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I was pondering several unrelated things today, and my mind wandered onto the recent scandals in football (in the UK) over a few recent reports of racism in football - in particular, the 'John Terry' incident. For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, John Terry (footballer - plays for Chelsea and England) was caught by an anonymous 3rd party shouting a "racist remark" to a player on the opposing team. The person who reported it didn't hear it - they saw it (lip read) from the TV footage I believe. The player of whom the remark was made (Anton Ferdinand) claimed not to have heard the remark, but the incident is currently under some form of official investigation by the Football Association and (I believe) the police.

I found the video footage through a google search (John Terry racist I think came up with the goods) as I was intrigued to see what had caused such a stir. It appears he said 'black ', and even though I can't lipread the video footage looks very convincing. Especially when John Terry subsequently claimed he said 'Did you think I called you a black ?'. I don't believe John Terry said 'Did you think I called you', because it looks like he said 'ing' on the video. Whatever he said, it was incredibly rude and I can see why people could be offended by it.

There have been a couple of other alleged racist incidents recently too, which have led to the president of FIFA appearing to put his foot in his mouth after attempting to dismiss the claims that racism isn't prevalent in Football:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15757165.stm

The media (in the UK at least) are jumping on this probably because they want to try to make Blatter resign. Anyway, his comments made something potentially controversial click in my mind regarding the John Terry incident. To me, racism is where someone is singled as a direct result of their race and as a result is discriminated against based on their colour, and this type of behaviour is (IMO) certainly wrong. Having said that, I believe that there is a distinct difference between racism and just shouting abuse, and I would argue that what John Terry said was not racist but purely abusive. For it to be racist, I believe there would need to be evidence that the motivation for the abuse was racial, i.e. had Anton Ferdinand been white, John Terry would not have shouted abuse at him. The fact that the abuse followed a tackle suggests to me that the abuse was motivated by an action rather than someone being of a particular race.

I'm aware this is probably a controversial view, but to further my case I would encourage people to consider a few other, similar scenarios. For example, if John Terry had said (in the context of where he said 'black ') 'you Fat ' to a fat person, or 'you goth ' to a goth, that could have been offensive to the person involved but no disciplinary action would've been taken following the match, and the police would certainly not have got involved. Furthermore, the offensive word is the same, censored word in all three examples. The only difference is the adjective used to describe the person, and hence I am in agreement with Sepp Blatter that this type of behaviour SHOULD just be settled with a handshake as any other incident where one party insulted another party on the football field should be. Overall, I have come to the conclusion that this incident has in fact highlighted society's hyper-sensitivity to race, rather than football's continuing problem with racism. But I expect (and hope) that most people would disagree, so let the debating commence!



A similar fuss was made over a comment made by Tiger Woods' former caddie at some award ceremony or other. I feel the same way about that too - not racist IMO, but potentially insulting because the caddie called Tiger an a-hole.