Although it may not fit the movie geek stereotype, I am a pretty big fan of certain sports. Soccer and UFC are the big ones, so ’tis the season to revel in World Cup glory. Belgium is my #1 team, due to my respect for Chelsea man Eden Hazard, and England comes in at #2 since I lived there for a few years.
As I scroll through all the World Cup related tweets I have sometimes come across ones where people either praise or denigrate a European team, like France, for all of the players who trace their origins to other countries. This focus doesn’t apply to the white players as much, it is usually focused on the players of colour since their skin is a salient contrast to many people’s preconceived notions of what a European should look like.
I found this interesting because some of these people might criticize diversity in their country, while also relying on immigrants, specifically immigrants of colour, if they want a chance to see “their country” hoist the cup. Which brings me to this tweet I came across.
As I scrolled through the comments, there was a lot of support instead of the usual rants about “snowflakes.” The support was a welcome change but of course it couldn’t be universal. There were also some “didn’t happen” tweets, by people whose clairvoyance makes it clear that this Twitter user is just “dividing us.” I don’t believe the tweet just because it exists, the internet is a reliable tool for spreading lies. I believe that this racist incident happened because I have been a subject of the same scrutiny. I have had experiences with people seeing my dark skin and thinking it is antithetical to Canadian identity. It is my experiences with this ignorance that make me reach out with empathy, instead of the desire to silence the discussion. I have no doubt that some of the people commenting with the “didn’t happen” excuse, also hold the same views as the group of white men who approached this brown Englishman. They take the tweet as a personal attack because it exposes them, so they seek to silence it.
Funny enough, the England national team has some players who these white men would say are “not English” because their skin is different. Do these men want to strip Lingard or Dele Alli’s citizenship and erase all the contributions these players made to the World Cup run? I doubt it. This breed of racist can support minorities if the minorities are serving them in a very salient and direct way, like trying to restore national football pride. The minorities working hard and trying to earn a living are parasites, but the ones on the 60 inch plasma screen in the bar are potential heroes. If these “not English” athletes mess up, then they just go back to being immigrants and parasites and Romelu Lukaku phrases this perfectly:
“When things were going well, I was reading newspapers articles and they were calling me Romelu Lukaku, the Belgian striker. When things weren’t going well, they were calling me Romelu Lukaku, the Belgian striker of Congolese descent.”
If a player isn’t performing well, I can understand giving them some criticism. However, players like Lukaku are often easy targets for racial abuse (whether things are going well or not). Swedish midfielder, Jimmy Durmaz (of Arabic descent), faced a flood of racist tweets after one of his errors cost Sweden a victory in the group stage and I wonder if the same flood of hate will follow for a good portion of France’s players, Lukaku, Lingard, Dele Alli etc. if they fail to reach the mountaintop?
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