i don't know what its like in America, but in the Uk i thought, and i think most people from here thought that racism was a long dead ghost in sport, no more would we see bannana's being thrown at a player or monkey chants being shouted simply because of the colour of his skin. Which is why i think the scene's from last nights U21 football match between England and Serbia shocked me so much. I just find it astonishing that fans from any country could still act that way, let alone throw lumps of concrete at people and start a mass fight by the tunnel.
if you don't know what im on about here you go

so my question is this... Should this still be happening in this day and age? should we be treating the countries guilty of this to the same level of pariah status what we treated aparthaid south africa with?
UEFA has a history of not treating this kind of thing seriously enough, a dutch player was fined more for showing his underwear than the FA's of countries guilty of racism..
Do other sports and other countries have a similar problem with this?

i saw the same documentary...
i htink this shocks me a bit more simply because im a fan of rugby above most other sports, and in rugby at least its not as big a problem (unless you look at aussie rules, which is rife with it). I agree there should be very harch punishments, but if you look at EUFA's history over the past 10 years or so, there is no consitancy in its reaction to racism in football..
Why is it always football as well?

What you have to remember is that America is an immigrant nation, where as Serbia (or most of eastern Europe) hasn't had to deal with immigration on any sort of scale since the Slavs & Magyars arrived from Asia in the 7th & 9th/10th centuries respectively. I mean the Mongols did come to Eastern Europe, but apart from Russia they didn't last long where as the Slavs are the predominant people in the former USSR, Poland, Czech Rep, Slovakia & former Yugoslavia, with Magyars taking that role in Hungary.

They just haven't had to confront multiculturalism in the way that the new world & western Europe (especially the countries which used to have colonial empires) have had to & so haven't even begun to deal with the issues.

I mean, during the summer Zenit St Petersberg spent big bringing in Axel Witsel & Hulk from Benfica & Porto. Witsel is a Belgian whose father is from the Carribean island of Martinique, Hulk is a Brazilian, but Zenit fans, rather than being excited at signing 2 tremendous players, are outraged their club has signed blacks. Fucking outrageous.

Sports bring out tribalism in people. People have really intense primal emotions associated with their favourite teams. I think to a staggeringly large number of people football (soccer) in particular is a replacement for religion. So I'm not all that surprised that collectively they can act like savages. I'd like to hope even most of these people would look at what they had done afterwards and feel ashamed that they got caught up in it in the moment.

That or this is just a bunch of fucking idiots who should be ashamed of themselves, but might be incapable of feeling such an emotion. I sure hope not.

I was living with a 60 year old Czech guy briefly after I got to Cananda, and he told me, amongst other things, that Jews ran the world, and that he hates multicultural society and prefers to live in a homogeneous society. He also talked about how black people were naturally less intelligent and "civilised" than white people, though he admitted that was largely for cultural and historical reasons.

Guy was kind of a dick to be honest.

I wouldn't say there are racist feelings among fans and players in American sports, maybe for some teams that are in large metropolitan areas, where there are several teams in that city. Usually, in such markets, there are the "rich team" and the "poor team". For instance, the New York Yankees are a huge team, but can be considered to be a "poor team" because the majority of their immediate fans, those who live in New York, are generally poor Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites with Italian ancestry. Whereas the New York Mets have generally middle class White fans.

I think our rivalries are very aggressive, like the Giants-Dodgers rivalry is a very violent one in the US. Oakland Raider fans are typically very aggressive fans, and Chicago fans are considerably some of the most vile people on the face of the Earth. But I can't say there is a racist feeling. It's more of a hatred towards cities or states, not really towards any race. That might be because most American sports are based in America. Europe is an international continent, and many different cultures neighbor each other. Any racist displays in American sports tend to be isolated incidents nowadays. But I'm not denying that we don't have racism in sports here either. I just don't see it as being violent, at least not to the extent in European sports.

Now that my response gif is out of the way. To talk about American Sports rivalries is a completely different thing, we have fights on the field every now and then, and especially with the Ravens - Steelers (BEST RIVALRY IN THE NFL), but when it comes to fans we're like school-kids. Puff out our chests and get in each other's faces but never really amount to riots, unless however you have the greater numbers, in that case you bottle the opponent's fans.

Like Epic said, we usually don't have racial conflicts over sports at a professional or organized level anymore even. Hell we barely have fights over sports anymore.

it is kinda true though. Same with Cubs and White Sox. I live nearby Chicago, and people say all the poor people (stereotypically black people) root for the White Sox, and Cubs have all the North Shore suburban white people. I'm not trying to make some racist statement, but that's how people generally view their fanbases.

Edited by user 22 October 2012 06:07:33(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I'm not saying their finances in general. The Yankees have a lot of money to remain competitive because they are in a large market. Many of their immediate New York fans are viewed as more inner-city than their contemporary Mets. I have several relatives who live in Brooklyn and Staten Island who can back me up on this. The Yankees just happen to have a very big market, and that's why they continue to thrive.

yeah, that's true. I knew that saying poor was probably poor word choice.