Going Ape
‘IS Spain a racist country?
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| A Spanish monkey |
Far from it, it is famously tolerant and sees little wrong in the racism dished out to Englands black footballers.
Eduardo Torrico, a Spanish journalist working on the Spanish daily sports paper AS, tells the Mirror that we just dont know it.
And this ignorance, he says, is worse than knowing it, since it means it can be ignored. No-one is applying solutions needed to stop it, he laments.
Speaking in the same paper, Ashley Coles mum, Sue, agrees. She says that she thought the noise from the Spanish crowd was just the sound of them booing her boy.
Then she listened harder and heard the boos turn into ooo-ooos. So she turned the telly off.
And at the same instant, as the Star says, her boy turned off the top-secret plan for him to play for Real Madrid.
The Spaniards had ear-marked Cole as their replacement for ageing left back Roberto Carlos, but Cole has apparently gone off the idea, deciding that no amount of glory and cash can make up for being the target of racists.
And Rio Ferdinand tells the Sun that he was so incensed by the Spanish crowds pathetic antics he would have had no problem had Sven Goran Eriksson ordered the team from the pitch.
He says that he doesnt think anybody in England would have blamed the players had they taken an early bath.
It was all DISRESPECTFUL…DISTASTEFUL…DISGRACEFUL, as Rio says it was.
But, surely, leaving the field of play is precisely what the racists in the crowd want the black players to do. Better to play with dignity and beat the racists out of sight.
Of course, having seen Englands performance, there was less chance of that than there is of the Spanish FA clamping down hard on racism.
But perhaps we shouldnt be too hard on the Spaniards. Today the Express carries a story that reveals how a new species of prehistoric ape has been found near Barcelona.
The Pierolapithecus ape is long since dead, but it was a Spanish ape, and therefore a possible ancestor of many of the Spanish fans who jumped up and down to celebrate their whiteness.
Couple this discovery with Spains so-called albino gorilla, Snowflake who, until his recent death, entertained thousands of visitors to Barcelona zoo – and the picture changes.
Could it be that Spaniards are not deliberately racially abusing blacks by acting like monkeys but are merely doing what they do in their natural habitat?
Heres one for the anthropologists and apologists to puzzle over…’
Posted: 19th, November 2004 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
