This story is awful all over, but there are some important distinctions that aren’t being made here by members of the media, and the broader public, that need to be made. Take the Guardian reporting on a story on Swiss footballer Michel Morganella:
Switzerland’s Michel Morganella has been expelled from the Olympics for posting a racist message on Twitter.
The Swiss Olympic team chief, Gian Gilli, says Morganella is being stripped of his Olympic accreditation ahead of Switzerland’s final group match against Mexico on Wednesday.
He “discriminated against, insulted and violated the dignity of the South Korea football team as well as the South Korean people,” Gilli said through a translator.
The Huffington Post does the same at the Guardian; make the accusation of a “racist tweet” without reprinting it for the public to see. In fact, all of the story headlines in the major dailies refer to the Tweet as “racist.”
I happen to be of the belief that while they’re both odious, it’s important to make a distinction between xenophobia and racism. The latter involves discrimination based on ethnicity and ancestry; the former is based on nationality. If you simply lump the two together, you’re diminishing the severity of each in their respective contexts. Considering recent events, and because it’s generally important that words retain their meaning particularly when they involve serious charges, it’s important these distinctions are upheld.
The Guardian claims Morganella’s words are racist, yet does not reprint the original remarks (perhaps out of taste and sensitivity). While they have been translated in several different ways, the defender said something along these lines:
I want to beat up all South Koreans! Bunch of mentally handicapped retards!
These are highly offensive remarks, to be sure. They are certainly xenophobic, as Morganella makes mention of an entire nation. But racist? That’s not exactly clear. Perhaps he is racist, but if we’re judging on these remarks, that’s not a slam dunk case. Morganella had just lost to the team in the Olympic football tournament, and then disparaged the entire nation in a crude and offensive way. The man’s an idiot (that much we can deduce), and an asshole. And the Swiss Olympic chief made the right decision in sending him home.
But if we’re going to preserve the meaning of the word, it’s important to make the distinction on exactly why these remarks were racist and not simply xenophobic.
Oh look. Richard Whittall defending racism in football. Again.
How you read that into what I wrote I have no idea.
As ridiculous as the tweet is, there’s nothing racist about it.
Helpful hint…if its racist, it’s usually something specific to a certain group of people…”mentally handicapped retards” goes for anyone…this isn’t racist, just wrong…
after saying “mentally handicapped” “retards” is redundant. That’s the real story here.
Anyway, sounds like he was being racist. Not a slam dunk that we know the author’s intention???? just because he mentions a nation doesn’t make it xenophobism.
You can’t be racist against Canadians, Americans, the French, British, Dutch, Germans, etc. Similarly you can’t be racist against Ghanaians, Rwandans, or Cameroonians, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians or Palestinians, Venezuelans, Uruguayans or Chileans, Cambodians, Vietnamese or…South Koreans.
Those are nationalities, not races. There are going to be exceptions, but they’re really really really rare. For example, Israelis are generally considered to be a ‘race’ of Jews…it’s not entirely accurate, but the dialogue regarding anti-semitism is such that it will be regarded as racist. It’s also possible to be racist against a country when the country holds the entire group of that ethnicity.
The Japanese or Chinese could perhaps be included in that, though there it’s a bit iffy as to whether their ‘race’ is Japanese/Chinese, or something more like ‘east Asian’.
The thing is he could only be truly racist if he was focused on ALL Koreans, and even then it’s a bit uncertain as to whether their race, like the Japanese and Chinese, is ‘Korean’ or ‘east Asian’.
-shrug-, race is an imagined thing anyway, a human construct that we use to differentiate each other. It’s not a real thing, we’re all just ‘humans’…some of us have just been treated better than others as a result of arbitrary descriptives.
Hmm…by that definition, I guess I’m a racist: humans suck.
Apparently, he plays for Palermo. I wonder if he’s a fan favourite…