Yeah let’s face it, it’s a storm in a teacup really isn’t. Blown out of all proportion.
What Demba BA is saying is not that he said ni##er or anything racially aggressive but that he used colour to identify the person.
Who was it?
The scouse guy
The tall guy
The slightly overweight guy
The black guy
The white guy
The foreign guy
The short guy
I don’t see a problem.
I’m a Scouser who lived in London for 15 years. People all the time would make anti Scouse jokes, call me a bin dipper, thief, lazy, accuse Scouser of being aggressive. But if someone said, the Scouse guy when identifying me, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
That’s why I’ve specifically said I am not calling him a racist. There is a chance, probably a decent chance, that he spoke without thinking in his native tongue and immediately regretted it (because, again, he knows negro is offensive in English due to his training).
However, he still should be aware of the context he is working in. He pointed at a black man and said “negru”. He, probably and hopefully, did not mean it in an aggressive or racist way but the reaction of the people around him is entirely understandable.
In this thread alone we already have a few people saying nonsense like “Black Lives Matter but you can’t say Black” or the old “You can’t even talk these days without being called a racist” which in my opinion is shifting the blame to black people being overly sensitive which is what I have a problem with. The reaction of the black players and the coaches is entirely understandable.
I actually think most people are overly sensitive in today’s society. That includes people of all racial, (not even sure race can be used now) ethnic backgrounds, people of all nations or colours.
Someone is always ready to be outraged at something.
I’m trying to understand your point, but I think most people would conclude the above based on your earlier comment that it would have been ok had he said it in english and that, as a fluent speaker, he was naïve to not do so.
FWIW though, having that sort of multiinguistic flexibility is not the same thing as me knowing I shouldnt say “fuck sake” on a conference call with a client and moderating myself appropriately. The vast majority of fluent speakers of a second language still have to translate in their own head before speaking. It looks instantaneous, but it is still a process. Most of those who get to the point that they can think in their second language actually do so because a mental switch has been flipped, in that if they want to go back to speaking their native language they have to internally translate to that in their head before doing so.
I am ok with the discussion about whether we should use race as an adjective for an individual. I’m not ok with the idea that we have to interpret all these incidents through the medium of what English speakers hear and what it sounds like to them.
In the video that I have seen it is the 4th official that is talking to the referee in Romanian and he’s asking him to come over and identify the black one at the bench because whatever he was doing couldn’t go on. Then you can hear Webo start shouting “why you said negro” and it all kicks off from there.
It’s a case of his diversity training failing, it is not a case of him being racist or of him even using a racial slur because saying negru, which as already said it means black, to refer a black person is entirery acceptable in Romanian and has no racial connotations on its own.
It comes to something that a word spoken in one language without any racist connotation, can be interpreted as (and taken to mean) a similar sounding word in a totally different language. A language that was neither being spoken nor, in fact, that is spoken as the mother tongue either by the speaker or the person being spoken to OR EVEN for that matter the person taking offence.
I envy all you polyglots who are able to navigate such a ridiculous minefield.
The shared language between Webo and the assistant referee was English, shown by the fact they immediately started arguing in English. When the audience is English speaking and your word sounds racist in that language then you should know not to use that word. He may have been addressing the referee but he was pointing directly at a black man who does not speak Romanian and called him a “negru”. Of course, in that context, Webo assumed he called him a negro and the assistant referee should have been aware of that linguistic issue and moderated accordingly.
I am sure there are English words that sound offensive in other languages. I wouldn’t use that word to someone who is likely to misunderstand it if I am aware of the potential issue.
Do you honestly think the circumstances would have been different had he said exactly what he did in literally translated English? I don’t. Not because I’m criticizing Webo, but because of what would have surely been inferred by the use of that word into English of someone who is known not to be a native speaker.
Had this have been an issue of the specific word choice it would surely have been resolved by the unambiguous explanation that he was speaking a different language and used a different word. No one accepted that explanation, ergo that wasnt actually the problem.
I think if he had said “the black man” instead of “the negru one” then there wouldn’t have been an issue - or that Webo wouldn’t have been right to be offended. I can see why he was offended by being called negru because to his ear it is just being called negro.
No one accepted that explanation because the tensions were already raised by the comment. By that time it is just a straight up argument and neither side is realistically going to back down.
The Basaksehir manager claimed they all were shouting but he sent off Webo because he was black. That’s obviously unverifiable but that’s his claim (and he shouted it straight in the guys face).
