For the eagle eyed amongst you, I actually went back and changed the title of this blog (at the end of ep. 5) because someone here in Buenos Aires said the following thing to me, completely in passing - 'que pasa, negro?' This basically means - hows it going dude? Surely this is casual racism? So I did a bit of research, and I have two (rather interesting) points to make regarding racism in Argentina (and surrounding countries):
Firstly, the use of the word negro as affectionate slang out here is widespread (and by that I mean said by a lot of people, both black AND white), and is not derogetary or racist at all. On the contrary, it is quite affectionate. Obviously, if you go up to someone who you don't know and call them a 'negro de mierda' then you might get your face kicked in - but these are two seperate issues.
Secondly, I refer to Luis Suarez - for those of you who don´t know, he is an immensely talented player for Liverpool FC in England. Born in Uruguay, he moved to Ajax FC in Holland before moving to england - and he has possibly the worst reputation of any football I know. This is partly to do with his tendancy to go down easily under a challenge, but in the most part due to his official sentencing as a racist by the Football Association (he was banned for 8 games) earlier this year.
I won't go majorly into the details, but essentially he was reported (transcipts are available of the trial) to have said to Patrice Evra (a black Manchester United player) 'tu eres negro' several times. This translates as 'you are black' - but only if you speak spanish from Spain. Here in Argentina (located just next to Uruguay where he grew up), there is not one native speaker I have yet found that would phrase it like this. The ONLY way that you could call someone black (whether it be affectionate or not) would be to say 'vos sos negro'. It means the same, but in these parts they conjugate their verbs using the 'voseo' form of spanish, (much to my annoyance and confusion in the first couple of weeks after arrival)
Now, I can't say I have read every single part of the FA report because it's very long (although what i did read shows a shoddy grasp of spanish with many missed accents), but if you add up both points as above you may see what I'm trying to get across. I will never know whether Suarez meant any malice in his words - all i have to go on is quotes from Patrice Evra himself. On the other hand, I am also not saying that Evra was lying - but it's not like the two possible versions highlighted in red are vaguely similar. Make of this what you will.
What I personally beleive is that we need to take some extra things into account here - was the onus on Luis Suarez (as a footballer from a foreign conutry) to learn what is and what is not acceptable in the UK? Perhaps. Do the English FA have their own predjudices against South Americans? I am not sure. I am all for eradicating racism from football (and all other walks of life), but making someone the poster case of what may have been a misunderstanding is perhaps unfair - either way, the media jumped on it and now this man is officially a Racist. What i also don't understand is why John Terry, who was found guilty by the FA of saying worse things (in english, no less) was given a ban of half the length.
In case you were wondering, I think that Suarez is a cheat and a diver on the football field, and for that I hate him - but this is an issue which transcends the football pitch and society must take an impartial view (as I have tried to do).
Either way, if found guilty then Mark Clattenburg, a born and bred English referee, therefore has no excuse...
Episode 7: The economy and the Dollar Blue.
Chau
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