11 Dec 2014 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, United Kingdom
I feel sorry for Mario Balotelli. I’m sure he’ll take that as a comfort; knowing he’s not the only one asking “why always Mario?” That is not to say I think he’s drifted through life blameless and immaculate: not at all. I’ve only seen him in the flesh once, when Manchester City played Arsenal. He had a terrible game and got sent off for what even I, sitting in row Z at the other end of the ground, could see was a stupid and dangerous tackle.
But I’ve had a soft spot for Balotelli ever since someone pointed out he looks like a baby dinosaur. Without wishing to infantilise him, he’s like the boy in school who can’t help getting in trouble even when he’s trying to be good. Ballotelli’s current situation is the perfect example. Last week, the player posted an image on Instagram, showing Nintendo character Super Mario (from whom the footballer takes his nickname, or at least would like to).
“Don’t be racist!”, it read (Yay!)
“Be like Mario” (LOL!)
“He’s an Italian plumber” (indeed he is)
“created by Japanese people” (correct)
“who speaks English” (sort of)
“and looks like a Mexican” (I suppose he does. A bit.)
“…jumps like a black man” (hmmm)
“and grabs coins like a Jew” (oh)
Long story short: people suggested that this might be a bit racist towards black and Jewish people, Balotelli responded that his mum is Jewish. Eventually, he took the post down and apologised. But by then it was too late. The Football Association announced over the weekend that the striker would face an investigation for using insulting and improper language with “reference to ethnic origin and/or colour and/or race and/or nationality and/or religion or belief”.
For what it’s worth, I don’t believe for a moment that Balotelli meant to insult anyone with his Instagram post. I think he entirely sincerely posted the meme seeing it as an anti-racist message. The problem for poor Mario was that his ill-judged but innocent Instagram came while the football world was actually paying attention to anti-semitism, as Wigan chairman Dave Whelan spouted a series of inappropriate race-related comments (Jews, money, you know, that stuff) after hiring former Cardiff manager Malky Mackay, who himself had run into controversy over dubious texts (Jews, money, on and on it goes).
Whelan stylishly compounded the issue with a “clarifying” interview in the Jewish Telegraph, where he spun the ”some of my best friends are…” line, saying there must be “a dozen” Jews with apartments near his residence in Majorca, and “so many Jewish people go to Barbados at Christmas. That’s when I go. I see a lot of them in the Lone Star, in restaurants. I play golf with a few of them.”
In the same interview, Whelan told how when he was younger, people called the only Chinese restaurant in Wigan “the Chingalings”, and absolutely nobody had minded (though one doubts anyone asked the Chinese people of Wigan).
Whelan now also faces charges of misconduct from the FA. I’m not about to suggest that the FA has no right to investigate Whelan, or anyone involved in professional football in England. Associations can have their own rules and standards. But it would be sad if, in football’s newfound determination to deal with discrimination, innocents such as Balotelli got caught in the dragnet.
The interesting question is whether, in combating racism, one confronts the words used, the stereotypes invoked, the intent behind them, or all three at once. Is it possible to disentangle the three?
Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than the debate about whether Tottenham Hotspur fans should be able to chant “yids” or not. Short explanation: some Spurs fans are Jewish, many identify as the “yid army”. Some people — mostly not Spurs fans — feel that Spurs fans chanting “yids” legitimises anti-semitic chanting by fans of other teams. Spurs fans say it’s their chant and their word and they are using it positively. Unpick that one, sports fans.
Words in and of themselves are neutral entities. Does saying the word “yid” — in and of itself — make me more or less anti-semitic? No. But the creation of a taboo can elevate a word, bringing a certain thrill to its use. In a society where, more or less, we have decided bigotry is a bad thing (which is not to suggest a society where bigotry is no longer a problem), the use of words and phrases associated with bigotry can take on a thrill of its own, as much for the well intentioned as for the malevolent. The bad taste joke, the inappropriate interjection, the drunken football chant using the words you might not be supposed to use, are the shared cigarette behind the school bike shed; the shared, line-crossing moments that so often bond people.
The joy for most Unilad Bantalopes lies in that shared bond. For the person who created the meme which ill-feted Mario Balotelli shared (very much from the Bantasauraus school), one could simultaneously attempt to be anti-racist and use racial stereotypes. Human beings are complicated like that. And that’s why a zero-tolerance approach to words and meanings is unlikely to work on us.
This article was posted on 11 December 2014 at indexoncensorship
25 Nov 2013 | France, News and features, Politics and Society
French Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira makes a speech about penal reform in the lecture hall of the Political Science University in Paris. (Photo: Davide Del Giudice / Demotix)
An obscure 16 page-long far-right magazine recently put France’s black justice minister Christiane Taubira on its cover, comparing her to a monkey. The storm of indignation that followed gave unexpected visibility to the magazine and members of the government expressed their desire to sue the magazine or to block the distribution of the infamous issue. Was this an attack on the freedom of the press? Or rather, an occasion for French politicians to look good and to make everyone forget about their own track record?
“Crafty as a monkey, Taubira gets her banana back”, said Minute’s cover, next to a photo of Taubira looking unhappy. The title used a common French phrase (“avoir la banane” means “to be in good form” in French).
Following the outrage caused by this cover, Jean-Marc Ayrault, France’s prime minister, asked prosecutors to investigate whether any law had been broken. The prosecutors decided it had and opened an investigation for “injure publique à caractère racial” (racist public slur). The interior minister, Manuel Valls, announced he was examining whether it was legally possible to block the distribution of the magazine. This, however, has not been followed by any measures.
Taubira, 61, was born in French Guyana, where she started her political career as a supporter of independence for the ex-colony. She has been the driving force behind the 2001 law that recognises the Atlantic trade and slavery as a crime against humanity and a strong advocate of the law allowing same-sex marriage passed this year.
As such, she has suffered an escalation of racist abuse from the opponents to same sex-marriage. Last month, Anne-Sophie Leclere, a Front National municipal election candidate, was dismissed by her party after comparing Taubira to a monkey on her Facebook page and on TV. “I prefer to see her swinging from the branches of a tree than in the governement”, she told a reporter. The FN subsequently sued Taubira for having insulted the party.
During a recent visit to Angers, the minister faced kids from the “Manif pour tous” waving a banana at her and chanting: “Who’s the banana for? For the monkey!” The abuse is reminiscent to what Cécile Kyenge, minister of integration in the current Italian governement, has been facing in Italy and rife with references to colonisation: In an October demonstration of the extremist Catholic Civitas Institute, a priest was heard shouting: “Y’a bon Banania, y’a pas bon Taubira” – a reference to the old advert for Banania chocolate powder which featured a Senegalese infantry man speaking in pidgin French, an advert which is seen as a symbol of French colonialism.
Minute’s words “deny that I belong to the human race”, said Taubira, who refused to prosecute the magazine.
Created by supporters of French colonisation in Algeria in 1962, Minute backed the Front National party in the 1970’s and has been struggling over the past years. Its publishing company went into administration last March and the magazine currently counts only three employees. For the magazine, the infamous front page has been a success: “We wanted free publicity. We got more than we could have dreamed of”, said one of their journalists. Hélène Valette, spokeperson for Minute added: “We take responsibility for this cover. It’s satirical. No one takes offense at the covers of Charlie Hebdo.”
Satirical publication Charlie Hebdo responded to this statement saying: “Some people have actually taken offense at the covers of Charlie Hebdo, among which the Catholic far-right which has sued us 12 times in 20 years (…) Minute does not defend the freedom of the press. It prepares the ground for future racist crimes.”
The law against racist public slur was added in 1972 to the 1881 Law on Press Freedom. France has some of the toughest hate speech laws in the EU. Minute’s editor is risking up to six months in jail and a 22,500 euros fee.
For French politicians and for the press, the racist abuse against Taubira has actually provided an occasion to express unanimous indignation and to push under the carpet their own recourse to racist rhetorics. As Julien Salingue wrote in Acrimed (an independent organisation criticising the media) some of the media coverage of the abuse looked like an investigation led by suspects. “Has France become racist?” recently asked the Parisien newspaper on its front page, forgetting previous covers demonising migrants. The pattern was shared by Le Point and L’Express magazines, known for their sensationalistic Islamophobic covers.
At the launch of the Front National municipal campaign, a journalist from France Inter radio deemed fit to give a platform to 85 year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen and ask him for his opinion of Christiane Taubira. Always predictable, Le Pen said that because Taubira had been independentist she was against France and had been chosen because the colour of her skin could serve as a shield when proposing unacceptable laws.
Interior minister Manuel Valls has used the attacks on Taubira to his political advantage and has been very prompt in saying he wanted to ban the circulation of Minute – which seemed at best useless, as the damage had been done, at worst, counterproductive: it would insure more publicity for Minute and allow the publication to portray itself as a defendant of the freedom of the press. Valls happens to be well-known for its anti-immigrants and anti-Roma policies and rhetorics. France’s national union for undocumented migrants, which is planning a protest in front of the Parti Socialiste headquarters on 27 November, argues that “the liberation of racist speech is a result of the policy of successive governments which have agreed to the idea that “immigration is a problem” and stigmatised Roma people, Muslims and all foreigners, especially undocumented people.”
Henri Maler, one of Acrimed founders, tweeted: “Fighting racism exclusively by outraged declarations and legal action = emptying the ocean with a tea spoon.”
This article was originally posted on 25 Nov 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
30 Nov 2011 | Uncategorized
The web has been awash with outrage this week after video emerged of a woman engaged in a racist rant on a tram in Croydon.
The woman has now been arrested for a “racially aggravated” Public Order offence. The specific charge falls under section 4a, “Intentional harassment, alarm or distress”. Convictions can carry a prison sentence of up to six months.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the problematic nature of the Public Order Act, which it can be argued has its practical uses (allowing police to arrest people before violence breaks out), but can be used to censor “offensive” behaviour such as preaching or protest.
There were two things that were fascinating and troubling about the whole “My Tram Experience” experience.
The first is that the woman seems quite unwell. This does not necessarily excuse her behaviour, but in the rush to condemn her behaviour there seemed to be a hell of a lot of opprobrium and very little sympathy.
The other element was the fact that this was filmed and released on YouTube at all.
I tried to imagine how an incident like this would have played out 10 years ago, pre YouTube, pre Twitter. The woman may or may not have been kicked off the tram. People would have got off the tram and told a few people about the weird woman on the bus. That would probably have been the end of it.
Remember when everyone used to worry about CCTV cameras? It was at the height of paranoia about the Labour governments “authoritarianism”, when campaigners such as No2ID warned that the UK’s state surveillance apparatus was worse than that of the Stasi.
That panic seems to be over, perhaps due to many who made the argument being willing to give the Liberal Democrats a chance on civil liberties.
But it’s also perhaps due to a change in thinking. In the age of cameraphones and YouTube, do we now take it for granted that someone’s filming? Are we willingly becoming a citizen Stasi, happy to record and report each other’s behaviour?
8 Sep 2011 | Index Index, minipost
British designer John Galliano has been given a suspended fine for two racist and anti-Semitic abuse rants in a Parisian bar. The former Dior designer was found guilty of making public insults on two occasions and charged 6000 euros (£5,200). Galliano was said to have made 35 anti-Jewish insults in the space of 45 minutes when he repeatedly insulted a French couple in February. He was also found guilty of similar charges from October 2010. Galliano claims not to remember the incidents due to his triple addiction to alcohol, sleeping tablets and Valium.
