I also feel that the whole England squad should have walked off the pitch. But the suggestions mentioned sound feasible, but will they ever happen? I hope so.

I think they should have walked too. It always brings me back to when Cantona kicked that Combat 18 thug who had come down to the front of the stand to insult him for his Frenchness. At the time, I thought Cantona was completely nuts to do that, and he was really, but at the same time it at least broke the false reality of sports whereby "fans" think it is okay to viciously abuse sports players just because they are sports players. I'd love to ask Cantona how much he regrets what he did.

And now its hitting the headlines AGAIN with Dwight Yorke getting it from a so-called Blackburn fan yesterday. Skysports clearly show this guy giving it loads to Yorke who appraoched him and it seems told him him to cut it out. The "fan" then started it over again with a mate of his seemingly joining in. Officials claim he was ejected but it really is unbelievable in todays modern world that this type of behaviour exists. Did it ever go away? Have we convinced ourselves that we (as a people) are not racist? Why is it apparently raising its ugly head again?

One of the sadder sides (and there are many) is the Spanish coaches refusal to condemn the whole saga. A manager of any national side has many responsibilities but surely common decency would lead this man to wholeheartedly set his stall out and issue a damning warning to the aggressors.

Is there a lack of ethnic minorities in Spain? What (aside from complete lack of education/decency) does their attitude imply?

Anyway I'm rambling but its hard to put thoughts into words with this issue.

It's an ugly issue indeed. Media reaction has rightfully been strong yet I feel the tabloids delight in criticizing the Spanish has an uneasy edge with it since it is they who are often the worst offenders of racial sterotyping.

I also feel uneasy with the UK football tv commentators condemnation of the event. I remember as a kid in the 80s watching live games when monkey chants were commonplace. It was rare to hear the commentator even mention the sounds let alone speak out against them. A comment from John Barnes was interesting when he said that just because racists keep their mouths shut at UK football stadiums for 90 minutes doesn't mean racism has gone from the game.

Or you take the lead of the Chinese authorities...at the final of the recent Asian Cup between China and Japan - where feelings ran deeper and longer than a Mao march through the countryside - the Stadium PA would kick into gear every time the Chinese fans were becoming unruly. The fans were jeering the Japanese anthem and the PA drowned out the boos with a really really loud siren sound that quite likely saw the evacuation of nearby buildings - the crowd responded and the PA fought back (a pattern that continued throughout the match) until the only recourse was to say bugger this, we're gonna burn flags instead...

I wonder if part of the problem lies in the very nature of competitve sports, especially on such grand scales as football games, where thousands of people actively set themselves against another group. Finding things you don't like about the other side is part of the whole culture, and it is a rather easy step to ranting about the opposite team to denigrating their ethnic groups. It's all about "us" and "them", and if you think about it, cheering your own team over another by using insulting terms for them is actually the same thing as racism. It just doesn't seem that way when you are denigrating people who are ethnically the same as you are.

Mick: I think it's down to the crowd mentality and the false concept that you can say what you like to sports players as if they aren't real. Most of the people doing it wouldn't do it if they were on their own or if they thought the sportsplayer was going to do what Yorke (or Cantona) did and confront them.

Scott: Great story of prevention. They would have needed some pretty quick photoshopping to hide the flag-burning, though.

Butuki: They are similar, yes, and the line is fine, but there's a bit of a gap between leveling insults at a member of another team for say cheating and abusing a member of another team based purely on the colour of his skin.

Pat: Barnes has a point but it isn't reason not to stop the racism inside the stadia. Prevention isn't better than complete cure but it's better than nothing. Agree with you about the English media too.

I disagree that the line is fine. Insulting someone over their weight, their extra-marital affairs, their ear size etc does not carry with it the sheer scale of abuse both contemporary and historically that racist comments do.

Just on the original post and suggested sanctions, I'd go along with making offending countries play behind closed doors, and deduct points or eliminate from competition altogether for repeat offenders. The loss of revenue would certainly be an incentive for the authorities in those countries to take effective preventitive action.
Of course eliminatig racism from stadia doesn't make a dent in a prevalent racism in wider society. But football can only do what it can in it's powers and it would appear in England they have managed to change the culture over the past 20 years, from the chanting Pat referred to being commonplace, to very isolated incidents like the Yorke one becoming high profile.
So I think it's possible to regulate that sort of behaviour in controlled environments like a football stadium, and punish offending individuals and FAs, get's a little trickier to control once you get outside!

Hmmm, as someone who has all my life been on the receiving end of racist comments, including being held up at gunpoint in the Boston and told to "Get the f**k out of our country you goddamn Arab!" (there isn't an ounce of Arab blood in me... I am German/ Filipino/ Black American/ Chinese), had a close Jewish friend get out of a train here in Japan when she found out I was part German, had three squad cars surround me and my brother while we were walking on a street in LA, throw us up against the hood and interrogate us for three hours for being "Latinos" in a white neighborhood, and in Japan being taken into custody by the police in Shizuoka for "looking like a Pakistani thief" (and these are just a few of the things I've seen and experienced personally), I do think I know a thing or two about what racial comments can do to you and what their significance is in history (when you're part black you just can't ignore it, especially when your relatives have things like people tell them to move to the back of the bus or other people take pock shots at them). And I do think I know the subtle distinction between racist comments and harmless comments about frivolous concerns. What I was talking about at the football games was the brutal and very violent attitudes of fans who support their teams to such an extent that they will attack other people simply for being from other teams. You've all heard and seen peole like that. The fear I feel from violent fans and the look in their eyes is no different from what I've felt and seen in every racist commenter or brutalizer I've come across. Just like racists tend to be quiet on the trains when they are alone, fans open their mouths and let their fists fly when they are in a group. I think the stimulous all arises from the same basic idea: "Us and them".

I think it is easy for people to shun the concept of their holding racist-like attitudes within themselves, but that is where part of the problem lies. Prejudice is prejudice no matter where it comes from. Racism is no worse or better than sexism which no worse or better than homophobia which is no worse or better than holding disdain for a fat person. We all have it. including me, whether we recognize it or not. Racism is usually not loud and visible, either; just like sexism it can often come across as amiable and insidious.

Let me defuse this. Reductionism is fine for suggesting we're all capable of racism, sexism etc. I agree with you completely there Butuki and that's why I say the line is fine. But the danger with reducing in this way is that it can open the door to equivocation (of the "a bit of racism isn¡Çt any worse than anything else" variety), which I think is very wrong, especially in the specific context we're talking about here—football. I think that's what Pat is picking up on. The history he's talking about is the history of football crowd behaviour, on which you'd be the first to admit, Butuki, that you're not an expert. I sense one more thing in your comment. As the only non-football freak commenting on this post (a brave person), are you suggesting team sports, by their very "us and them" nature, are detrimental (and savage)? Because if you are, it's an interesting area to cover.

But anyway, the focus of this discussion, as Speedy says, has to be very narrow, and that focus is what football can do about the problems it currently has in its stadia.

Well, I'm most definitely not a football freak and defintely not an expert, most certainly not of British football, I'll be the first to admit, but I do watch football and I used to play it in high school. As a German I used to watch German teams, but with a Brazilian wife I've definitely become a traitor and fallen for Brazilian-style football. So, though I wouldn't go out of my way to subscribe to cable TV to watch football, I do watch it. Just don't ask me to name any one or discuss scores with you. For competitive sports I much prefer fencing (which I did for eight years in college and might take up again), the marathon, bicycle racing, and ultimate frisbee.

As to what I think about the "us and them" idea in competitive sports... well, I don't think it is coincidence that people use martial and war-like terms to talk about sports, especially team sports. The whole culture behind sports developed straight out of our warrior and military past. I think that is not coincidental either.

I'm not saying that sports are a bad thing, however. In fact, one reason I think that martial terms are used and why teams act like soldiers (to the extent of wearing uniforms) is because national team sports allow people to direct the pent up energy and need for identifying with a group (a very natural thing for us apes) that in past were shunted into numerous wars. By diffusing that energy (and one reason that I think so many men need sports so much... much more than women) wars are avoided and peace and prosperity prevail. A very intelligent and wise reaction to human nature.

The problem arises when the feelings that are stoked in groups like the Hooligans go beyond the ability of people to control them; the old war-like energies take over. That is why I say that racism and sexism and other isms all work from the "us and them" idea; much as we like to believe we are "higher" than other animals, the truth is we are still animals and really don't think any differently from any other territorial beast. That is also why I say that racism is not, in itself, inherently wrong... racism practiced by a hermit living on a desert island is nothing but mumbling. It is an animal emotion that all animals have. It is when it becomes destructive that it ceases to have a place in society, any society, even that of gorillas, wild dogs, and ants. If we can understand it this way and learn to overcome it by recognizing that it is but an uneducated territorial response, I think we can come a long way to crossing bridges and stop seeing people in categories, even racists. I don't think we can understand how to solve a problem if we can't answer what it is, how it is formed, and why. Prejudices are not difficult reactions to understand...it is getting past them that is difficult. I mean people just don't become racists because one day they decided that blacks are somehow subhuman... something in their life reinforced that old territorial response.

And competitive sports, in its very nature, encourages the territorial response. Too much and things like racism will emerge.

I propose that one way to diffuse this is to emphasize, during advertisement of games and rooting for teams, the merits of the opposite teams. Spend more time talking not just about one's own team, but also the other. Humanize the faces of the players more. I wonder how much the Spanish spectators would have dehumanized the black players if those players had been more real to them?

Sounds like the way the American media portrays the Arabs, doesn't it?

Another point to think about. The racism is sometimes directed at the home teams own players. In the case of French fans hurling racial abuse at their own black players.

Butuki:
I found it interesting to read an opinion from a self-confessed non "football-freak". It is true that partisanship to one's team can certainly blind one to way the game and its supporters are viewed from the outside. And when I use the term outside I mean those who are perhaps less knowledgeable about football and its traditions.

Part of football is about having a dislike about the opposition. This can take the form of chanting at the opposition's fans, always looking out for their result and being happy when they lose etc etc. I agree with you that football is a tribal activity and those that need such "guidance" in their lives will happily join in a herd like mentality. And I also agree with you that an us or them attitude is ultimately destructive when used violently. I still think that using racism, even if used as violently and as aggressively as other forms of condemnation, still brings with it an association to dark periods in history. I don¡Çt think there is a subtle difference at all, in this football context, between this and shouting at an overweight or ugly player. By suggesting that all forms of abuse are on the same level, the only difference being the amount of violence or verbal abuse used, allows those who prefer to partake in casual racism (ie, recent media comments by prominent British media people) to continue with such views. When questioned the response has often been comments like: "I have black friends", "half of my team was black" etc etc.

Regarding one of your other points - trying to get to know the opposition a bit better and therefore dehumanize would be unlikely to work. Football, and by extension sport, thrives on the desire to win. This can be taken to extremes when supporters see that fighting and abusing each other is a natural extension. In this overmediatised world fans know a fair bit about the opposition. And the aspects that irritate them will be ignored if the player then moved to their own team. An irritating, dirty player then becomes their own tenacious and hard-tackling player.

Speedy:
I agree too that penalties need to be harsh and that a loss of points would be the best solution, especially if it resulted in the country in question losing out on qualification for a World or European cup.

All of you make very good points. I am certainly not going to push any further arguments on this since I really haven't been part of the football culture and know very little about things that have happened. I couldn't even discuss more in-depth about such things about teams making racist comments about their own members, since I didn't even know that it still happens in this day and age until your earlier comments today.

Pat, I can't argue with you about the dark history of racism. You're definitely right about that. Maybe my only further questions might be, "What brought on racism and slavery in the first place? If, as people have shown at some point, people recognized that these concepts were wrong, why didn't they recognize it from the beginning? Or had they, all along? If so, what is it, in us, that conjures up such dark behavior? And how does this mysterious thing relate to us today?"

I'm a rather weird-guy guy anyway. Have never really found the fascination with rooting for teams ( perhaps because of my background, in which I've never identified with any country? Dunno... ) and get quickly bored all the "we won, we are great" talk. I guess winning has never been important to me. Though I do love watching really skillful play. It's amazing to see what athletes can do.

Butuki: Thanks for your input. It's good to get the perspective of an NFF (we may as well abbreviate it by this stage) in the football discussions.

Roland: I've witnessed what you're talking about first hand. In 1995 I was studying in Bordeaux, and used to go watch the local football team, which contained at the time Zidane, Lizarazu and Dugarry incidentally, but at that time Bordeaux had a kind of joke supersub of the Igor Biscan variety. Only thing was he was black. And as well as all the ridicule when he came on that the likes of Biscan might face from people with the same skin colour as him, I'm sure he also got the monkey hoots. I remember even back then thinking it was much worse in France than I'd seen elsewhere.