Devon Dick LAST WEEK, at a friendly football match between England and Spain in Madrid, the black English players were taunted by Spanish fans. Not to be outdone, on Sunday, Trinidadian Dwight Yorke, playing for English club Birmingham City, was subjected to racial abuse by fans from of all clubs, Blackburn Rovers. These incidents remind the world that racism is alive and that Blacks live in a hostile world.
RACE AND INTELLIGENCE
Some persons have tried to claim there is a correlation between race and intelligence. Since 1960s, Arthur Jenson and others have tried to demonstrate a dominance of nature over nurture. It is being claimed that Blacks 'nah nuh head'. But this is just plain racism. Racism is a structurally embedded system based on giving unfair and unreasonable advantage based on race. South Africa, under the apartheid regimes, is the most recent and best known example.
These incidents in football are entrenched racism and not aberrations or racial prejudice. Last month, the coach of the Spanish national football team made a reference to black French player, Thierry Henry, as a piece of black s...t. And that coach did not lose his job! Also in October, there was a BBC documentary on the experience of black football players in Britain. It featured Lindy Delaphena, Ian Wright, Viv Anderson, John Barnes etc. It was a litany of abuse based on colour by English fans. British football is fuelled by racism. John Barnes is the only Black person to have managed a major club in Britain and Scotland at that. However, there has been no second chance for the Jamaican-born Johnnie Barnes while Caucasian managers play musical chairs when they are seen as failures.
Are Blacks not intelligent enough to manage football? Is it a similar thing that's apparently happening in Jamaica with the football coaching staff? - the indigenous black is being rejected? Under Coach Carl Brown, Jamaica played one of its best games against Uruguay. After the Honduras game, I wrote an article supporting Carl Brown as coach because of the rumour that he was being replaced, although he had not failed. The Private Sector, it is claimed, would not fund a local coach. Was it because of talent or race? Well, the foreign coach (not black) did not lead us to Germany for the World Cup Finals. It would have been better to have failed with Coach Carl Brown.
IMPERIALISM, ANTI-SEMITISM
There seems to be racism in the Private Sector. Lloyd B. Smith, a columnist for The Observer and publisher of Western Mirror, claims that there is no black person in the PSOJ Hall of Fame. I have not read any denial by the organisation. Why a Lester Spaulding of RJR Group or a Neville Blythe of UGI and CVM groups could not be there? Have they not satisfied the criteria? For decades now the participants and winners of the Miss Jamaica 'beauty' competition, except for one year, do not look like the vast majority of Jamaicans but there is no outrage from the sponsors or threat to stop financing this structural problem. Racism has contributed to the development of imperialism and anti-Semitism.
European countries, with the aid of the Christian Church, conquered, occupied and plundered other territories. Significantly, Mutabaruka makes the point that no Black country has ever enslaved another race. And in this modern age of democracy, Britain, Spain, France and Portugal all have overseas territories. Amazingly, these issues are not discussed at the UN, Christian Councils or other world bodies. Interestingly, reparations of US$222 million have been given to Jews who have suffered as a result of anti-Semitism. But no reparations for Blacks who have suffered as a result of imperialism and its bedfellow racism. Racism in Europe requires more than walking off a pitch and a campaign to kick racism out of football. It needs the dismantling of the pillars of imperialism in Europe and structural adjustment in the way business is done, even in Jamaica.
Rev. Devon Dick is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church and author of 'Rebellion to Riot: the Church in nation-building.'
