Quote:
Originally Posted by miami_fan
I am not going to go as far as giving the official the benefit of the doubt. I am not saying it was clearly racist either. I am comfortable saying I don’t know and leaving it at that. The example that Barnes used of the coaching staff with five black coaches, one white coach and how the official would identify him is a bit problematic. Given the current makeup of coaching staffs at that level throughout the game, it would be impossible to believe that the official wouldn’t know the manager of the team. Sad but true.
One thing we can all agree. This is one incident where we are sure that race (not necessarily racism) played a primary factor.
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If I were to be that "white" person in that exact example, I'd have to restrain myself the way Pierre Webo did too, because people intentionally called me "white" clearly meant to try to hurt me too much in my life that I decided to no longer let people get away with calling me that without getting a "please, don't call me or anybody else that ever again". I would even realize that a lot of people are too inexperienced with the matter (in a sense that they just never really thought about this) to understand why it would be uncool.
The intent of the 4th official was perhaps meant in no harm, but of all the things he could have said, he picked out the one thing that's not just very sensitive, but it's factually inaccurate. Although that we should understand here that "negro" (in this particular case "negru") isn't slur at all, in many languages it is the color "black", nothing else. Which still makes it factually incorrect and why an internationally assigned assistant referee should know better, because they're supposed to pick up on such language and act on it when players or "fans" use it.
Which brings us to the tedious part, the argument of what would have been acceptable here. The guy with the darkest skin? The brown (brownest) guy? The tall guy? The guy with the biggest/smallest [whatever stands out compared to the others]? With players it's simple: send #25 off or #10, that's why they have those numbers. But the people on the bench with no name tags or numbers, you'll be going for something that makes it easiest to pick the one out from the rest.