Double Standards

Racism is never black and white. It's the watery colors of human weakness: blinkered equivocation, fear of the unknown, insane logic, tribal self-righteousness that sees only wrongs done against you, the sick chameleon of different voices for different audiences, beating the drum more loudly when sensing support from the rats coming crawling out from the dark corners, glib "jokes," the sniggers of tribal bonding, and the weak, silent consent of the ones who should know better.

After their great work last week in attempting to apologize to Juventus fans for the Heysel Stadium disaster in which 39 Juventus fans lost their lives, the tribe over at Red and White Kop (RAWK) let themselves down badly yesterday. And they don't even know.

It started from nothing. One forum member created a thread wondering why local rivals Everton were producing quality young players but Liverpool were not. A completely innocuous thread.

Except the forum member's username was Chinese Red.

The thread continued with some long-term members informatively explaining naiveties in Chinese Red's thinking about the youth development system. That's why I read RAWK: there's a wealth of well-informed people.

Then enter Spartacus. Spartacus is RAWK staff, so you'd expect her to be one of the well-informed. Her forum tagline is "I dragged Rafa into the bar" (Rafa being Liverpool's Spanish manager Rafael Benitez) and she's posted over 10,000 times. She's a forum heavyweight. As RAWK staff, she was partly responsible for creating the forum guidelines, which don't include warnings about racism (they should), but at least ask people not to make overt personal attacks on other members.

She must have forgotten the guidelines, because her comment is clearly an overt personal attack.

"Local players and local fans only - that's what we need, where are you from Chinese Red?"

When is a question not a question, you ask? And if so, why put it in question form?

Chinese Red, to his/her credit, sidesteps the nasty ad hominem and returns to the substance of the post, adding "so who cares where I'm from?" at the end.

But the Pied Piper of local ignorance has already started to play, and is becoming more and more confident in the sound of her own ugly tune.

Her response is filled with the false bravado of the ignorant:

"Me, local players and local fans. So you're from?¡É

And out come the rats. The jokes begin, Spartacus leading the way. Maybe Chinese Red should move his family over to Liverpool and get them a job in the local chippy, she suggests.

Because we all know, all Chinese people only work in Chinese take-aways and chip shops. Just like all Pakistanis run corner shops, all Irish are drunks and all Liverpudlians are thieves. Oh, wait, can't say that last one. It might offend Spartacus.

The sniggering begins. Some of the other RAWK staff post on the thread, none of them saying anything about the attack on Chinese Red.

Then, though it hardly seems possible, it gets even more disgusting. An Australian, obviously a friend of Spartacus, tries to curry favour with the racist with a "But what about me?"

Her response is predictable.

"Local people and people from down under—that's about it."

This is the "I hate all foreigners...but you're not a foreigner, you're my friend" school of xenophobia. We see that one a lot in Japan.

All true racism comes in shades. The more different the race, the worse they are. We all know that. We should know when Spartacus says she wants local fans only, she doesn't mean she doesn't want Australian fans. No, no. Of course not. And she certainly doesn't have anything against Spanish involvement in Liverpool FC. Rafa is the saviour, don't you know? In fact, when you think about it, Liverpool's successful teams have always contained at least as many non-locals as locals. No, why can't you understand the logic? It's simple. She just means those dirty Chinks, coming around trying to sound intelligent on her forum.

Thanks Spartacus. Have a good time in Turin, and if Liverpool fans are attacked over there, you should be able to find it in yourself to understand why.

Posted by Setsunai at April 12, 2005 12:50 PM | TrackBack