Why is racism wrong?

Golcar CC · Bezalgo

Why is racism wrong?

El Presidente · Disco Brad

Because it is, I guess is the obvious answer. While I don't condone Herschell Gibbs' comments and support the ban as these things are necessary to keep racism out of the game, there are a couple of things to consider.

I am almost certain that Gibbs is not a racist. Having to grow up as a "coloured" man in South Africa under apartheid, he must certainly know that racism is a disaster and could not agree with it in any form.

His alleged comments were along the lines of "This isn't ****ing Pakistan, you know. Bunch of ****ing animals." To take either of these sentences on their own, one could argue that neither were racist comments. Together there is the inference that people of that nation are animals. I agree that as offence was clearly caused and as World sport is trying to erradicate this examples need to be made top show that it will not be tolerated. Therefore I stand 100% behind the ruling and the ban must take place.

Where the line becomes less clear to me is say where for example an English section of a football crowd might sing something along the lines of "Two World Wars and one World cup, doo dah, doo dah" at an England Germany match. This could also be argued as inferring that all Germans support the policies of those wartime "governments." Would the same stance be taken there as has been shown by the ICC?

Anyway in short racism is definitely wrong. One of the beauties of the game of cricket is that it is played by so many diverse peoples and it is a great leveller. Looking at current and recent England squads it is clearly bringing people of all ethnicities together in the name of sport. Panesar, Mahmood, Pietersen, Joyce, Geraint Jones for example all examples of people brought up with different ethnic backgrounds and uniting people as all representing "their favourite team" and being role models for all Englishmen.

I support the ban and it must continue to remove any vestiges of racism there is in the sport, though I would certainly not call Mr Gibbs a racist. He said what he said - heat of the moment or not. Offence was caused and he has to take the punishment for the game to continue being as non-racist as it can be.

-- Edited by El Presidente at 12:56, 2007-01-18

Golcar CC · Bezalgo

Yeah I tend to agree on the subject of Gibbs. Whether or not it was intended to be heard is irrelevant, it was racist behaviour and should be punished.

There has to be a distinction between punishing racist behaviour and labelling people as racists. But the behaviour must be punished, nevertheless.

It's also tough to draw lines between mocking other nations, groups and racism, particularly at the crowd level. Banter between Aussies and Poms is fine in a certain context, not acceptable in others... and the different sides may have different views on such appropriateness.

I think the Telford Vine article deals quite well with the issue. One thing is clear, the aim of the cricketing authorities has to be to develop an atmosphere where ignorantly denigrating people based on their race, creed, colour or other associations is (1) not accepted, and (2) - more difficult - understood as being based on ignorance about other people.

El Treasurorio · Senior Member

I'm not too sure what all the fuss is about. What do people expect when they add a completely uneducated and stupid fat (is that racist or fattist?) tart in a confined space with an educated person from a completely different culture and upbringing (insert "an" beforehand if necessary)? Indeed, I suspect that's the reason Ms. Goody was invited by the prodcuers onto the show.

There's nothing wrong with people not liking various cultures/accents/ways of life, as, after all, it is a free world where you have a right to such opinions. It is, however, totally wrong not to be able to understand or be aware of various cultures and their various attributes whether you like them or not. I believe that Ms. Goody isn't a racist, she just dislikes the Indian actress because of cultural differences.

What Ms. Goody should realise is that not everybody grows up f-ing and blinding, loses their virginity at 15, has a vocab of a couple of thousand words, never finished school or speaks English worse than, for example, an Indian who learned it as a second language. People will always be different and they will be liked or disliked for/regardless of such qualities. It's only when this "dislike" of others for their cultural differences induces the belief that members of other races (and thus cultures) are not as good as the members of your own. Although I dislike Ms. Goody for her (lack of) attributes, there's nothing wrong with people being a Ms. Goody.

I guess some racists should be called culturalists....

-- Edited by El Treasurorio at 13:55, 2007-01-18

Golcar CC · Bezalgo

El Treasurorio wrote:

I'm not too sure what all the fuss is about. What do people expect when they add a completely uneducated and stupid fat (is that racist or fattist?) tart in a confined space with an educated person from a completely different culture and upbringing (insert "an" beforehand if necessary)? Ineeed, I suspect that's the reason Ms. Goody was invited by the prodcuers onto the show.

Yeah I must admit I'm not sure whether the tabloid reaction falls under the Ricky Gervais "Ahh, now that's racist" category.

i.e. they've no great awareness of racism and related issues and why it may be wrong (like Jade Goody as you say), but the general level of awareness has reached a level that they know "you're not supposed to say that".

There's a significant tendency for tabloid journalism to be based on an outrage that is completely amoral and is just based on current public taste (hence the Sun's retraction after calling the cabinet a gay closet some years ago).

At least they're being shrill against racism, I suppose, but it's not going to stop the endless stream of articles about how Britain is being stolen piece by piece and moved to Poland, Romania, etc.etc

-- Edited by Golcar CC at 14:21, 2007-01-18

El Treasurorio · Senior Member

Golcar CC wrote:

At least their being shrill against racism, I suppose, but it's not going to stop the endless stream of articles about how Britain is being stolen piece by piece and moved to Poland, Romania, etc.etc

Your reference to Poland, Romania and other E.European EU countries highlights precisely my point about cultural awareness and racism. True, E.Europeans don't have the same money or fashion culture as in the UK, but that doesn't make them any less a people than those who live in the UK. In fact I think it's wonderful to get Polish plumbers to undercut their extortionate British counterparts and to give our builders sleepless nights with the prospects of hard-working Hungarians taking their jobs.

The interest in such articles stems from the Brit's fear of the aforementioned. It's no longer a cultural difference when your job and with it your welfare are at stake. The same goes for Ms. Goody with her fear of being exposed as an ugly, uneducated and stupid woman who only made it for such reasons and not for the more desired attributes that a successful, articulate and educated Indian beauty posesses.

As for the English chanting "2 World Wars and 1 World Cup", do we not realise that for two thirds of that statement we had the Americans and for one third that the Germans had the Italians? So, discounting our two thirds, I think it makes it 3-1 to the Hun

Angus · Veteran Member

As the only white player in 46 Montreal cricket teams, I can tell you racism sucks. For me, it means I come out of most net sessions covered in bruises. It means, although I'm the first to turn up, I'm the last to get a bat, at two minutes to one in the morning. It means I never get a bowl in games - even when the wicketkeeper and guy with a dislocated shoulder get to turn their arm over. And it means, after travelling for nearly two hours, because no teammate is prepared to give a lift, that I can be told I'm sitting out this one - an hour into a game - because they've accidentally brought too many players.

It feels ****.

I met one white Canadian who ran a cricket club here for ten years. He stopped when his own teammate said to him, 'I don't want you playing because you're white.'

El Presidente · Disco Brad

A week later and Jade Goody's star has waned spectacularly and Herschelle Gibbs' appeal has been dismissed. Clearly a positive sign that attempts are being made to stamp out racism wherever it raises it's ugly head.

Richie Benaud dismissed Gibb's complaint that the stump microphone should not have been live at the time by saying "It is precisely the same in the television commentary box for a television commentator. If you do not use the words, they do not get to air." He also stressed that no-one was of the belief that Herschelle Gibbs was in any way racist, but that the ban should stay.

Personally I think this is the right decision and it shows that cricket and its authorities will not allow it to take place on a cricket field or anywhere else associated with the sport. Good news in my book.

Luxury · Heading for toffee

What exactly was it that Gibbs said? Is it always racist to call people a "bunch of f****** animals", or only when they're not white?

El Presidente · Disco Brad

Unfortunately the bunch of animals line was connected to "Why don't you go back to ***king Pakistan" so there was an inference being made that being one led to being another.

Luxury · Heading for toffee

... and if the place had been Canada, or Wales? Would it still be racism. Calling a group of people from Pakistan a bunch of effing animals who should go back to Pakistan is offensive and unpleasant, bigoted perhaps, but is it racist? Can't Pakistanis behaving obnoxiously be told to "f*** off back to Pakistan" in the same way that half of Earls Court could be told to f*** off back to Oz? Or is it only ok to describe some people as animals? English football hooligans, for example.

brazo de natillas · King of the divan

If I were feeling articulate, I'd want to make a point about there being a difference between racism and xenophobia, and between racism and some kinds of cultural supremacism (not those involving a lack of respect for other people, but those involving a lack of respect for particular beliefs), though nearly all have in common that they're lazy and stupid.

I'd never say 'This isn't Australia, you know. Bunch of ****ing animals' without a wink, but if I were to say 'This isn't Pakistan, you know. Bunch of ****ing animals' without a wink, there'd likely be much more understood by it because of the very different historical relations between people from the culture I'm (at least partially) identified with and the culture Pakistanis are (at least partially) identified with.

The gnomic bit of me wants to say something like 'words only mean what they're understood to mean' but I'm not sure the rest of me agrees. The problem is the intention, rather than the words. If the intention is hurtful, it's wrong and, given that words are often all we have to go on, I can understand it's sometimes necessary for authorities to get all behaviourist and to start being seen to be doing something even when the intention is in doubt.

More pragmatically, any official acceptance of any suggestion that it's it's a white man's game is obviously bad for the game, given who plays it.

Ach. Too many fuggin brackets.

-- Edited by brazo de natillas at 23:56, 2007-01-25

-- Edited by brazo de natillas at 23:57, 2007-01-25

Golcar CC · Bezalgo

Luxury wrote:
... and if the place had been Canada, or Wales? Would it still be racism. Calling a group of people from Pakistan a bunch of effing animals who should go back to Pakistan is offensive and unpleasant, bigoted perhaps, but is it racist? Can't Pakistanis behaving obnoxiously be told to "f*** off back to Pakistan" in the same way that half of Earls Court could be told to f*** off back to Oz? Or is it only ok to describe some people as animals? English football hooligans, for example.

Those are good questions. Tony Blair and Anne Robinson were both subject to police investigation for comments made about the Welsh, which most people, I imagine in Wales too, may have felt was going too far.

Context is everything, and I'm sure that Pakistani supporters in the ground are residents of South Africa so that means his comments are not the same as for example Huddersfield fans saying f u ck off back to Bradford to Bradford fans but more like, let's say, white people in Yorkshire saying **** off back to Pakistan to people who were born in England, which is different.

Perhaps in 20 years time it will be different, but although it's daft to expect sport "stars" to set an example to the rest of the community, I think it's good in an international game like cricket, and particularly a society with a past like S. Africa's, for authorities to label specific behaviour as unacceptable, and to punish the behaviour.

As Richie Benaud says if you don't say it, it won't be picked up. None of us would make the same jokes or comments in an airport security zone (e.g. there's a bomb in my bag, or whatever) that we might elsewhere, and while Gibbs should be free to make whatever comments he wants in privacy, he should accept that a cricket field in an international game is a public place.

I reckon.

Muppet · Je suis l'état et l'état c'est moi

brazo de natillas wrote:
The problem is the intention, rather than the words. If the intention is hurtful, it's wrong...

I'm not sure I totally agree with that. I think it's a question of being sensitive to what can offend.
I don't believe it's acceptable to say "well I don't mean it offensively so I can say what I want". If you know that something is likely to cause offence, then you simply shouldn't say it (unless you are happy to face the consequences), rather than basing your approach on what you think ought to be offensive.

Essentially, you can't measure intention but you can measure effect, and only genuine ignorance about what is considered offensive (e.g. George Bush's injudicious reference to the "Pakis") would be a defence.

brazo de natillas · King of the divan

Muppet wrote:

I'm not sure I totally agree with that.

I think it's a question of being sensitive to what can offend.
I don't believe it's acceptable to say "well I don't mean it offensively so I can say what I want". If you know that something is likely to cause offence, then you simply shouldn't say it (unless you are happy to face the consequences), rather than basing your approach on what you think ought to be offensive.

Essentially, you can't measure intention but you can measure effect, and only genuine ignorance about what is considered offensive (e.g. George Bush's injudicious reference to the "Pakis") would be a defence.

I'm not sure I agree with it either, hence the ummhing and ahhing.

You can't measure intention but you can guess at intention if there's a pattern, or if it's a context you're very familiar with.

If anything, I think judging what is likely to be offensive is often even more difficult than judging intention, because context is so important, and unfamiliar contexts are so difficult to grasp. It's difficult to guess at the connotations of language to others.

There is, obviously, a difference between language you'd use knowingly to a friend from a different group and language which risks offending someone who doesn't know the original context. But I do have reservations about many potential uses of this excuse because of the ease with which they duck the deeply unpleasant norms of some social groups, and particularly of some workplaces.

Thinking about this, I can't help seeing David Brent.

El Presidente · Disco Brad

I think the fact that Richie Benaud has had the final say on the matter is a good choice. No one would dare question Richie Benaud - except maybe on wardrobe related matters. Richie knows everything and everybody loves him. He has spoken and we must listen to him.

El Treasurorio · Senior Member

El Presidente wrote:
Richie knows everything ......

I bet he hasn't the foggiest why he's so yellow.

Golcar CC · Bezalgo

El Treasurorio wrote:
El Presidente wrote:
Richie knows everything ......
I bet he hasn't the foggiest why he's so yellow.

Must you always take such a jaudiced view, Mr Treasurer?

El Treasurorio · Senior Member

Golcar CC wrote:
El Treasurorio wrote:
El Presidente wrote:
Richie knows everything ......
I bet he hasn't the foggiest why he's so yellow.

Must you always take such a jaudiced view, Mr Treasurer?

Another schpelling mischtake Mr. Golcar CC. Schurely all drinks are on you tonight!

Muppet · Je suis l'état et l'état c'est moi

El Treasurorio wrote:
Golcar CC wrote:
El Treasurorio wrote:
El Presidente wrote:
Richie knows everything ......
I bet he hasn't the foggiest why he's so yellow.

Must you always take such a jaudiced view, Mr Treasurer?
Another schpelling mischtake Mr. Golcar CC. Schurely all drinks are on you tonight!

Excellent. Mine's a Vudpeker.

El Presidente · Disco Brad

Muppet wrote:

Must you always take such a jaudiced view, Mr Treasurer?
Another schpelling mischtake Mr. Golcar CC. Schurely all drinks are on you tonight!

Excellent. Mine's a Vudpeker.

Gentlemen, Gentlemen. There are typos and comical mistakes by using the wrong word. Jaudiced is clearly a typing error and acceptable as such. However using know as no, as well as know as now is (possibly) careless and therefore as Mr Golcar's professional status deserves punishable by cheap shots.

As I am about to meet the good gentleman in one of the few bars that serves "Vudpecker" I may very well demand that he buys me one, for making the same error twice (after suffering at the hands of the spelling police the first time).

Incidentally, having escaped for "orthadox" mr Tres, I wouldn't start a war that you could not possibly win.

Date: Jan 26, 2007

El Presidente wrote:
Incidentally, having escaped for "orthadox" mr Tres, I wouldn't start a war that you could not possibly win.

One reason I didn't go into a job that would need my appalling English. Observant of you to have "bought" that point up!

Hang on, El Presidente and Director of English school, shouldn't that be "brought"?

El Presidente · Disco Brad

This story is still doing the rounds of the likes of Sky News.

With an exclusive interview with Big Brother winner Shilpa I just noticed this line "I've said this an innumerable number of times." Magnificent

Golcar CC · Bezalgo

El Presidente wrote:

This story is still doing the rounds of the likes of Sky News.

With an exclusive interview with Big Brother winner Shilpa I just noticed this line "I've said this an innumerable number of times." Magnificent

People forget how much Elvis wanted to be Dean Martin and they also occasionally miss clues passed out by Indian celebrities on the nature of mathematics and some of its more elusive, yet elegant, concepts. Shilpa's father is part of a long line of notable Indian mathematicians, and she may be nudging us towards further study of irrational numbers, or perhaps imaginary or complex numbers, one property of which is that cannot be ordered.

Sorry for going off-topic.

-- Edited by Golcar CC at 12:20, 2007-02-02

El Presidente · Disco Brad

People forget how much Elvis wanted to be Dean Martin and they also occasionally miss clues passed out by Indian celebrities on the nature of mathematics and some of its more elusive, yet elegant, concepts. Shilpa's father is part of a long line of notable Indian mathematicians, and she may be nudging us towards further study of irrational numbers, or perhaps imaginary or complex numbers, one property of which is that cannot be ordered.

Sorry for going off-topic.

I followed those links and did not understand a single word. Ouch.

brazo de natillas · King of the divan

Golcar CC wrote:
he may be nudging us towards further study of irrational numbers, or perhaps imaginary or complex numbers, one property of which is that cannot be ordered.

Or she could be alluding to the Aleph numbers. Mr President?

El Treasurorio · Senior Member

I know this is an old thread, but perhaps the resident Aussies can post something regarding this e-mail I received from an old Aussie acquaintance of mine:

Proud To Be A White Australian.
Someone finally said it.
How many are actually paying attention to this?

There are Aboriginals ,Torus Striate Islanders Kiwi Australians,
Lebanese Australians, Asian Australians, Arab Australians,

Boat People from all over the place.Etc. And then there are just
Australians.

You pass me on the street and sneer in my Direction.
You Call me " Australian Dog" "White boy," "Cracker," "Honkey,"
"Whitey," "Caveman" ... And that's OK.

But when I call you, Black Fellarr, Kike, Towel head,
Sand-******, Sheep Shager, Camel Jockey, Gook,

or Chink ... You call Me a racist.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence
Against you, So why are the Housing Estates the most

dangerous places to Live?

You have the United Arab's union, College Fund.
You have Invasion Day. You Have Yom Hashoah ,You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi.

If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) ...
We'd be racists. If we had a White Pride Day .. You would call us
Racists.
If we had White History Month .. We'd be racists.
If we had any organization for only whites to
"advance" OUR lives ... We'd be racists.

If we had a college fund that only gave white
Students scholarships ..... You know we'd be racists.
"White colleges" . THAT would be a racist college.

You can march for your race and rights. If we marched for our
Race and rights, You would call us racists.
You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and
<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />Orange, and you're Not afraid to announce
it.

But when we announce our White pride ......You call us racists.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when
a white police officer Shoots a Muslim gang member or beats up a Lebanese
Drug-dealer running From the law and posing a threat to society .
You call him a racist.

I am proud.
But, you call me a racist.

Why is it that only whites can be racists?

There is nothing improper about this e-mail.
Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on.

El Presidente · Disco Brad

****s, ****ers, ****s and idiots who can't spell. **** em! It's things like that which make me realise I'm quite happy living here. Not funny, not clever. **** off, racist scum.

-- Edited by El Presidente at 13:43, 2007-03-15

paichukka · ...Ding!

I'm proud to consider that email racist bilge.