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Racism in Football


Zatman

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5 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I didn't say you did.

I said comparing taking the knee's association with BLM to the swastika's association with Hitler and the Nazis isn't a fair comparison.

I think it is a fair comparison; I gave an example of two good symbols, and two political groups that have used them, and how the symbols have been looked at differently because of those groups. It doesn't matter what those groups are or how different they are, I'm talking about an association of symbols. 

I don't care if there is a link between taking a knee and BLM movement - in fact I know that there isn't - but some people think there is, regardless of what they are being told, so they will continue to boo.

I said in another thread, I think the best way out of this is to get PL to put a big STOP RACISM NOW advert underneath the players shirt number. And then, when a booing, racist, John Smith wants to go to Villa Park to support his team he will cheer a team that wears it. And if he wants to buy their child a football shirt, that child will wear it. And if racist John Smith wants to have any official merchandise associated with Aston Villa, that merchandise should have a label, symbol, or something associated with the STOP RACISM NOW movement. 

I will happily buy that shirt, and buy one for my son. And maybe some income from merchandise (even if it's £1 extra) can go to anti racism campaigns.

And if John Smith doesn't like it, he doesn't have to go to Villa Park or support my team. 

And I'll be very happy if John Smith fu**s off. 

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5 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think it's actually a very strange thing to consider this as a double standard in this way.

For example, if one small group of people decided that they believed that it should be okay to punch their wives in order to impose household discipline emerged, and then another larger group emerged in support of wives everywhere, we wouldn't hear claims that it was unfair of us to harshly judge the wife beaters, or that it was a double standard when wife beaters were taken to task on social media and in the press whilst those from the "wives lives matter" group were not - we'd understand that beating wives is simply wrong.

The idea that there is a double standard in place on how people are treated on this is rooted in the idea that both viewpoints are of a roughly equal value and have merits which should be taken into account equally, and in  this case that's not true - racism is wrong, that's a simple fact in our societal construct. It's not a double standard - it's a standard.

Maybe I summarised his point badly. What he saw as the double standard was that when players take the knee, the possible interpretations of the gesture should apparently be ignored and only the intentions be considered. Whereas in the other two cases the intention was ignored and only the interpretation was considered to matter.

Edited by Panto_Villan
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25 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

 

  • The academic's view on that was that it's simply not possible to seperate politics and football. Any kind of commemoration of head of state / war dead / etc, or even simply playing the national anthem is inherently political. There was some chat about whether booing should be allowed. In the end the conclusion was that since everything is inherently political, and booing a political cause (e.g. the other side Brexit) is fair game, booing everything should be allowed (as should a player choosing not to sing the national anthem etc). But it's also legitimate for booing a cause to provoke a social backlash or a backlash in the press.

That's exactly as things are at the moment is it not? Nobody is saying that people booing should be arrested or banned from the ground (that I've seen, anyway). 

Players make their gesture. People boo. People think that people booing are racist dicks. Racist dicks get to deal with the societal consequences of people thinking they are racist dicks. 

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47 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

Maybe I summarised his point badly. What he saw as the double standard was that when players take the knee, the possible interpretations of the gesture should apparently be ignored and only the intentions be considered. Whereas in the other two cases the intention was ignored and only the interpretation was considered to matter.

I get that and I think there's a really important point there about how interpretation decides the meaning of action, not intention. That's why the FA and the players are trying hard to educate those that misinterpret the gesture (perhaps deliberately). I think it's also really important that those that boo understand how the interpretation of booing will decide the meaning of it and to react accordingly - if there's an intention to protest a political point in the booing, then those people must surely understand that it isn't being perceived that way and that what they're doing is widely seen as a racist view - I would expect the people doing it for that reason to stop on that basis - perhaps they could wear a t-shirt explaining their viewpoint instead?

I think there's something to be said about weighting on that too, there are possible interpretations on taking the knee, but for 99% of people it's interpreted as a gesture of solidarity with a struggle against racism, it's a tiny minority view where people see it as a symbol of a marxist extreme. When a player uses a racist slur, 99% of people interpret that as racism, there's one percent that will give the player the benefit of the doubt, but in general people see it as wrong. In both cases, we go with the societal norm - minority interpretations are ignored in favour of massive majorities . It's like that one person that goes out in the snow in shorts - we don't take him into account when we're figuring out what to wear, or consider it a double standard when we never join in and wear shorts ourselves.

Interpretation matters, but action matters to, in a society based on rules, some actions are simply wrong. Justifying racist actions through comparison to protests for anti-racism is a peculiar joining together of things that aren't the same - we must eat more apples because oranges are full of Vitamin C.

 

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15 hours ago, Panto_Villan said:

What you're saying in the bolded part regarding the history of the organisation and how it ties into kneeling isn't quite accurate. Nothing that needs to change your conclusions, but there's no harm in getting the history correct (you can look it up on Wikipedia if you want to verify what I'm saying).

The BLM political movement actually began back in 2012ish around the Trayvon Martin case. So it wasn't so much that the social movement occurred and then BLM the political organisation hijacked it, it was rather that BLM the political movement organised rallies in 2020 in support of George Floyd as they had done in previous years for people like Eric Garner and Michael Brown, but this time they were attended by far more people and a far wider spectrum of people than before. Probably because the Floyd video was so shocking.

Some time afterwards people started to realise that actually the Black Lives Matter political organisation had much wider and more controversial aims than the generic black rights causes many were marching in support of, so the PL and some other organisations that had supported BLM thinking it was purely an anti-racism organisation quietly stopped publicly supporting it and started to support generic anti-racism instead. I think a lot of anti-racism supporters did the same (I certainly did). But prior to that there was no black lives matter movement, it was only Black Lives Matter.

This is why I don't understand how people deny that taking the knee is a politically charged gesture linked to BLM - it was widely performed at rallies organised by BLM the political organisation, by people giving their support and money to BLM the political organisation. It's totally fine to believe that footballers when they say that they now aren't taking the knee in support of any particular organisation. However, it's pretty strange to deny that there's a clear connection between taking the knee and BLM the political organisation.

The point I was making was about the gesture of taking the knee - it massively predates the political BLM - both in terms of US civil rights and Kaepernick. I said it was adopted/hijacked (delete as applicable) by the BLM political thing. I totally get that when it was, some people  linked it in their minds, at that time and that's fair enough. But they (BLM political people) don't own it, they didn't start it, or initiate it and don't own it - any more than the National Front or BNP have claim over the Union Flag.

FWIW political US BLM came out of a twitter hashtag, like you say a number of years ago and in the UK, similar really - it sprang out (later) of the post George Floyd uproar - people attaching themselves to a grassroots wave of feeling and trying to harness that for a wider change, of their choosing, to society.

The UK footballers have no involvement with the US (or UK) BLM "marxists". Their (the footballers) gesture is for equality. If people claim to associate what they're doing with marxism, and boo it as a consequence of that view, then it can only be out of lack of information/ignorance/wilful intent or worse. It's shameful.

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20 hours ago, leemond2008 said:

I've just read that Scotland have confirmed that they will not be taking the knee when they play England, now obviously that will include McGinn, so he won't be taking the knee when playing for Scotland yet he will when he plays for the Villa in the premiership (if we continue it into next season)

They are now. 

 

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5 hours ago, Mic09 said:

I think it is a fair comparison; I gave an example of two good symbols, and two political groups that have used them, and how the symbols have been looked at differently because of those groups. It doesn't matter what those groups are or how different they are, I'm talking about an association of symbols. 

I don't care if there is a link between taking a knee and BLM movement - in fact I know that there isn't - but some people think there is, regardless of what they are being told, so they will continue to boo.

I said in another thread, I think the best way out of this is to get PL to put a big STOP RACISM NOW advert underneath the players shirt number. And then, when a booing, racist, John Smith wants to go to Villa Park to support his team he will cheer a team that wears it. And if he wants to buy their child a football shirt, that child will wear it. And if racist John Smith wants to have any official merchandise associated with Aston Villa, that merchandise should have a label, symbol, or something associated with the STOP RACISM NOW movement. 

I will happily buy that shirt, and buy one for my son. And maybe some income from merchandise (even if it's £1 extra) can go to anti racism campaigns.

And if John Smith doesn't like it, he doesn't have to go to Villa Park or support my team. 

And I'll be very happy if John Smith fu**s off. 

Yes but one of the organisations is the most evil, horrific political party and leader to have ever lived.

So of course the taboo behind the symbol associated with them is going to be far far greater.

It's not a fair comparison

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On 10/06/2021 at 21:44, Panto_Villan said:

So following the discussions I had earlier today, I actually text my mate who is a university lecturer on the topic of modern and historical black identity about what his views were on the choice of kneeling as a gesture was. His reply was:

"Definitely a clear link between kneeling and BLM, although it's hard to pin down why they're doing it."

"I guess it's just whether they're willing to believe them when [footballers] say they're doing it for racism or if the response is too boo regardless. Maybe they're right but I reckon it makes them a bit of a dick regardless.

"Totally sure the row would have been less heated if they'd chosen a different gesture than kneeling."

He's someone paid to think about this stuff for a living, so I thought it'd be worth adding to the discussion. Make of it what you will.

Just texted my mate, he is Johnny Black king and representative of all black men, he said. 
 

“they are racists mate”. 

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Fair play to the Russians, they have expressed the fact that booing the knee is really just about being racist pigs, far better than any poster here ever could.

Edited by ccfcman
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6 minutes ago, ccfcman said:

Fair play to the Russians, they have expressed the fact that booing the knee is really just about being racist pigs, far better than any poster here ever could.

They were booing as they have bad memories of the marxist regime of the past 😉

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24 minutes ago, ccfcman said:

Fair play to the Russians, they have expressed the fact that booing the knee is really just about being racist pigs, far better than any poster here ever could.

Belgium seem to be doing a decent job of putting them on their knees though. 

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49 minutes ago, Shaw_nuff said:

Hello Marxist cucks.

How cucked are you all feeling today?

Gramsci cucked or maybe just Marcuse?

Enjoy your virtue signalling pretend muh racism as repressive tolerance marches through your pointless lives. 

If nothing else, I've got you all googling phrases you 'useful idiots' have never thought of searching for before. (useful idiots was a favourite of Lenin's BTW).

What a shambolic thread in a country full of such racist thugs that all and sundry are trying to get here to be oppressed. You all need a reality check.... low-life, self-hating brainwashed, yes boys.

Hey, how are you buddy, we missed you. 

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