Why football has a racism problem and how to fix it – Analysis – Eurasia Review

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By Ellis Cashmore*

Racism is normal

This organization is an organization that clearly wants to fight against racism, as it has already done. Javier Tebas was referring to La Liga Nacional de Ftbol Profesional, the governing body of Spanish football, of which he is president. His statement was a response to Brazilian player Vincius Jniors’ astonishing claim that racism is normal in La Liga.

It was a predictable statement after a public row between Tebas and Vinicius: The players’ assertion that the Spanish league belongs to racists has been met with La Liga has worked and will continue to work against this behavior of xenophobia and racist comments in the stages. Vincius then called on sponsors and broadcasters to pressure the league to make changes. The results of this remain to be seen.

Spain is not completely alone in the 30 or so European footballing countries that lie to the east of Poland. Italy’s Ultras have right-wing and nationalist leanings and Inter Milan’s black Belgian player Romelu Lukaku was the target of racist abuse in Turin recently. But racism has largely disappeared from Western football. At least football crowds. In England, Tottenham’s South Korean striker Son Heung-min has been the subject of a racist video online. Sources of content online are notoriously difficult to trace and it is unlikely that the authors of this or other hateful messages circulating online are sports fans: more likely malicious geeks who want to discredit the sport.

History of racism in football

The persistence of racism in association in football is one of the most puzzling anachronisms in sport, or any other sphere of society for that matter. Like the game itself, the practice of abusing black players has its origins in England. In the late 1970s, the appearance of dozens of black players enraged many white fans who reacted by throwing bananas, growling like monkeys and shouting epithets. The players were the children of Caribbean migrants who had settled in the UK in the aftermath of World War II (often known as the Windrush generation, named after the first ship to arrive in England from Jamaica in 1948).

This was unexpected: at various points in history, black players had appeared in English football without incident, and the Afro-Brazilian player Pel was recognized as the best in the world. But, coaxed into far-right political movements, many fans were reminded that football was created by white men, watched by white men, and run by white men. Blacks were uninvited guests. I remember talking to Cyrille Regis (1958-2018), who played for West Bromwich Albion and other clubs at the time. He told me how he learned to absorb, as he said, the near-continuous abuse and somehow used it to motivate him.

Despicable as it was, the racism was intelligible: White fans resented the intrusion of people they saw as intruders into a sport they and their ancestors had built and owned. Or at least felt like owners. There were also underlying conditions: unemployment was staggeringly high in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. work were unemployed. Far-right groups blamed ethnic minorities, of which the Caribs and their descendants made up around half (total number in the UK population of around 500,000, less than 1%).

Theories of racism

Theories of racism differ, but most are based on competition for scarce resources, including jobs, housing, health care and education. Racist antagonism is by no means inevitable, even less natural, and rivalries for resources are created arbitrarily from convenient benchmarks. Migrant status, visible appearance, language, cuisine, and worship patterns serve as metaphorical signs of enemies. What appears to be a conflict arising from false racial differences has more prosaic origins.

Racism, like other cultural practices, is volatile: it’s like a gale of fire and it spreads uncontrollably and unpredictably. This happened after football fans around the world discovered an extraordinary way for England fans to barrack players. Once ignited, the fires take on a life of their own. Racism died out in most parts of Europe by the end of the 1980s: the emergence of so many illustrious black players in the top sports leagues silenced abusive fans in much of Western Europe , but not to the east.

Football in places like Ukraine, Poland and Russia is today, in terms of cultural diversity, about where Britain was in the mid-1980s. Unlike Britain and to other Western European countries, which have endured the tortures of the damned trying to root out or even just manage racism, Eastern European countries see racist abuse as other forms of taunts of football based on physical appearance. They don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of their abuse. Or, if they do, their governments don’t.

I will not work on the history of racism in football. Suffice it to say that somehow he survived in a world where black lives matter and multiculturalism has been elevated to sacrosanct status. Survived, that is, in certain forms. As I explained earlier, the popular form in most European countries is via social media and that means sports fans are not necessarily involved. The screams disappeared. Suppressed maybe, but, as long as racism is not expressed in behaviors (verbal and non-verbal), its effects are manageable. We have to accept that the Eastern Europeans will take longer to catch up. But that still leaves us with Spain. Why is this such an outlier?

Almost 20 years ago, Spain national team manager Luis Aragons described Thierry Henry, a French player, as negro de mierda [black shit]. The manager has been widely condemned, but the fact that someone of such seniority felt comfortable hurling such a crude insult has left football wondering if the Spaniards were out of step with the rest of the Western Europe. The recent mishap suggests they still are. Perhaps Spain, with its different regional cultures and languages, including Catalan, Basque, Galician and Valencian, has assimilated or at least learned to live with the tensions and enmities linked to identity and regional autonomy, particularly in Catalonia and the Basque Country. One effect may be to have desensitized Spaniards to the pain caused by divisive language.

Sledgehammer-To-Crack-A-Nut

So what should be done? We can’t get into people’s heads and change their thoughts. But we can stop them from speaking and acting in a way that openly expresses those thoughts. And, when they do, we should punish. The United States’ National Basketball Association (NBA) opted for the hammer strategy to crack a nut when, in 2018, it hit Los Angeles Clippers owner Don Sterling with a $2.5 million fine. and a club sell order. Sterling admitted in an interview with NBA investigators that he made disparaging remarks about black people. The response from governing bodies seemed to be disproportionately punitive, but have you heard of racism in basketball lately? (I’m not naive: it still shows up from time to time: Kyrie Irving recently said that crowds treat black players like they’re in a human zoo.)

Football must hold clubs accountable for the behavior of their supporters. It already does to some extent: the closure of stadiums or parts of stadiums for periods and the imposition of fines on clubs indicate that the governing bodies are ready to blame the club gate. Still, the penalties are hardly on par with the NBA sanction. Expulsion from major European competition, double-digit point deductions and the freezing of several transfer windows could get the message across. This kind of punishment would quickly translate into a compelling message for fans: do it again and you’ll still get the same thing! We would never hear another beep. And, if any stray sheep in the herd uttered a racist remark, other members of the crowd would soon muzzle them.

It’s about deletion rather than resolution. It is a reasonable ambition, not an unattainable or fanciful hope. I’ve learned over the years that thought control doesn’t work: behavior control is altogether more practical. It is the paradox of football that the globally inclusive game is torn apart by fanaticism that should have been stillborn or, at least, dead in the 1980s. In many parts of the world it did, but its persistence, especially in Spain, is particularly embarrassing. It’s a miracle that football sponsors like Coca-Cola, adidas, Toyota and Qatar Airways haven’t felt uncomfortable with the residual presence of racism and pressured the governing organizations for support. ‘crush. The TV networks could also have flexed their muscles and demanded tougher penalties for offending clubs, of course they wouldn’t want to lose the big name clubs or the ratings would drop.

Racism will be crushed for sure. It remains a matter of time: football will realize, at some point, that the sledgehammer is a crude, heavy and powerful instrument designed to smash rocks. Some nuts are harder than others: for example, macadamia nuts have extremely hard shells that require significant force or specialized tools to crack. A sledgehammer has more than enough force to break this. The time for education and persuasion is over: football must now start hammering.

*About the Author: Ellis Cashmore is the author of ‘Elizabeth Taylor’, ‘Beyond Black’ and ‘Celebrity Culture’. He is an honorary professor of sociology at the University of Aston and has previously worked at the universities of Hong Kong and Tampa. Ellis Cashmore is co-editor of Studying Football

Source: This article was published by Fair Observer. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Fair Observers.

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