Wednes­day, Ju­ly 17th, 2024!

Mark this date down in your notepad (for those of you who still write) or in your cloud, da­ta base, or wher­ev­er you keep im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion and facts, for this could be a very his­toric date in glob­al sport­ing his­to­ry as it was on that day that Javier Milei, the Pres­i­dent of Ar­genti­na, the on­ly South Amer­i­can coun­try with a black pop­u­la­tion of less than 5%, put a sword in the hands of play­ers from around the world to make or take what could be a mas­sive step to­wards the erad­i­ca­tion of overt racism in sports!

Note: This is not a step to­wards erad­i­cat­ing racism in sports, as giv­en the rise of the ‘right’ wing agen­da in many coun­tries across the world, this is un­like­ly to hap­pen any time soon, but to stem the ris­ing overt and bla­tant dis­plays that have been ex­pressed more and more by fans and even some play­ers across the world of pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball and in fact at all lev­els.

That sword? A chance to send a mes­sage of ze­ro tol­er­ance to racism in all sports, but es­pe­cial­ly the #1 spec­ta­tor and par­tic­i­pa­tion sport in the world, that ac­tions, signs, nois­es (mon­key chants), or even songs are un­ac­cept­able and will not be ig­nored!

For those read­ers who may be won­der­ing what this col­umn is about, last Sun­day, Ju­ly 14th, En­zo Fer­nan­dez, an Ar­gen­tin­ian who plays in the mid­field for Eng­lish Pre­mier League pow­er­house Chelsea, live streamed him­self and some team­mates singing a very deroga­to­ry and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry song that tar­get­ed the black play­ers cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing the France na­tion­al team.

The song was first sung af­ter the 2022 World Cup fi­nal in Qatar, where Ar­genti­na de­feat­ed France on penal­ty kicks, and some of the lyrics are: “Lis­ten, spread the word; they play for France, but they come from An­go­la. How love­ly they run! They are ‘come­travas’* like that F#%er, Mbappe. Your mom is Niger­ian, and your dad is Cameroon­ian, but their pass­port says na­tion­al­i­ty in French. (Come­travas is a slang term used in Ar­genti­na that rough­ly trans­lates to some­one who has sex with trans­gen­der peo­ple.).

What is tru­ly amaz­ing about the song and shows ex­act­ly how deep the racist ha­tred of the Ar­gen­tines to­wards the Black French play­ers is the stun­ning fact that their team had just won their sec­ond con­sec­u­tive Co­pa Amer­i­ca Cham­pi­onship by nar­row­ly de­feat­ing Co­lum­bia, an­oth­er team 80% black, 1-0, but chose to di­rect their un­war­rant­ed prej­u­dice to­wards a team thou­sands of miles away and play­ing in an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent tour­na­ment!

How much more bla­tant can it be?

And the pas­sion, en­er­gy, and vit­ri­ol shown in the video when the song is be­ing chant­ed can­not be faked or act­ed up­on! It looked pret­ty re­al!

So, we are all hu­mans and, as such, sub­ject to mak­ing sil­ly mis­takes, say­ing or do­ing some­thing so sil­ly or stu­pid in the heat of a mo­ment, com­ing with that adren­a­lin rush cre­at­ed by the joy of cel­e­bra­tion, or, con­verse­ly, the anger and pain caused by the dis­ap­point­ment of los­ing or not achiev­ing an ex­pec­ta­tion thought to be a cer­tain­ty.

When things even­tu­al­ly calm down and heads lev­el out, most of­fend­ing par­ties do the right thing and defuse po­ten­tial­ly ex­plo­sive sit­u­a­tions, and such was the case a day lat­er when, fol­low­ing the con­tro­ver­sy cre­at­ed by the video, Fer­nan­dez is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment: “I want to apol­o­gise for a video post­ed on my In­sta­gram chan­nel dur­ing the na­tion­al team cel­e­bra­tions. The song in­cludes high­ly of­fen­sive lan­guage, and there is ab­solute­ly no ex­cuse for these words.” Adding: “That video, that mo­ment, those words, do not re­flect my be­liefs or my char­ac­ter.”

While per­haps nowhere near enough, this apol­o­gy may have been a cat­a­lyst for cre­at­ing a path for walk­ing back the song and what it con­veyed and po­ten­tial­ly heal­ing some of the hurt and emo­tion­al suf­fer­ing that must have been in­flict­ed on hun­dreds of black play­ers Ar­genti­na’s play­ers have shared dress­ing rooms with over the years and the mil­lions of fans who have faith­ful­ly cheered them on en route to win­ning three World Cups and a cou­ple Co­pa Amer­i­ca tro­phies.

And this seemed to be the case as Ju­nior Sports Min­is­ter Julio Gar­ro came out soon af­ter and said that the song by the play­ers made the en­tire coun­try look, and it would be good to make an ex­am­ple of the sit­u­a­tion. It was fit­ting for the team’s cap­tain and most fa­mous play­er, Li­onel Mes­si, to is­sue an apol­o­gy on be­half of the team, as should the pres­i­dent of the Ar­gen­tine Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion.

While it is un­known if an apol­o­gy from Mes­si would have quelled the storm, it sure­ly could not have hurt, but be­fore one of the great­est play­ers ever to have laced up boots could re­spond, Gar­ro was fired by the Pres­i­dent of Ar­genti­na, Milei, who backed his racist play­er by say­ing: “No gov­ern­ment can tell in­di­vid­u­als what to think or what to do on the Ar­gen­tine na­tion­al team, World Cham­pi­ons and two times Amer­i­c­as Cham­pi­ons, or to any cit­i­zen! For this rea­son, Gar­ro ceas­es to be un­der­sec­re­tary of sports for this na­tion.”

While Milei is cer­tain­ly right about in­di­vid­u­als be­ing free to “think” what they want, we all know that when a per­son pulls on a jer­sey or what­ev­er at­tire is worn to rep­re­sent their re­spec­tive coun­try, a code of con­duct is en­act­ed that strict­ly mon­i­tors and con­trols the be­hav­iour of ath­letes both in­side and out­side their par­tic­u­lar sport or en­deav­our!

Fail­ure to ad­here to this code, which gov­erns both words, ac­tions, and deeds, of­ten leads to sus­pen­sions, fines, and even ex­clu­sion from teams!

With­in the past few days, Japan has ex­pelled the cap­tain of their artis­tic gym­nas­tics team head­ing to the Paris Olympics for the griev­ous and heinous of­fence of'smok­ing a cig­a­rette’! This was against the team’s code of con­duct!

But for those in the know about Ar­genti­na’s his­to­ry, and there seem to be a shock­ing­ly small per­cent­age of these, the song by the play­ers and the back­ing of their pres­i­dent shouldn’t be a sur­prise as the coun­try has a ‘dark’ his­to­ry in deal­ing with black and in­dige­nous peo­ple in the coun­try, in which 97% of a pop­u­la­tion of 46.2 mil­lion iden­ti­fy as Eu­ro­pean!

You read cor­rect­ly! 97% con­sid­er them­selves white while shar­ing a con­ti­nent with Brazil: pop­u­la­tion: 215 mil­lion (51% black or mixed); Co­lum­bia: 52 mil­lion (51% mes­ti­zo or mixed); Venezuela: 28.3 mil­lion (51% mes­ti­zo or mixed). Pe­ru 34 mil­lion (60% mixed); Chile 19.6 mil­lion (30% mixed); Bo­livia 12.2 mil­lion (68% mixed). Uraguy has 3.4 mil­lion peo­ple (10% black and mixed).

It should be of in­ter­est to note that up to the year 1710, over 50% of Ar­genti­na’s pop­u­la­tion was black, just like all of its neigh­bours, who de­pend­ed on kid­napped and then en­slaved Africans for labour on their mas­sive plan­ta­tions.

How, then, is Ar­genti­na now 97% white? And in fact, due to re­vi­sion­ist his­to­ry, it has al­ways been this way?

This view is so wide­ly ac­cept­ed that for­mer Pres­i­dent Car­los Men­em, who once fa­mous­ly de­clared, “In Ar­genti­na, blacks do not ex­ist. That’s a Brazil prob­lem!” This view that Ar­genti­na’s pop­u­la­tion has al­ways been as it cur­rent­ly is is now wide­spread and be­lieved by the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion, as this is ac­tu­al­ly taught in schools!

His­to­ry ac­tu­al­ly shows that be­tween 1868 and 1874, then Pres­i­dent Domin­go Sarmein­to un­der­took a covert geno­cide of black and in­dige­nous peo­ple, and this was fol­lowed up with the ob­jec­tive of mak­ing Ar­genti­na an all-white ex­ten­sion of West­ern Eu­rope by sep­a­rat­ing the non-whites and plac­ing them in squalor with no de­cent health­care, ed­u­ca­tion, or in­fra­struc­ture.

There was al­so forced re­cruit­ment of black men in­to the mil­i­tary, where they were placed in the front lines and most dan­ger­ous po­si­tions in the Paraguayan War of 1864, killing tens of thou­sands, while thou­sands more were placed in pris­ons and mass camps for the slight­est in­farc­tions and even fab­ri­cat­ed crimes.

This an­ni­hi­la­tion of the male pop­u­la­tion af­fect­ed the gen­der bal­ance to such a huge ex­tent that the women were forced to have chil­dren with white or mixed Ar­gen­tine men, fur­ther re­duc­ing the black gene pool, a trend that con­tin­ued un­abat­ed over the years un­til an African-look­ing Ar­gen­tine is a rar­i­ty and see­ing an African-look­ing per­son rep­re­sent­ing that coun­try is com­pa­ra­ble to a sight­ing of Kyawthuite, an or­ange min­er­al con­sid­ered the rarest thing in the world! In fact, this writer has nev­er seen a black per­son rep­re­sent Ar­genti­na in over 40 years of watch­ing sports!

So here we are in 2024 with a video that is undis­putable and clear­ly demon­strates to the world ex­act­ly how “some” Ar­gen­tines still think about black peo­ple.

It is im­por­tant to note that while his­to­ry and the ac­tions of those in the video paint a com­pelling pic­ture, it is not sug­gest­ed that all Ar­gen­tines are racists or share the views ex­pressed by the lyrics of the chant!

How­ev­er, the mo­ment does present what could be a wa­ter­shed op­por­tu­ni­ty for lead­ing and in­flu­en­tial black foot­ball play­ers to take a stand against racism in sports, es­pe­cial­ly foot­ball, the world’s most pop­u­lar sport, both played and watched!

Imag­ine Re­al Madrid play­ers Kylian Mbappe, Vini­cius Ju­nior, and Jude Belling­ham—all black and ar­guably in the top five of the game’s best play­ers—tak­ing a stand that un­less any Ar­gen­tine play­er on their squad pub­licly re­nounces the chant, they are not tak­ing the field with them.

Imag­ine this po­si­tion be­ing adopt­ed by promi­nent black play­ers all across Eu­rope and every­where else in the world, where Ar­gen­tines share dress­ing rooms with black team­mates. Not just in foot­ball, but in all sports!

What an im­pact this would have! What a blow to racists and racism! Play­ers and oth­ers would think a few times be­fore they re­peat­ed a sim­i­lar ac­tion!

The onus must al­so be with Wes­ley Fo­fana, a team­mate of Fer­nan­dez at Chelsea, and the per­son ini­tial­ly re­spon­si­ble for orig­i­nal­ly post­ing the video and first de­scrib­ing it as un­in­hib­it­ed racism. He has tak­en a ba­by step by un­fol­low­ing the Ar­gen­tine on so­cial me­dia along with club mates Ma­lo Gus­to and Alex Dis­asi, while Chelsea has launched an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. But there is a lot more that can be done.

Most play­ers may not be as promi­nent as the RM trio named, but col­lec­tive­ly, they have pow­er, and just like black quar­ter­back Col­in Kaeper­nick of the San Fran­cis­co 49ers took a knee to high­light dis­pro­por­tion­ate po­lice vi­o­lence against black peo­ple in the Unit­ed States, their voic­es and ac­tions too can be heard and can make a dif­fer­ence!

Sur­pris­ing­ly, there is an­oth­er usu­al­ly very loud and vo­cal group that has been strange­ly qui­et on this mat­ter. The LBGTQ com­mu­ni­ty!

This group of­ten ac­cus­es so­ci­ety of dis­crim­i­na­tion and big­otry; it is there­fore shock­ing that the song’s ref­er­ence to Mabappe hav­ing sex with a trans­gen­der per­son has re­ceived so lit­tle re­sponse or push­back from LBGTQ ad­vo­cates across the world. Well, at least up to the time of writ­ing!

But it is still ear­ly days, and much more may yet be to come.

An­oth­er group that should come un­der scruti­ny will be these die-hard peo­ple of colour who have sup­port­ed Ar­genti­na over many decades and who claim that the pol­i­tics or ide­ol­o­gy of a coun­try should have noth­ing to do with sports or which team they sup­port!

Af­ter this in­ci­dent, the po­si­tion of the Pres­i­dent, and per­haps ex­po­sure to the true his­to­ry of Ar­genti­na, maybe they will re­con­sid­er wear­ing the white and sky-blue shirt in pub­lic, and while it’s fine to love the mu­sic of con­vict­ed pae­dophile R. Kel­ly’s or en­joy movies pro­duced by sex abuser Har­vey We­in­stein, there are not many who would pub­licly speak out for them or wear a T-shirt with their faces!

The next few days should in­deed be very in­ter­est­ing.