My soccer racism nightmare: How to keep the beauty in the beautiful game
For the past two weeks, the world has been captivated by the competitive spirit at the World Cup. The beautiful game known as “jogo bonito” in Brazil has been on display, and the prolific talents of Lionel Messi, Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior and Thomas Müller have dominated their opponents. But one of the most glaring realities not being highlighted by cable stations is the prevalent racism occurring in the stands at the games around Brazil.
Before the start of the World Cup, Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, led an admirable campaign in labeling the event as the “anti-racism” World Cup. Unfortunately, racism has reared its ugly head time and again. At stadiums throughout the country, there have been numerous disparaging incidents where German fans have adorned themselves in blackface wearing T-Shirts saying Ghana, a Polish fan running onto the field with Neo-Nazi sentiments written all over his body, male French fans adorning themselves in blackface and mocking the Afro-Brazilian and Caribbean religion, Candomble, and many more examples.
How is this allowed to occur in a country with a predominantly black population? Outside the continent of Africa, Brazil has the second-highest number of concentrated people with African ancestry. The disdain for people of African descent has become too commonplace within the culture of football. Football is known as the beautiful game, but when racism continues to enter the picture, the beauty gets erased. The governing bodies of the Union of European Football Associations and International Federation of Football Association have done little to quell this epidemic festering among its ranks.
On separate occasions, FIFA has tried to address this problem by approving a Code of Ethics in 2004, which included a statute that “officials, players and players’ agents may not act in a discriminatory manner, especially with regard to ethnicity, race, culture, politics, religion, gender or language.” Two years later, they amended Article 55 of their disciplinary code to allow for the possibility of imposing stricter sanctions against clubs after incidents of racism. In the same year, they launched their “Say No to Racism” campaign before the 2006 World Cup.
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/01/my_soccer_racism_nightmare_how_to_keep_the_beauty_in_the_beautiful_game/
I've enjoyed the World Cup as much a anyone, but there's definitely a very ugly side to soccer that we haven't seen in US sports in a long time.
