In football, you can intentionally physically hurt another player, you can swear profanities to players and refs alike, you can cheat your way to penalties and game deciding decisions, dive your way to getting other players sent off, but none will incur as much wrath as using a racial slur.
It’s a battle that FIFA has been battling for years, nearly costing FIFA president Sepp Blatter his job after suggesting players should just shake hands and forget following racially provoked exchanges. The FA took matter into their own hands this week, handing Luis Suarez an 8 match ban and will most likely follow up with a similar punishment for Chelsea captain John Terry.
Reaction from media was overall positive for the FA, who were lauded for leading the battle against racism in football and serving as a model that the likes of UEFA and FIFA ought to look up to.
At first glance, the decision looks solid – racism has no place in modern society and anyone who engages in it ought to be punished in some way. Luis Suarez being on the opposite end of this decision doesn’t really hurt society’s perspective on the matter, as the Uruguayan stands as one of the most hated athletes in the sport following his Hand of God 2 in the 2010 World Cup, his cannibalistic tendencies in Ajax, and his overall manner of conducting himself on the pitch.
Having said that, it does strike as particularly peculiar that Luis Suarez referring to Manchester United’s Patrice Evra as a ‘negro’ gets a 8 match ban while Wayne Rooney kicking another person (as he did against Montenegro during the Euro 2012 qualifiers) only gets a 3 match ban (which the FA themselves appealed and had it reduced to two games).
Could this timely decision to hand out a landmark penalty have anything to do with the recent denial by Blatter that racism doesn’t exist in football? After all, the FA’s disdain of Blatter is no secret and what better way to undermine the FIFA president than to take the exact opposite stance.
If you go even deeper into the case, it turns out that in Uruguay, the word ‘negro’ has no negative connotations and the whole situation has sent Uruguay into a fury, with officials from the country claiming the FA’s decision to be ‘absurd’. With foreign players becoming a core part of the Premier League – surely the FA should have used cultural discretion in its decision making process? Suarez should be educated enough to know the negative feelings his words could inspire, but his honest admission that he indeed did use the word ‘negro’ would back-up his claims that his words didn’t hold any malice – why else openly admit it?
There’s also the fact that Patrice Evra is involved in this, a person with a history of crying foul over racial prejudice without pretense and even being fined for exaggerating. In this matter where concrete proof is lacking and the players’ words are all we have, it is rather bewildering for the FA to conclude that Evra was the more credible witness and going as far as punishing Suarez without any other substantial proof.
According to Suarez’s claims, Evra said to Suarez “Don’t touch me, you South American” to which the Liverpool player responded “Porque, Negro?”. Evra’s account was that he had asked Suarez why he kicked him to which Suarez apparently said “Because you are black”. Evra claims Suarez used the word seven times. Regardless of who’s take you believe the outcome is one sided: Suarez 8 match ban, Evra 0 match ban.
Racism is a huge problem in Europe, perhaps worse so than any other part of the developed world. I remember watching an England vs Turkey international match years back in which a large part of the stadium were shouting “I’d rather be a Paki than a Turk”. Nothing came of that day. No penalties were handed out, no fans were banned..heck, it didn’t even grab any paper headline. Skip forward to today, and not much has REALLY changed besides the advertising campaigns, the pre-match banners, and stiffer penalties on offending players that governing bodies are starting to enforce.
Yet whether it is Luis Suarez or John Terry – neither is facing losing their job by their respective clubs and their managers are turning a blind eye, standing firmly behind them going forward. It’s not exactly hard to understand why. The assumption is that the person is ‘just’ muttering a specific ‘taboo’ word at the heat of the moment. It’s rather safe to say that most football players are not actually racist types hell-bent on creating a supreme race, and if they were, they would have a hard time surviving in a career where ethnicity is as diverse as the shades of green on a football pitch. Amid all the negative headlines you will hear about this story in the coming days few will tell you that Patrice Evra himself in his written statement in this case said ‘I don’t think that Luis Suarez is racist’. Furthermore, even the FA in their opening remarks accept that Luis Suarez is not racist.
The point made by Blatter was that when players engage in physical competition, adrenaline and testosterone get in the mix, and people can end up doing and saying things they don’t necessarily want or believe. Wayne Rooney kicked a Montenegran player after carelessly losing the ball, but no one in their right mind will accuse him of being a serial ninja. In the same way, players might say something below the belt to each other amid the pushing and shoving and the battle to get under each other’s skin. It’s called trash-talk and it’s widespread in pretty much every single competitive sport. Some might insult the other person’s mother or kids, while others who are less well versed in the subtle craft go after the person’s race, knowing the cheap but guaranteed reaction that it will garner. Either way, sports can often get ugly when normal player conduct is replaced by frustration and anger, which has a habit of transforming itself to non-sportsman like conduct. None of the reasons why this behavior occurs is excusable, but it needs to be put in the proper context.
In England’s case, they have decided to put its war against racism at the forefront of its agenda – but that does not make racial slurs necessarily more evil than physical abuse or cheating. This is the cultural, or should I say political element that gets lost in the midst of the witch-like-hunt against Luis Suarez. An argument could be made that this draconian control of what people can and can’t say is against libertarian principles of freedom and liberty and that it undermines more substantial efforts to create true social harmony.
I’m not suggesting the FA are wrong in their approach of having racist offenses command more repercussions compared to other misdeeds. After all, racism is deeply rooted in perception and public figures play a huge part in shaping society’s senses of right and wrong. However, governing bodies must also know that public figures are the tip of the iceberg in the fight against racism and deeper more structural factors are at the root of the problem. Using sports as the battleground against racism, while the legal, economical and political branches of society watch idly from the corner is similar to bringing a knife to a gunfight – it’s unjust, insufficient and it’s probably not going to help your cause a whole lot.
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