Something has been gnawing at me about the latest installment of the World Cup and it isn’t Luis Suárez: It’s racism.
The ugliness of the “beautiful game” is no secret. Soccer and racism have become almost synonymous on the international stage. Just ask Italy’s Mario Balotelli.
The idea of the World Cup as a unifying force among people of different nations is nothing short of propaganda. A quick scan of the Internet and the language being thrown around or a look at the sea of fans in Brazil will quickly disrupt this romantic vision.
While a lot of the racism and intolerance is coming from the stands, including homophobic slurs from fans that have sparked one of FIFA’s many investigations, a decent chunk is plastered on computer screens.
If you’ve been active on social media in the past couple weeks, World Cup news has been unavoidable. Fans are displaying their passion for their nation, or other nations, on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to an obnoxious degree. This passion, however, has quickly devolved into a more harmful form of expression that has made social media a hotbed for racially charged language.
But calling some of the rhetoric flying back and forth on social media “racially charged” is the understatement of the year.
You don’t need statistics to prove that a problem exists, but a look at the chart that followed the use of the word “Nazi” on Twitter during the huge United States-Germany game speaks for itself; the word was used almost 25 times per second after Germany’s goal. Nope, no camaraderie here.
The problem doesn’t stop at tweets. Photos are circulating of German fans wearing blackface at the Germany-Ghana game, and Balotelli, Italy’s star striker, is on the receiving end of racism both at the games and online. Even journalists – if you want to call Ann Coulter a journalist – are playing a role in perpetuating this hateful culture. If you’re a soccer fan, this is sadly not very shocking.
However, this problem isn’t addressed as openly as it should be. Masking racism by pretending that soccer brings people of different nations together has a Coca-Cola commercial-esque essence of fantasy about it. Pretending that racism isn’t a major part of the game, especially in international competition, only works to further the problem. Veiling something doesn’t make it go away.
FIFA does minimal work to address racism in an attempt to seem humanitarian, but revealing the repulsive nature of the culture around the game starts with the fans. The “Say No to Racism” campaign is a weak public relations stunt from a body that doesn’t take the necessary steps to punish blatant racism. Let’s be honest – combating the racism that exists isn’t going to begin with the corrupt bigwigs working to line their own pockets from games played in multimillion-dollar stadiums adjacent to overcrowded favelas.
An angry tweet calling a German player a Nazi may not seem like such a big deal, but given the evident racial tensions, it becomes representative of a larger problem.
The World Cup is doubtless a major world event that elicits passionate reactions from a global audience, but its dark side can’t be left in the cellar to ferment. These are conversations that need to be forced into the spotlight, not crammed away behind the facade that shrouds them.