an interesting thread here: http://bb.blackcountry.com/communitycentral/showthread.php?t=11437 not too surprised. pockets of ignorance in the wolverhampton stands apparently chant racist crap for sustained periods of time, even when Seol's not on the pitch! most of the people in the forum above have the right idea in condemning the behavior. i'm not shitting a brick about this yet. i wasn't there so there's no way to know how prevalent this behavior was. and it's not as if korean baseballplayers don't get this treatment sporadically in the states. i don't know what do you guys think? personally, having lived in California all my life, and having been in Reading the last couple months, I must say that the Brits are a bit less enlightened when it comes to issues of race than predicted. but when California is the used as the benchmark for these kinds of things, i tend to be dissapointed...
There are going to be idiots everytime there is a large crowd - just a law of average in human nature. Judging by most replies in the thread, people are disgusted by the fans behavior and do not support racism. I am heartened by it. As racism goes, you see far less of that in California than most other places in USA. I have been to places like Texas and Kentucky and it can get pretty ugly there. However, I see a lot of racist behaviors from new immigrants toward other minority among Californians.
The next time that happens the players who disagree with this kind of behaviour should just walk off the field.
I realized travelling through the UK, most limey's are generally friendly, but some are dimwits. This is somewhat of a pet-peeve, but we get limey familys who visit southern California once in a blue moon. They all double park near the beaches taking up space in which two cars could be parked -and that freakin annoys me.
Everyone is prejudiced or racist in some way or another. No biggie. It's all good fellas. Don't tell me you guys don't carry any prejudices of your own.
Let's not forget. We don't have to go to English league fans to see racism. Just stop by Asian Rivalries forum.
For what it's worth, I didn't hear any racist chants from where I was at Molineux. If there was any then it could only have been from a minority. The closest thing to that that I heard was the Coventry fans calling the Wolves fans "yam yams", but that's another thing entirely.
Perhaps that's because American cars are the size of our buses!! You also drive on the wrong side of the road, which probably doesn't help I didn't realise that anyone still called the Brits "limeys" - isn't that verging on rascism...? Actually I read somewhere that the British sailers only ate limes to prevent scurvy as the more effective lemons were harder to get hold of - probably for the best as "lemony" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Don't worry Quirky. Actually we have our very own racist wanker in this forum itself. A unique situation I have never really faced before but goes to show that if you stick around long enough anywhere, an @$$hole is sure enough to crawl out from under some rock.
Didn't know "limey" was insulting. Apologies if so. However, I've met Enlgish people who expressed to me that the expression "limey" was similiar to British people calling Austrailian's Aussies, New Zealander's Kiwi, and Austrailians calling the English Pooms. Maybe, I should stop referring Austrailians as Aussies, and so on. I had no idea it was an offensive term.
Sorry - was my fault - I swear there was a smiley in there when I posted it!! I'm not actually used to hearing the term, and it's actually quite quaint. No offense was taken. My point was that there can sometimes be a thin line between what is considered acceptable and what is considered as racist. Anyway, I think I'll stop using smileys until I've worked out how to use them properly, just to avoid any further confusion.
No problem Birky. Out of curiousity, just to change the subject, what are the girls like up in Birmingham?
How am I supposed to answer that? The ones I've known have all the parts that they should have and none of those that they shouldn't. Actually, there's quite a nice young lady who has a season ticket in a seat just along the row from me - a girl who likes football, what more could you ask for?
Not having witnessed anything either from the Blackburn v. Birmingham City match nor this Wolves match, I'm only going on what I've heard here in this forum... if there has been racist chants, both in Blackburn and in Wolverhampton, then the English reaction toward the incidents in Madrid during the midweek match should be an insular one before they go on a crusade against the Spanish. That's not to say that the Madrid fans (meaning fans in Madrid watching that particular match) were justified in what they did. But isn't it amazing that all the attention is poured onto these bad apples in Spain and then on the same weekend we hear of these racist chants inside England? My response is this: Just score a goal and shut them up. The joy of the majority will silence the ignorance of the minority.
Too right. To try and put things into some perspective though, the chants and gestures at the Blackburn v Birmingham match were from just a few individuals - mainly one, who was ejected from the match. I was at the Wolves match and didn't hear anything racist, although that's not to say that there wasn't anything. I believe that it was just a few mindless comments from individuals rather than anything particularly nasty. I think the fact that this was highlighted on a Wolves forum by Wolves fans may show that this is not classed as acceptable behaviour by the majority. I watched the England v Spain match on the television and the chants (monkey noises to be exact) were clearly audible, which would suggest that it was from more than just a few supporters, although it would be unfair to tar all the Spanish supporters with the same brush. I think that there are right wing groups who follow various teams in Spain, as others do in other parts of Europe. I think these need to be targeted more than the odd, ignorant individual, who can and should be silenced through peer pressure. I remember speaking with a black lad from Wolverhampton, who ended up supporting Birmingham City mainly because many years ago, racism was rife in football in England, and Birmingham was one of the few clubs where he felt safe. I believe that this has changed significantly over the years in England, and am pleased to see an increase in the number of black and asian fans who attend Wolves matches. Anyway, from what I hear, the comments that were made at Wolves were more like stupid comments from ignorant people rather than anything intentionally malicious. Let's hope they keep their mouths shut in future, unless they have anything positive to say.
Racism will never be fixed... Think of koreans, yea they can get discriminated by other races in different places of the world but hell Koreans discriminate other races too, same ********
I think racism from minorities is totally different. Racism, much like sexism and is about power and I don't recall anything in the history books where Koreans made the English or caucasians in general their slaves. So you might say that we should 'get over the past' but I find this statement totally stupid. History is what determined the social powers for us today so forgetting the past is something that just can't be done or simply turn a blind eye to. Look at how much caucasian influence there is around the world. Every country been touched by some old white fat rich azzwipe.
However, this idea does not always apply, as many people who study postcolonial studies argues. For instance, my girlfriend, who is European, went to Korea because of her job for a year. By the context of her situation- she was in a position of a minority. She was treated like crap, and because of her minority status, she was powerless. In the end, she felt helpless, angry, insecure and found whole her situation alienating, mos specificially regards to her foreign environment. I hear this crap all the type for foreigners who visit or reside in foreign countrys, but many times in countrys like South Korea, China and Japan. As one of her collegues noted, Seoul is the city of white hate. This is peculiarly odd, because South Korea is one of the most industrialized countries in the world, where they are in the forefront of scientific and technological development. Yet, as wealthy nation states, both South Korea and Japan have bizzare racialist conceptions.