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Garth put Antonio as centre forward in his team of the week and said this about him [emoji38] :dowie:

 

Michail Antonio: This was a fabulous performance. What this lad loses in finesse he more than makes up for in effort and desire. What a shame the striker had his well-deserved goal overruled by VAR.

 

Very soon players like Antonio will no longer feature in the professional game due to VAR on account of the player's lack of sophistication as the technology seeks to root out the slightest indiscretion. The only element of luck that now exists in the game is if VAR sees something that everyone else misses.

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Certainly not racist, but there is definitely a bit of cultural relativism which happens when people view completely different countries through their own societal standards which have been forged through their own very specific history.

 

Italy as a nation and an all-encompassing national identity has only existed for circa 150 years, and before that existed for 1500 years as a collection of smaller regional states. Even between towns this sense of difference is still pronounced, with entirely different dialects existing miles apart. This creates a culture which is regional, parochial and small-minded in many ways to this day.

 

The modern formation of Italy also means that its colonial history is minimal. There was never an influx of people of colour who also shared the same language and culture - as was the case when Britain or France accepted post-war immigration. Immigration to Italy of people of colour has pretty much always been framed through the prism of Africans crossing the Mediterranean. Therefore as a country Italy has simply never really gone through this process of assimilating people of colour into their cultural identity.

 

Germany has a very similar history (founded in exactly the same year), and honestly from my own personal experience with teutonic culture there is a weird way of dealing racial differences (I'm talking an awkwardness, rather than racism). The major difference between Germany and Italy is that Germany (at least in the old FDR) went through a thorough process of introspection after Nazism to create the modern, liberal, borderline apologetic nation it is to today. Italy simply never went through that same process after Mussolini and its own experiences of fascism, at all.

 

All of this creates a society that is openly xenophobic to otherness without ever really understanding why its considered racist. If I can make fun of a Venetian, or a Neapolitan, then why can't I do the same to a black person? This is the genuine thought process you will get from an Ultra, and without a history to explain why this is not acceptable, it continues unrelenting. It's undoubtedly a major issue, and vehemently unacceptable through modern western standards, but like anything can't really be explained nor fixed without really understanding context.

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It also doesn't help that pretty much all positions of power in Italy are dominated by old men. The decision making at the Corriere dello sport and the FIGC is lead by those well into pensionable age - leading to the kind of truly embarrassing incidents of the last month.

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I see the artist has said that the original paintings - presumably some some time ago and not specifically for this initiative - were supposed to suggest that all humans are apes, but Christ. Pick something else for your campaign, lads.

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I see the artist has said that the original paintings - presumably some some time ago and not specifically for this initiative - were supposed to suggest that all humans are apes, but Christ. Pick something else for your campaign, lads.

 

That won't go down well in the catholic church.

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I thought I'd make this work to teach that we're all apes

 

I made the western monkey with blue and white eyes, the Asian monkey with almond-shaped eyes and the black monkey positioned in the centre

 

Decided the monkey representing black people needed no modification  :neutral:

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