Dealing with racism in sport

[Arwon]

Great work all around here:

Magpie fan membership torn up after racist remarks

A COLLINGWOOD fan's 20-year club membership has been terminated by the club after he admitted to racially vilifying Gold Coast player Joel Wilkinson.

The incident took place in the fourth quarter of Sunday's match at the MCG and was witnessed by Collingwood midfielder Dale Thomas.

Thomas complained to his club after the match about the comments, which was supported by several Collingwood fans in the vicinity of the offender.

Collingwood CEO Gary Pert offered an apology to Wilkinson, who asked the AFL to make the matter public "in a bid to educate spectators about what is unacceptable crowd behaviour at AFL matches".

"On behalf of the entire Collingwood Football Club, I want to publicly apologise to Joel for what he experienced during the match against Collingwood on Sunday evening," Pert said.

"It is important that Joel knows that the behaviour of one Collingwood supporter is not a reflection of the views of the broader Collingwood community.

"I hope Joel is heartened by the strong leadership position that Dale Thomas took, which was supported by the crowd that witnessed the incident and then, ultimately, the football club itself."

tldr: Footballer is racially abused by a fan in the crowd. Makes a complaint, and the complaint is supported by his direct opponent, but also by other fans of the opposition whose information helped identify the person so his club membership could be revoked.

To what extent does this happen in other sports around the world? Is it a good response or PC GORN MAD? (Hint: not the second one)

 

[emzie]

It happened in a baseball game last year, I seem to recall.

I'd be surprised to hear a racial slur at an NFL or NBA game since the fans tend to be pretty diverse.

 

[madviking]

Why do so many teams insist on being called "magpies"? I think that's the real issue at hand.

Spoiler :

But seriously, kudos to all the protagonists involved.

 

[Leifmk]

A good thing. Open racism is becoming increasingly socially unacceptable, it's been a slow march of progress but it continues.

 

[woody60707]

A good thing. Open racism is becoming increasingly socially unacceptable, it's been a slow march of progress but it continues.

Slowly? Where do you people live that anyone is ever openly rasist?

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Slowly? Where do you people live that anyone is ever openly rasist?

I really really want to say something clever and belittle your point. But unfortunately I got nuthin' and must regretfully answer "Australia"

 

[Leifmk]

Slowly? Where do you people live that anyone is ever openly rasist?

Seriously, where do you live that nobody ever is?

Move in the right sort of social circles, and you may go months or years without encountering blatant racism. And then all of a sudden you trip across it spilling from the mouth of, I dunno, a cousin you haven't seen in years, or a random store clerk who thinks you share his opinion on black people, or something. But by and large even those with racist opinions do seem to be growing more careful about actually airing those opinions, I don't notice nearly as much bullcrap now as I did maybe 20 years ago. And then there are some people who actually improve their opinions as well (such as one childhood/teenage friend of mine I didn't keep in touch with after he'd grown into a quite virulent racist -- ran into him again fifteen years later, by which time he was married to a black African lady).

(Associate with the wrong sort of people and you'll be stepping in it every day.)

 

[downtown]

Slowly? Where do you people live that anyone is ever openly rasist?

Do you actually live in the city, and you've never heard anybody use an ethic slur?

I think this is a pretty good move in the OP. Such blatant sporting racism is actually pretty rare in the US I think...our racism tends to be a bit more subtle, and usually relates to how certain sports or athletes are portrayed in media (i.e an overuse of the word 'thug' while writing about nearly completely black professional basketball)

 

[luiz]

That's a good thing. That's the appropriate way to deal with this sort of thing.

Out of curiosity, what would happen if he insulted the player in a non-racist way?

 

[Arwon]

Abusing footballers for being useless and stupid and so forth is a time honoured tradition.

Do you actually live in the city, and you've never heard anybody use an ethic slur?

I think this is a pretty good move in the OP. Such blatant sporting racism is actually pretty rare in the US I think...our racism tends to be a bit more subtle, and usually relates to how certain sports or athletes are portrayed in media (i.e an overuse of the word 'thug' while writing about nearly completely black professional basketball)

Indigenous Australians are massively overrepresented in Australian Rules Football (2% of the population, at least 10% of the elite footballers). So there's both a lot of respect and good cross-cultural engagement, as well as a lot of scope for racist nonsense.

In particular, there's been a lot said and written about the stereotypes of the flashy and brilliant but inconsistent and lazy black footballer. Adam Goodes (Captain of the Sydney Swans, th eteam I support), in particular has written about how these perceptions hurt black footballers by creating the perception that they're all natural talent and no hard work. There's also questions as to why there's no Aboriginal senior coaches and almost no prominent football media personalities, and so forth. So yeah, the subtle attitudinal stuff is there too

 

[luiz]

Abusing footballers for being useless and stupid and so forth is a time honoured tradition.

What about for being gay (or being perceived as such)?

 

[Arwon]

Until some players come out there won't be much complaining about that, I suspect.

 

[luiz]

Until some players come out there won't be much complaining about that, I suspect.

And no player has come out?

In Brazil people have been jailed for yelling racist insults to players, but insults to the (very few) gays in sport result in nothing. I find insulting the gays even worse, considering how few they are, it's more of a cowardice.

Anyway. I don't know how things are in Australia, but I feel insults to players here can get quite out of hand. Sure, calling them useless idiots is part of the game. But saying "I effed your whore wife" is not (I've seen players lose their temper because of that on more than one occasion). I don't find it any different than racist insults, but only the latter is punished or even discouraged. While being offensive towards adversary players is a football tradition, so was calling blacks "dumb nig*ers".

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I think it's in bad taste to harass players who are losing or having a bad day, but I don't think it should be infractable, unless like you said Luiz, it was truly heinous.

 

[Arwon]

Yeah. I think given the family atmosphere (and the near gender equality of the crowds) at Australian Rules sporting events the abuse doesn't get too bad except for the occasional idiot. Crowds at their best are self-regulating in that respect. Among Australians, foreign soccer crowds are notorious for their volatility and for the way opposition fans have to be segregated. I guess a high level of abuse is probably part of that territory.

We definitely abuse the umpires a lot more than players though.

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

I'll bet you the club contract has something along the lines of "We have the right to terminate your club membership at any time for any reason." So I don't see a problem with this.

 

[CommonKnowledge]

There was a Panorama report into football racism in Ukraine and Poland a few weeks back that was quite shocking.

Fans shout continual derogatory chants to each other, some about the opposition being Jewish (which isn’t true and even if it was, why would that be insulting to a rational person?), some about players being black (monkey chants being the most common) and even instances of what seems to be Nazi salutes with an accompanying “Sieg Heil”. On viewing the footage, Sol Campbell advised fans to “stay home, watch it on TV… don’t even risk it,” even going so far as to add it wasn’t worth the risk of “coming home in a coffin.”