You'd think people would think about what they're saying before they say it, espeically given that they know they're in the spot light. Having said that, I guess that's what you get when you're uneducated.
Bentancur racial slur | Banned for 7 games
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Bentancur apologized publicly to Son almost immediately. The remark is racist but was clearly made as a joke without malicious intention. Not saying that excuses it, but sometimes people make mistakes and the best you can do is say sorry and move along. I think it was a stupid, bad joke on his part, but not tar and feather worthy.
And it sounds like Son accepted his apology, good enough for me to close the book on this one.
Why Always Me?
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You have missed the ‘ill advised’ bit of my post.
Assuming there was no racist intent in the remark (probable if they are mates) then it was a stupid thing to say. It’s not okay, nor is it the end of the world, especially if Son has no issue with Bentancur.
Wow the absolute levels of casual racism being spouted in here. If you can't fathom how blithely joking that all of Son's cousins look the same can be dehumanising and racist, then you need to get your head and heart checked.
"Oh but Son's okay with it" - of course he's publicly okay with it, he's the team captain and he's swallowing his pride for the greater good. We also have no idea what he and Bentancur said behind the scenes.
"Oh but my mate [insert name of a white person] looks like the spitting image of his cousins" - yes, he may. This also dismisses the significant history of how generalised caricatures and stereotypes of people from East Asia have been used to demean and paint all from that region with the same brush, and how these kinds of rhetoric haven't been applied to Europeans in the past.
"Oh but Son's okay with it" - of course he's publicly okay with it, he's the team captain and he's swallowing his pride for the greater good. We also have no idea what he and Bentancur said behind the scenes.
"Oh but my mate [insert name of a white person] looks like the spitting image of his cousins" - yes, he may. This also dismisses the significant history of how generalised caricatures and stereotypes of people from East Asia have been used to demean and paint all from that region with the same brush, and how these kinds of rhetoric haven't been applied to Europeans in the past.
It doesn't really matter if there is intent or not.
‘You said “Son has said everything is fine, BUT…” which implied everything is not fine.
You then went on to say “I find this pretty inexcusable” which implies a level of outrage/offense.
Taken at face value what Bentancur said was racist and wrong, simple. But if you consider context (mates banter), the cultural difference between our society and South American society and the fact that Son has stated publicly he is happy and hasn’t taken offence plus the fact it wasn’t an overtly racial remark then I think we educate Bentancur, explain to him why that’s not okay to say and we all move on is all. My reply to your post wasn’t about you personally - just a plea to not go ‘full internet’ about this which seems much ado about nothing.
Okay, I feel like this is one of those times where I should walk away and not get myself into trouble.
In Uruguay it's absolutely racist to say all Asians/Chinese/Koreans look the same and everybody there knows it, so the cultural differences excuse is nonsense. Besides, we are hardly talking about an elderly person in the most remote village of Uruguay. As regards to the "intent", let's be absolutely clear: it's impossible to determine with certainty, but even if it weren't, are we saying the "intent" would need to be for him to actually want to offend Asians or Koreans in front of millions of tv viewers? That would probably warrant a criminal prosecution and it's hardly the standard for general public discomfort and/or potential non-criminal consequences.
Because they probably somewhat do. This is nothing more than exaggerating something, in this instance for "comedic effect". I don't like what he said, but it's not really as bad as people claim here. It's not really different than exaggerating some stereotype, like the Curry one mentioned here. You can not like it, but it's not really that bad.
And for people who are now absolutely enraged about what i said. Look up something called the "Cross-race effect".
Same Faces, Different Labels: Generating the Cross-Race Effect in Face Memory with Social Category Information - PMC (nih.gov)
Cross-race effect - Wikipedia
There's two separate baselines to your whole post here which you are conflating:
A) 'What constitutes as offensive/racist?'
B) 'What I deem as offensive/racist enough based on my own experiences'.
@Desert Eagle I think has already covered why your take on B is an ignorant way of thinking.
As for the point A, making those kind of statements can be a form of 'othering'. You're not talking about a group of people as individuals, you're talking about them as a monolith and can be insensitive, ignorant and/or racist. Saying one group of people look the same is a kind of 'orientalism' and 'othering' i.e things that we have seen in Western media/perspectives that has unfortunately influenced the world.
Now as pointed out by @Desert Eagle already, are these comments the end of the world and does it compared to being racially profiled in a shop or violent/more 'direct' occasions? No but what you're doing is minimising the issue and showing a lack of understanding. It's fine to 'not be bothered' and feel it's not a 'big deal' (i.e compared to the examples above) but what you're saying doesn't make sense logically.
Acknowledgement of people from certain backgrounds having similar physical or emotional traits is understandable but not the same as saying they all look the same. That's quite different, hence why people have a problem with what Bentancur has said. You may not like that, but it is quite bad.
Have you looked at the links i posted? It's not all that different. It's more difficult for people to recognize people from other races, thus making them "look the same". It's still an exaggeration to say they all look the same of course, but it's understandable.
No. It isn't understandable to say that all Korean people look the same. I don't need to look at the links you posted to know that.
Well there it is. Gut feeling is better than science nowadays. That's a big problem.
I don't know your stance on vaccines, nor do i care. But change your post to "I don't need to look at the links(science) to know vaccines are harmful".
You can see the big ass problem with that right?
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It's not the 'science' it's the 'othering' of a group of people. Look into it. There's a lot of context you're missing.
It's fine to make statements to say 'people from a homogenous group can look very similar'. It's not 'fine' to say 'you want a shirt from my team mate? haha it could be from his cousin, they all look the same'.
I put the 'fine' in quotations because I agree, it's not a heinous comment but it falls into the public wider context of how east asians are seen e.g look the same, speak the same language, 'exotic' etc. Therefore, it's still insensitive and needs addressing/acknowledgement.
The science literally is about 'othering'. Besides i never said people from a certain group can look very similar. I said according to research people from other races are harder to recognize than people from your own race. So 'othering', whatever that may mean, seems appropriate.
What he said is a racist trope though. He said an oft repeated joke about people of Asian descent, in particular, that's known to be offensive.
He's not just saying this off the top of his head as it occured to him that that it's harder to recognise people of a different ethnic background to him.
This happened a few weeks ago and he's since apologised. Not that it means it's ok to say mind.
I'm not sure what your point is and I don't think you have understood mine. You posted an article/'science', which i don't have an issue with to then say 'it's not right to say they all look the same but it's understandable'. When questioned on this, you replied to say 'gut feeling is better than science' as if to imply, someone cannot make assumptions off some scientific understanding.
The issue isn't science, It's the context of language, hence the 'othering'. You are reducing a group of individuals with nonchalant casual insensitivity/racism and then trying to justify it with 'well there's scientific reasoning'. Also I made an edit so you may have missed my last line.
Here is an article on othering from the first google search that seems pretty decent:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-othering-5084425
In the grand scheme of things, I don't want people to be cancelled for something like this and I don't think the intention is heinous but we should try to be aware of why certain language used can continue tropes and reduce people's individuality. For me, it's a faux pas that will continue to happen as long as we don't address it and try to justify it as banter, as not malicious, as 'not serious overall', etc.
Thanks for your the critical analysis, and your summaries of my views which, as you say, has ‘already been covered’ as an ignorant way of thinking. And before I go on to elaborate, can I ask whether you have personal lifetime experiences of racism, or of being a minority? Not saying that you haven’t, although trying to understand the position that you are speaking so authoritatively on the validity of my views.
My initial post was simply ‘meh’, which is my personal position on things like this. Second hand outrage at how two mates refer to each other. I was compelled to elaborate on what are my personal views, which are valid to me regardless of what caf consensus may be, due to insults and jibes I received. I was not conflating what constitutes ‘offensive/racist’ - heaven knows any words are offensive. I was more focused on what is actually ‘racist’. As in, the use of race as a belief or doctrine that suggests one’s race is superior to others and has the right to dominate. A racial stereotype or prejudice is not by default, ‘racist’. If you assume I like fried chicken because I’m black, I take no offence. Fried chicken is delicious. Even if I didn’t think it was delicious, the presumption that I liked it, while based solely my race - is not actually ‘racist’. Saying ‘Indians eat curry’ is not racist. And there are a million other examples which have been categorised as such which are not actually racist.
As for my ‘minimisation’ of these types of slurs - yes, that is exactly what I am doing. I am doing so because I am frustrated by the, I guess - ‘maximisation’ of them. I am tired of seeing racism trivialised into ‘bad language’, and tough on racism so regularly distilled into stamping out what is, in the grand scheme of things, what I feel to be very low down the scale as far as impactful racism is concerned. The more that anti-racism is defined as being tough on these types of things, my view is the longer it takes to address the racism that matters most. To use the old analogy, I’d much rather we address the ‘sticks and stones’, to which there are many, but we are, as a society, caught up on the more trivial of racism - to the point where I would argue that many people are not even aware of what the most limiting racism is, and possibly even totally unaware of its existence except for those that experience it.
As for ‘othering’ - I am also not anti othering, frankly. Again, I feel like the magnification of it, and the furore that is made over things like this, even if well-intentioned, are actually more harmful than helpful. But perhaps that’s just me. As a British born minority, I actively want to be ‘othered’. I always resist against being grouped and mixed with everyone else in every context to the point where the ‘other’ about me is marginalised or erased. The reaction to othering serves to insinuate that being other is being less than, which I resent. So I have no issue with being referred to as Nigerian, for example, despite being born here, because I’m an extremely proud Nigerian. The insinuation that it is more, I dunno - ‘polite’ to call me British than Nigerian in itself implies that of the two, being Nigerian is worse than being British. My view is that this society conditions you to feel a bit of shame about cultural or racial characteristics, and I believe much of this is done inadvertently and worse still, with the intention of doing the opposite. I was speaking to a white guy once and he was describing something that happened with another guy and began to describe him. He said the guy was black, then he looked ashamed and went red and asked ‘sorry, am I allowed to say that?’ Of course he is allowed to describe a black man as a black man, and it was obvious through his actions that the sentiment was to ensure he did not appear racist. The reality is, that exchange was more racist in itself, as the implication was that it was offensive to call someone black. As a small kid my Mum wanted me to wear traditional clothes to school on International Day. Any ethnic minority child would tell you that this is disastrous, the last thing a kid in UK primary school wants to do is present as not British. I may be rambling a bit here, but the point is, different doesn’t mean bad, and the societal insinuation that different is a negative is a foundation of racism in itself, and the determination to never be othered by minority groups is an unfortunate by-product of such a society. Differences, characteristics or whatever should be celebrated and not overridden by a desire to have the characteristics of the status quo.
So on the whole, I think people may simply need to be better taught how to be effectively anti-racist. Demonising Bentancur, or similar, is nowhere near the effective or progressive stance they probably think it is. The racism that actually limits is not being addressed, by and large, - yet that isn’t even noticed, because everyone is so busy being visibly ‘anti-racist’ as far as they are concerned. I can speak for myself and say that I have not been racially abused in the UK for many years, but I have experienced racism - i.e, a belief or doctrine that suggests one’s race is superior and has the right to dominate, on a frequent basis - and worryingly, in a manner that half of the time, the person doing so probably isn’t even aware. So in and of itself, I don’t really mind someone thinking Bentancur’s comments was wrong. But the inevitable sledgehammer or at least, calls for a sledgehammer annoys me because it’s like ‘this is what it takes to bring out the anti-racism display’, whereas I would much rather proactive tackling of racism where it really limits people’s lives. Not banning a guy for using the wrong words to his friend.
It’s a difficult thing for me to define but this statement is quite indicative of the problems with racism towards East Asian people. It trickles down from all other races as …
Harmony and avoiding conflict are misunderstood as weakness and treated with a lack of respect, which results in people saying dumb shit like this because there aren’t any ramifications.
im sure Son secretly wishes he’d feck off back to his cattle farm in Uruguay nobodies ever heard off.
Harmony and avoiding conflict are misunderstood as weakness and treated with a lack of respect, which results in people saying dumb shit like this because there aren’t any ramifications.
im sure Son secretly wishes he’d feck off back to his cattle farm in Uruguay nobodies ever heard off.
I think something being overlooked here and apt for a discussion on racism towards East Asians is that the reason the phrase exists is because people haven’t bothered to make the effort to look at that wider community to understand people do look very different and the reason the effort hasn’t occurred is because in the hollow quest for diversity it’s not a community high on the list.
Firstly, perhaps I should apologise for using such harsh language but I don't buy the whole 'this isn't serious, so let's sweep it under the carpet as not something we should be bothered with'. I understand and agree with your general sentiment that there are 'bigger' issues to address; sometimes we bog ourselves down in the 'triviality' and nuance of such incidents, where we are looking at language and 'finding' or explaining where the issue is. I get that but there are varying degrees of things like offence and racism, which is why I have specifically talked about 'othering'. It's this idea that 'trivial' comments like 'they look the same' are harmless but in reality it paints this overall narrative that (and I'm putting words into mouths here) that East Asians are the same, they're this group of homogeneous people that we just treat as one thing, they aren't 'us', they are them etc.
Rather than addressing your points individually, I think it's better to give you an idea of where I stand on this:
1) Bentancur's comment is or can be seen as offensive, we should acknowledge that and understand why is that the case.
2) Just because there's a scale of 'stereotypical comment' vs 'someone wants to commit genocide' unfortunately in this world, that doesn't mean we can't look at former and treat it with a certain amount severity.
Saying 'this is offensive and let's understand why' is not the same as 'let's demonise this person and spend less energy on bigger issues'.
As for your comments on being proud to be Nigerian, I think you are talking about your identity, how others perceive you and how you perceive yourself. A by-product of othering is if I met you person and I asked 'what's it like back home?', 'where are you from?', 'you speak really good English' or 'how long have you been here?' with a 'harmless' surprise tone etc. This is the idea that you're not one of 'us'. Now in practice, these can be all legitimate questions with genuine curiosity and well intentioned but these questions can lead to othering. In society, minorities are seen as that, not of Britain, one of a group of people that aren't the majority. These are factual statements but it can also create deeper identity issues that lead to the types of racism that you very well want to address that 'those' are not us, are inferior etc. That's why language is important too.
As for my background, let's just says, despite being born here, I have had all those questions above asked of me with alarming regularity in my younger days.
See, people are too hung up on the word itself instead of the intent. It's the intent of what you mean when you say something
Apology accepted and a very eloquent post worthy of the user name.
I’m not sure I’ve said ‘this isn’t serious and let’s sweep it under the carpet’ per se. My point is that it irks me that it is THIS type of thing that tends to bring the big anti-racist guns out. And as a result of the display, everyone pats themselves on the back and says ‘look how big our anti-racism guns are’. And now satisfied that we actually have anti-racist guns, we can all move on with our lives and applaud ourselves for our progressiveness. Like really? This is where we take a stand? Interjecting on two mates language towards each other? So yes, forgive me for having a cynicism towards outrage at ‘trivial racism’.
I would not be surprised to see people in this very thread who have been quick to express abhorrence towards Bentancur’s words display a more indoctrinated position of racism in another thread, probably without even knowing, and obviously without any ‘racist language’. For example, a poster could easily continuously express anger at Pogba dancing or something, and then come in here and chastise me about the indifference to Bentancur’s language. Which is of course a snapshot, but a snapshot of football and society as a whole, and as someone who feels acutely aware of such, I’ve grown to care little about ‘stamping down on racism’ from within institutions that are not even close to addressing the fundamental racist cultures within them by saying ‘you can’t say monkey anymore, it’s racist’.
And yes, you could take my being proud to be Nigerian about identity, but identity alone is sufficient (and a complex paradigm anyway). However, I can honestly say that I would take no offence at all to you asking me ‘where am I from?’ or ‘what’s it like back home?’ etc. And my personal view is that people need to stop taking offence to such. The idea that you are not from the UK is not an offensive one! There are other places outside the UK. And it’s also common sense. I’m black, as far as I am concerned, English people are not black, anymore than Nigerian people are white. This is not America, and the American story is a sad one, yet one British society seems so desperate to emulate in this respect. African Americans are largely there as a product of slavery, and one of the biggest shames of that is that they have been stripped of their identities and ‘American’ is all they identify as. It is a positive thing that the UK is not the same, and there is no ethnic minority in this country really who doesn’t know where they come from, the mass migration was recent enough, and the blacks started coming here from the 60s onwards. I’m in my 30s and my friends are predominantly from the same background as me, and I can say not one of my friend’s parents have an English accent. With the Caribbeans, more likely their grandparents that don’t have an English accent - but none of them have been whitewashed to the extent where they only know themselves to be British. So for me, personally, I actually don’t like to be grouped as no different to a white British man just because I was born here, and never in my 30+ years have I asked another Black Brit what country they are from and they have told me ‘England’. They know exactly what I mean, and the answer to the question is usually the foundation of the connections that we form. So yes, I have no reason being asked where I’m from in England, just as I believe Harry Kane shouldn’t have a problem with being repeatedly asked where he’s from in Nigeria. I think I’ve rarely been asked out of malice, just curiosity, and I’ve always understood why I’ve been asked, and say ‘Nigeria’ with pride. I tend to find that, wherever the person is from, they then share something they know or are fond of about Nigeria and we bond from there.
The above is a micro example, but I do think the sensitivity to anyone being discussed in anything other than their ‘Britishness’ is harmful. Everyone who has a right to be here has a right to be here, but we should be celebrating and learning from the cultures within Britain rather than this constant effort, seemingly in the name of political correctness, to erase it all and say everyone is the same. Everyone IS the same in that we have the same rights as humans and citizens. But we are different in that we look different, having different types of hair, eat different food, have different accents and most importantly, often different stories. I’m a believer in preserving them. I speak to people like myself regularly and we share a sense of disappointment that our children will likely not know our language. Ultimately, the opposite of ‘other’ is the same - and we are far too cosmopolitan a country to identify by nothing beyond our passport.
And back to Bentancur, I can see why it’s considered offensive. And if I’m being totally honest, it’s just western ideals/conditioning IMO that makes people so objectionable to the statement (in my personal opinion). Koreans do resemble each other. A discerning eye can tell the difference between a Korean and a Japanese. Or they may hear someone is Japanese, and say ‘ah, I’d have thought you looked more Korean’. It’s just silly to get all Twitter about it and say ‘are you saying Koreans look the same’. The fact is, nobody has ever assumed that I am Korean! I simply do not look Korean. Many correctly assume I’m Nigerian. Others say I don’t look Nigerian. But not that I don’t look Nigerian in the way Harry Kane doesn’t look Nigerian (even though you can’t say that because technically, anyone can be born in Nigeria so what does a ‘Nigerian’ look like?!).
If we are ready to fight racism, I’ll be the first on the frontline, but I maintain my position that I have little outrage for things like this (personally). If any fight is centred around this sort of thing, then the fight has missed the point completely, and worryingly - seems unaware of the actual enemy it is even fighting! If we want to target these sort of comments as a (small) part of a wider class action suit then fair enough, chuck it in there, otherwise I’m unmoved.
I acknowledge that I’m probably moving the conversation to different levels now so last essay from me on the topic
Nothing in your links says that it's ok or not racist or understandable to say that people of a certain ethnicity or nationality or race all look the same. That would be an incredibly dumb interpretation.
The intent or subconsciously saying this is what making tackle racism harder. People are affected by their upbringing, environments, races, nationality, history, cultures, traditions, values...ect. and all these is what making of us as a human being. Lets be real, more or less, we have experience or display some racism (even if we dont know about it).
Its not just the comment but how casually saying it out to your friend (even if your friend ok with it) is the problem here. You think its ok to say to your friend on TV, and its brush off as a joke, then its going to be ok to say to others too. We need to keep educating people about racism and so far i think tackle racism is more say than done because its deeper than what we think it is. Why cant we have a class or course in school to educate people from young age because educate from young is better than telling a grownup to change their ways of seeing and thinking. Focus on next generation.
Its not just the comment but how casually saying it out to your friend (even if your friend ok with it) is the problem here. You think its ok to say to your friend on TV, and its brush off as a joke, then its going to be ok to say to others too. We need to keep educating people about racism and so far i think tackle racism is more say than done because its deeper than what we think it is. Why cant we have a class or course in school to educate people from young age because educate from young is better than telling a grownup to change their ways of seeing and thinking. Focus on next generation.
I appreciate your posts. Given me some stuff to think about. I don't have the same dedication to post a long post like this. But I wanted to say that whilst I agree that there are bigger fish to fry, it seems like a problem to me to assume something about someone because of their skin colour., even if it's a perceived positive or neutral assumption. Statements like "you mustn't be from here", "you must be good at maths", "you must like to eat xyz" etc are all due to racist stereotypes that people are carrying around that can negatively effect the way people are treated.
Maybe we just don't live with a chip on our shoulder.
I'm always somewhat baffled when I have to mark ethnicity on a form. Caucasian? No, not really. Afro-descendent? Nope. Asian? Neither. And so on. We are all mixed race, some more, some less, and don't give two shits either way.
This is a country that has been historically open to immigration for all, economic migrants (italians in the late 19th Century, Cubans and Venezuelans the last couple of decades, rich Argies more recently) and particularly those escaping racism and genocide (shit tonnes of Armenians, Jews, and Spanish minorities at odds with Franco). When the US released some radioactive Syrians from Guantanamo, there was only Uruguay willing to host them.
We abolished slavery in 1815, granted civil rights way before all your apparently more enlightened nations and were the first to field black players in international tournaments.
That's the long and short of it. I'm not sure where the "all look the same" sensitivity comes from but essentially what he is saying is they are visibly different in a consistent recognisable way.
I've probably traveled across Asia more than Bentancur so can tell they are not the same. Get an average Japanese guy and Chinese guy in a room and I'm 99% confident I can tell you which is which. But then... doesn't that imply that, while they are individually different from their countrymen, they share traits I can pick up as "the same"?
Koreans are a bit tougher for me, but they can probably easily recognise themselves miles away, even from North Koreans. I understand they are comparably shorter at a rate of 1cm per decade they've lived under Communist rule. That probably extends to other characteristics without it having feck all to do with race.
Thanks for your expert insight, I'm Uruguayan but you would know better I guess.
It's almost exactly the same to me, seriously.
I can guarantee you that's not in Bentancur's radar. He is simply referring to the physical traits which resulted in Alvaro Recoba being nicknamed "El Chino"
Exactly, like when people make jokes about Uruguayan terms of endearment or say Bentancur should feck off to his cattle farm.
Speaking of terms of endearment, that was always a correct take which applied to Cavani. The problem really was when it emerged in the Suárez incident there was absolutely zero chance that was the intent. Suárez wanted to upset a rival defender and that's what he found to be effective. There was conscious intent to resort to racist remarks and he was an idiot doing it and then not owning up and apologising immediately.
It's a completely diffetent cup of tea.
You're welcome, and yes I would.
Yeah, some bizarre posts in this thread about Uruguay.
And how do determine intent? It's very easy to apologise after the fact when you get a negative reaction, regardless of what your intent actual was.
It could, of course, have been an ignorant comment but highlighting it serves to educate people.
The difference between the Suárez case and those of Cavani/Bentancur is crystal clear.
So much so, that the President of the Uruguayan Afrodescendent Association (Africania), an 86 year old activist, had completely different attitudes to them.
"Sometimes they call me 'negro' or 'negrito' and they have said it to me with affection. You realize in the form, in the expression, when it is something pejorative, when it is something insulting and when something is an affectionate term"
Never bothered support the original case as it was clearly about riling up Evra.
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There's a huge difference between Suarez and Cavani, given the circumstances. The Betancur incident isn't really like either to be honest. It's probably just ignorance but I don't see how you determine intent in Betancur's case.
The intent was to make a "they all look the same" joke. What else could it possibly be?
I don't think you can determine intent. I don't think we should be trying. It all becomes very judgy and high horsey. Society will shape itself naturally and eventually, no need to pretend we're at the tip of the movement.
The meaning of the joke is extremely clear. It has nothing to do with Chinese people looking different than Japanese people, but that Betancour wouldn't be able to pick one South Korean apart from another, or one Asian from another Asian, depending on how "precise" his joke is. He's joking about not being able to tell the difference between e.g. Son Heung-min, Park Ji-sung, Kim Dae-jung and Psy, because they all look the same.
They have similar hair colour, that's basically it.