Colour blinds fans to star quality

This is a heading of an article on the sports page of The Guardian Weekly (01.01.10). It is about a football player Mario Balottelli of Inter Milan, who faces racial abuse from fans of the competing football club Juventus in Turin. They shout offensive songs. 

Mario Balotelli

He was abandoned at birth by his Ghanaian parents and brought up by his adopted parents in Brescia (Italy). He speaks Italian with the accent of the region, but received far more racist abuse than other black players, because his Italian identity is seen by some as a provocation. Italy’s immigrant population reaches 7%, but the country considers itself white.

This sort of discriminatory behavior is common in many countries of Europe. Embarrassing for  generations of Surinamese football players (many playing in the top-club AJAX, Netherlands), the fans of competing clubs were screaming jungle sounds and throwing bananas. Notably ,the players were born and raised in the Netherlands. This is not only seen in football (soccer), which is considered by many to be  the sport of the under-privileged, but also in other branches of sports.  In some sports however, this public mortification is not encountered, because of balloting, e.g. cricket or golf. It means that people with a dark skin are generally not entitled to membership or not welcome. There is one exception: Tiger Woods. But read his life story and discover his hardship. Boxing on the other hand is dominated by men of color. It is true that they are strong, but their perfect body is not their goal, nor do they see it as a human accomplishment, but as a means of getting freedom. Compare the gladiators during the Roman period.

This discrimination based on skin color is deeply rooted in the western world.  It has to do with feeling superior, with excluding other people from an equal place in the society,  with exploitation.

In the Netherlands there is officially no discrimination based on skin color. The reason is, that the governmental bureau of statistics (CBS) does not categorize their citizens according to color lines. They discern autochthonous (original, white), and allochthonous (foreign) citizens. The last group is broken down into western foreigners (from the rest of Europe, North America and Australia/New Zealand) and non-western citizens. This big group of nearly 2 million people ( on a total of 16 million) is vaguely traceable. They are mostly colored people, whose parents came from our former colonies: Indonesia, Suriname and the Caribbean islands – The Dutch Antilles. There is a rest group which consists of people from other non-western places, whatever that may mean. Obviously, this group consists of people with a dark skin, most likely from Africa. Although there is no official registration here in the Netherlands that keeps records based on discrimination against people with a dark skin, simply because the category officially does not exist, it does not mean that this form of discrimination does not occur. In practice, e.g., daily life, work, sports and recreation, skin color  is certainly by far the most practiced form of discrimination. Skin color is so obvious. Discrimination in sports is clear. It is only the tip of the iceberg!

Wiete Westerhof