Argentina players singing racist chant targeting French players after Copa America final

africanspur said:
Lot of words to say white.
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Not even. Proto-Indo-Europeans spread west and east and are the ancestors of populations in Europe but also Iran and India, with languages like Farsi, Hindi, and Urdu all belong to the Indo-European language family. So the peculiar thing is really that @MalcolmTucker thinks you can neatly define what 'ethnic European' means, cause being fairly familiar with the topic, I am pretty sure you cannot meaningfully define that without using a lot of arbitrary limits in terms of which parts of groups and which time periods count and don't count.

And yes, it would be interesting if @MalcolmTucker responded to those comments instead of just stating his disbelief at their existence. Cause that just makes it seem like he doesn't actually know what he's talking about and just repeats other people's talking points.
 
JPRouve said:
I don't think that there is any issue with the idea of European ethnic groups existing at some point a long time ago. The issue is when you state that people in 2024 are actual Europeans and refers to groupings of people that are only relevant if you go back 4000 years ago. And the issue with this is that genetically you will struggle to find people that aren't very mixed because during that period of time there has been a lot of exchanges between Asia, Europe and Africa but more importantly from a cultural standpoint anything that is thousands of years BC is highly irrelevant to 2024. In 2024 a yoruba that has never left Nigeria has more in common with an Irish than anyone from Europe 4000 years ago, they share more culture than the groups you listed.
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Yoruba and Irish? Two ethnic groups. They don't suddenly disappear because they share more culture with each other today than they do with their ancient ancestors
 
The funny thing is I've been looking more into what a proto indo European is and there actually isn't any record of it and it's more of a hypothetical.
 
2mufc0 said:
The funny thing is I've been looking more into what a proto indo European is and there actually isn't any record of it and it's more of a hypothetical.
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Yes. But you get to avoid having to say "white" and it makes you feel less racist, while being incredibly racist. And that's really all that matters.
 
I mean who other than complete losers care about this stuff anyway? Your ethnicity is Hunter Gatherer and late Farmer or whatever? Great, here is a cookie.
 
2mufc0 said:
The funny thing is I've been looking more into what a proto indo European is and there actually isn't any record of it and it's more of a hypothetical.
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It's really a language thing. Given there is such a thing as a language families, in this case Indo-European, which are described in terms of family trees, there must also be a language on top of that tree. That's Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The language is of course completely hypothetical, since its time period precedes writing; but it is very likely to have existed.

So if you have PIE, there must have been people that spoke it, which are called the Proto-Indo-Europeans, who likely lived north of the Black Sea. But it becomes problematic to associate them with ethnic traits, cause obviously they didn't just populate all the areas where Indo-European languages are spoken out of nowhere. In all those places, people were living already, so we're rather talking about a long (I'm talking millennia) process of gradual population displacements, cultural assimilation and diversification, and so on.

One example of such processes: when the Romans conquered Gaul (more or less current France and Belgium), its inhabitants spoke Celtic. At the end of the Roman period, they spoke Latin (or rather, a regional variant that would subsequently develop into the various French languages). There was no big population move behind that, it's primarily a matter of the Roman language becoming dominant over time. Same with Iberia (Spain and Portugal) - where you also see the opposite case: at the end of the Roman period, the Visigoths move in, who were originally from (north)eastern Europe and moved to Iberia through a big population displacement. So a lot of Visigoths got to Spain and they provided Iberia's first non-Roman royal dynasty; but their language left very little mark on Iberia's languages (which had also mostly changed from Celtic to Latin during Roman rule).

Those developments are all between Indo-European langauges (well, there's also Basque of course, which is standalone), but the point is: language history is a pretty poor indicator of ethno-cultural developments.
 
MalcolmTucker said:
Yoruba and Irish? Two ethnic groups. They don't suddenly disappear because they share more culture with each other today than they do with their ancient ancestors
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Sure. But I think the point was: do you think the current Yoruba and Irish have more in common with each other, or with the Yoruba and Irish (respectively) of a couple of thousand years ago?
 
"Early European Farmers, Western Hunter-Gatherers, and Proto-Indo-Europeans" is serious power level revealing stuff.
 
I much preferred the world cup format back in 2000 BC, with Indo-Europeans facing off against the Afro-Asiatics, Uralics against Dravidians, Turkic against Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian against Mayan.

You could really tell where someone was from back then.
 
fck said:
I mean who other than complete losers care about this stuff anyway? Your ethnicity is Hunter Gatherer and late Farmer or whatever? Great, here is a cookie.
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If you don’t care about it, why post in the thread?
 
2mufc0 said:
Are you guys white?

I'm not and don't have an issue with he word in the context I have used it in.
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It's generally not considered an acceptable term, at least here in California/US now. It's nuanced but today, person of color or BIPOC would be okay but colored not so because "The reason “colored people” is offensive without being a term of abuse is that it reminds many people of times when we were, whatever we were being called, abused."

https://slate.com/human-interest/20...decide-which-racial-terms-are-acceptable.html

The holy trinity 68 said:
To be fair 30 years ago using the term 'black,' to describe a person was deemed offensive. Some older generations struggle to keep up with the times. Not everyone means offence. We just need to educate people better in some regards.
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I think that timeframe is off. 30 years ago, 1994 "coloured" would definitely have been offensive. It was considered the appropriate and polite term maybe 100 years ago but by the 1990s the terms (in the US) would have been black or African-American. Interestingly, I've met people that self-identified as African-Americans and others that actually hated the term and would say "I'm not African-American, I'm a black American".
 
Mascherano embarrasses himself and Argentina continues to hunker down.

Euphoria no excuse - Lloris on Argentina race row

Mascherano defends Fernandez​

Former Argentina midfielder Javier Mascherano defended Fernandez and said "everything has been taken out of context".

In an interview with Ole, external, Mascherano, who won 147 caps, said: "If there is something that we Argentines are not, it is racists, far from it.

"If there is something that we are as a country, it is totally inclusive. In Argentina, people from all over the world live and we treat them as they should be treated."

Fernandez has been unfollowed on Instagram by Chelsea team-mates Wesley Fofana, Benoit Badiashile, Lesley Ugochukwu, Christopher Nkunku, Axel Disasi, David Datro Fofana, Romeo Lavia and Malo Gusto.

Former Liverpool, West Ham and Barcelona player Mascherano, who is now Argentina Under-23s manager, said: "I know Enzo. He's a great guy and he has no problem with that.

"You have to understand the culture of each country and know that sometimes what we perceive as a joke can be misinterpreted in other places."
 
Cheimoon said:
Not even. Proto-Indo-Europeans spread west and east and are the ancestors of populations in Europe but also Iran and India, with languages like Farsi, Hindi, and Urdu all belong to the Indo-European language family. So the peculiar thing is really that @MalcolmTucker thinks you can neatly define what 'ethnic European' means, cause being fairly familiar with the topic, I am pretty sure you cannot meaningfully define that without using a lot of arbitrary limits in terms of which parts of groups and which time periods count and don't count.

And yes, it would be interesting if @MalcolmTucker responded to those comments instead of just stating his disbelief at their existence. Cause that just makes it seem like he doesn't actually know what he's talking about and just repeats other people's talking points.
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Proto-Indo-Europeans spread East and West. What's your point?

Here's a BBC article titled "Genetic History of Europeans Revealed" which mirrors what I said about the ancestry of Europeans. Strangely, they don't 'meaningfully define' what a European is either, because everyone except for the incredulous members of Red Cafe know what a European is.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34883225
 
MalcolmTucker said:
Proto-Indo-Europeans spread East and West. What's your point?

Here's a BBC article titled "Genetic History of Europeans Revealed" which mirrors what I said about the ancestry of Europeans. Strangely, they don't 'meaningfully define' what a European is either, because everyone except for the incredulous members of Red Cafe know what a European is.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34883225
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The issue is that you reverse the argument of the article. They point out that those specific groups of migrants played an important role in the development of Europe, but you turn it around that they (and only they) are the 'actual Europeans'. The article doesn't claim that and never would.

And so the east and west thing is interesting, as you claim those migrants that moved west are 'actual Europeans', and I I guess the ones that moved east (into Iran and ultimately India) aren't. Which again is pretty arbitrary and not at all part of this article's discussion.

(The article also overreaches a bit by ascribing general conclusions to what's really a small sample of human remains studied, but that's a different conversation.)
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
It's generally not considered an acceptable term, at least here in California/US now. It's nuanced but today, person of color or BIPOC would be okay but colored not so because "The reason “colored people” is offensive without being a term of abuse is that it reminds many people of times when we were, whatever we were being called, abused."

https://slate.com/human-interest/20...decide-which-racial-terms-are-acceptable.html



I think that timeframe is off. 30 years ago, 1994 "coloured" would definitely have been offensive. It was considered the appropriate and polite term maybe 100 years ago but by the 1990s the terms (in the US) would have been black or African-American. Interestingly, I've met people that self-identified as African-Americans and others that actually hated the term and would say "I'm not African-American, I'm a black American".
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Fair enough, this seems to be a US thing where the racial dynamics are completely different to the rest of the word.

As a non white person myself not from the US, it never has caused me any offense or anyone i know from similar backgrounds. I didn't specifically single out black people as the point i was making was related to the non white Spanish players who one who is of mixed ethnicity.
 
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2mufc0 said:
Fair enough, this seems to be a US thing where the racial dynamics are completely different to the rest of the word.

As a non white person myself not from the US, it never has caused me any offense or anyone i know from similar backgrounds. I didn't specifically single out black people as the point i was making was related to the non white Spanish players who one is mixed.
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Yes its generally interpreted differently in various places. But as @oneniltothearsenal said, its considered archaic and highly insensitive in the US in the present and was previously used by whites as recently as the tail end of the Jim Crow era. It is still in rare circumstances encoded in language today by way of the C in the NAACP acronym.
 
Cheimoon said:
Sure. But I think the point was: do you think the current Yoruba and Irish have more in common with each other, or with the Yoruba and Irish (respectively) of a couple of thousand years ago?
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Exactly. Ethnicity isn't just genetics, it's also social norms and in general culture, in fact it has more to do with the latters. So there isn't actually any sense to refer to 4000 years old groups of people when they have almost nothing in common with the people you are linking them with, they don't have the same language, morals, faith and overall values.
 
africanspur said:
Mascherano embarrasses himself and Argentina continues to hunker down.

Euphoria no excuse - Lloris on Argentina race row

Mascherano defends Fernandez​

Former Argentina midfielder Javier Mascherano defended Fernandez and said "everything has been taken out of context".

In an interview with Ole, external, Mascherano, who won 147 caps, said: "If there is something that we Argentines are not, it is racists, far from it.

"If there is something that we are as a country, it is totally inclusive. In Argentina, people from all over the world live and we treat them as they should be treated."

Fernandez has been unfollowed on Instagram by Chelsea team-mates Wesley Fofana, Benoit Badiashile, Lesley Ugochukwu, Christopher Nkunku, Axel Disasi, David Datro Fofana, Romeo Lavia and Malo Gusto.

Former Liverpool, West Ham and Barcelona player Mascherano, who is now Argentina Under-23s manager, said: "I know Enzo. He's a great guy and he has no problem with that.

"You have to understand the culture of each country and know that sometimes what we perceive as a joke can be misinterpreted in other places."
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He has a point, can you be racist when you are in a racist context. Can you be wet when you are saturated with water?
 
Cheimoon said:
The issue is that you reverse the argument of the article. They point out that those specific groups of migrants played an important role in the development of Europe, but you turn it around that they (and only they) are the 'actual Europeans'. The article doesn't claim that and never would.

And so the east and west thing is interesting, as you claim those migrants that moved west are 'actual Europeans', and I I guess the ones that moved east (into Iran and ultimately India) aren't. Which again is pretty arbitrary and not at all part of this article's discussion.

(The article also overreaches a bit by ascribing general conclusions to what's really a small sample of human remains studied, but that's a different conversation.)
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PIE who migrated West mixed with other ancient populations that were in Europe.

PIE who migrated East mixed with other ancient populations that were in Asia.

Hence, Europeans with PIE ancestry are distinct from Asians with PIE ancestry.
 
MalcolmTucker said:
PIE who migrated West mixed with other ancient populations that were in Europe.

PIE who migrated East mixed with other ancient populations that were in Asia.

Hence, Europeans with PIE ancestry are distinct from Asians with PIE ancestry.
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Is De Ligt's father a European with pie ancestry?
 
MalcolmTucker said:
PIE who migrated West mixed with other ancient populations that were in Europe.

PIE who migrated East mixed with other ancient populations that were in Asia.

Hence, Europeans with PIE ancestry are distinct from Asians with PIE ancestry.
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Are they actual europeans if they are also immigrants?
 
africanspur said:
Mascherano embarrasses himself and Argentina continues to hunker down.

Euphoria no excuse - Lloris on Argentina race row

Mascherano defends Fernandez​

Former Argentina midfielder Javier Mascherano defended Fernandez and said "everything has been taken out of context".

In an interview with Ole, external, Mascherano, who won 147 caps, said: "If there is something that we Argentines are not, it is racists, far from it.

"If there is something that we are as a country, it is totally inclusive. In Argentina, people from all over the world live and we treat them as they should be treated."

Fernandez has been unfollowed on Instagram by Chelsea team-mates Wesley Fofana, Benoit Badiashile, Lesley Ugochukwu, Christopher Nkunku, Axel Disasi, David Datro Fofana, Romeo Lavia and Malo Gusto.

Former Liverpool, West Ham and Barcelona player Mascherano, who is now Argentina Under-23s manager, said: "I know Enzo. He's a great guy and he has no problem with that.

"You have to understand the culture of each country and know that sometimes what we perceive as a joke can be misinterpreted in other places."
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Is there anyone prominent from Argentina who has actually criticized Fernandez ? It feels like a cultural bubble where everyone is in general agreement that he did nothing wrong.
 
Raoul said:
Is there anyone prominent from Argentina who has actually criticized Fernandez ? It feels like a cultural bubble where everyone is in general agreement that he did nothing wrong.
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They can't really say much about Enzo when it's a bus load of players singing it. Probably a can of worms they want to avoid.

If it was Enzo on his own I think there might be more (or some) criticism.
 
So is Argentina 's VP defending Fernandez par for the course here? "We dont have any racism, and we reject colonial criticism? Kinda parrots some of the rubbish on this thread. She actually felt the need to interject to come to someone else's defense who had clearly acted wrong.

I am still trying to piece together what colonialism has to do with this. Seems like a deflection and a ridiculous one at that.

Seriously, what hope is there for Argentina to improve here if this is the stuff coming from their leaders?
 
Raoul said:
Is there anyone prominent from Argentina who has actually criticized Fernandez ? It feels like a cultural bubble where everyone is in general agreement that he did nothing wrong.
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You're normally quite logical from what I have seen and my question may cause uproar if I direct it to anybody so I'm asking you, why was what he said racist? The translation I saw (Sleeping with trans people aside which I don't understand the reference at all), it seemed he said a lot about the French NT players having connections to countries in Africa which is true isn't it? That doesn't seem to discriminate a race but if I'm English and someone called me "German" for example, that wouldn't be racist would it? Just a mischaracterization.
 
duffer said:
They can't really say much about Enzo when it's a bus load of players singing it. Probably a can of worms they want to avoid.

If it was Enzo on his own I think there might be more (or some) criticism.
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I would add that it's very unfair to focus on Fernandez and I include the reaction of their VP, while defending him they are also throwing him under the bus because it gives the impression that he was singing alone.
 
Changeisgood said:
So is Argentina 's VP defending Fernandez par for the course here? "We dont have any racism, and we reject colonial criticism? Kinda parrots some of the rubbish on this thread. She actually felt the need to interject to come to someone else's defense who had clearly acted wrong.

I am still trying to piece together what colonialism has to do with this. Seems like a deflection and a ridiculous one at that.

Seriously, what hope is there for Argentina to improve here if this is the stuff coming from their leaders?
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Presume she is saying they get their team from the French colonies/former French colonies which is not the case as these lads are French.
 
JPRouve said:
Exactly. Ethnicity isn't just genetics, it's also social norms and in general culture, in fact it has more to do with the latters. So there isn't actually any sense to refer to 4000 years old groups of people when they have almost nothing in common with the people you are linking them with, they don't have the same language, morals, faith and overall values.
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Do you think the Yoruba's ancient ancestors had more in common with each other than they did with the ancient ancestors of the Irish?

Do you think the Yoruba today have more in common with each other than they do with the Irish?

Yes, so ethnic groups can still exist even if a guy in Lagos and a guy in Dublin both have iPhones and watch The Sopranos.
 
Raoul said:
Is there anyone prominent from Argentina who has actually criticized Fernandez ? It feels like a cultural bubble where everyone is in general agreement that he did nothing wrong.
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The Argentine undersecretary for sport did and he got promptly sacked but he also weirdly made it about Messi, asking for him as captain to apologise, so whether he would've survived without that part who knows.
 
JPRouve said:
I would add that it's very unfair to focus on Fernandez and I include the reaction of their VP, while defending him they are also throwing him under the bus because it gives the impression that he was singing alone.
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Whilst it would be unfair if he is the only one who gets punished, I don't really have too much sympathy. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

I'll just have to restrain my baser instincts when people on here are calling Enzo a racist in 6 months while cheering for players who were signing their hearts out with him on that bus.
 
2mufc0 said:
Fair enough, this seems to be a US thing where the racial dynamics are completely different to the rest of the word.

As a non white person myself not from the US, it never has caused me any offense or anyone i know from similar backgrounds. I didn't specifically single out black people as the point i was making was related to the non white Spanish players who one who is of mixed ethnicity.
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It's definitely culturally embedded to some degree but I'm not sure the racial dynamics of the US are completely different. I'd say places like California are probably more similar in racial dynamics to other cosmopolitan cities with immigrants from all over the world than they are to say the racial dynamics of Savannah, Georgia. I don't know the history of appropriate terms in France, for instance, for people of any background but online I'd say its probably best to err on the side of caution.
 
AngeloHenriquez said:
You're normally quite logical from what I have seen and my question may cause uproar if I direct it to anybody so I'm asking you, why was what he said racist? The translation I saw (Sleeping with trans people aside which I don't understand the reference at all), it seemed he said a lot about the French NT players having connections to countries in Africa which is true isn't it? That doesn't seem to discriminate a race but if I'm English and someone called me "German" for example, that wouldn't be racist would it? Just a mischaracterization.
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The song insinuates that they are not actually french, that only their documents say that they are french. Now the question would be why only black players were targeted? What would compel someone to specifically target them?
 
DOTA said:
The Argentine undersecretary for sport did and he got promptly sacked but he also weirdly made it about Messi, asking for him as captain to apologise, so whether he would've survived without that part who knows.
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Thanks. Forgot about that.
 
JPRouve said:
The song insinuates that they are not actually french, that only their documents say that they are french. Now the question would be why only black players were targeted? What would compel someone to specifically target them?
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Don't a lot of the black players have links to African countries though? I thought a lot of them had family who were born there further up their family tree? I mean it's distasteful - I just don't understand the "Racist" angle, it's stupid, insensitive and so oddly timed considering they just won a competition neither France or Africa were part of?

Seems to have caused more controversy compared to Lavezzi and co a few years back making blatant racist actions towards the Chinese
 
AngeloHenriquez said:
Don't a lot of the black players have links to African countries though? I thought a lot of them had family who were born there further up their family tree? I mean it's distasteful - I just don't understand the "Racist" angle, it's stupid, insensitive and so oddly timed considering they just won a competition neither France or Africa were part of?

Seems to have caused more controversy compared to Lavezzi and co a few years back making blatant racist actions towards the Chinese
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How would you describe someone suggesting that you are not english because your parents or grandparents weren't?
 
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