Jarrod Bowen under investigation for racist tweet

[Bertie Wooster]

That's ludicrous.

But it's going to keep happening. And like with other examples there's going to be no room for common sense or context to be applied because people are so scared of being accused of defending / condoning 'racism' (even if it's not, the accusation is enough nowadays) that they'll have to punish the people to avoid being the next who are forced to apologise or resign, etc.

Once this kind of thing starts snowballing, it's impossible to stop. And that's clearly what's happening with a few things at the moment.

 

[Rado_N]

N apparently. It's obviously a shitty thing to type and by 15 you're old enough to know better but as others have said he was technically a child and he wasn't a professional footballer then.

Oh for sure I was just curious and at the same time too lazy to look on Twitter.

 

[Chairman Steve]

I doubt journalists found the tweets. It’s those dumb football Twitter accounts.

Are those the ones that have handles like Trenttastic, Martialific, Wernerist, Aubameyangarang etc?

Some gooner kid who is NEET and lots of time to burn probably dug it up after the result on the weekend then? That is something special if you have dredge up something as a gotcha. A tweet from 9 years ago

 

[Rado_N]

Maybe I'm not well-versed enough in racial epithets and such, but what could be the word starting with W?

Well the insinuation from the tweet is the friend in question isn’t actually black, so think “rhymes with” and what Eminem was often called when he first appeared.

 

[cj_sparky]

Around the same time a Mr.Chow was running round in the Hangover movies using the same phrase...

 

[horsechoker]

3 match ban for Cavani

I'd give him a talking yo but chances are he's matured. I would hate to be punished for everything I did as a teenager that I've since realised I shouldn't have said.

 

[Tom Cato]

https://www.skysports.com/football/...r-using-unacceptable-racist-term-in-2012-post

9 years ago.

As someone who opposes racism at every opportunity: This is not racist neither is it appropriate to target people for tweets they posted when they were adolescents.

Next up: Global petitions to charge the maker of the 1992 film "White men can't jump" for racial profiling.

This is beyond dumb.

 

[duffer]

Andre Grey got banned and fined when someone dug up 4 year old Tweets (which were pretty awful) but he was a grown man when he made the offending Tweets.

 

[justsomebloke]

The hashtag is absolutely racist.

I can't tell what the hashtag is?

 

[Siorac]

Well the insinuation from the tweet is the friend in question isn’t actually black, so think “rhymes with” and what Eminem was often called when he first appeared.

Oh so basically the N word starting with a W instead. Until your post and my subsequent quick Google search I never knew that was a thing. Huh.

 

[OL29]

I can't tell what the hashtag is?

#N****aPlease

 

[The Mitcher]

That 'their' is more offensive than the tweet itself.

Nine years ago though. Surely there has to be some sort of limitation on this. I'm not sure about English law but in Hungary, if it turned out that, for example, I stole a car nine years ago, I couldn't be punished for it at this point unless the car's value was above €1m.

There is no limit to this, authoritarians will always go one step beyond.

 

[duffer]

Oh so basically the N word starting with a W instead. Until your post and my subsequent quick Google search I never knew that was a thing. Huh.

That was a big one in my school. I got called it once because I came into school wearing a awesome LA Raiders jacket.

I didn't care, that jacket was sweet.

 

[VP89]

With the exception of the N word, I might have post like this when I was in my teens, because it wasn't really deemed as racism then by general society really. It clearly wasn't meant to be offensive to black people or demeaning. Stereotype? Yes. But in a age/time where it was meant in jest and not offence.

FA should ban him though because they did with Cavani

 

[Adam-Utd]

He should obviously make a public apology and say what he said was wrong, but to ban him for that would be too far.

I suspect though because they've set the precedent it'll be 3 games minimum.

 

[limerickcitykid]

Around the same time a Mr.Chow was running round in the Hangover movies using the same phrase...

It’s also a very popular brand of cereal. Bowen may have just had a bowl for breakfast.

 

[Rado_N]

Oh so basically the N word starting with a W instead. Until your post and my subsequent quick Google search I never knew that was a thing. Huh.

Sadly so.

 

[Inigo Montoya]

He won't get a ban or a fine. He was a child.

That part is irrelevant. He was old enough to know right from wrong and using a racial slur constitutes an offence. Under the law the age of criminal responsibility is from 10-17. Although that’s an extreme situation, a lot of mitigating factors will be taken into consideration. Having said that, footballers have been taken to task for historic tweets and times have changed considerably. If he isn’t, there’ll be an enormous backlash

 

[justsomebloke]

Shouldn’t that be, ‘ me thoughts exactly’?

Nope. "thoughts" and "thought" are both fine, I believe. And I assume "me" is a typo, and should be "my"? Nice try though, it would have been fun if you caught me out.

 

[Pexbo]

He was a child and clearly stupid at the time, it doesn’t seem right to punish him for this considering he was still at school at the time but he definitely needs to come out and apologise for it and make it clear how much he regrets it.

 

[DWelbz19]

Are those the ones that have handles like Trenttastic, Martialific, Wernerist, Aubameyangarang etc?

Some gooner kid who is NEET and lots of time to burn probably dug it up after the result on the weekend then? That is something special if you have dredge up something as a gotcha. A tweet from 9 years ago

You laugh, but that’s genuinely what happened to Andre Gray. He scored a brace against Liverpool a few years back and Liverpool fans dug tweets out from 2012 which he was then charged for. They were some pretty terrible tweets too, tbf.

 

[Bastian]

Mental.

 

[AgentSmith]

You’d wonder at what point this type of thing does more harm to the cause it purports to help than good.

I don’t think anything punitive should happen to Bowen but he should take the opportunity to say sorry and publicly acknowledge it was a stupid thing to say. Which it was.

Giving a 24 year old footballer a 3 match ban for something he said as a 15 year old schoolboy seems a stretch.

 

[Brwned]

Jesus it was almost a decade ago!

I think it's an interesting dynamic personally. This particular example is ridiculous, but there are some other examples recently that raise challenging questions IMO. Questions that we've not really had to work through before. The only comparable example is when a politician was writing some university newsletter decades ago, where they were power hungry enough at a young age to use those obscure platforms available to them, and they have attained enough power for journalists to track them down.

This story about the Teen Vogue editor is a bit different. They're an organisation that project certain values, it's baked into what they do, and the individual was hired with a strong emphasis on communicating and exemplifying those values. What she wrote clearly violated that premise in such a stark way that she couldn't legitimately perform that role any more...but she wrote it as a teenager, complaining about homework and other inane bullshit. At what point does that person no longer represent the person she is? The material will exist for her entire lifetime, associated to her name, and in a sense that version of herself is timeless.

It's only in the last few years that teenagers that came of age in the social media era are now stepping into prominent roles in adulthood, and at some point we're going to need to figure out what is a legitimate separation between old me / new me. People have never been defined by who they are, right then, right there. The exact timespan we judge people on depended on the context of our relationship and the visibility we had into their "past lives". Those two things have fundamentally shifted and we clearly haven't come to a consensus on what an appropriate time span is.

 

[dal]

Wtf.

When I was at school that was said and mainly by my black friends to me in jest.

Everyone needs to learn not to broadcast anything related to race that can be taken negatively, keep it in your friend circle as a joke, don’t put it on fecking Twitter.

 

[Beachryan]

Going back through players tweets from when they were a teenager to stir up controversy is about as classy as the tweet in question.

This.

 

[Martial'sEmergingSmile]

Andre Grey got banned and fined when someone dug up 4 year old Tweets (which were pretty awful) but he was a grown man when he made the offending Tweets.

Andre Gray's were also legitimately hateful. Hashtagging for 'gays' to burn, die etc.

Bowen's is just silly. Lots of people were using the phrase 'nigga please' jokingly in that era. I'm black, was just finishing Uni around that time, and I remember it being super popular...and definitely wasn't racially exclusive. Google Trends actually shows that October 2012 - the month Bowen posted it - was literally the peak point of the phrase.

Also, he's obviously mixed-race, but just noticed while searching for the Google Trend a Trevor Noah tweet from the same year....just as a way of showing that it was in the public conciousness at the time.

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

My opinion is the same as it was during the Cavani incident - as a society we need to go back to remembering that context and intent matter.

 

[duffer]

You laugh, but that’s genuinely what happened to Andre Gray. He scored a brace against Liverpool a few years back and Liverpool fans dug tweets out from 2012 which he was then charged for. They were some pretty terrible tweets too, tbf.

Gray was in his 20s when he made those tweets though and it was only 4 years later. Also, those tweets were particularly vile.

 

[AgentSmith]

Andre Gray's were also legitimately hateful. Hashtagging for 'gays' to burn, die etc.

Bowen's is just silly. Lots of people were using the phrase 'nigga please' jokingly in that era. I'm black, was just finishing Uni around that time, and I remember it being super popular...and definitely wasn't racially exclusive. Google Trends actually shows that October 2012 - the month Bowen posted it - was literally the peak point of the phrase.

Also, he's obviously mixed-race, but just noticed while searching for the Google Trend a Trevor Noah tweet from the same year....just as a way of showing that it was in the public conciousness at the time.

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

My opinion is the same as it was during the Cavani incident - as a society we need to go back to remembering that context and intent matters.

Good post.

 

[V.O.]

He won't get a ban or a fine. He was a child.

The FA have already established that none of intent, context, language or culture matter. Why would age matter? He's done a racism! Three match ban.

What's also pretty funny to me is that in the tweet he's actually attacking 'cultural appropriation' but nobody's even really discussed that. It's literally just a game of "he wrote the bad word" gotcha and what he's saying doesn't even enter the conversation.

 

[justsomebloke]

Andre Gray's were also legitimately hateful. Hashtagging for 'gays' to burn, die etc.

Bowen's is just silly. Lots of people were using the phrase 'nigga please' jokingly in that era. I'm black, was just finishing Uni around that time, and I remember it being super popular...and definitely wasn't racially exclusive. Google Trends actually shows that October 2012 - the month Bowen posted it - was literally the peak point of the phrase.

Also, he's obviously mixed-race, but just noticed while searching for the Google Trend a Trevor Noah tweet from the same year....just as a way of showing that it was in the public conciousness at the time.

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Have to agree with that. When I read the tweet, it doesn't conjure an image of a rabid racist to me, but it absolutely does sound like a 15-year old with bad judgment and rather too much eagerness to be cool.

 

[Devil may care]

It's clearly a joke and wouldn't be unlikely for a comedian to say on stage a decade ago, these days 90% of jokes are off limits, trying to get a guy in trouble for a joke tweet nearly a decade ago is ridiculous.

Well the insinuation from the tweet is the friend in question isn’t actually black, so think “rhymes with” and what Eminem was often called when he first appeared.

Picket lines for his wicked rhymes, sick is the mind.

 

[Ali Dia]

As someone who opposes racism at every opportunity: This is not racist neither is it appropriate to target people for tweets they posted when they were adolescents.

Next up: Global petitions to charge the maker of the 1992 film "White men can't jump" for racial profiling.

This is beyond dumb.

It’s got the beginning of 1984 vibes to it big time. Search though anyone’s online history far enough back and you will find something that’ll piss a load of people off these days. Social media is absolute gack!

 

[OL29]

Andre Gray's were also legitimately hateful. Hashtagging for 'gays' to burn, die etc.

Bowen's is just silly. Lots of people were using the phrase 'nigga please' jokingly in that era. I'm black, was just finishing Uni around that time, and I remember it being super popular...and definitely wasn't racially exclusive. Google Trends actually shows that October 2012 - the month Bowen posted it - was literally the peak point of the phrase.

Also, he's obviously mixed-race, but just noticed while searching for the Google Trend a Trevor Noah tweet from the same year....just as a way of showing that it was in the public conciousness at the time.

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

My opinion is the same as it was during the Cavani incident - as a society we need to go back to remembering that context and intent matter.

Whilst I agree with the premise of this post, and maintain that Bowen shouldn’t be banned as he was an impressionable 15 year old, I don’t think there’s ever been a time where it was socially acceptable to use that phrase, particularly from non black people. It may have been widely used, but, like the word ‘faggot’, it’s always been abhorrent, I don’t think the fact that other people said it too is an acceptable excuse.

 

[roonster09]

He was 15 isn't it. It would be stupid to punish him now for the tweet he posted when he was 15.

 

[Lay]

Well the insinuation from the tweet is the friend in question isn’t actually black, so think “rhymes with” and what Eminem was often called when he first appeared.

Is that word offensive?

 

[OL29]

The FA have already established that none of intent, context, language or culture matter. Why would age matter? He's done a racism! Three match ban.

What's also pretty funny to me is that in the tweet he's actually attacking 'cultural appropriation' but nobody's even really discussed that. It's literally just a game of "he wrote the bad word" gotcha and what he's saying doesn't even enter the conversation.

That’s a big reach

 

[duffer]

If Twitter was around when I was 15 and people could dredge that shit up now and judge it by what it seemed socially acceptable today, I'd probably be in prison.

15 year old me did like a dead baby gag.

 

[justsomebloke]

Whilst I agree with the premise of this post, and maintain that Bowen shouldn’t be banned as he was an impressionable 15 year old, I don’t think there’s ever been a time where it was socially acceptable to use that phrase, particularly from non black people. It may have been widely used, but, like the word ‘faggot’, it’s always been abhorrent, I don’t think the fact that other people said it too is an acceptable excuse.

Well no, but the point is more what it shouldn't be used as an excuse for. It's clearly inappropriate and embarrassing. But is it reasonable to assume it's an expression of racism?

 

[justsomebloke]

If Twitter was around when I was 15 and people could dredge that shit up now and judge it by what it seemed socially acceptable today, I'd probably be in prison.

15 year old me did like a dead baby gag.

The man who is not a raging, irresponsible idiot at 15 is rare indeed.