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Racism and Uncle Urchin

JKiF

By JKiF
in St. Albans City Forum

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AFF

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Two quick points:

 

a). As to be expected, there is an eagerly awaited double page spread in the Daily Mail concerning Big Ron and the 'incident'. Ian Wright is quoted as being "absolutely disgusted" [at Ron's comments]. "Marcel isn't a lazy player at all".

 

B). There is an anecdote about Cyrille Regis who, allegedly, used to say "If you don't stop giving me stick, I'll buy a house next to you."

 

Now. Here's a couple of questions for you. Firstly I made the second part of Ian Wright's quote up. In truth, the quote is only that he was absolutely disgusted. Did I make a racist 'joke' by inventing the second part? Or was it just a joke? It wasn't that funny but did you laugh/smile? If so, does that make you a racist?

 

And for the second question: would Cyrille Regis be considered to have made a racist joke if he had said that today? If so, is he a racist?

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Claire! Newbie

Claire!

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Quote:
Return Of The Zeal said:
There's no way she'll have ever heard of Time Square, Thornsy!!

Talking of Yankland... the Zealster is a-travellin'!!



LOL!!!!! Oh I've heard of Time Square!!!!! I was trying to think where the Times was in Ney York!!!!!!!!

Where you thinking of going in Yankland?!!!!!!
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mdetaylor Newbie

mdetaylor

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See below

 

"The Times"

 

April 23, 2004

 

Here it is in black and white: Big Ron may be silly, but he's no racist

By Simon Barnes, Sports Writer of the Year

 

 

 

WHEN social historians come to write about the emergence of Britain as a multiracial society, they will have to come to terms with sport. Sport is the single most important force in the establishment of the society we live in: tolerant, if imperfectly so; accepting, if imperfectly so; understanding, if imperfectly so.

Most people, if asked to make a list of famous black Britons, would produce a list with a disproportionate number of athletes. This indicates two things: the still imperfect integration of non-white people in British life, and the crucial importance of sport in that continuing process.

 

 

 

Daley, Denise, Big Frank — these are people who need no surnames: icons of modern British life. There have been four non-white winners of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year: Daley Thompson in 1982, Fatima Whitbread in 1987, Linford Christie in 1993 and Lennox Lewis in 1999.

 

When Ruud Gullit became manager of Chelsea in a typically audacious move by Ken Bates, then the chairman, all Fleet Street wrote about how wonderful it was to have such a sexy polyglot polymath managing a British football club.

 

Nobody even mentioned that he was black. Everybody had forgotten. Gullit had genuinely eradicated the colour bar. When Nasser Hussain, born in Madras, became England cricket captain, nobody bothered to point out that he wouldn’t have passed the racial purity laws that once existed in South Africa . . . yet a few years before, most of English cricket was supporting apartheid South Africa. Time passes quickly, especially in sport.

 

Thierry Henry is the finest footballer playing in England, and no doubt Europe and the world as well. He is expected to get the players’ Player of the Year award for a second year running. Nobody has pointed out that this is a great achievement for a black man. His skin colour is nothing to remark on.

 

Britain has advanced a very long way in a very short time and it is sport that has taken us there. So, therefore, it is only logical to look back to the people who were instrumental in opening sport to black people and to salute them as heroes. Heroes not just of sport but of society, people who have made decisive contributions to the world we live in.

 

The process threw up many heroes, most notably the black pioneer athletes who battered down doors by bloody-mindedness, strength of will and serious ability. But not every door had to be battered. Some doors were opened willingly and the door-openers must take their place among the heroes of the modern society.

 

And it is the purpose of this column today to sing the praises of one of these, a curious individual who did more than most people to open doors. If we can stretch the chain of logic taut — but not quite to breaking point — we can call Ron Atkinson the father of the racially tolerant society.

 

Atkinson’s contribution to modern life was genuinely revolutionary. In 1978 he became manager of West Bromwich Albion, a club that had two black players, Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham, in the first team. The next year he bought a third, Brendon Batson.

 

An English side with three black men! It was unthinkable. The prejudice against black footballers went deeper than banana-throwing and monkey-chanting. Football insiders sincerely believed that black players (such as Pelé?) “had no heart”.

 

Still deeper was the prejudice that black players were incapable of leadership or responsibility. Black players were almost always wingers: fast, flashy, peripheral. They were never centre halves or playmakers or goalies. Atkinson was bold enough to build a team based around the power and industry and skill of his three black players.

 

They were nicknamed the Three Degrees, after the black singing group; a few years later the Middlesex cricket team had five black players and they were inevitably known as the Jackson Five. No one would think of employing such nicknames now. They betray the uneasiness white people felt about accepting non-whites, an uneasiness papered over with nervous, unfunny jokes, much as people do at a cocktail party when they don’t know each other.

 

The Three Degrees were an instant hit on Match of the Day: roll up, see the black footballers, they run like us, kick like us, tackle like us, yet — get this — their skins are a different colour.

 

Time and again, Atkinson pointed out that ability was all that mattered. “They could be yellow or purple and have two heads as long as they can play,” he would say. For years, this line was adapted by every manager who bought or selected a black player and parodied by every comic: I don’t care if he’s black or white or yellow with purple spots, if he can do a good job he’s in the team.

 

So if Tony Blair wants to reward those who built the better parts of the society he now oversees, he should make sure that Atkinson is officially honoured in the next list: Arise Sir Ron, knight of the new society, hero of the fight against racism, a man who staked his job and his reputation on the belief that black folk are as good as white folk.

 

If that isn’t worth celebrating, I don’t know what is. It’s all very well being a great footballer, but somebody’s got to pick you. Atkinson picked three black men and the decision played a big part in the changing of a society. His triple selection was not just a symptom of changing times, it was an active intervention into the processes of history.

 

For a tolerant, multiracial society, we need to thank Atkinson more than just about anybody. For sport brought about the changes more than any other area, football more than any other sport, and Atkinson more than any other man in football. Without doubt, then, we have to accept him as a man who played an important part in changing history. All of which makes his gaffe this week so unfortunate. He was punditing for ITV for the AS Monaco-Chelsea game and, thinking that the microphones were switched off, he remarked that Marcel Desailly was “a f***ing lazy big [***!!***]”.

 

As a result, he has resigned from the pundit’s job (estimated salary £150,000-£200,000 a year) and has become a by-word for bigotry and racism. His apologies have been heartfelt and prolonged (“I must have rocks for brains”) but everybody, it seems, agrees. He unquestionably said it, so unquestionably he has to go.

 

It seems that the appearance of racism is worse than racism itself. Atkinson is not, as I trust I have established, a racist. But Atkinson is, as he has established himself, a bloody fool. It is professional good sense for anyone in the public eye to assume that all microphones are always on. This is doubly the case if you have been caught that way before. Atkinson made similar unguarded comments to a live microphone during an England-Cameroon game 13 years ago. In this more recent instance, Atkinson found an opprobrious term rolling nicely off the tongue. No doubt he was, as usual, hamming up the part of Big Ron. God, we simply must play the character.

 

Well, he said [***!!***], and [***!!***] is now considered an ultimately unacceptable word. Those are the rules in public life and Atkinson broke the rule and nobody questions that he has to go. He has become unacceptable. The Guardian, which always likes to seem whiter than white, has sacked him as a columnist.

 

The word has caused genuine offence and an awful lot of whipped-up and factitious offence as well. I don’t think Atkinson comes out of it with any credit whatsoever; bloody fool for using the word and double-bloody fool for using it around a loaded microphone.

 

Our society is so tolerant these days that it will not tolerate a person who uses the language of intolerance. Atkinson has made himself unacceptable and must accept the consequences. He does so with a full heart and a hanging head. He is “devastated and very sorry”. So he should be.

 

But bloody fools and racists are not always the same thing. As Atkinson goes out of public life for using one of the few taboo words left in the English language, let us admire him for what he is.

 

He was a leader of the fight against racism, a founding father of the still imperfect society of tolerance, a man who played a noble part in the changes of British life. He is a hero of our times and all of us — black, white or yellow with purple spots — owe him a debt of gratitude.

 

 

DID I JUST SAY THAT? COMMENTATORS WHO WERE LOST FOR WORDS

 

RON ATKINSON’S comments about Marcel Desailly were the latest in a history of gaffes. During the 1990 World Cup he was reprimanded for remarks about a Cameroon defender made on air and compounded the error in a half-time conversation that, as in the most recent incident, continued to be broadcast abroad.

 

In the half-time break during the Champions League tie between AS Roma and Arsenal in November 2002, he offered the following observation about Francesco Totti: “He actually looks a little twat, that Totti. I haven’t been a big fan. Are there any sandwiches? I’m starving.” And when Steve McManaman held aloft the European Cup after Real Madrid defeated Valencia in 2001, he opined: “You won’t see that again now that the Scouser’s got it.”

 

Where Atkinson led, plenty have followed . . .

 

JOHN MOTSON, the football commentator, suggested in January 1998 that he found it difficult telling black players apart. Asked on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sportsweek if there were players who looked alike, Motson said: “There are teams where you have got players who, from a distance, look almost identical. And, of course, with more black players coming into the game, they would not mind me saying that that can be very confusing.” He escaped censure.

 

 

RUSH LIMBAUGH last year resigned from ESPN’s preview show, Sunday NFL Countdown, after adverse reactions to remarks he had made that had racial overtones. Limbaugh, a right-wing radio presenter, had been added to the show to “express opinion and spark debate” and hence drive up ratings, but caused dismay when he claimed that the importance of Donovan McNabb, an outstanding quarterback, to his team, the Philadelphia Eagles, had been overrated by a liberal sports media keen to see black players achieve.

 

A BBC Derby sports commentator was forced publicly to apologise when commentating on the Nationwide League first division match between Leicester City and Derby County three days after the September 11 tragedy in 2001. GRAHAM RICHARDS, who was also a magistrate in Derbyshire, suggested that Brian Deane, then a Leicester forward, had “gone down like the twin towers, only less spectacularly”.

 

 

 

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YB941 5thD EFM ~soul~ Newbie

YB941 5thD EFM ~soul~

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We're getting return flights to either San Fran or Vegas, then working our way about the west and mid-west with a greyhound pass, booking hotels etc. when we get there.

 

Wanna go ASAP - Mrs Z is trying to book off a couple of weeks in mid-May, but I think we may have to settle for the Summer.

 

I'll bring you back a t-shirt with the Stars & Stripes on, mate!!

 

 

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