Liverpool FC got into a bit of a tizz over Luis Suarez getting an eight-match ban for racism. It WILL get over it.
Liverpool has had it worse than this, such as when having to cope with its five-year expulsion from Europe after the Heysel tragedy.
Not to say Hillsborough and its carnage in 1989.
In fact, far from being in a tizz, Liverpool should not only condone the punishment as a measure of faith to the traditions of a noble football club, but should feel proud to be part of a football culture that is taking, it seems, some kind of international lead on not tolerating racism in the game.
England has some form in occasional forward thinking that surpasses and pre-empts the game’s most innovative thinkers (including any of those who may reside in Zurich).
It was the English who introduced three-points-for-a-win long before FIFA made it global and it was they who first punished with a red card the so-called professional foul, when, as a last resort, the last defending player brings down an attacker poised to score. At first FIFA balked at the English impertinence for bending the rules but quickly buckled and made it mandatory everywhere.
Now, I suspect, it is the English who will lead the way in stamping out on-field racism and before long FIFA will fall into line.
With Sepp Blatter’s oafish remarks about there being no on-field racism in football still ringing in the ears, Suarez cops an eight-match ban for it. Oh the irony. And the John Terry case is still to come.
Of course, Suarez continues to deny he has been racist and is appealing the sentence. His defence is predicated on the solitary claim that the name by which he called Patrice Evra, ‘negrito’ (little negro), is not a racist term in his native Uruguay.
This needs to be straightened out from the start.
It is a fact that in many parts of South America calling someone by a label that refers to their skin colour can often be, far from derogatory, a term of endearment.
I have personal experience in this.
My better half is Brazilian, with physical features that attest to an African racial heritage. From mixed parentage, she has olive skin such as you would find with a native of southern Europe or north Africa (she’s often asked if she’s Moroccan).
Soon after I met her we went for an outing to a Brazilian club in Sydney where one of her kinfolk, a big lad half snozzled on caiparinha, called her a ‘morena’.
I asked her: ‘What did he call you?’
‘Morena,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a reference to my skin colour.’
‘So why didn’t you slap him in the face?’
‘What? Why should I have done that?’
‘Because, plainly, the man’s a racist skunk.’
‘No he’s not,’ she retorted. ‘What he actually said was, hey morena, you’re a truly beautiful woman, did you know that?’
I rested my case. It’s difficult to slap someone in the face after he calls you beautiful. Especially if you’re a woman. And I couldn’t bring my sense of chivalry to the point of smacking him given that he was about eight foot tall and had all the physical attributes of Junior Baiano.
I later learned that Brazilians make a big habit of affectionately labelling people according to their skin colour, physical appearance and, of course, the region from which they hail.
For instance if your skin is white and you have blond hair, there’s a good chance of you being nicknamed ‘alemao’, which means German in Portuguese.
Garrincha used to give affection to his celebrated wife, the singer Elsa Soares, by calling her ‘criula’, a reference to her skin colour. She’s black.
On referring the Suarez claim of innocence to a number of Uruguayans, I was told that indeed ‘negrito’ can be a term of endearment in that country.
One, a senior Uruguayan broadcaster whom I’ve known for 20 years, said: ‘In Uruguay it’s very common to use negrito as a term of endearment. This, for example, is the way I call my son. It’s very common for you to call your wife, negrita. Now, that depends on how you use it of course, of the context.’
Ok, so here’s the thing.
It’s not the term itself but the way and with what intent you use it. And, I am also told by my better half, it also depends on to whom you use it and under what circumstances.
You cannot, for example, do it to someone you have never met. And if you happen to be white and call a black man a ‘negrito’ in a derogative or even dismissive way, you are likely to cop a foot in the testicles, even in South America.
This is what rules out the suggestion, on which Suarez relies for his defence, that he was being nice or somehow chummy to Evra when he called him a ‘negrito, at least 10 times according to Evra.
It is doubtful if the exchange was in the context of, say, ‘Hey negrito, see you at my barbecue tomorrow.’ Or maybe, ‘By the way, negrito old chum, I’m in Paris on Wednesday. Can you recommend a good restaurant?’
I’ll leave it to you to figure out the only possible alternative context in which Suarez called Evra a ‘little negro’, addressing an opponent during a highly charged, highly competitive football match.
I’m pretty sure, in fact somewhere around 99.99 per cent certain, it could only have been a piece of blatantly racist sledging. Suarez deserves everything he gets.
