
From Ireland they came
Brought us nothing but trouble and shame
Well the famine is over
Why don’t they go home?
Now Athenry Mike was a thief
And Large John he was fully briefed
And that wee traitor from Castlemilk
Turned his back on his own
They’ve all their Papists in Rome
They have U2 and Bono
Well the famine is over
Why don’t they go home?
Really worth 5 years in prison? Welcome to 1984!
@Paula @Conor There’s a tendency for us to ignore how much the US-Mexico rivalry is becoming defined along ethnic lines. I’ve written about the Mexican experience, but don’t misunderstand me, there’s been multiple example of racism on both sides.
http://futbolintellect.com/2011/06/a-gripe.html about the Gold Cup Final, and http://futbolintellect.com/2011/05/throwing-stones.html about the widespread nature of racism in football.
Almost worse than the racism is the fact that we tacitly accept it by looking the other way. Just like Andrew’s article suggest, we don’t do much when confronted by racism.
For example, after the drama of the Gold Cup Final, a well-known football podcaster began to gather guests for a show about racism in the game. Then, a few hours later, he decided to completely ignore the event, claiming it was “too controversial.”
Heartening, isn’t it…
@japan74 Lol Orwell reference of course. To be honest I’m a little surprised it took you this long.
Thoroughly enjoyed it. Typo “…since not only is racism is born and nurtured outside football”
@Evan Wait, what? Are you seriously implying that making monkey noises in stadiums is something that some people just stumble upon? Others are making noises so I should start too, this in no way implies that the black people on the field are monkeys, especially because we only chant it when they have the ball… that’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard… sorry for the profanity. And yeah, they take everything that’s even slightly racist, because judging a person by his race is okay, as long as you don’t overdue it. And black people in America call one another “nigger” so that makes racism okay. Well, I’m a black person in America and I don’t call my friends that. Maybe you shouldn’t make broad sweeping statements like that. And in the end their you stated that “people need to grow up” and what, start accepting racism as just another part of life? One second it’s poking fun, another someone truly believes that blacks our inferior, then that turns into “why aren’t they in chains? it’s been done before?” But yeah, totally you’re argument makes sense. It’s time the author of this article just grew up and started being racists like the rest of us because White people are just better than everybody else because of their skin. That IS what you were saying Evan? Correct me if I’m wrong.
@Andy
So I guess you do think 5 years jail time for singing a song at a football match is OK?
Pathetic stance for ‘liberals’ don’t you think?
@Andy
‘Shut up asshole’
Bravo that’s worthy of Oscar Wilde.
What have I said that is ‘ignorant’? Just that I don’t think the minor verbal transgressions of football crowds are really the most serious of issues in the context of racism or indeed anything else.
I know let’s take all real feeling, culture, tradition and ‘morbo’ out of our game to make it ‘acceptable’ to some PC American pseudo-intellectuals!
I bet the atmosphere at Real Salt Lake must be so intense and exciting…
Sometimes the meaning and use of words change – language is a living and dynamic phenomenon.
Or – can you lend a nigga a pencil?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLZA32oHbC4
Team, japan74 is a troll. He normally trolls the site under a different name, but it’s close to his real name, and apparently even a brave free-speech maximalist like he claims to be would rather hide behind a pseudonym when posting as a monkey-chant apologist.
He is trying to get a rise out of you, which is why the reasons for his monkey-chant apologetics change from comment to comment and why they’re full of obvious logical fallacies (no monkey chants = sterile stadium atmosphere) and straw men (monkey chants aren’t the worst atrocities currently happening in the world, therefore they aren’t worth criticizing).
This is ridiculous, and you will only fuel it by engaging with it. My advice is don’t.
@Ronit I totally agree. In fact, I wonder why more people don’t think of the stadium as a starting point for powerful responses to racism and homophobia (I was going to include sexism, too, but let’s hold on to that thought.) An institutionally-backed effort to criticise, repudiate and transform a racist act is a powerful thing, if sustained. Football fandom is about colour and drama and choreography: it can do more to ensure that players go to work in a racism-free atmosphere than anything or anyone else.
Which is also why the notion of ‘the players,’ especially players of colour, doing something to repudiate racist acts also strikes me as an incomplete gesture, and unfair to the players. The burden of criticism should not be on the victims or potential victims of racism: it should be on club presidents, coaches, administrators, everyone who goes to the stadium, and yes: everyone who watches football on TV and thinks, talks and writes about it. These structures may be corporatised beyond the point of return these days, but surely this is one area where corporate effort and community effort need not be at cross-purposes.
@roswitha I agree, football has a character by which its fans tend to lean towards some of the ideals of clubs themselves. In some ways this was elaborated in “reenchanting the world”. If clubs were to actively be against discrimination it could have a deeper effect on society. In doing so, clubs can infact lead the change.
@Maxi
Who was this podcaster? Also, you can’t blame the guy — Americans’ general tendency to avoid all discussions about race and/or class if they can help it is well observed.
I’d personally want to see a blanket ban on alcohol for all US-Mexico tournament matches. But that’s totally wishful thinking, I know. I’d also like some of the larger blogs to make a point of creating clear policy on racist, xenophobic, sexist, or homophobic comments in their forums, but that’s highly dependent on the amount of staff they can regularly have on hand to enforce it.
I have no idea how much impact the USSF’s “Respect” campaign is actually having on people’s consciousness, but it doesn’t apply to how fans talk about other fan behavior after the fact.
This is how the fans in Germany (Werder fans throwing their “own” from the stands) don’t stand around and do nothing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNAsY6Xh6Ho
http://www.spiegel.de/sport/fussball/0,1518,589325,00.html
sorry I couldn’t find the article in english but I am sure there was one
@Paula I’m not going to say who it was, just as a matter of privacy.
I definitely agree that an alcohol ban would help a bit, but like you said, that’s wishful thinking. Not to mention that tailgate culture (at least in the US) makes in-stadium alcohol policies a moot point.
Obviously, it comes down to the clubs and federations. If they take racism in the terraces as a real problem, and provide responsive security teams, the issue would dissipate. Instruct stewards to call over security if they hear racist chanting, and instruct security to toss the morons out. Simple enough.
You should all watch a movie called Biutiful.
A good article on an important subject. Racism is a subset of a larger collection listed under discrimination. Whenever it becomes ‘me’ and ‘you’, or ‘us’ and ‘them’, the potential to discriminate is there. Sometimes it’s necessary to communicate (indeed, essential), but knowing where to draw the line can be something with which debaters can have a field day. Bottom line, we’re all humans, we all share the same emotions, same dreams and fears. That’s where the line is drawn. Your humanity. I am not very different from you, and by association, they are not very different from us. In one word (cringing at the thought even): compassion. There, I said(wrote) it.
@Humphrey Fuck’s sake, he did that in the article. You Barca and Madrid fans are worse than the old firm, you’re so touchy and paranoid
@Archie_V Read back what you just wrote. Then ask yourself why the racists use a specific type of racist abuse to insult black players (and only black players). Then read the article again, because you’ve missed the point completely
@Archie_V I’m sorry Archie but I simply don’t buy that Spaniards don’t know what they’re saying. What they don’t understand is is that insulting black people and calling them sub-human is bad, because they’re racists. I live in Italy and here the same shit as justification for vile abuse (especially that directed at Mario Balotelli) as OK, because it’s the same as insulting people from Naples for being lazy cholera sufferers. It’s a bullshit argument
By the way, the correct spelling for a Barça fan is “culer”, not “culé”. The problem is most Barça fans don’t even know the correct spelling.
You can see this here: http://dlc.iec.cat/results.asp?txtEntrada=culer&operEntrada=0
@Timothy Barton Given that FCBarcelona.com uses culé throughout its English-language site, I think that battle might be lost.
Excellent article.
I’m appalled that so many people in the comments are defending such ignorance. No excuse for any of it.
@Archie: “But the corollary of that is that there are no KKK, NF, BNP or EDF equivalent institutions in Spanish society either [...]”
That statement is simply nonsense. While the parties you recognize as racist (i.e. Nazis) may not have seats in the parliament, that doesn’t mean the ideas aren’t there, and if you look into Spanish politics, you’ll find more than enough ignorant hatred within the main parties. For example, in 2005, at a state dinner, Prime Minister Zapatero openly ranted about Jews, ending with a statement translating roughly to, “it’s easy to see how one could justify the holocaust.”
Any suggestion that Spain isn’t rife with xenophobic, racist, and antisemitic views is also nonsense. As late as 2008, polls have suggested that 46% of Spaniards hold negative views of Jews (http://pewglobal.org/files/pdf/262.pdf)(and yes, there are only ~12,000 Jews in Spain … Most have been expelled or killed over the centuries, or thought it wise to leave). Hell, as late as 2010, the US state department warned US citizens that the governments/police forces within Spain were thoroughly saturated with racism and that it might not be safe for Black people to travel in the country. That warning was only rescinded as part of a first-lady visit. Amnesty International also reports that Spanish police are explicitly instructed to use racial profiling to pick up suspected illegal immigrants – i.e. that person is black, he can’t possibly be one of us.
@Ronit Of course these people wouldn’t do such a thing outside the stadium. Only the stadium can possibly provide them with the collective feeling of anger, the distance from their target, and the relative anonymity, required to go out and do such a thing.
But if these people are racist, then they are racist and that’s that. You could try to say that the emotional weight of a big football match causes otherwise relatively peaceful citizens to do things they otherwise wouldn’t, but that argument appears pretty weak when you consider the sheer range of potential targets for abuse available to these people. Of all the things they could chant about, however, they pick the colour of a player’s skin.
Trust me, the stadium is not a cause of social problems. If anything, it provides a relatively peaceful area in which to vent.
@Shavit It’s equally apalling to me how privileged individuals bawl out righteous anger over the internet, stitching clever-sounding liberal sentences together like seasoned populist conservative MPs.
Personally, I don’t think that many of you are particularly ‘shocked’ or disgusted by any of this. Of course, most people here would certainly agree that racism itself is apalling – I would guess that most of the so-called bigots attacking political correctness here feel exactly the same. But ‘disgusted’? Really? Racism is vile. Equally vile is self-aggrandisement – especially on the internet – by distancing yourself from bad things. Next we’ll be handing out medals for saying Hitler was a bit off the mark.
I happen to think that Archie made an excellent point about ‘otherness’ in Spain. It is not an excuse for, or defence of, the people making the offensive chants. He is simply pointing out how Spain has not experienced the same social upheavals as strong multi-ethnic societies like the US or the UK. Of course people will be more inclined to make monkey chants in a society which hasn’t seen race riots, civil rights movements, government campaigns, or, it would seem, that many black people.
On the other hand, whilst Spain has not experienced the sort of ethnic integration as America or Britain, so too these latter countries did not witness the kind of social revolution which swept mainland Europe. Result? A hard-headed pragmatic dogma at the root of the intellectual and cultural development of these countries, causing a general mistrust and even fear of intellect among its ordinary citizens. In Britain, the pen is reserved for the rich and the pretentious; in America, for the Godless. This is why somebody questioning the reasons behind racism in a Spanish football stadium can easily be branded a ‘pretentious racist’.
While we are on the subject of racism, America’s former democratically elected president did not even know who Mr Zapatero was. Given that it was American black people who were forced to campaign to be allowed on the same buses as whites, and given America’s notorious problems with racial segregation, I would hardly hold it up as a counter-example.
@Augusto Neto Please tell me that you don’t really think racism and blog comments disapproving of racism in a style you happen to find self-aggrandizing are “equally vile.”
@Brian Phillips OK, Brian – wrong choice of words. I find both vile. Racism, of course, is in a different category altogether. I just get a bit fed up with people scoring personal points, over the internet, in person, in Parliament, wherever, by hacking away relentlessly.
What I’m trying to say is this: of course racism is wrong. But I’m sure majority of the ‘racists’ in this post thread agree. They’re just not here to score intellectual points. It’s so easy to sit around saying how bad racism is, that there is no excuse, that anybody who tolerates it is sub-human scum; it’s easy because any rational person will agree with you.
What is less easy is to be critical, to confront issues like racism on a rational level and to discuss its roots in a manner which could well upset the sensibilities of most people.
Not to be rude to the people who came on here looking for enlightening conversation, but how far has this frightened liberal debate got us, beyond ‘racism is bad, someone should stop it!’? I enjoyed the fervour of the post, but I can’t help thinking that if the author, myself, or most of the people responding here, were to be sat in the Nou Camp beside a group of racists, we’d just quietly bow our heads and think ‘oh dear’.
Personally, I don’t find anything that has been written on here apalling. I’d find it apalling if I saw a black man being attacked by white men because he was back (or vice versa). Is this racist? I should probably not embark on a career in politics.
I know it isn’t the done thing to criticise an editor who has been kind enough to publish my own writing, but the way you jumped on that one comment which I made at the start, Brian, is symptomatic of the problem we’re facing here. I made a lot of points, clearly from a non-racist standpoint, yet your only response has been to question my values.
If I promise you with all my heart that I am a fully-commited non-racist, can we talk about what actually constitutes racism, how we approach it, and how our own attitudes towards racism reflect our own fuzzy thnking?
@Augusto Neto The end of my first paragraph didn’t appear, for some reason. It went on for a further two lines, but you get the idea…
@Augusto Neto We certainly can do that, but I have to tell you that I think your comments here are a little lost in their own bile. Both your exaggerated contempt for liberal piety (“privileged individuals bawl[ing] out righteous anger”) and your demand to stage a discussion of the roots of racism “in a way that will upset the sensibilities of most people” could easily be read as preliminary to a defense of the monkey-chanters (they don’t know any better, they don’t mean it that way, everything is so sociohistorically complex, their critics are hypocrites, etc.). I don’t believe that’s what you want or mean. But your decision to equate internet comments disapproving of racism with racism itself seemed to flirt pretty aggressively with that precipice, so I asked you about it. You take my even noticing your word choice as another example of the liberal piety you hate so much, but frankly, given that one side of this comparison is people leaving (at worst) politically correct comments in an online forum and the other side is people throwing bananas at black players, I think maybe some of your contempt for the liberals is misplaced.
Because really, we can do the complex-sociohistoric-roots tango till our feet are stumps, and as Archie showed, it’s a conversation worth having (even if it’s obviously not the point of this post). But when it’s over, we’re still going to be left with the ethical imperative to say no to this stuff. Maybe you find that simplistic, or don’t think it “gets” us anywhere intellectually. To my mind, questioning the motives of e.g. the Spanish press for downplaying these stories, or of the clubs for not doing more to combat it among their own fans, while reminding fans that they can speak up on their own, actually does help us get somewhere we need to go. And even leaving a comment expressing support for the anti-racist consensus strikes me as more worthwhile than working up a backlash against the backlash against the backlash against the idea that that consensus ought to exist.
@Brian Phillips Brian, I fail to see the logic in the connection you made between my desire for a rational debate which may well upset the majority and defending racism. Is all criticism directed at anti-racists a defence of actual racism? I want to criticise what I see as the feeble-minded intellectual leap onto the anti-racist bandwagon because of what it represents, not because I feel any sympathy towards any kind of racist ideas.
I know you don’t think I’m a racist, or a racist-sympathiser. But in questioning my motivation, you introduced the idea that I ‘might’ be, because I suggested that political correctness might be as bad as racism. Having corrected myself on this point, I would still like to point out that political correctness is itself an insidious, dangerous social process which, if extended, might have nasty consequences for society. It leads to positive discrimination (which is essentially racism when applied in an ethnic context), it leads to a frightened, represed society and, ultimately, it leads to segregation. So I think it warrants calling out, aggressively if necessary.
The irony, of course, is that a lot of the comments made on this post stem from the same ignorance which fuels racism. I jumped on Shavit’s post because of its groundless attack on Spanish society – I could produce equally damaging polls conducted in pretty much any country in the world, but I wouldn’t suddenly decide that those countries necessarily had severe issues with race.
(We could also conduct a poll on RoP:
1. How anti-racist are you? A) VERY B) A little C) Meh D) I’m fairly racist E) WHITE POWER!
2. How much have you done, in your personal life, to combat racism? A) I have started my own foundation, and I go to right-wing rallies to hurl abuse B) Fair amount, if I see racism I say “Dude, the fuck?” C) Meh D) Why would I want to combat it? I secretly enjoy it E) BLACK POWER!
I imagine we’d get mostly As for 1) and mostly Cs for 2). The fact is, people are very good at complaining and making sure they are seen to be on the right side. They are less good at actually doing anything about it.)
The fact is, and it has been pointed out by the odd ‘bigot’ on here, that race simply is not an issue in Spain. Being racist is simply less dangerous, statistically, in a country where it won’t inflame anything. Blame the government? Neo-liberal governments protect their wealth, and nothing else. That’s why, during the L0ndon riots, rich suburban districts were teeming with riot police whilst there were several complaints of a complete shortage in the actual areas affected; the same thing happened in Paris throughout the last decade, and can be found elsewhere too. What non-interventionist, laissez-faire government will raise a hand to protect the sensibilities of 2% of its population, particularly when that 2% would pose no threat as a mobilised force anyway? It’s sad, but then we have the vote for a reason.
Blame Barcelona? Similar argument as the above, only Barcelona have a lot less power than, say, a national government.
Blame the press? The press sell newspapers, adverts and airtime. Spanish people want to read about football, not a handful of racists. It’s a football-obsessed country. The UK is different; football is a hugely popular sport, but it is far from a national passtime. British people, with race issues thoroughly ingrained in their consciousness, will be just as interested in racist chanting as the actual football; Spanish people, on the other hand, like football more and care about racism less. If you sacrifice a few column inches from Mourinho and hand it to an article on race, you can expect less interest from the general public.
There is no xenophobic agenda in Spain. Its government is no different from ours (except that, unlike ours, 50% of its MPs are female – not bad for a backward nation), its football clubs and press are motivated by the same economic issues. It is simply a different social reality, and one upon which we have much less right to pass judgement than we think.
Solutions in the future? We can’t put more black people in Spain. Theorising about whose fault it is gets us nowhere. I actually think the conclusion of the article itself was pretty good in a way: it is up to individuals to criticise and to say ‘no!’. And they can do this by demanding changes in government, changes to the running of their social institutions, and taking back some of the control of their economic and social situations from institutions to which they have no ties. Because it’s those institutions who have the power to bring about social change; that change will depend on the motivation of the people in power.
My argument might sound ideological, but I think it’s much better than sitting around moaning – especially on a site which tends to produce such wonderful writing and genuinely thought-provoking ideas.
@Augusto Neto So without getting long winded, fancy and overly verbose the summary as of up to now is as follows??
You are against racism (“obviously”). However it offends you to the point of it being vile (not equally vile as racism as you corrected yourself) that people for the sake of appearing politically correct seem either unwilling or incapable of having some mind elucidating “discussion” about the causes and roots of racism. Rationally.
Firstly I suggest re-reading Brian’s last comment. The suggestion is not that you could be anything (racist), but rather that your prose and sarcasm directed towards the supposedly self righteous may be misguided and very much exaggerated along the same “self-aggrandisement” lines you claim to find so repulsive. Such that outwardly, it reads like a defense; which begs a defense of what?
Secondly Racism is irrational so what exactly you hope to achieve by going back to it’s roots quite honestly escapes me. I understand that it is agonizing reading people’s misplaced and exaggerated ‘strong’ opinions but the context that you’re trying to provide to suggest that this (prudish judgmental attitudes towards ‘racism’) is actually the problem with dealing with racism is overstated to say the least.
“It leads to positive discrimination (which is essentially racism when applied in an ethnic context), it leads to a frightened, represed society and, ultimately, it leads to segregation. So I think it warrants calling out, aggressively if necessary”
But people calling out racism itself aggressively regardless of their pretense is somehow offensive to you? Your last two paragraphs are actually quite good yet you earlier ‘endorse’ the idea of otherness providing some sort of perspective. The problem with yourself and ArchieV is that you’re trying to dissect racism into a contextual, isolated experience of some sort. It’s pretentious. It’s pretentious in that it suggest that Spain is some sort of island unaware of the issues facing the world outside of it’s shores solely because their social issues are different. Because the black population in Spain is so small that they are as good as invisible, racist chants are really not that racist; akin to pointing out a big nose? But to whom? Naturalized black Spaniards? There is no responsibility to being aware of the nature of racial prejudices, historical racial issues etc as long as it’s beyond your shores? Is Spanish football played by only black Spaniards? Or broadcasted to only Spanish television? Or packaged to only Spaniards such that the racism’s contextual integrity remains? Are all of the black people in the stadiums in Spain Spaniards? Are all of the black players in Spanish football then responsible for becoming acclimated with this contextual yet-not-as-bad racism? You even mentioned Hitler at some point. Do I have to be a Jew or be from a country with a substantial enough minority population of Jews in order to exercise responsibility as far as antisemitism? It’s not contextually understandable. It is irresponsible. And people voicing that, whether through being conformists or not certainly can’t be equated to ‘the issue we face with dealing with racism’. Neither do they set such a dangerous precedent that “defenses” of anti-anti-racists need to be written as sardonically and callously as this.
Like I said you closed your argument well such that I agree with that. But in highlighting this ill of modern PC-ness, you are overly callous and dismissive, and almost defensive of something that cannot be defended. What you would find appalling (read as the only thing you would find appalling) is actual attacks? Can I venture that it’s appalling when Eto’o has to ask sections of monkey chanters “Why me?” Such that discussing the shoveling of monkey chanting under the rug is important. On some level. No matter how banal to the otherwise enlightened and non-judgmental.
@Dr3 You’ve missed the point spectacularly, I’m afraid. Whilst I expected more in the way of intellectual weight during the discussion of this post, given the quality normally associated with this site, I’m not after a good old debate. I hate political correctness because it’s feeble, it’s irrational, and it is a tool used by individuals either to protect themselves or, as the case has been here, make themselves feel better about a topic they have precious little to add to. I have no problem with people criticising racism; it’s the manner of that criticism which irks me.
As I hope you can finally tell by now, my posts weren’t a defence. They were an attack.
“Your last two paragraphs were actually quite good”. If you hopped off your high horse for a moment, you might notice that the penultimate paragraph is directed linked to what came before it. I was trying to say that you don’t change anything by going to a football stadium and attacking big groups of racists (or politely demanding that they halt, or whatever). You change things by gaining enough of an overall political consciousness to go out, vote, protest, read, write, criticise, and, ultimately, refuse certain ideas. Doing this is about much more than saying ‘racism is bad!’; the institutions which economically support the social conditions for breeding racism outwardly defend ethnic integration, so all they will do is agree with you, without actually solving the problem.
There is a huge difference between a politically-correct mentality, which is borne of fear, and a political mentality, which is borne of a real love of humanity and a desire to make things better. Call me ‘pretentious’ for saying that Spanish society is distinct from ours, but facts are facts. Their dominant institutions behave in exactly the same way as ours, but they operate above a totally different social landscape. Just because Spanish people have access to the same consumerist crap we do (which promotes racial equality in a way that is hardly going to stick) and they have some thriving multicultural, tourist-filled cities, does not mean that the instincts of an individual born and raised there will be identical to ours. Capitalism hasn’t quite got that far in standardising the world yet.
In Spain, people can loudly make jokes about black people and not face too much in the way in recriminations; in the UK, someone doing that faces, at best, the risk of being looked at in digust. At worst, they can risk being physically assaulted or reported to the police. For understandable reasons, Britain (or America) is much more sensitive as a society than Spain. Take away the fear element I mentioned before, and it becomes much more difficult to actually enforce certain ideas. As I said, the dominant institutions lack the incentive. It’s up to people to change how those institutions are run, which involves a great deal of political participation and, -shudder-, ideology. At the same time, by judging a different soicety by our own standards, we are being just as racist, on a fundamental level, as the bigots in the stadium. That apalls me.
As for suggesting that I said, at any point, that racist chanting is less racist because it’s in Spain, I suggest you stop right here, go back to my very first post on the matter, and read everything I have written again, including this post. Slowly, if you have to.
When I mentioned Hitler, way back in the beginning, I was referring to how easy it’s becoming to receive critical acclaim for stating the bloody obvious. I’m not sure how anti-Semitism has filtered is way into this argument, but since you bring it up, no, you don’t have to have an affinity with Judaism as a religion or culture to criticise the Nazis or anti-semitism in general. Again, though, if your criticism simply consists of piping up with ‘hey – anti-semitism sucks man!’, then not only is it not very useful, but I have to question your motivation for doing so. Are you really anti-racist to the point where you can’t contain yourself, or are you being a good consumer and enhancing your own personal image? I’d suggest it’s a bit of both.
And this isn’t shovelling anything under the rug. Nowhere am I asking for people to calm down about racism, or ignore it. I am criticising how it’s combated, and I’m attacking the weakness of the politically correct bandwagon because I see it as a force which, whilst it does a good little job of protecting ethnic minorities from physical and verbal attacks by the caucasian majority in Western societies, it also creates an insidious, latent racism right across society as a whole. It promotes fuzzy thinking which leads people to abandon their reason, which ultimately leads to irrational things like…well, racism. Racism against black people, against white people, against Jews, against Spaniards.
You called me pretentious, you accused me of being guilty of the self-aggrandisement I seek to attack, you patronised my entire argument (save for two paragraphs), yet you just carted out the same counter-arguments which were levelled at Archie: ‘you’re looking for deeper contextual reasons – you’re defending racism!’ ; ‘you’re saying Spain is different – it isn’t, because racism is racism, so suggesting the methods of tackling racism should be different is just wrong!’ ; ‘you’re disagreeing with people who don’t like racism…sounds, uh…defensive, wouldn’t you agree?
‘.
I suggest that the arguments you’re defending stem mostly from fear and self-aggrandisement and add very little. Whilst I don’t think I’ve personally added all that much, I like to think I’m coming at the issue from a more progressive angle and hope someone sticks up for me and adds something more constructive, otherwise my entire attempt will have been pointless.
i appreciate the article and @Archie_V’s thoughtful push-back.
i’d like to ask the author and others a question related to one of his quotes above:
‘Unlike a heap of sand, individual members of a crowd are independent moral agents, with free will, and while the very nature of crowds perhaps diminishes that sense of freedom, it would be weak indeed to suggest that it could lead to a justifiable and complete abrogation of responsibility. If someone’s being a prick, you really should be calling them on it.’
i entirely agree with this, and would hope to forcefully confront fans if i ever were in the position to do so at a match. but, as many have mentioned in their comments, should this apply only to racist comments? do i have the responsibility as a moral agent to confront fans around me for using derogatory, homosexual/feminine/body type/etc slurs? i’m not asking whether or not we all think these various forms of discrimination are BAD. i’m asking, what our individual response to the various forms should be.
you can quickly imagine how the ethical task gets compromised. am i supposed to morally police ALL the fans around me that are inevitably spewing slurs? is this ‘practical’ or ‘required’? if not, what criteria would one use to determine whether it’s necessary to speak up or not (e.g. confront the racism jab, don’t confront the gay jab…but what if i were at a football match with my gay friend or the player being ridiculed was actually gay?)?
is the chief criterion whether or not i think the footballer’s feelings are ‘hurt’? or, is the proper moral response to simply not attend football matches so one does not become not tacitly guilty? conversely, should one perform, as crazy japan74 would suggest, some type of ethical suspension when entering the stadium (wouldn’t want to live in that world, but it is the most consistent stance to take)?
obviously the arena is not the main place to confront social evils (although, we should probably all remember saint telemachus’ supposed martyrdom in a roman arena), but we are still alive and responsible in camp nou, and should figure some reasonable way to make our moral judgments. help?
@Augusto Neto I responded to one point in Archie’s post. His overarching point based on a “contextual” (academic lingo – because of how it is so often performed – for “bullshit”) argument, is, by and large, nonsense.* But, in my comment I took issue only with one statement, namely that there were no comparable groups to the KKK, BNP, etc. The statement was no more than convenient dodging. I sensed that some – dare I say – context was needed. Hence my response amounted to ‘sure there’s no KKK, but who needs the KKK when the ideas are within the dominant political parties? Simply put, one does not need a hood, the cover of secrecy, or a burning cross if the Prime Minister shares your ignorant beliefs – ideas that are, of course, rampant in Spain. A small point. Another not so small point (but fairly tangential), is that you would be hard pressed to find a country in Western Europe that is so entrenched in antisemitic and racist views. You seem to quibble with the notion, but the fact is, those that concern themselves with such things are actually quite concerned by the state of affairs in Spain. Regardless, if one is begging for context, ignoring the reputable data emanating from trustworthy nonprofits and the United States government is probably not where you want to start.
Anyway, from this one post, you’ve (apparently) determined that I’m ignorant, hopelessly politically correct, and (likely) unable to keep from drooling on myself.*** Sure, I said I was appalled by those that defend racism. I am. Politically correct or not, I am. Even if it is hopelessly mundane and simplistic to state it, I am appalled. Perhaps you hear righteous indignation [so be it - better that than ethical cowardice**], but I mean the internet message board equivalent to telling a football fan grunting monkey noises to “shut the fuck up.” [Note here, that I never claimed that Archie was defending or justifying racism - you pulled that charge out of thin air.]
*Spain’s problem with “otherness” is self-inflicted, if at all. The Spanish have held to a policy (informal or not) of exclusion [for an example of the "not," see fascist Spain; for the (at least arguably) informal, see standard police procedure to arrest people with darker skin] and have enacted multiple systematic attempts to build homogeneity stretching back 500 years [See, again, the example of fascist Spain, but also keep in mind that whole inquisition and expulsion of the Jews]. Black people, Jews, etc. do not live in Spain for a reason – i.e. by and large, they have been kept or forced out. Of course, I second the point made already by another that a true “contextual” argument would not pretend that Spain somehow exists in a vacuum, which is miraculously impervious to a basic understanding of human dignity. Similarly, I simply do not buy any argument that claims the Spanish fail to see the massive and glaring distinction between calling someone ‘short’ and calling out monkey chants. If I were from Spain, I think the very idea would insult my intelligence.
**”At the same time, by judging a different soicety [sic] by our own standards, we are being just as racist, on a fundamental level, as the bigots in the stadium. That apalls me.”
Ah, relativism … the trite drivel of ethical bankruptcy. Don’t worry, when you grow up it will pass. Until then, consider the sheer fucking stupidity of claiming that we shouldn’t judge the slaughter of Jews, Gypsies, Gays, etc. during the Shoah – that somehow, or in some light that idea was not, and will not always be simply wrong no matter who does it or where it happens. Think I’m playing the Shoah card because it’s the extreme (yet, no more extreme than the position of ethical relativism)? Then consider slicing off a 12 year old girl’s clitoris. Does that not merit condemnation wherever it happens? Give me a break, only a coward, a person void of empathy, or a racist could watch Eto’o hurrying off the pitch saying “no more,” and not lay judgment where it belongs.
***Among a dozen personal attacks that all missed the mark. I’ll suggest that much worse than perceived “privileged individuals [that] bawl out righteous anger over the internet” are the simpleton cowards who make personal attacks over the internet based on unfounded preconceptions, while lacking any real knowledge of the person they’re attacking.
@Shavit excellent response, well-done. while i can understand Augusto being annoyed with aspects of “political correctness,” when it happens to be ETHICALLY correct as well, it ceases to be simply bandwagon PC behaviors. you put it brilliantly with “ethical bankruptcy.” there are some things that are simply right, or wrong, and no amount of clever arguing can change that. once we as a society recognize such a practice as wrong to the core, we should stomp it out as best we can. why human societies behave in such appalling ways, repeatedly, throughout our history is an argument for the sociologists, anthropologists, or theologians…but Spain has a homogenous society and a problem with racism. established fact. so does Denmark, Greece, and lots of others. which came first, the homogeneity, or the xenophobic drive to keep it that way? who knows…who cares? these might be explanations, they are not excuses. i can understand Augusto’s annoyance with piling on, or arguments that lack substance, but to say that judging Spanish society in this PC way is just as racist as garden-variety racism is incorrect. there are universal truths, and universal morals, that we should all seek to know. when cultured society finally agrees that racism is morally wrong, Augusto would have us refrain from saying so because we are mindless politically-correct sheep? i wholeheartedly disagree.
@Chris Morals are closely related to morés, and not just etymologically: they are not universal truths at all, but shifting customs that vary greatly over time and between cultures. Take, for instance, European attitudes to paedophilia, which have undergone an about-face in a single generation. In the 1970s, hardcore porn featuring children was on open sale in “new, miracle” Germany. Yet by the 1990s people were being reported to the police for trying to get holiday snaps developed of their own children playing naked on the beach.
Or consider this man, if you can recognise him, pictured only last year. He’s in blackface not because he’s a racist, but because he’s following a long-standing tradition of entertaining the kids at Christmas by dressing up and pretending to be something he’s not. Sound familiar? It should, because just as nobody in Britain or America is offended by a sullen, scrawny acne-ridden twenty-something from Nuneaton padding up and strapping on a cotton-wool beard to pretend to be a jolly old Nordic fat man in a shopping mall, nobody in Spain was offended by Sergio Ramos (yes, for it was he) pretending to be an African magus in a Seville street parade. In Spain, blackface is considered to be no more offensive to black people than drag acts are offensive to women. And, to be honest, why should it, if it carries none of the cultural, social and political baggage of racial oppression that so clearly applies elsewhere?
It’s interesting and I think quite pertinent to this discussion to note that race is afforded no special status – no higher “pedestal”, as it’s been called above – under Spanish law. There is no race-relations act as such, and “inciting racial hatred” is not a specific, discrete criminal offence.[1] What is in place, however, is general anti-discrimination legislation,[2] under which focusing on a person’s race for discriminatory purposes is given exactly the same weight as focusing on their religion, appearance, sexual orientation, accent or any other manifestation of otherness that people might choose to point to. Neither more nor less.
What this means in practice is that former Spain coach Luis Aragonés’s having called Thierry Henry “that black cunt” during a training session in 2004 was, in accordance with Spanish law and public opinion, no more reprehensible than if he’d called Wayne Rooney “that bald cunt” or Peter Crouch “that horse-faced streak of piss”. And that’s why I think the points I’ve been making aren’t mere sidebars broadening the scope of the original post, as Brian seems to have taken them, but rather the actual crux of the issue.
Trying to stamp out racist behaviour at Spanish football grounds and racism alone would be seen by most people in a position to do something about it – the clubs and the people who pay to sit in their stands – as a wholly artificial exercise. Yes, it certainly needs tackling, and urgently (I know nobody here who feels exactly proud of their fellow countrymen when they hear monkey chants), but it needs to be approached as an integral part of a much broader campaign to foster respect for otherness in all its many forms. Otherwise it would be quite reasonable to expect any move to eradicate racism in isolation to be resented as an arbitrary, unwanted and unwarranted imposition from outside. As someone who knows football well in both England and Spain, the Sky Sports pundit Guillem Balagué, put it when he was trying to explain to his largely puzzled Spanish readers why such a fuss was being made in the U.K. of what Aragonés had said: “This whole race business is something that they’re very serious about in England, where they take political correctness to an extreme.”[4]
My (and I think Augusto’s) reaction to many of the comments here is that passing judgment on Spain’s football-going and wider culture by applying the moral standards that happen to be currently dominant in Britain and America is not only unfair and, ironically, borderline xenophobic itself, but also unhelpful if we hope to find an answer to Andi’s original question: what are we supposed to do to put a stop to a practice that is doing football in general and Liga clubs in particular no favours at all?
I don’t know what the answer to that question is, but I do have a strong suspicion that simply decreeing, ex cathedra, “Wrong is wrong, period” is unlikely to be it.
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1. Whereas glorifying terrorism, for instance, is a specific offence. Call an ETA bomber “brave” in Spain and you can – and probably will, if you do it in print – go to jail. Each society’s laws, like its morals, tend to be determined by its own past experience and future needs.
2. Brought in by a leftish/liberal government that has been called many things over the years but reactionary has seldom been among them. It was one of the first in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, for example (not just civil partnerships as under New Labour in Britain).
3. As the most at-first-sight-obvious translation of the expression in Spanish that Aragonés actually used (ese negro de mierda), “that black piece of shit” is how I’ve seen it rendered most often English, but the translation isn’t a very fortunate one, as it implies a far nastier degree of contempt than the original words actually carry.
4. As, 7 October 2004. (My translation.)
Oops, that Sergio Ramos pic seems to be a bad link. Try this.
So who’s up for defending the Bulgaria fans? No doubt it’s just “political correctness” and “borderline xenophobia” to condemn throwing Nazi salutes and monkey chants, right? Silly English players paying any attention to racist chanting in their direction; why don’t they just respect Bulgarian cultural norms?
Few things spell out the idiocy of relativism than following its own logic down the rabbit hole.
@Shavit How on earth can you claim context to be an academic term for “bullshit” before attempting any sort of counter-argument to anything?
Sifting through the self-righteous, borderline xenophobic mess which followed, all I can pick out is the sheer absurdity of accusing well-meaning people of defending racism whilst utterly ripping into an entire society you know sweet f**k all about.
Racism is “rampant” in Spanish society? Have you ever even been to Spain, or are you judging the entire country on the ‘findings’ of a few ideologically-challenged interest groups and poorly-researched government polls? What sort of racism is rampant there, by the way? I assume you’re talking about the thousands and thousands of white people monkey-chanting their way towards the Salvador Dali exhibitions, or the army going round shooting tourists on the Costa del Sol…oh no, hang on…
You even suggested that racism is deeply embedded in the culture of Spain’s majority political parties. Would you kindly explain, aside from one alleged quote from their Prime Minister, how this is the case? I mean with cold facts, not the drivel you’ve offered up before.
Oh, and congratulations for bringing up Spanish history. Should generations of modern, well-educated Spaniards continue to flagellate themselves for what the economically and socially powerful from their country did centuries ago? Is Spain a racist and anti-semitic place now because the Inquisition took place there? I wouldn’t recommend taking a city break in Munich if that’s how you feel..
I also suggest you read up on relativism. There is a marked difference between relativism and the position I take (personally, I hate relativism more than political correctness, which is saying something). My argument is that whilst racism is wrong, the manner in which it is combated MUST stem from a rational, educated perspective and not be motivated by fear or personal gain. This involves an appreciation of facts, of context, and of history rather than the barking out of post-ideological drivel.
Relativism posits that no one society can claim itself to be superior to another, it is anti-universal. I believe racism is a universal wrong. A relativist might not (though most relativists tend to be frightened white liberals anyway, so perhaps they’d agree with me, though for different reasons).
The irony of your last paragraph is delicious. This whole argument just makes me want to go and relax in Spain, to be quite honest.
@Archie_V I agree with a lot of what you said there. I wasn’t speaking about the actual standards Spanish people tend to have – I was attacking the bizarre logic behind a lot of the criticism of Spanish society on here – but you make some good points about how it’s a bit nonsensical to apply British and American social norms to Spain.
I don’t think the self-loathing societies of Britain and America will ever accept ‘blacking up’ – I wouldn’t have used that example. It does, however, epitomise the difference between societies: neither in Spain nor in Britain is it acceptable to insult somebody or discriminate against them because of their ethnic background. But in Spain, you can make jokes which in England you can’t. I don’t see it as being racist; I don’t find it particularly funny, but that’s due to reasons of taste.
The sad reality is that the majority of people in the UK are more frightened than moral when it comes to this sort of thing. I remember watching Extras, in which Keith Chegwin is portrayed as a racist bigot; he asks Ricky Gervais to name funny black people. Gervais reels off a huge list. Chegwin then asks him to name funny ‘British’ people. Gervais can’t think of a single one; he looks at a picture of (black comedian) Lenny Henry, pauses, and keeps thinking. It’s clearly a joke about a bad comedian but watching it with people, it’s always the same guilt-ridden, cover-your-mouth laughter. The entire episode, in fact, plays on the utter discomfort middle-class white people feel around the entire topic of race.
There is a BIG difference between comedy and monkey-chanting. It’s just that whilst British and American societies have HAD to deal with the latter and the Spanish haven’t, I’d actually suggest that it’s the Spaniards who are mature enough to see this difference.
@Fast Eddie Sorry, I didn’t actually see this match. I was watching the disgusting footballerist abuse directed at Cristiano Ronaldo during Portugal’s match in Cyprus. The Cyprus fans were screaming ‘Messi, Messi!’ whenever he got the ball. Someone ought to sort this out*.
In all seriousness, I don’t know anything about Bulgarian attitudes towards racism, but regardless of context, monkey-chanting is wrong. Now, my choice is either to leave it there, or go on a righteous tirade about how much of a mess Bulgarian society is – I’m sure there’s a poll somewhere which proves it unequivocally.
*Actually, as we’re on the subject, does the regular chanting of insults towards Ronaldo’s nationality in Spain count as racism? The context is certainly there – Spain spent the best part of 1,000 years trying to conquer Portugal, so that ticks the history box. The Portu-chanting tends to be even more widespread than the monkey chanting, the personal insults far worse than those hurled at Alves etc. The reason behind the chants is essentially the same – Ronaldo plays for the other team, and his background is different.
“How on earth can you claim context to be an academic term for “bullshit” before attempting any sort of counter-argument to anything?”
I said the word “contextual” placed before the word “argument” was bullshit, (and let me quote myself here) “because of how it is so often performed.”
“Sifting through the self-righteous, borderline xenophobic mess which followed, all I can pick out is the sheer absurdity of accusing well-meaning people of defending racism whilst utterly ripping into an entire society you know sweet f**k all about.”
If me saying “I’m appalled” is self-righteous and “borderline xenophobic” then so be it. But, I accused no one of defending racism. In fact, the only reference to anything in the general category of what you accuse me of is found in this line: “[Note here, that I never claimed that Archie was defending or justifying racism - you pulled that charge out of thin air.]” If this is going to be a grown up conversation, you need to learn to read.
“Racism is “rampant” in Spanish society? Have you ever even been to Spain, or are you judging the entire country on the ‘findings’ of a few ideologically-challenged interest groups and poorly-researched government polls?”
Yes, I have. Being a jew, I found it to be quite a miserable experience. I was there for six months. Generally speaking, people would look uncomfortable when they discovered I was a jew. Either that, or launch into a tirade about how Israelis kill children for sport and Jews control the world’s financial institutions. Perhaps others have had different experiences. So be it. I met quite a few friendly folks there as well. But really, are Amnesty International and the ADL “ideologically-challenged interest groups” or do they just know more about the topic than you? As for the “government polls,” I referenced no such thing. The United States government put a travel advisory on Spain for institutionalized racism that saw a host of government employees and other citizens arrested and interrogated for illegal immigration because they were black. But once again, if you are looking for context ignoring such groups is hardly the place to start. (But, I know, you aren’t really. You’re just looking to be right.)
“What sort of racism is rampant there, by the way?”
Oh, you must be right. The casual, blatant and deplorable racism evidenced at every football match certainly isn’t a symptom of a larger phenomenon. The same for all that research coming from those ideologically-challenged interest groups. Shame on all of us for not knowing as much about spain as you.
“Oh, and congratulations for bringing up Spanish history. Should generations of modern, well-educated Spaniards continue to flagellate themselves for what the economically and socially powerful from their country did centuries ago?”
Centuries ago? What? Crack open a book and tell me when Spain ceased being a Fascist country. Of course, then you might find it was only a short while ago that a conservative strain of Catholicism was the state mandated religion and there were formal policies of exclusion both for culture and immigration. Silly me and all that context.
“Is Spain a racist and anti-semitic place now because the Inquisition took place there?”
Did I say that, or did I say it might help explain why Jews don’t live there? (and hence, why Spain’s problem with “otherness” is self-inflicted.)
“I also suggest you read up on relativism. There is a marked difference between relativism and the position I take (personally, I hate relativism more than political correctness, which is saying something).”
Hmm … no, no there’s not. This statement is dripping with relativist bullshit: “judging a different soicety [sic] by our own standards, we are being just as racist, on a fundamental level, as the bigots in the stadium. That apalls me.” Perhaps you need to be more clear in your position. And look, I didn’t even correct your “fuzzy thinking” (as you put toward others) that has somehow equated concepts of “race” and “society”.
But hell, let’s see that difference: “Relativism posits that no one society can claim itself to be superior to another, it is anti-universal. I believe racism is a universal wrong.”
oh, you mean one society cannot judge another “by [their] own standards” without being “just as racist, on a fundamental level, as the bigots in the stadium.” Yeah … huge difference.
And let me add … “A relativist might not”: no, a relativist WOULD NOT. perhaps you should do the reading up on relativism … that is, if you don’t understand relativism eschews the concept of a “universal” truth..
“My argument is that whilst racism is wrong, the manner in which it is combated MUST stem from a rational, educated perspective and not be motivated by fear or personal gain. This involves an appreciation of facts, of context, and of history rather than the barking out of post-ideological drivel.”
Ah … so in the comments section to a blog everyone is supposed to cease their daily routines and run right out to research worthy proposals into ending racism in Spain. Surely we can be forgiven for returning to work instead, right? But sure, if your argument is simply that those that are seeking to combat racism in spain should use the general context of Spain, then fine, we agree. The advertisements, condemnations, and discussions should probably be in the local language and manipulate shared conceptions of identity and national narrative. Great.
But that’s not all you’ve claimed here (if you’re being honest.) Rather, you’ve condemned people on this site for saying racism in spain disgusts them, and you’ve done it in a particularly patronizing and shitty tone. Who the fuck in the comments section of this blog claimed to have an answer to the problem of racism in spain? Who the fuck was even trying to come up with one? Does simple disgust (and expressing it) not have a place in a conversation on racism? If you had any experience – i mean any experience – actually working to combat racism, you would have to answer that latter question in the affirmative. Given that I doubt Andrew Thomas has much of a readership in Spain, his article, and the discussion that followed is more for our sake than the people in Spain. Expressions of disgust are nowhere more valid than in a culture-affirming role …
Of course, I suspect that you’ve ventured on this board to make yourself feel intelligent by grasping on to a few posts that were clearly speaking to a different subject. For all your blustering about the proper method to approach racism, you have yet to actually offer anything of substance. Can we expect anything soon, or is this all you have to offer?
@Shavit Goodness, I spent nearly half an hour pouring through all this nonsense then somehow hit escape. Very disheartening. In brief:
- I did get the sense that your hatred of Spanish society had some personal roots, it did seem quite irrational. I’m struggling to picture every Spaniard you met wincing in disgust at their discovery of your heritage, but if you say it happened, well, I don’t know what to say. I suppose all I can say is don’t judge an entire country based on your experience. That would be…racist.
- As for people attacking Israel, well, I’m afraid you’ll face that almost everywhere you go. Israel does provoke a lot of anger* – not least here in the UK, where we again see a perfect example of the double standards adopted towards racism by the white middle classes. Anti-semitism is considered far less reprehensible here than, say, skin-colour-based racism – but then there have never been any ‘Jewish’ riots, there isn’t a huge Jewish underclass living in abject poverty, and there are no militant groups of nationalist Jews for the nouveaux riches to worry about.
*To pre-empt anything, I’m not getting into the Middle East conflict. That Israel causes a great deal of anger to many people is a simple fact in and of itself.
- On relativism, once more:
My argument: racism is a universal wrong, which should be combated rationally and not for individual gain, nor out of general or personal fear. The roots of racism are complex, often localised and independent, and one very different society has no right to pass judgement upon how the other combats it.
A relativist argument: racism isn’t necessarily wrong, because no one culture or society is superior to another. Spanish people might be a bit racist, but who are we to judge?
Please read that carefully, I’m not repeating it again.
- I’d be interested to see Amnesty International’s findings, regardless of your argument. I might look it up – is it actually possible to read it anywhere?
- As for your last paragraphs, among all the ‘fuck’s, you seem to convey the impression that I was demanding answers. Please re-read all my posts, where all I’ve called for is constructive, discussion which isn’t motivated by the occasional poster’s need to be acclaimed for not liking racism, particularly when some of them, you being a prime example, appear to be just as ignorant about one culture as the monkey chanters are about another.
I actually said before that I alone have no concrete answers, but I do think I have come at this from a much more rational perspective than you, which is why I wanted things to go in another direction. Note that my not having answers doesn’t mean that my questions are less valid than your anger.
@Someone Seriously? Wow… just…wow. Anyway, excellent piece.
@Augusto Neto I can’t seem to find anything to support Shavit’s argument on Amnesty International’s website. There is an accusation that Spanish police officers are given quotas for arresting illegal immigrants by their superiors (an accusation denied by the government), but if this were true I’d file this under xenophobia rather than racism
Compare with the reports on institutionalised racism in the British police.
I think I’ll leave this now and start reading about football again.
@Augusto Neto I never claimed to hate Spain or Spanish people, culture, or society. Nor have I made any claim that all people in Spain are racist, antisemitic, xenophobic, etc. Yet another charge pulled from thin air … Oh, and no, it wouldn’t be racist to hate people from Spain. It might be a bunch of things, but it wouldn’t be racism.
“- As for people attacking Israel, well, I’m afraid you’ll face that almost everywhere you go.”
That is, of course, not the point. Feeling the need to launch into an unprovoked attack on Israel simply because a Jew is near you is symptomatic of something much darker. That is, assuming that every Jew in the world supports, defends, has some control over, loves or otherwise has contact with, or sway over Israel is a gross overstep. “Jew” does not equal “Israeli.”
“I can’t seem to find anything to support Shavit’s argument on Amnesty International’s website.”
You must have not looked.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR41/003/2011/en/6ddc4998-7bcf-48fb-9c67-6b8a099a86b9/eur410032011en.pdf
“- [...] discussion which isn’t motivated by the occasional poster’s need to be acclaimed for not liking racism, particularly when some of them, you being a prime example, appear to be just as ignorant about one culture as the monkey chanters are about another [...] I actually said before that I alone have no concrete answers, but I do think I have come at this from a much more rational perspective than you, which is why I wanted things to go in another direction.”
Ignorant, eh? hmm. Did I miss the part where you actually knew me, or my knowledge of Spanish culture? Surely you must if you are willing to blindly throw insults.
But really, your entire argument comes down to an unfounded, and thus far, unsupported perception that those on this blog are somehow seeking “acclaim” for saying racism is bad. I still have no idea how you looked past the words on the screen, into the minds of those that wrote them, and miraculously determined their motivation. Are you sure you are capable of such a feat? Who’s being irrational?
Regardless, nothing in your post actually addresses the part where I responded to this nonsense. So here it is again: “Does simple disgust (and expressing it) not have a place in a conversation on racism? If you had any experience – i mean any experience – actually working to combat racism, you would have to answer that latter question in the affirmative. Given that I doubt Andrew Thomas has much of a readership in Spain, his article, and the discussion that followed is more for our sake than the people in Spain. Expressions of disgust are nowhere more valid than in a culture-affirming role …”
Can I expect a response, or just more unfounded jabs at me being ignorant and irrational? Any chance you are actually going to start that discussion on racism that you request, or can we expect more calls for someone else to do it?
eh, whatever …
@Shavit “That is, of course, not the point. Feeling the need to launch into an unprovoked attack on Israel simply because a Jew is near you is symptomatic of something much darker. That is, assuming that every Jew in the world supports, defends, has some control over, loves or otherwise has contact with, or sway over Israel is a gross overstep. “Jew” does not equal “Israeli.””
- My favourite so far. It was YOU who brought up Israel:
“Yes, I have. Being a jew, I found it to be quite a miserable experience. I was there for six months. Generally speaking, people would look uncomfortable when they discovered I was a jew. Either that, or launch into a tirade about how Israelis kill children for sport and Jews control the world’s financial institutions.”
I simply said that you will find similar criticisms of Israel no matter where you go and that, if anything, you’d be even more likely to hear them in a so-called ‘tolerant’ society, like that of the UK.
I’d suggest you crawl up your arse and try to remove whatever irritant that’s there. Maybe you’ll find yourself up there, too. In the meantime, I’d suggest you stop hinting that people on the internet might be anti-semites just because they happen to find your arguments empty and misguided.
Thank you for sending the link to that report, though. Now go back on their website and look at Amnesty’s reports on the United Kingdom, the United States and – why the hell not – Israel. Then come back here and rant about the darkness at the heart of Spanish society.
I’m sorry that this argument has taken the place of what might have been a more interesting conversation. I couldn’t have ignored your claims ahout me, however, if I’d wanted to start an interesting topic.
I’m done.
@Augusto Neto Sorry Brian, I just had to respond to this:
“I simply said that you will find similar criticisms of Israel no matter where you go and that, if anything, you’d be even more likely to hear them in a so-called ‘tolerant’ society, like that of the UK.
I’d suggest you crawl up your arse and try to remove whatever irritant that’s there. Maybe you’ll find yourself up there, too. In the meantime, I’d suggest you stop hinting that people on the internet might be anti-semites just because they happen to find your arguments empty and misguided.”
You little twit. I never hinted you were antisemitic. I told a story about a guy who launched into an unprovoked tirade against Jews and Israelis. You said: You’ll find criticism of Israel anywhere. I responded by saying, “That is, of course, not the point. Feeling the need to launch into an attack on Israel simply because a Jew is near you is symptomatic of something much darker.”
I was obviously speaking of the person in spain who went on an unprovoked tirade against Israelis while I was sitting on a bench wearing a kippah.
As for you finding my arguments empty and misguided, you never actually responded to them. You seem to take issue that I consider Spain to be rampant with racism and antisemitism. But, you haven’t produced any evidence to the contrary. You completely ignore the parts of my posts where I did respond:
““Does simple disgust (and expressing it) not have a place in a conversation on racism? If you had any experience – i mean any experience – actually working to combat racism, you would have to answer that latter question in the affirmative. Given that I doubt Andrew Thomas has much of a readership in Spain, his article, and the discussion that followed is more for our sake than the people in Spain. Expressions of disgust are nowhere more valid than in a culture-affirming role …”
That’s the third time you would have read it now. Care to respond?
Better yet, post some more empty attacks at me and ignore it.