Mark clattenburg, racist?

[Plev]

I don’t doubt your sincerity, but the dancing on a pin head argument you favour does us no favours.

 

Suarez admitted using the word negro, and that was confirmed by us. Negro is a word making reference to colour and falls foul of the rules. It was an open and shut case- provided by the most incompetent LFC Administration in the club’s history. The panel found him guilty because we served up the evidence.

 

Only Suarez knows exactly what he meant by negro, but you can be certain that he does nor address bar staff like that in Montivedeo, Amsterdam or the Albert Dock. If you doubt me try it some time to a random black man and see how you get on.

 

The affair should have been resolved at Club level. If that was not possible the Club should have handled it in such a way that no guilty verdict was possible. Having FA processes and Criminal processes at odds with each other is madness. The abject failure of FSG to address those issues meaning that this whole sorry farce is primed to run again somewhere, and at some time, is scandalous.

 

That would depend on whether the person addressing was speaking in his own language, as Evra was. If they were then I would suggest that he possibly would.

[Major Tom]

So, I repeat, the allegations were investigated and were found to be unsubstantiated. We can only speculate as to why they deemed him guilty.

 

Why do you think he was banned then? Anti Liverpool conspiracy? Corruption?

 

See, everything you are saying makes some sort of sense until you start to claim - or at least infer - things like this. Given I am assuming correctly, of course!

[RedPaul]

I don’t doubt your sincerity, but the dancing on a pin head argument you favour does us no favours.

 

Suarez admitted using the word negro, and that was confirmed by us. Negro is a word making reference to colour and falls foul of the rules. It was an open and shut case- provided by the most incompetent LFC Administration in the club’s history. The panel found him guilty because we served up the evidence.

 

Only Suarez knows exactly what he meant by negro, but you can be certain that he does nor address bar staff like that in Montivedeo, Amsterdam or the Albert Dock. If you doubt me try it some time to a random black man and see how you get on.

 

The affair should have been resolved at Club level. If that was not possible the Club should have handled it in such a way that no guilty verdict was possible. Having FA processes and Criminal processes at odds with each other is madness. The abject failure of FSG to address those issues meaning that this whole sorry farce is primed to run again somewhere, and at some time, is scandalous.

 

Whilst I agree with you that the club made an absolute mess of the whole incident, that particular line of yours is a load of nonsense. As someone who has spent a lot of time in South America, such language, and derivatives of that word, is commonly used in everyday circumstance and in all manner of situations and noone takes offence. It does not have the same connotations as it does in the UK because, most importantly, it is pronounced differently, and used in different contexts than it would be here, which I suspect you are well aware of.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Why do you think he was banned then? Anti Liverpool conspiracy? Corruption?

 

See, everything you are saying makes some sort of sense until you start to claim - or at least infer - things like this. Given I am assuming correctly, of course!

You are not.

 

There is no anti-LFC conspiracy. We can only speculate why they arrived at a decision so horribly at odds with the facts that their own investigation had uncovered (or failed to uncover). For what it's worth, my personal favourite speculative explanation is incompetence: that they genuinely thought that the best way to fight racism is to be seen to be "tough" on it - and this consideration overrode their obligation to actually find the truth of who said what to whom.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

I don’t doubt your sincerity, but the dancing on a pin head argument you favour does us no favours.

 

Suarez admitted using the word negro, and that was confirmed by us. Negro is a word making reference to colour and falls foul of the rules. It was an open and shut case- provided by the most incompetent LFC Administration in the club’s history. The panel found him guilty because we served up the evidence.

 

Only Suarez knows exactly what he meant by negro, but you can be certain that he does nor address bar staff like that in Montivedeo, Amsterdam or the Albert Dock. If you doubt me try it some time to a random black man and see how you get on.

 

The affair should have been resolved at Club level. If that was not possible the Club should have handled it in such a way that no guilty verdict was possible. Having FA processes and Criminal processes at odds with each other is madness. The abject failure of FSG to address those issues meaning that this whole sorry farce is primed to run again somewhere, and at some time, is scandalous.

Suarez was charged on seven counts. Six of them are utterly unsubstantiated. That is not a "dancing on a pinhead argument". It's just a simple, ineluctable fact. And no LFC fan should lose sight of that.

 

Addressing someone as negro is not automatically against the rules. The relevant rules refer to insulting language; if guilty of that, the reference to ethnicity is an aggravating factor, not a charge in its own right. (I'm not arguing the rights or wrongs of this: just clarifying that the fact that Suarez admitted to using the word negro does not make it "an open-and-shut case".) I repeat - if someone feels that addressing someone that way should not be acceptable on an English football pitch (even when speaking Spanish) so be it: but it should be applied equally to penalise "Don't touch me South American".

 

As for your assumptions about who Suarez would call negro I'd hazard that you're wrong again. Both Glen Johnson and Yaya Toure have said that he has used that word to address them and that both of them are fine with that. It's very common in Spanish to address people with an adjective referring to their physical appearance (although it always sounds a bit demeaning if you try to translate it into English). Moreover, referring to someone's black skin in English is always loaded with baggage, arising from a long history of colonialism, slavery and genocide and its consequent legacy of racism. In South America, there isn't the same historical and cultural baggage, so it's generally acceptable to use the word as a form of address: as was borne out by the two Spanish language experts that the panel consulted.

[gumps]

Suarez was charged on seven counts. Six of them are utterly unsubstantiated. That is not a "dancing on a pinhead argument". It's just a simple, ineluctable fact. And no LFC fan should lose sight of that.

 

Addressing someone as negro is not automatically against the rules. The relevant rules refer to insulting language; if guilty of that, the reference to ethnicity is an aggravating factor, not a charge in its own right. (I'm not arguing the rights or wrongs of this: just clarifying that the fact that Suarez admitted to using the word negro does not make it "an open-and-shut case".) I repeat - if someone feels that addressing someone that way should not be acceptable on an English football pitch (even when speaking Spanish) so be it: but it should be applied equally to penalise "Don't touch me South American".

 

As for your assumptions about who Suarez would call negro I'd hazard that you're wrong again. Both Glen Johnson and Yaya Toure have said that he has used that word to address them and that both of them are fine with that. It's very common in Spanish to address people with an adjective referring to their physical appearance (although it always sounds a bit demeaning if you try to translate it into English). Moreover, referring to someone's black skin in English is always loaded with baggage, arising from a long history of colonialism, slavery and genocide and its consequent legacy of racism. In South America, there isn't the same historical and cultural baggage, so it's generally acceptable to use the word as a form of address: as was borne out by the two Spanish language experts that the panel consulted.

 

Good post, but the bit I've put in bold above is I believe the crux of the difference in the 2 cases.

 

The admittance of Luis and the , in hindsight, naivety of KD and DC in going to the ref and making statements gave the FA an "in" and an opportunity to look tough on racism and make an example.

 

Really, they should have said nothing and let the FA do all the running, like any prosecution, to prove a charge. Luis and LFC basically implicated themselves. As I say, easy for the FA.