The Strange Case of Edinson Cavani 07/01/21
The Strange Case of Edinson Cavani.
I had intended that my first post-Christmas blog should come out next Tuesday, with the Edinson Cavani incident as an Add On, but the issue has gained momentum and is such an intriguing and illuminating incident in our current racial turbulence that it deserves a post of its own
If you don’t read the football reports in the newspapers you may have never heard of Edinson Cavani. He is a Uruguayan footballer whose two late goals gave Manchester United victory (not in itself a crime) on November 29th. A friend instagrammed congratulations. Cavani responded ‘Gracias, negrito’ The word is not abusive in Uruguay, neither was it received or intended as such. But this was not enough for the English Football Association, who fined him £100,000 and gave him a three match ban for ‘bringing the game into disrepute’. (This is the same length as the ban for inflicting a career destabilising injury on another player). Cavani had no choice but to be a good boy; apologise, withdraw the comment, accepte his punishment, and keep his job
But it is arguable that the real racism here lies with the English Football Association. A South American culture of warmth, informality and spontaneity is to be suppressed in favour of the cautious buttoned-up restraint of North Atlantic businessmen; that is, the people who control English football.
I had more or less written the above when I was pleased to find I was of like mind with the Uruguayan Players Association (supported by a number of high-profile Uruguayans playing in Europe) who have produced a spirited response. “Far from condemning racism, the English Football Association has itself committed a discriminatory act against the culture and way of life of Uruguayan people. . . We are against any kind of discrimination; however unfortunately, through its sanction, the English Football Association expressed absolute ignorance and disdain for a multicultural vision of the world.”
I raise this issue not as a football obsessive, but because it raises two related important and complex issues that are a recurring theme in this blog, but which are commonly mishandled, not just by the English Football Association but by a whole range of established bodies, including the Church of England.
1. We live in a context of complexity and diversity.
The two-tone binary that has formed our paradigm for understanding ‘race’ is clumsy and damaging. On which side of the binary should Cavani be placed? A privileged white man? Or someone from a deprived majority-world culture? In this country he is seen as white, and our resonances with the term ‘negrito’ make us uncomfortable with what he wrote. In the USA he would be ‘Latino’, and thus, with First Nation and African Americans, belonging to one of its most disadvantaged groups.
(There is an illuminating vignette from the time of the Los Angeles riots in 1992, following the acquittal of police officers filmed whilst beating up Rodney King. A restaurant owner foreseeing the violence to come, hastily scrawled ‘Latino Owned’ on its wall. His quick-wittedness paid off. Amidst a blaze of destruction his restaurant was passed over. So consider: in a supposed ‘race riot’ a largely ‘non-white’ (mainly African American) mob in the midst of destroying mainly ‘non-white’ (Korean) owned premises, spared a property because it belonged to a ‘white’ person. And no word takes you much closer to the heart of Europe than ‘Latin’.)
People don’t fall into neat boxes – whether of ethnicity, social class or status. Particularly in urban areas, there is a complex web of affinities and alliances, resentments and hostilities, which eludes the labelling of ‘black’/’white’, BAME, or whatever. Institutions which have neglected the hard work of close engagement with the grain of multi-ethnic communities are destined to flounder and, even whilst wanting to do the right thing, end up making inappropriate decisions. The FA’s decision was bureaucratic and officious, too distant from the world that players live in. We need to consider how these factors may work out in the Church of England.
2. Law and rights are needed but require a light touch.
It is hard to dispute the claim of the Uruguayan Players Association that Cavani has been punished unfairly. Eight years previously the Liverpool footballer, Luis Suarez, had been punished for using the same word, but then in a context of mutual aggression and abuse. At the present time when there is considerable complaint about the lack of roles for black people in the leadership and administration of English football, perhaps the Football Association felt it had no room to manoeuvre. It is hard to avoid the impression that it was primarily concerned about reputational management and presenting itself as giving a ‘strong lead’ against racism. The result is a clumsy injustice coming out of a background of guilt, and the wrongful punishment of a member of an ethnic minority.
Every day there are billions of inter-ethnic interactions in our society. A very small number are violent or abusive and require the use of the law. However to inflate the number of instances that can be regarded as ‘problematic’ – where someone like Cavani can find themselves on the wrong side of the law – generates caution and distance, rather than a growing confidence in developing relationships. Where jobs can be lost for saying ‘coloured’ rather than ‘person of colour’ the upshot is likely to be people simply steering themselves away from situations where they are likely to step into trouble.
Institutions are right to keep a sharp eye on how they are performing in a multi-ethnic society, and so to introduce regulations and procedures which generate greater fairness. But guilt is a poor motivator. Ultimately it is vision of the richness and joy that comes from contexts of ethnic diversity (as illustrated at Manchester United!) that generates and inspires unity in diversity. Law doesn’t produce that; grace does.