I’m going to play devil’s advocate a bit if I may. Gareth Bale has regularly been compared to/called a monkey on the internet. Now that a black player has been called a gorilla it has become racist? What’s exactly the line here? Or are we judging those who have called Bale a monkey too?
Black people historically have faced dehumanisation tactics to make people view them as sub-human, a direct implication to gorilla/monkey associates black people with animals, whom humans (or any race for that matter that feels superior) don’t see themselves as equal too among st other things, by doing that for example you can justify black people having no rights, as has been done before in the past. Hence racism.
Yeah it’s an obvious paralel popular with racists ( eg bananas thrown at black players) bale was just mocked because of his ears, it’s way more deep and disgusting when people say these kinda things to black people, i would compare bale mocking to people roasting Harry Maguire for his big forhead, not that i aprove any of this it just much less malicious then racism.
People who are racist generally don’t have a problem in extension to justify or do things beyond words, or at the very least are quite compliant with any aggressive racially motivated policies.
Just because Iwobi made it in life doesn’t mean he has to live with that kind of bullshit, doesn’t make him or anyone ‘weak’ at all.
I was thinking the same. If she had compared him to another animal, like a horse say, would that have been racist? Was it just the comparison to a particular class of animals and the history associated with that that made it racist?
Remember we all used to refer to RVN as horseface, but that wasn’t racist because he is white and there is no history of comparing whites to horses.
Anyway, there is no denying Indians have this thing about the color of the skin. People from the northern region of the country consider themselves superior due to their fairer complexion.
Yeah exactly this. There is a clear historical stigma of associating a black person with a monkey. It is without question an extremely racist association when aimed at a black person.
Calling a white person a monkey (or any other animal) is a completely different thing as there is no history / stigma to it. Pretty simple really.
Yeah I’m struggling to understand how anybody could want to play devil’s advocate in this situation. There is, as has been said well by @RockyMaivia, @JakeyBoy and @Sol - a clear historical stigma.
The comment was clearly racist.
Why would it make you weak to be offended by racism?
So if we take away the history associated, it’s just one person making fun of another’s appearance, just like we did with RVN. Still a horrible thing to do and there is no excusing that but I am just wondering if that’s what she meant to do, make fun of how he looks.
Doesn’t the intent behind it matter? Or are we saying, because this kind of thing has history to it, it doesn’t matter if the person had the same intention as the people who said such things back when racism was rife?
I’m not sure it’s devil’s advocate- I think the poster was trying to say that name calling, for any player, ought to stop. White players don’t deserve to be called names, either. (Adams, Bale, Keown and van Nistelrooy come to mind)