I have seen a few soccer matches from Spain this year and have seen a bit of their problem of racist chanting. It disturbed me to no end that my favorite sport is being tarnished (again) by this sort of thing. I have done a bit of reading about the problem and it certainly isn't a soccer problem in Spain, and other European countries, its a social problem that is living within their cultures.
Today there is a good article in the Guardian that has drawn similar conclusions. This article also goes on to address English soccer and how it is not immune either, but to me the crux of the article is in the beginning when the author describes the small Spanish town of Getafe. Its a sorry and disgraceful description of a society that should have learned from history that this sort of behavior has no place in the modern world.
These are the battles we should be committing ourselves to. Darfur is in the midst of a genocide that doesn't even get a mention on the evening news. Europe is seeing the reimmergence of racism and we know where that lead last time. Our own citizens' ideas on the Muslim religion is further away from the truth than is healthy. Yet we are throwing ourselves into battles over science versus religion, saving the life of a Florida woman who is brain-dead, and deciding that two men marrying is more dangerous to marriage than Rush Limbaugh's 4th engagement.
We have some seriously fucked-up priorities.
Posted by dmason at May 8, 2005 12:09 PM