By: V4 Agency
UEFA has launched an investigation into a term used during a football match. The word uttered also appears in the name of a prominent anti-racism movement, but no one seems to care.
The football match between between Paris Saint-Germain and Istanbul Basaksehir on 8 December has stirred up quite an international scandal. As is known, the match was stopped in the 14th minute because the fourth official, Romanian Sebastian Coltescu, allegedly made a racist remark to describe the Turkish team’s player, Pierre Webo.
The disagreement stems from Coltescu using the word “negru”, the Romanian word for black, which is quite misleading as it resembles the offensive term “negro”. Although the referee said he did not call the player a negro, he only referred to his dark skin, the players were offended and began boycotting the game. The players of Istanbul, later joined by PSG’s footballers, walked off the pitch and demanded the referee’s replacement. An incident involving players from both teams walking off the pitch is simply unprecedented in the Champions League’s history. The match was eventually finished the next day with a new team of referees, led by 37-year-old Danny Makkelie, a Dutch official.
Istanbul Basaksehir striker Demba Ba, originally from Senegal, got involved in a minor dispute during the match after he complained that whites are never called white, only blacks are called black.
The incident was followed by plenty of comments by experts, journalists and footballers. One of them – 46-year-old Vikash Dhorasoo, a former PSG player of Indo-Mauritanian descent – said likened black players running on the pitch to their ancestors who kept running from their masters on the plantations.
Meanwhile, in a recently emerged recording Pierre Webo, the player described as “black” by the referee, is heard insulting the same referee, saying Romanians are called gypsies in his country.
In recent months, representatives of various sports have been particularly sensitive to manifestations of racism. In the United States, home of the Black Lives Matter movement, players boycotted NBA games for three days at the end of August after two police officers shot 29-year-old African-American Jacob Blake in the back. The protest was initiated by Milwaukee Bucks players, who also made a statement wearing T-shirts with Black Lives Matter slogans.
UEFA ordered an investigation into the scandalous match involving PSG. They stressed that there is no room for any type of racism and discrimination in football.
If the word black is racist, BLM will soon be banned in America, because the letter ‘B’ stands for Black, suggesting – along the same logic – that BLM is a racist organisation.
In a letter addressed to UEFA, V4NA asked whether the word black was racist, and whether UEFA thought that BLM was also a racist movement?