While I'm familiar with that sentiment, I'm short, with a full beard, and a lot fairer than Pogba. I couldn't look any more different than him if I tried.
Sounds like a mixture of genuine stupidity and total ignorance, probably not meant to be malicious. But I can understand how it would leave a sour taste. As a white person I've had things like that happen to me in parts of Asia where I would stick out like a sore thumb.
It doesn't sound malicious, more ignorant/ stupid then. Hopefully you don't see them at the game again.
Again, it's really important to remember that it not 'seeming malicious', doesn't mean it isn't disgusting racism that needs to be called out - and subsequently weeded out.
This isn't meant as an attack on you two lads, at all, but it does need highlighting.
One of the things we have to accept as a society is that if we want to raise standards, then as well as the 'abhorrent' things that are
glaring,
screaming examples of prejudice / racism etc - there will be many (more) 'lesser' examples that are the leftovers of having a racist / prejudiced society for so fecking long.
We then end up debating 'is
this racist', 'is
that racist' - rather than just accepting that it's entirely possible for something to actually be deeply racist, yet not 'malicious'...
We have to get used to this and accept it and then embrace it - it's what could well be our legacy as a generation, seriously.
Treating somebody
differently - IN ANY WAY - purely because of their skin colour is racism. Judas in Asia (great name for a band that...) being treated in any way differently because he's white - racism.
Some geezer who looks feck all like Pogba being called Pogba by moronic girls - racism.
Doesn't matter if the girls fancied you! Still racism.
Doesn't matter if it
didn't bother you... Still racism.
And for the inevitable, and endless procession of - '
Yeah but I'm not malicious, I don't want to have to challenge my own thought process after 30/40/50/60 years -
I know I'm not a racist" - Racism is bigger than 'you', accept that...
Racism is better viewed like a
toxic religion or a parasitic thought process. It's insidious, it's sentient and its slimy, wretched tentacles are far and deep reaching.
Racism as an entity
knows that it's under attack, and it morphs and adapts within the minds of it's hosts - even the ones who 'aren't malicious' - it moves to corners of the collective psyche trying to stay alive, trying to remain unseen so it can appear again when the light upon it is less bright.
Like I said, our generation has achieved very little historically - this though, could be the thing that we tell our Grandchildren about (if we're blessed to have them), this is our Vietnam, our 'what side were you on'.
So remember, even if it's not 'malicious', call it out, weed it out.
Even if it's in your (or mine) thought process.