Cowards' Mindset

Oh those Spaniards, the very flower of enlightened Europe!

LONDON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - British ministers have condemned the 'disgraceful' racial abuse of England's black players during Wednesday's friendly international against Spain in Madrid and demanded that soccer authorities take action.

Monkey noises were heard when Ashley Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips touched the ball during England's 1-0 defeat and chants of 'If you are not f**king black, jump up and down' rang out from the 55,000 crowd at Real Madrid's Bernabeu stadium.

How much more cultured they are than us poor, provincial racist Americans! (Could you imagine such a chant being raised in, say, the Georgia Dome?)

I’m fairly certain, however, that a player of Arab descent would never be treated in this manner. Not since March 11, 2004, at any rate.

Of course I’m not suggesting that the black British soccer players should blow the Spaniards up. I do, however, find it interesting that the Spaniards felt so secure in the knowledge that such men would not resort to such drastic methods of revenge.

Secure enough to come up with a number of creative ways to call the players nigg*rs to their face.

So we see now how it works, Spain. Racially harass talented men who may be better than your own soccer players. You know they won't hurt you (well, probably not). But roll over and play nice for other men who murder hundreds and maim thousands of your citizens. Got it.

I would assume that there will be no "raghead" chants in Madrid when, say, Jordan's team comes to play ball.

(Thanks to Deacon at Powerline, who links to more articles on the subject)

Comments

[Allan]

Maybe it's something about soccer that brings out the worst in people. Remember the hooligans? Riots in Holland, Italy, and England at soccer games. In Italy they managed to cause one of the bleacher stands to collapse.

In England train engineer stopped a trainload of soccer fans who, their team having lost, were tearing apart the train cars. He refused to continue until they behaved. They didn't stop, he didn't continue. Since the train wasn't going anywhere they walked back (to Liverpool I believe) smashing cars and store windows along the way and pretty much causing havoc.

The most recent incident prior to this one in Spain concerned the ingrates playing on the Iraqi soccer team in the Athens olympics. They said they hated America for occupying their country and generally spat all over us. They had apparently already forgotten that, having lost badly in the olympics, they would have been beaten and tortured, and perhaps killed, on the orders or Uday Hussein the olympic team director of Saddam's Iraq.

[Iron Mike]

Whenever I hear someone complain about America being racist, I tell them to travel. Go wherever in the world you want! Europe, Japan, even (insert "gasp" sound here) Saudi, if you can believe it.

I'm reminded of a friend of mine who was stationed in the Netherlands. He told me about a famous African runner who emigrated there and started running for his new country.

He was running by the bus my friend was on when all of a sudden, the Dutch on the bus started yelling and shouting out of the bus windows, "Go Zwarte Piet!"

Zwarte Piet, or Black Peter, accompanies Santa Claus (in the Netherlands, at least) and if a little Dutch kid is naughtly, Black Peter takes him/her and carries them away in his sack.

Yea, and we're racist.

[Michael]

Ms. Baldi,

once again you are so damn f***ing right, exactly on target. Let me add that ever since I came across your blog, I've been reading it regularly and avidly and have become a great fan of yours. Hope you don't mind taking this compliment from a GERMAN.

Grateful for your work, both the military and the civilian/writing part.

Greetings, Michael

[Michael]

It may not be the soccor. I have not heard of Americans rioting over lost soccor games.

[baldilocks]

Michael: Wilkommen und schoenen Dank. :-)

[Michael]

Ah, right, now I remember reading somewhere in your postings that you spent military time in Germany (wasn't it in Berlin? or at least shortly before the Berlin Wall came down?). Hope you retain some love for the umlauts.

Since I'm at it: Do you follow German politics (aside from the more or less generalized "Bush is stupid and it's all America's fault" rantings) in any way? Even if not, I suspect you're pretty much a political junkie and hence your curiosity is easily aroused. I'll take a shot at it.

Ever heard of the woman leader of our conservative opposition party, the CDU (Christian Democratic Union)? Her name is Angela Merkel. IMO she is quite a remarkable person, principled and tactically astute at the same time. Problem is, she may be a bit too smart and principled for her own party. Still I think chances are pretty good that she will lead her party into our next general elections in the fall of 2006 and then, if it wins (which it should, if only on account of the detereorating economy), become our first woman chancellor. She grew up in the GDR and hence has experienced the repression and economic inefficiency of socialism first-hand. Her general political outlook thus may be somewhat similar to libertarian Eastern European politicians who understand and value the alliance with the US.

If indeed she becomes our next chancellor, that may usher in a new phase in German foreign policy, a phase of trying to SINCERELY (and not only for tactical and pragmatic reasons) rebuild a partnership with the US. However, given the prevailing public sentiment after decades of indoctrination and moral stupor, she will have to go about it very cautiously and carefully.

Ms. Merkel privately was strongly in favor of the Iraq war, for instance. However, when Schröder cleverly unleashed the pent-up German anti-American sentiment over it, she had no option but to keep silent about the issue; to voice open support for the US would have been politically suicidal at that point. Currently, however, the general feeling here is that we have been rather badly burned over the Iraq issue and our clumsy attempts at being a player on the world stage (though no leading politician will publicly admit to that). Therefore the unspoken consensus is to stick to domestic issues for the moment (and they need attention, to be sure).

Just to illustrate my point a little: Ms. Merkel traveled to Washington and met with Ms. Rice rather shortly before the Iraq war (2 months or so) - a move that infuriated the German Left and even many in her own party. The two ladies seemed to get along quite well. Maybe they even tried their Russian on each other a bit, who knows. Perhaps the girls in the future also can figure out how to get things back on the right track for German-US relations. That would be no mean achievement.

Have a nice weekend.

Greetings, Michael

[cube]

racism & anti-semitism abound in the world.

America rules!

cube
http://cube47.blogspot.com/

[baldilocks]

Hope you retain some love for the umlauts.

:::hangs head in shame for my laziness:::

Thanks for the info about Ms. Merkel. I'll do my research, auf Deutsch natürlich. :-)

[Fernando]

Well, I'm usually a proud Spaniard, although not today. What happened in that game was despicable, a shameful show of pure racism.

I don't think that you are right about it being any different had they been Arabs. The context was soccer and the purpose was intimidation. As such, it worked just fine. The English side played well below its potential, was forced into uncharacteristic mistakes, and ended up losing the game. If England's stars had been of Arab or any other descent, the hooligans would have taunted them just as mercilessly because intimidation obviously works, and because cowards feel safe when they are part of a crowd.

[rick]

Well, the cries of "America bad racist ugly nation" just continue to get louder and louder. But an honest appraisal of the racial situation virtually anywhere in the world will find that this country is far, far ahead of the supposedly "enlightened" nations that expect us to look to them for guidance. Sheesh,. it just makes me sick.

We've come so far in such a short time. If we could just finally do away with the color issues - affirmative action and such crap - and just focus on individuals instead, we'd be nearly done with this crap. Sure, there'll always be some yahoos, somewhere, who hate any other race, or a particular race, but eventually they'll die out. Another generation and we just might be there, God willing.

[Allan]

There is an old saying "Everyone has to have someone to look down on" and there is some truth in it.

The less your book of life is filled with accomplishments, small and large, the more likely you are to depend on disrespecting and eventually hating others.

[sadeya]

Spaniards cannot be classified according to what happened. There are tensions between different types of people in any country and that being said, there are tensions between the Old conservative Spain and the new open more diverse Spain. But in any case, I suspect the hooligans that shouted those things do not fall into any such deliberate ideology - they were basically drunk people with no sense. What is surprising for us Americans is that they didn't fear the repurcussions whereas Americans would have. However, in the US, movies, teachers in schools, and everyday people have made openly racist statements for nearly all my life before the aftermath of 9/11. Iwhen I would tell them I am Muslim.

I know first hand how Americans have reacted to the Muslim religion because I grew up here as a Muslim. There was a point of time when Muslims, Arabs, South Asians were not even a minority. If something was said to us out of disgust, if someone made fun of us in front of millions on television, or if a movie protrayed us in a bad light, it was not even considered racism. In that way we were an invisible minority. People feared the repurcussion of racist statements of blacks more than of Arabs, the sand niggers, for many years. While I understand the fears and lack of information that Americans have had towards Arabs and Muslims, I mean to say that open racism toward Muslims has existed for a good number of decades, and nearly all my life. I almost got used to it and just thought to myself, well I'd be afraid if I didnt know anything about Islam too. In fact, racism has died down since the aftermath of 9/11 when many Muslims had to let their voice be heard for the first time. For the first time I am not invisible.