That's the other side of the coin: beyond what the words Suarez used may mean, there's the question of what's racist, which is *very* dependent on culture. What would be perceived in hyper-sensitive Britain as racist would not be in other cultures less sensitive to racism. And then there's the differing sensitivity to perceived racism against different races: in the UK, people are very sensitive to racism against blacks but not against, say, Albanians because there are a lot of blacks but few Albanians. A few weeks ago, an extremely liberal, pro-immigrant German lass who spends all her time helping kids from immigrant families, who would never dream of saying anything anti-Turkish, told me that "laying an Obama in the White House" is slang for having a shit (there are very few black people in Germany, and most racism is directed against Turks, Arabs and East Europeans).
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With regards to the FA's ruling: it's a complete cop-out. They've found him guilty of indecent/abusive behaviour and punished him for racism. An 8 match ban is ridiculous for what they've found him guilty of. FFS, Rooney got a 2-game ban for running up to the TV camera and shouting "fuck off" into it. They should have either given him a punishment typical of the violation they found him guilty of or had the balls to label him a racist along with clearly you've-been-found-guilty-of-racism ban they handed him.
Whilst I agree with the first half of your post that's not necessarily the point. It may well be inoffensive in his culture but there are ramifications beyond that - he's been in Europe for some time by now and as such must realise that it's extremely offensive to refer to people in such a manner. He's not a complete idiot, surely he knew what he was doing and as such theoretically it could still be construed as racist?
I'm just theorising mind, don't know the ins and outs of the case.
Plus it's funny as fuck he's been banned for 8 games.
Or maybe not. It seems bizarre that this could have been the first time he'd said such things in four years. Also, seeing as there were no other witnesses, why did Suarez freely admit he'd said "negrito"? If he had believed it was racist, surely he'd have just denied it. More likely, he wasn't aware of how hypersensitive the UK is to perceived racism.
Hmmmm. Perhaps. It seems like a cheap (attempted) get out of jail card, playing stupid, to be honest. My guess is that there was no racist intent used but that he was trying to wind Evra up as much as he possibly could and pushed it a bit too far (possibly down to a lack of understanding around the connotations of that word in England and France) and now it's come back to bite him on the arse.
That's pretty much how I see it. If he'd thought what he had said was racist, he'd surely have denied saying it.
Yes but it doesn't matter what he thought, it's what he said.
He's not being charged for being a racist, he's being charged for using racist language. Saying rasist comments, promotes racism, that's why it needs stamped out.
It's alot easier stopping people for saying racist comments, than stopping them thinking racist things.
