As we're unlikely to see terraces again at football, this is the virtual equivalent where you can chat to your hearts content about all football matters and, obviously, Arsenal in particular. This forum encourages all Gooners to visit and contribute so please keep it respectful, clean and topical.
I am a 'white' Australian, but I had Irish citizenship before Australian, which I only obtained this year. So to the people who know me, I'm referred to as 'Irish'.
But still, I am a 'white' Australian for the purpose of your argument.
That should have no influence over my previous comment:
To take such offense to a large crowd of majority cowards who want to make racist chants towards you does no more than grant them a victory as they know that they have gotten to you.
RaM wrote:I am a 'white' Australian, but I had Irish citizenship before Australian, which I only obtained this year. So to the people who know me, I'm referred to as 'Irish'.
But still, I am a 'white' Australian for the purpose of your argument.
That should have no influence over my previous comment:
To take such offense to a large crowd of majority cowards who want to make racist chants towards you does no more than grant them a victory as they know that they have gotten to you.
Well it has plenty of influence over the argument.
As I've pointed out on the 'Idiots' thread to be racially abused is not the same as being called a ginge, or a scouser or fatty. Something you should merely rise above and ignore.
There has never been a system where ginger people have been shackled and sold and shipped across the oceans as slave labour and the legal property of a non-ginger plantation owner, for about 300 years. Slavery was only abolished in the USA in 1864, there are football clubs in England that were formed before this date.
Ginger slave women were never raped by plantation owners
Gingers were never ruled over by non-gingers in a system of colonialism with no form of political self determination that lasted a couple of hundred years ending only a decade prior to my own birth. In fact White colonies like Australia had their autonomy long before the like of India and African/West Indians colonies - a justification being that they were not yet 'mature' enough to run themselves.
Which brings me on to the next point - Ginger people have never been subject to pseudo scientific theories of biological inferiority and lacking the mental capabilities of their non-ginger counterparts. Blacks are still subject to dubious assertions of their mental inferiority within sections of the academic world - i.e. Charles Murray's Bell Curve theory.
Ginger people were never prohibited by Law from marrying non-gingers as was the case in Rhodesia, South Africa and states in the Deep South of the USA. Gingers never had to use a different public toilet, barred from restaurants and forced to use the back of the bus to be segregated from their non-ginger counterparts. This was the case as recent as the time Charlie George won us the double.
Ginger were never denied the vote, even though the were the overwhelming majority of a country - Apartheid South Africa only ended two years before Wenger came to Arsenal.
These are all reasons why racist chanting is a little bit different from merely being called names - it takes a little more than sticks and stones to uphold such systematic oppression. And in historic terms it's all in very recent times.
Being a white Australian is nowhere near a situation of empathy with this - the very worst term of abuse is being called a convict - and the vast majority of Australians are not decended from the original convict settlers but from voluntary migration.
It's an unfortunate fact that a lot of east european countries are still fairly racist. They are not cosmopolitan and have no real experience of other races or cultures. Put it down to ignorance as much as anything.
At the moment, Ireland has a large Polish and Latvian community, mostly young people here because of our (currently) strong economy, and most of them that I've met are so casually racist that it is quite shocking.
Well this is an enormous generalization.
Latvia is right up in the Baltic, not far from Scandanavia. Serbia on the other hand is across the water from Italy. You might as well make a generalization about the English from experience of the Spanish in terms of geographical distance.
As for being casually racist, I don't see London's Polish or Latvians as being particularly racist. In fact I had a recent experience in South London where a black man wouldn't make way on the back seat of the bus for a Pole when there was space to and then when an argument kicked off as a result the black man told him to fuck off back to his own country.
Geographical distance has nothing to do with cultural or social similarities. For all intents and purposes, Poles and Latvians are culturally and socially (in the wider Pan-European context) "East" European. They have lived in a predominantly "white" society, with no real experience of multi-culturalism, and certainly little or no experience of different races on a day to day basis. Their racism is caused by ignorance, as in lack of education on the issue and lack of experience of those other races.
Just beacause you saw one example of a black guy insulting a Pole (how did you know he was a Pole BTW? Did he look like a Pole?) does not make East Europeans a non-racist group of people.
My experience of Poles and Latvians in Dublin (not all, but most that I have met) is that they are casually racist. IE; they don't see anything wrong in what they say when using offensive racist language.
I'm not saying they are like the BNP or Combat 18, but they use the "N" word with saddening regularity, mostly directed towards our large Nigerian population. I have seen and heard this.
That is my point.
BTW; I'm not getting dragged into a pissing competition over 11 pages here with you Cus, I'm just clarifying my point.
Comon guys, saying a bad word to someone is hard very hard specially when that has racist or nacist meaning, i konw it's hard i was grown in an area when i was treated as an second clas nation and my rights where pushed hard by serbians, they are white and i'm white. I didnet have right to go to schools where they went to wealk on the parks or streats where they walked, i couldent even dream about some other places.
Slavery hepened before some houndered of years in your area, but i'm only 30 years old and this what i'm tlaking about hapened in last 20 years, and in EUROPE (Balkans). And the badest thing hapened when they start beating and killing us why we wanted democracy and West europian culture, they killed a lot of friends of mine why thay have an wrong name or why they are speking wrong language, or why they have an wrong relegion. ( I miss 7 tooth from Srbian Police). After all this they send enormeous army to kill all of us, they killed and destrouyed everything in front of them, burned houndered of villages and thousends of houses, killed kids, wifes, old mans and called tham terrorists in front of the world. But they did this in Slovenia, than in Croatia, than they made an holocaust in Bosnia, they cleaned Kosovo from Albanians only than Nato started a bombing of what i saw was planed because most of the times those buildinge were empty, some of the convoys that were bombed were Albanians refugees runing away from serbs, and sometimes serbs put albanians in front of their tanks and war machinery just not being bombed by Nato. What hapened in Kosovo was evil, but it was mutch mutch worst in Bosnia. Who got charged for that? Some serbian leaders!
Wrong.
U are surprised why serbians are racist? Dont be! They will be in the future as well, cause not their leaders but the nation was guillty for the masacres they made around balkans (a part of Europe).
Misters in year 1998 and 1999 there are several families that are disepeard from this planet by serbians, in their own land and home, babies, kids, wifes and mans are gone they dont egzist anymore, that lastname is gone noone is left.
And somone was surprised why an black man told an polak go home, mr. black people was treated like animals for several years around the world, the racism dont make tham like this but the primitive and racist behavior of his country mans made him act like that, if you have more of those people comming to your country every day stilling, laying, killing, rubing etc. u want love tham, and black people want love tham eather, anyway black people are english as well.
As i said in the beging it's hard to be treated of second clas, but we together can fight racism. World should ban all racist nations, also in sports, as long as we stay put and close are eyes and mouth they will keep doing that.
maybe i shouldent react to this but i cant stay put against racism, some people (serbs, rusians and majority of slavic nations) calls us nacists, but im not nacist if dont want to live with someone who killed my friends, kids, wife, sister , brother, or parents. But after all this i dont hate tham just want them to step on the ground and try to be equal to other nations around.
Sorry for my bad english, i hope i wruted what i meaned, cause i really cant find the proper words to write what im thinking about.
Kaqak. your post was very strong. It's amazing how hard it is to understand this kind of stuff, it's like your brain tells it can't happen, but you start to understand that it did happened. Same thing happens with what the nazis did to the jews in the german Holocaust.
Thanx for your understandig, but whatever hapens, human is strong as a rock, and a life goes on, thay can hate me and you but we are still rolling, and will be rolling in the future, because we beleive on it.
