Comments on: Racism reaches F1

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:42:21 +0000

Good stuff Fred B, thanks for the link.

By: Fred B

Fred B — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:33:53 +0000

I know this happened ages ago but I thought you might enjoy Richard Herring’s take the incident.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/richard-herring/2008/11/hamilton-black-racists-spanish

By: doctorvee » Media hypocrisy is making the F1 racism issue worse

doctorvee » Media hypocrisy is making the F1 racism issue worse — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:06:20 +0000

[...] Sunday when I wrote about the racist crowd members at the Barcelona test, I said that part of the problem was the media’s debased, distorted coverage of Formula 1. [...]

By: peterg

peterg — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 04:19:48 +0000

Although not his fault, Alonso could bring this to an almost complete stop. How easy would it be for him to publicly denounce the practice? It would go an enormously long way to recover the hit his reputation took last year, where his petulant behavior lost him my respect.

Spain is not alone & the U.K specialized in exporting hooliganism to the continent over the years so it’s a bit rich to cry foul now.

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:36:09 +0000

I agree Pink Peril — this should not be an issue about Spain, because it isn’t. It is about racists wherever they are to be found. They only reason this has sprung up in Spain is because of the rivalry between Alonso and Hamilton which some people just take far too personally. But had it been a rivalry between Hamilton and anyone else, you would soon see the racists cropping up, no matter where they are from. As you say, racism is a problem in every country and shamefully you still hear of incidents from time to time in football matches in the UK.

To bring it back to the point of my original post, some of the coverage of this has been despicable, and I have even spotted that one of the Google ads on this very page currently advertises a page on The Sun’s website with the following text:

Lewis Hamilton in racism storm. Spanish yobs vile attack on F1 ace

That language is inflammatory and sensationalist. The Sun is close dragging itself to the level of the vile crowd members in Barcelona. It is not as if that newspaper can legitimately take the moral high ground on this issue either. In fact, I can confidently say that if Hamilton wasn’t British, The Sun wouldn’t be mentioning this at all.

By: Pink Peril

Pink Peril — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:02:20 +0000

Every nationality has it’s racist element, this is not a “Spanish” problem. It’s just that this particular event happened to be in Spain.

Here in Oz we have had two disgraceful incidents recently at the Oz Open Tennis & the Cricket matches – I doubt you saw any coverage of them, but they show that unfortunately racism is not limited to any one forum (or nationality for that matter).

By: Samuel

Samuel — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:58:38 +0000

This is very sad and extremely disgusting. I can’t say I’m surprised since you can find this kind of insults at (unmoderated)Marca forums. I blame some spanish media(Marca and AS specially) for feeding the extreme rivality to the point has become hate. They are partially guilty but doubtfully they will assume any responsability. I hope FIA punishes whoever has the responsability of maintain the order in Montmelo’s circuit.

In the other hand, generalizations as Minh’s one are unfair, untrue and probably hide another, more subtle, kind of racism. I’ve seen lots of spanish football matches, and racist manifestations are rare, and they’re convoluted in the insult feast that football matches had become(I’m pretty sure this isn’t a spanish-only phenomenom).

By: jameshigham

jameshigham — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:08:02 +0000

What next in F1 – political correctness?

By: Pink Peril

Pink Peril — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:09:34 +0000

What I don’t understand is why these so-called fans were not evicted from the grounds?

This sort of behaviour is unacceptable in any forum, but so far F1 had been lucky to escape any overt racism. The FIA needs to take a strong stance immediately to show this will not be tolerated. Start as you mean to go on.

By: Minh

Minh — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:53:40 +0000

Hardly surprising, Spain and the Spanish are still pretty racist. Just watch any time a British football team plays in Spain, and listen to all the monkey noises the crowd make every time a black player touches the ball.