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In some ways, it's simple: during an international soccer match tonight, Romanian match official calls on Romanian referee to eject a player whom he identified, in Romanian, as "the black one." Players leave in protest. UEFA vows to investigate. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/sports/soccer/champions-league-racial-abuse.html?smid=tw-share
Racism in soccer isn't new. But racism among Romanians isn't new either. And so, immediate reactions in Romania defend the game officials using the argument that the Romanian word they are heard saying, "negru," is identifying, rather than racist. So, a matter of efficiency.
What's missing from the argument is WHY it seems just fine for Romanians to identify people who have other helpful identifiers (names, shirt numbers) by their skin color or physical attributes instead. Efficiency is not an excuse. It reveals how you see and divide humanity.
And then there's this, weighing heavily in the air: in Sunday's parliamentary elections, 10% of the vote went to a new ethno-nationalist, anti-LGBTQIA+, misogynistic, anti-mask etc. party whose leader used to be the former leader of one of the Romanian national team’s "ultras."
"Ultras" are notoriously racist, everywhere. In Romania, anti-Roma chants are a staple of local games, and, this very year, they protested the hiring of a Portuguese-born player on grounds of “integrity, identity and symbolism." https://emerging-europe.com/from-the-editor/romanias-wake-up-call/
So many of the people who defend the Romanian game official do not see their reaction as problematic. By refusing to see how the players may have gotten offended, by refusing to hear how the Romanian word "negru," used in this context, resonates against history...
...by arguing that political correctness is a form of censorship perpetrated by minorities on sophisticated intellectuals, rather than a simple form of respect and courtesy for your fellow men — in other words, by engaging in a defensive rather than self-reflexive discourse...
...they perpetuate the climate that led the party that no one wants to be associated straight into the Parliament.
And that's pretty much all I know about soccer.
And that's pretty much all I know about soccer.
