No Sterling highlighted that story when he decided to speak up. It was another black kid in City's academy, and at the time Foden was just an academy kid too, albeit on the cusp of breaking through.
Football, skin color and perception
- Thread starter giorno
- Start date
Oh was it? Wasn't there a mental article about Sterling buying his mum a house or something?
Oh yeah there's been PLENTY of those sorts of stories about Sterling too. But I think the particular one referenced above was Sterling comparing two headlines of two City academy kids spending their first pay checks on buying property for their families. Foden was praised for having a good head on his shoulders while the other was lambasted as a perfect example of why bling bling kids shouldn't be given too much money too early.
Yeah this is the one I was referring to.
Yep, wasn't a good post. It was predictably coming though.
People who earn hundreds of thousands of pounds a year shouldn't be buying houses. That's just mental.
Even his own manager profiled him on appearance: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport...russia-dortmund-documentary-a9454301.html?amp
Black players regularly have to tone down their personality or be persecuted by fans in the media. I even remember a guy on here saying he doesn’t like Sancho because he ‘speaks like a gangsta’, people can play blind all they like but you rarely, if ever see these remarks made about non black players.
Really hope Saka goes wild with his hair and starts slinging gold chains around.
They kick a ball around, why do pundits/talking heads care about appearances so much ffs
If you think reacting to what Hutchinson said is just "seeking offence where none exists", and that this "helps nobody", why do you think apologizing for what he said is the best response? Presumably if he did nothing wrong, and if believing he did something wrong is detrimental to the fight against racism, then apologizing is counterproductive.
I was talking about two separate issues. In the first post I was talking about Pogba and Lukaku. In the second I was praising Hutchison for being open to hearing how his words might have come across.
I see, my bad.
In my view, what Hutchinson said was pretty stupid. That Wright reached out to him is great, and that Hutchinson took it to heart is great as well. He could've taken the Petersonian route, as mentioned, but he chose to regocginze the issue instead of deflecting it.
Hutchinson’s willingness to understand the issue is seriously impressive, we’d be a lot further along in race relations if others were as receptive to being corrected.
Hang about mate, this is really odd…
Someone brings it up on here and calls it out and you’re wading in and telling everyone that it isn’t an issue and anyone seeing it as such is making a ‘hell of a stretch’.
Then Wright has a word with Hutchinson saying the exact same thing that the poster on here flagged up and you’re saying you’re sure ‘Wright was talking sense’!?
Ridiculous. Better to hold your tongue on stuff like this ‘til you’ve actually given it a bit of thought in future me thinks.
And certainly don’t go wading in and trying to shut down valid points on such important issues if you haven’t actually got a clue about the issue and don’t even seem to know what your own actual opinion is.
We had a ‘big black wardrobe type’ CM at Birmingham in the early 00s, Aliou Cisse. For years after that we were longing for a ‘big black wardrobe type’ in the middle. Then Redknapp took over, and we got our wish. Chiek Ndoye. The Senegalese Bambi.
We’ve currently got a black guy as our 4th striker. I’ve heard people say he’s the slowest black guy they’ve ever seen.
Nobody means any harm in it. It’s just old stereotypes. I’m in the kids football world, and you here the term ‘fast n black’ a lot at early age grassroots. It appears to be that black lads are more explosive & carry more fast twitch muscle fibres. See the success of mainly black sprinters.
We’ve currently got a black guy as our 4th striker. I’ve heard people say he’s the slowest black guy they’ve ever seen.
Nobody means any harm in it. It’s just old stereotypes. I’m in the kids football world, and you here the term ‘fast n black’ a lot at early age grassroots. It appears to be that black lads are more explosive & carry more fast twitch muscle fibres. See the success of mainly black sprinters.
No admittedly that was harden than rollingout ..
KDB
Foden
Eriksen
Messi
Ronaldo
As I said in a previous post. The stereotype goes back to grassroots level where the scouts are recruiting based on “superpower” stereotypes.
Any scouts here will have heard that term “superpower”
KDB
Foden
Eriksen
Messi
Ronaldo
As I said in a previous post. The stereotype goes back to grassroots level where the scouts are recruiting based on “superpower” stereotypes.
Any scouts here will have heard that term “superpower”
This. I don't care too much about bias in media, but bias at grassroots is worth fighting for. I hope it's better now, but during my time playing, 20 years ago, it was just ridiculous how much bias went into developing players in France. At some point in my club, all black players were developed to become CB/DM and all players from Morocco/Algeria/Tunisia, developed as n°10 or wingers. It had his advantages too, I was smaller than everyone during my early teens year, but every coach would keep playing me because they were investing on my future growth, whereas my white friends didn't have that luxury.
Laurent Blanc expressed it quite directly when he said that he wanted less black players in youth teams to compete with Spain.
This is nonsensical.
Some of the things you mentioned - Kane not showing up for training - Neville did criticise.
Pretty much all of the criticism I've seen directed at Lukaku isn't just that he's pushed for a move but that's done so less than 6 months after a club paid £100m for him. Less than 6 months after he was saying similar things about leaving for Chelsea. That he done it mid-season - The worst time for his teammates and manager to deal with it - And did it behind the club's back.
I'm pretty sure if Kane had gone to City and then done an interview like this he would have received the same sort of scrutiny. Kane went about pushing for a move the wrong way, something Neville has since admitted but I don't think anyone blames him for trying to force a move given what he's done at Spurs and where the club has been headed.
There is definitely a huge issue with racism in football but this sort of stuff - equating laughably different situations - to make your point is just harmful.
Trick question, can’t name 5 intelligent players of any race!
I’m assuming your a black guy, and you support Arsenal. I find it amazing how so many black guys I’ve met throughout the years have almost always supported Arsenal. What, or who do you attribute this too?
In my own experience, the answer was usually "being from London and above the age of 20". But that was nearly a decade ago...
The team that contained Henry, Vieira, Ashley Cole, Gilberto etc really did a lot to attract a generation of black kids to Arsenal. It was the cool team in town in my youth days. If you asked my brothers and cousins, who mostly support Arsenal, why they're Arsenal fans, most of them will at some point mention Henry and Vieira. There was an aura of street football about them too. I suppose there is no true answer for it but it was definitely a thing at one point.
Also the simple fact that arsenal were the big london club that won stuff before Roman...
Well yeah, that helped for sure.
This happens with all ethnicities. Luca’s first year in the NBA he was compared primarily to Steve Nash and Larry Bird: two players he doesn’t resemble at all except in pigmentation.
It's not necessarily about meaning to do harm though. Apart from the obviously vile stuff like the Daily Mail articles referenced before, it's often rather the harm that's done 'along the way' due to these stereotypes. We are 'just' talking about football here of course, and stereotyping a player into a position that's actually not their best is probably not the end of the world. But this sort of thing (unconscious bias based on wrong stereotypes) plays out throughout society, and that's where it gets really nasty.
In the meantime, it's obviously wrong, too, in football. In particular, black people are on average not built differently than white; 'race only goes skin deep' is the known and true saying. (I.e., the genetic components that determine skin colour have nothing to do with other physical characteristics.) For example, black people excelling at running is a cultural thing, not genetic. "But all those sports medals!" That's an incredibly small sample of people and says nothing about population groups as a whole.
So yeah, maybe there's no harm in it at the grassroots level (although I wouldn't always be so sure of that it either), but it does determine a child's destiny in sports in unfair ways, and getting rid of that would be great.
I’m quite clear on my own opinion, thanks.
I don’t think he meant any harm by what he said and anyone interpreting it as a racially motivated attack on Paul Pogba is being ridiculously precious. Pogba’s done more than enough to earn criticism for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the colour of his skin.
What I suspect Ian Wright “talking sense” involved was advising Hutchinson to be very careful with anything he says on camera as it can easily be misinterpreted, taken out of context and shared by people desperate for likes and retweets. He should know as he’s had more than his fair share of being at the bottom of online pile-ons.
If you genuinely think that’s what Ian Wright would’ve said to Hutchinson you’re completely delusional mate.
And it appears that guarding your own puffed up ego is more important to you than learning or progressing your knowledge on this subject.
As mentioned before - very Peterson-esque.
Last edited:
Yeah there's very little chance Wright's advice to Hutchinson was about being taken out of context for likes and shares.
Yeah that’s a weird reach.
I'm french, so like most people of my generation, we started getting interested in PL football thanks to Arsène Wenger!
In addition to what others commented: the issue here wouldn't be that he said this as a racially motivated attack, but that his unconscious bias made him resort to a racist stereotype (probably unknowingly).
It's not only hurtful or racist if people are fully aware of the consequences and implications of what they're saying.
I agree that’s possible. Although the sort of shallow and self-obsessed footballers he alluded to aren’t necessarily black, I can see how it could be perceived as that when he’s discussing Saka. Stephen Ireland would be a good example of a white player who went down that path. Arguably Tom Cleverley too (but he seems to have got his shit together, after that whole embarrassing personal branding crap he got carried away with).
Having said all that, I think it was @Tarrou who made a great point about how pundits and fans have unfair expectations on black players to always be humble and under-stated. They’re far quicker to be called out for being flamboyant than white players (as per Rashforr and Lingard when they wear fancy clothes) and I didn’t think about that when I waded into this thread.
Mind you, I stand by my original comment that I don’t see a personal attack on Pogba alluded to in the tweet though. And if any pundit did use Pogba as an example of football who cared more about his image than footballing excellence then that could be justified without any accusation of racist stereotyping.
Cheers. I can't really comment on individual players - I don't follow the news, pundits, or twitter enough for that. I was making a more general comment about unconscious bias, and I think we agree here.
I also agree, btw, that it can be hard in the case of specific individuals to say whether comments come from unconscious bias or a specific, individual issue. It's rather when you look across the board and start seeing that there are patterns of comments for certain population groups, that you can see what unconscious bias is bringing to the table.
Not defending Martial here but I’m sick of the blatantly hypocrisy of the media in this country.
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date