Why Barcelona duo could lose their spot after Racism Row
When racism is running rampant around the world, figures of influence must go out of their way to show their fans the right way of living and respecting each other. Football and racism go hand in hand, there have been many incidents of racism in football, and the sport has tried its hardest to let fans and players know that this sort of behaviour is not normal, and that we as a society need to change.
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Nowadays, every match begins with a tribute to the Black Lives Matters movement however, this is not the first time the sport has taken an anti-racist or anti-discrimination stance. The no room for hate movement has been going on for a long time and players regularly share messages of love and acceptance. Although these acts of anti-bigotry should be saluted, the message is always formed from a western bias.
What the last sentence means is that the anti-racism and anti-discrimination messages are always focused around black people. This is due to the western history of slavery where the Americans and the Europeans kidnapped hordes of Africans and then forced them into labour. There is no doubt a history of systematic racism in the west; however, when the players say, “no to racism”, we should understand that it means no to any kind of racism, not just against Black folks.
Recently, there has been a rise in the number of hate crimes against Asians and for a large part of it, it’s going unnoticed. The media houses are not vigorously standing up for the rights of Asians and neither is the sports and entertainment sector. Thus, when a video was leaked of Ousmane Dembele and Antoine Griezmann, mocking a few Japanese people for the way they look and the language they speak in, at first it went unnoticed.
Later, as more and more people found out about the video, the players were hit with a ton of backlash and there have already been some consequences for their actions. Both the players have posted individual apologies online, and today we will be dissecting the whole controversy and see what occurred due to the two player’s insensitive comments.