:conf:

I don't get how you don't get it. Racism is a straight up choice between a black person and a white person the white person is picked every time no matter how good the black person is no matter how garbage the white person is. Its clear that Ron doesn't respect this philosophy and back in a time when there would have been little fuss he decided to put prejudices to one side and pick the best person for the job. :shrug:

Coming from one of the poorest, most culturally diverse areas of London, I resent that remark. Since I moved to the country I've heard more blatant racism from the affluent middle classes that I ever heard from the working class.

Resent it all you want I have still been to football games and heard people say things like "pass it to the black lad" or "watch the darkie". Thankfully it's rare now but it still happens.

I don't hang around with middle class people because I am WORKING CLASS but I have no doubt they can be guilty of racism too, though my main gripe with them is elitism but then again I'm white.

It was certainly a racist comment but I don't know enough about him to call him a racist.

I do however question why he felt the need to bring colour into his judgement of the player.As an Afrikaner it reminds me of South Africa were if a white did something stupid they were dumb ,but if a black did the same thing they would be a dumb Kaffer.

I don't think he's a racist... just a moron.

I'm a West Ham fan, I know what they sing. You get racists everywhere although I'm not sure what's particularly racist about "pass it to the black lad"?

You post asked us to consider poor Ron being born into a working class background, intimating we should make exceptions for him because of that. Erm... no.

He is no more of a racist than anybody else of his generation. During the 60s & 70s racism was prevalent on family tv shows like love thy neighbour, in sickness and in health, and dozens more. Go onto youtube and watch a couple of episodes of various comedy shows that were shown early evening in the 70s, they are by todays standards very, very shocking.

They also grew up at a very different time, when homosexuality was illegal and racism was part and parcel of everyday life.

If he was in his mid 30s and said what he did it would be justified to vilify him, but a 78 year old man made a naive and silly comment.

Lets be honest, if you go into any workingmans club even now, you will hear such things bandied about like they're going out of fashion, by older men who just plain do not grasp how offensive these words are deemed these days. But every single one of them would not think twice to help someone of colour who was in physical danger. They just see it as a throwaway remark that when they were in their 20s and 30s was seen very differently.

I've heard my own mother, who is 60 years old, about 9 stone and would neither be capable or want to harm a fly say things like 'you look like a n****r' when a fried has come back off holiday. On hearing her say this before I looked at her and said 'you cant say that' and she looked at me daft.

Its a generational thing

He slipped up

Its wrong and he has apologised for it over and over.

Get over it.

LOL "Get over it". Funny how easily that's said when the issue doesn't affect you.

Oh yes I'm sure Marcel should just bloody get over being called a lazy ******.

The only time he apologised was on the Wife swap show and that was when his wife told him to.

Where am I making exceptions? I said context not exception, football in England has mostly been a white working class sport for decades.

If we were talking about Rugby or cricket then by all means lets discuss the upper echelons of society and their deep set racist ways.

And as for "pass it to the black lad" I've seen people done for less. Alan Hanson was castigated for using the word coloured when describing a player.

You said, and I quote "Also bear in mind football is the working class game, Ron Atkinson will have been brought up and experienced an environment where you would think nothing of throwing around comments like the n word" Are you not saying there that he was brought up working class where people would think nothing of using the N word? Because that's what it looks like to me.

I only mentioned that I've heard more racist language from the middle-class than I did from the working class because you had said how inherently racist the working class is! I think you know that though, you're just talking about cricket and "upper echelons" to muddy the waters. That's fine...

Coloured is not an acceptable word and quite right Hanson should have been pulled up for it. Although I don't think anyone's going to mind someone saying "pass it to the black lad", and it's quite out of touch to assume that it would be.

That and far far worse was more than acceptable 30 years ago.

So coloured is bang out of order and black is fine? Reet then...

Well...I think he's probably racist to a degree. There are levels of racism.



Coloured was at one time the more politically correct term (as opposed to the N word) it's become unacceptable. Language shifts.

Yes. Would you like to know why? Coloured is a term that is associated with apartheid.

That's a whole new debate, Inherent racism and all that.

Well lets be pedantic, black is a term associated with slaves.

It's also because saying they are 'coloured' suggests that, rather than simply being a different colour to white people (ie two different colours), white people have no colour, they are simply the norm, whereas black people have a colour.

Negro is associated with slaves

It used to be that referring to a person as 'black' was almost as bad as the dreaded n-word and that 'coloured' was perfectly polite.

Funny old world, eh? ;)

That was never the case in the black community. I don't know where you get that from.

I think that's more of an American thing: with people wanting tobe called African American instead of black.

Well,People say 'coloured' all the time where i'm from,I grew up hearing it,I'm only in my early 30's.Maybe different words are offensive in certain areas and not in others?

I think it's best if we as people never ever mention anybody's skin colour as anything in case the old PC brigade wheel up and frisk you off for a seminar.

That's not the case either. In my world and my household it has been black for as long as I can remember

I also hear people say coloured. Usually no harm is meant by it.

Lol it certainly is.

I don't mean all black people in America. I just mean there was a move that came out of America towards the African American label, rather than black. I don't think it was a massive move, I just think it got a lot of airtime (primarily in the form of people having heated arguments and defending their right to continue to use terminology or defending their right not to have to continue to use terminology...:P

...he chose the best person for the job because he was good at his job and passionate about it more than anything else, I do believe that but that still doesn't necessarily indicate that he wasn't/isn't racist necessarily though..just that 'sense' of the better player overruled everything else for him..

..but it wasn't acceptable 30 years ago though..maybe words terminology was used 30 years ago but it wasn't 'acceptable' then either...

Maybe, but things move on. If he has the mental capacity to run a successful football club you'd think he'd be able to learn some simple manners. He's older, he should be wiser.

I didn't say "coloured" was bang out of order, I said it was unacceptable. I don't get what's so hard to understand about that.

They do that alot though with Irish Americans and Italian Americans, seems to be less to to with colour and more to do with roots and where they originated from

Oh those terrible PC brigades. Wanting not to cause unnecesary offence to people.

Never understood why people get so het up about it. If I discover that a word I am accustomed to using is actually offensive to the people that word concerns, why would I wish to dig in my heels against that?

An occasional moment's discomfort over not being sure of the currently acceptable word is worth it for a society that tries not to cause hurt to people because of who or what they are.

And yet... by far the largest group to migrate to the USA was the English, according to the resource centre at Ellis Island. And yet no one ever hears someone described as an English American.

Yeah, that's true actually, I never even thought of that, I wonder why that is?

because no one would ever want to admit to something as terrible as that

It always makes me smile when people who want other people to be respected for who they are rather than what colour they are or where they come from, are referred to as the "PC Brigade".

:laugh:

Because they always go above and beyond their station.


Racism is wrong, good we are sorting it out.

Alan Hanson calls a player coloured on tv with no malice or hint of disgust and the knives are out.

That is what the PC brigade has done. People are now looking to be offended at EVERYTHING.

To a racist , homophobe, sexist etc. Nothing matters more than their stupid little prejudice. I have an uncle who is a very religious 7th day Adventist fool and as soon as he hears the word gay he almost shuts down. I'm not joking. He such a homophobe that nothing else matters to him. Trust me. If Ron was a true racist he most definitely would NOT have played black players, no matter how good they were and no matter how sh*t the white players were. This happened in Basketball in the 1950's when Red Auerbach became coach of the Celtics and had to endure all the racism that came with him playing black players.