I figured my sour note on Aragonés would bring along some line-fudging,
and I was right. A commenter said:
Hell, Spain and Europe are full of racist people, sure, but Aragonés
is not one of them. Ask Samuel Etoo or any of the black players he had
under his orders.
Calling someone "black" is being racist as much as calling someone
"blonde" is being racist, and Aragonés said just that to Henry, black.
I understand where he's coming from, but unfortunately I think that like
a lot of discussion of racism, whether by alleged victims or alleged
perpetrators of the practice, it looks for unequivocal boundaries at
the expense of common sense.
First of all my "lazy, thick nigger" bit came from Ron Atkinson, not
Aragonés (remember I admitted I had no idea what the latter was saying
during the sideline blow-up). In that celebrated case (I couldn't find
the whole brouhaha all well explained in one place, but here's Wikipedia
FWIW), the TV analyst abused
Desailly with the unfortunate phrase when he thought he was off-air. My
whole sour bit of dialogue was just one of those "eternal braids of
football intrigue" I mentioned. Aragonés had popped off in similar
fashion on Henry, probably when he thought no one else would hear him,
and here he was playing France, their eternal nemesis, and land of
Desailly-the-national-football hero. But do you know one of the things
Atkinson said to claim his indiscretion didn't make him a racist?
He pointed out that he as a manager (of West Bromwich Albion) was one
of the first to employ black players, and that he'd always treated those
players well. That rather puts ironic paid to the first defense of
Aragonés in the above quote.
It brings me to mind of my cousin, now about to graduate from Med school
in London. He was a brilliant footballer in high school. His team went
so far in a national youth tournament as to play their finals at Wembley
stadium. By his account, his coaches were quite kind to him, as far as
football went, but had no patience for his academic ambitions. In
effect they told him that a black kid like he was much better off
pursuing his football talent than giving himself airs about becoming a
doctor. Even his teachers exhorted him towards professional football.
I'd readily admit those coaches and teachers were just offering kindly
advice, but I expect it doesn't take a lot of pondering to realize that
their attitudes were also racist. From what I hear, such cases are very
common in England. Luckily for my cousin, his parents, typical
immigrants, raised him to think better of exclusively pursuing anything
that didn't come with a double-or-triple-barrel degree.
So back to Atkinson and Aragonés. They've probably in practice helped
more black players than they've abused. Are they racists? That's a
ridiculous question. You can't do a 10-billion person line-up and file
into neat boxes who is or who is not a racist. We've all done and said
racist things because discrimination is written into our very nature as
a defense mechanism. It's actually a miracle of civilization (not only
European civilization, BTW) that we are able to mingle together as much
as we do with so little incident, relatively.
Movies such as Monsters Ball and
Crash like to try stirring us up
with the deep insight: "look: that terrible racist is really just human
after all". I just roll my eyes every time. Is anyone under any
deluded impression that persistent racists are some species apart? On the other
extreme a movie like A Time to
Kill sets up a scene where an
audience is supposed to cheer that a KKK kook has been set on fire. The
(mostly white) movie audience with whom I saw the movie happily
obliged. I'll never forget that moment. I was astonished. I guess
it's quotidian to assume that membership in the KKK warrants summary
immolation? That's supposed to be better than the idea that interracial
sex warrants lynching? In that movie theater it was obvious to me that those same unthinking passions (typically of a manipulated mob) is the instrument of genocide as surely as of comic book social justice.
Anyway, my point is that Aragonés may be a perfectly fine fellow, but
that the Henry episode showed him in a very foul light, and his better
nature should have prompted more contrition than he's ever shown. And
never mind Aragonés. What of the Spanish FA? They know they are facing
a deluge of football-related racism (a lot of it of the truly violent
and terrifying sort, not just salty language from old men), and so how
could their response be such a ludicrous slap on Aragonés' wrist?
Aragonés' comment was be deeply offensive to some, and probably
constituted incitement of some others, and the official response was far
worse than the original offense. Speaking of incitement, I like many
others believe that the Aragonés incident helped fuel the despicable
treatment of black English players by the host Spanish crowd in a
"friendly" a little while later (of course that's why I brought up Shaun
Wright-Phillips, who was subjected to particular abuse). This shows how
the wrong words in the wrong mouth can incite far worse than casual
insult. Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe has atrocious racist incidents
every week, such that it has become a commonplace. And the respective
official associations have made it a routine to fine clubs $1000 here
and there in supposed punishment. This is the real problem, not that
Aragonés had a moment of poor judgment.
There is plenty of racism in England, but after some particular horrors
in the 80s, I give the English FA, under--Oh the irony--huge pressure from Thatcher's
government, much credit for cracking down with ruthless efficiency on
the problem. For this reason, football is one of the areas where the
English can be more confident of not encountering serious racism. There
is precious little will to tackle the problem as thoroughly in too many
other European countries. The problem goes all the way up to FIFA (have
I mentioned how much I hate FIFA?). Just before the World Cup Sepp
Blatter led a grandiose resolution that FIFA must use the power of football to "help make the world a
better place". Of course taking action in some of the worse places is a
bit too much of a reach beyond mere proclamation. In 2004 Blatter's
response to the abuse of the English players in Spain was that he
wouldn't have thought ill of the English team had they abandoned the
game. Gee thanks sir. You're such a help. What of actually putting
pressure on the Spanish FA to clean up its act? FIFA likes to argue in
such instances that they're helpless to interfere in the internal
concerns of a national FA. Right. But Blatter now has the bit in his
teeth to prevail upon the FA to reduce the Premiership from 20 to 18
teams. Oh that's not interference in an national FA's matters.
Whatever makes me think that?
And so I'll move to maybe the most interesting point in my
correspondent's argument--that Aragonés just called Henry a "black
shit". I think the implication meant is that so abusing a person is not
racist. I've heard reasoning like this before, and again I wonder
what's happened to common sense. The fact that calling someone "black"
and calling someone a "shit" separately could possibly not be considered
racist does not suddenly put a halo on the epithet "black shit". When
Aragonés says "don't let that black shit beat you" it is precisely as
racist as if he'd said "don't let that nigger beat you". Context is
more important than precise words will ever be. Even if you've only
seen what Aragonés says in print, the impact of the words should be
obvious. If you actually see the tape, it's even more chilling. Sure,
Aragonés is just trying to do what he can to get into Reyes' head.
After all Reyes is Henry's club team-mate, and the coach has to make it
clear to him that with the national strip on Henry is now the enemy. I
get that. But in using the words he did, Aragonés was obviously trying
to trigger a visceral response in Reyes to Henry's color. If Henry had
been white he wouldn't have said "don't let that white shit beat you",
because he wouldn't have expected the fact that Henry was white to have
meant anything to Reyes. Explanations that Aragonés was just using
salty language to motivate are so self-servingly simplistic that I think
they're disingenuous.
[Uche Ogbuji]
As a sort of epilogue to the series, I posted an interview with award winning Nigerian-American novelist Nnedi Okorafor, whose African themed fantasy and science fiction stories have always delighted me. She was a good college friend of Chimezie, whom I met a few times while visiting my brother in University. He brought my attention to Zahrah the Windseeker, and I was hooked, and I'm hardly alone in that. Her work has been hoovering up prizes and acclaim, and she is incubating some very exciting projects in multiple media. In the interview I ask her primarily about the "bubbling calabash of language stew" in her latest novel "Who Fears Death." I also include a couple of gorgeous illustrations related to Nnedi's work, including the cover of Zahrah, and a pair of drawings by Ross Campbell, to whose work I was just introduced while preparing this interview. I'm really struck by Campbell's skill and feeling drawing ethnically diverse characters.It has been a busy period following the birth of my daughter, with many exciting developments at work, a scare for my father's health (to which Chimezie has alluded), a more hectic than expected holiday period, and much more. I'm always grounded by my family, but it was very nice to be further grounded by so much contemplation of the past, present and future of that paragon of complexity, my native Nigeria.
When I heard yesterday morning that Guru had died, a sequence ran through my mind of classics rendered in that inimitable monotone. "Just to get a Rep" and "Words I Manifest" were my introduction to Gang Starr and the group's charismatic MC. I'm not one to dwell much on celebrity life milestones (though I do remark the 
"Dwyck" was the anthem around when I arrived in the US as my family immigrated. 
