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Is racism a problem at City games?


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Definitely still happens occasionally. Usually one or two idiots if it ever does go on though. Never anything from large groups. 

Think it was only last season one of our fans got charged for shouting racist abuse at the Wolves FA cup game. Iirc a family sat near him had to move due to it. 

Can’t say I’ve ever heard much throughout the years though, remember a fan who made a comment about the former ref Jarnail Singh back in the Eastend days & instantly apologised to everyone round him when he realised what he’d just done wasn’t clever. 

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The one v Wolves was (surprisingly?) spared a football banning order in the courts.

Nonetheless yes, that incident was noteworthy. You will set the odd idiot and that is the odd idiot too many- but not heard any organised chanting or similar.

Put it this way, I don't remember any type of Millwall type chant as per Everton in January, or Chelsea type anti Semitism claims that we heard about in late 2018, or the Sterling thing in the same period.

Banana skin thrown at Aubameyang, don't remember this either!!

No I don't think we have much of a problem at AG. Certainly can't be complacent however- but I do remember late 2010 some kind of chanting v Leicester but really seemed an outlier that.

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16 hours ago, bris red said:
racism
1. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.
 
Now correct me if I'm wrong but how would a group of mainly white Caucasian fans chanting at another group of white caucasian fans be deemed as racist?
 
Please understand what the word racism actually means before commenting..
 

While I agree broadly, the definition of racism and white caucasian being one and the same isn't so clear-cut.

Example- at a qualifier in 2013, Croat fans chanted- for obvious albeit unacceptable reasons- "Kill, Kill, Kill the Serbs!" Racist? Surely. Yet both will be largely white Caucasian, will they not? Yet it was a significant improvement or proved to be on on previous times!

Good section from an article on this game from 2013- but nothing compared to their 1999 meetings. Obviously away fans banned from each others grounds.

Quote

Thousands of Croatia shirts, with that distinctive red-and-white chequerboard pattern, had swamped the baroque streets from early morning, fans gathering, watched by the scowling riot police. Yes, there was an edge, here and there, but for the most part, the excitement and anticipation stayed on the right side of the thin line which separates patriotism from nationalism.

Inside the Maksimir, it was much the same. The Serbian anthem was loudly booed, before that word — Vukovar — took hold again, and when Mihajlovic’s picture was flashed up on the big screen, the howls of anger took on a visceral, venomous tone. Croats reserve a special loathing for him, after all, this son of a Croat mother who befriended Arkan, the notorious warlord. “Kill, kill, kill the Serbs,” chanted two sides of the ground. “If I was a Serb, I would kill myself,” they sang.

Ugly, of course, but the poison that infested the meeting of Yugoslavia and Croatia here in 1999 did not bubble to the surface. “It is normal to hear things from the side in this game, but it was OK” Aleksandar Kolarov, the Serbia and Manchester City defender, said.

His captain, Branislav Ivanovic, of Chelsea, agreed. “When you start the game, it is very difficult to hear anything from the stands,” he said. “Both teams were under a lot of pressure but we were ready for that. [The atmosphere] was a new experience, but it was not as hard as we were expecting.”

 

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23 hours ago, Nathandao said:

When at the Brentford game, someone behind me was shouting racist abuse at the linesman closest to us and one of the Brentford fans in the second half. Clearly very drunk and people around him were telling him to stop but to no result. The problem is far closer to home than you may think. Obviously in countries like Bulgaria and Italy, the problem is far, far worse but it still goes on right under our noses.

You must have been near me as well if this is the same guy. His mates weren't putting in that much effort to stop him, borderline laughing at him saying "You can't say that". I kind of wish I had gone and reported him now, but I would have missed parts of the game, trying to find a steward, explain the situation etc.

There needs to be some protocol that fans know is in place at every ground. Whether that's an app, text number or something. Just quickly input your location, description of perpertrator and it gets followed up. 

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On 14/10/2019 at 21:20, Make a Sub said:

Racism is still current through out the world and you don’t have to look too far to find a disgusting story involving an English club regarding racism. 

I’ve even Experienced racial abuse down Ashton gate when I took a black friend with me and was told to F off when I approached the gents who were calling our own black players words I can’t use on here and don’t want to type if I’m honest! And I was even called a traitor for being friends with a black person. Horrid scum bags who are ignorant and uneducated. 

I thought you were a Bristol Rovers fan, what were you doing at Ashton Gate? 

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We are moving on....but too slowly.

It's encouraging that most young children don't see colour when they talk about their friends and school mates. Their descriptions of each other rarely include differences due to skin tone.

If we could allow that generation of kids to grow through into adults without forcing prejudice and bigotry onto them, racism could finally be yesterday's problem (with the exception of some idiots who will never let it go).

Unfortunately there are countries where racism is overt and widely tolerated. Some football "supporters" from countries such as Bulgaria continue to provide the oxygen to people in this country who seek to create division between people of different ethnicity.

I would like to think that in our little part of the footballing universe, we all continue to treat the problem seriously and report appropriately. I would like anyone with a genuine interest in Bristol City to feel they belong at Ashton Gate.

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The last really bad incident I can remember was around 20 years ago. I was at the game with my daughter who must have been 9 or 10 at the time and a guy a few seats away from us in the Atyeo was shouting abuse at a player. I heard it a few times before I decided to approach a steward, he asked me to go with him and point the bloke out. I explained that I was there with my young daughter and I didn't want to put us in the firing line if anything happened, so he just said he would listen out in the general area I had indicated. Nothing was done, but by then I think they guy had realised he was under scrutiny and shut up.

I don't know if this next bit makes any difference, but the player he was shouting the racist abuse at was Aaron Brown. 

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I think the simple answer to the original question is No, it isn’t a significant problem at City games. There are clearly isolated incidents and any incident is obviously one too many.

However I also recall an “incident” where Dion Dublin received a standing ovation at the Gate in his last season of playing when  Norwich were down here which I would like to think is far more representative of our fan base.

Clearly where isolated incidents do occur it is up to fans to report them and the club need to up their game and take a firm line with the culprits.

We also pay enough money to Avon and Somerset’s “finest” to manage football matches and they clearly have a responsibility to act decisively too.

The 0.01% of fans or whatever it is who think it is fine to shout racist abuse in a football crowd need to be rooted out.

With any luck the events of Monday will wake a few people up.

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I’m intrigued by the almost universal condemnation of swampy’s call of  hypocrisy when comparing racism with “sheep shaggers” etc for the Welsh. To my mind, swampy has a genuine point.

There seems to be very widespread acceptance that racism is appalling, but somehow that it’s limited to skin colour and any hate speech (because that’s what it is) aimed at other white people is just acceptable banter.

A few points:

- racism itself was “acceptable banter” until it wasn’t. In the 1960s most fans would probably have thought calling a black player names was fair in the cause of upsetting the opposition.

- “Sheep shaggers”. So if we played an Arab team, how many people would think it was acceptable and funny to call them “Camel shaggers”? Not many, I’m guessing.

- racism is only based on ethnicity? Hmm. Mr Popodopoulos has pointed out the Serb/Croat issue. What about the English treatment of the Irish? Again, back in the 1960s, landlords had signs in the window saying “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. I haven’t checked the legislation, but I’d be surprised if the “No Irish” bit was still legal.

The problem is that the difference between banter and hate speech is all in the intent, which is subjective. There may be quite a few fans who genuinely hate the Welsh, or Scots, and can’t see that this prejudice is pretty similar to racism. If you’re treating it like banter with your mates, that’s fine, but last season’s Swansea match shows we don’t all act like mates in other respects.

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Important to stress that things are much, much better than they were.

I remember the NF openly recruiting outside AG and later on the whole C18 thing with England in the 90s. In that era, live football must have been incredibly intimidating place to be non-white and its unsurprising you v v rarely saw a black face in the crowd at the Gate, other than within the hoolie scene.

The last time I heard something explicitly racist was in the Landsdown at the Palace ghost goal match - when some simpleton shouted at Stern John to get back on the banana boat when he was subbed off.

Everyone around me just shook there head and a few laughed - at him. 

Its not just socially unacceptable these days, if you started using racial epithets at match now - you would have a v good chance of being caught on camera reported, banned and depending on the context, prosecuted. 

Still along way to go - but we are definitely on the road to getting there.....

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28 minutes ago, Leveller said:

I’m intrigued by the almost universal condemnation of swampy’s call of  hypocrisy when comparing racism with “sheep shaggers” etc for the Welsh. To my mind, swampy has a genuine point.

There seems to be very widespread acceptance that racism is appalling, but somehow that it’s limited to skin colour and any hate speech (because that’s what it is) aimed at other white people is just acceptable banter.

A few points:

- racism itself was “acceptable banter” until it wasn’t. In the 1960s most fans would probably have thought calling a black player names was fair in the cause of upsetting the opposition.

- “Sheep shaggers”. So if we played an Arab team, how many people would think it was acceptable and funny to call them “Camel shaggers”? Not many, I’m guessing.

- racism is only based on ethnicity? Hmm. Mr Popodopoulos has pointed out the Serb/Croat issue. What about the English treatment of the Irish? Again, back in the 1960s, landlords had signs in the window saying “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. I haven’t checked the legislation, but I’d be surprised if the “No Irish” bit was still legal.

The problem is that the difference between banter and hate speech is all in the intent, which is subjective. There may be quite a few fans who genuinely hate the Welsh, or Scots, and can’t see that this prejudice is pretty similar to racism. If you’re treating it like banter with your mates, that’s fine, but last season’s Swansea match shows we don’t all act like mates in other respects.

He is being condemned because literally every single time he posts it is solely to denigrate both fans of football generally and City fans specifically in a sneering, supercilious fashion.

If he didn't take every single chance he has to demean and belittle us, people may be more willing to consider his points, but, beyond mockery and insults, he refuses to engage with others.

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10 minutes ago, screech said:

Is racism a problem at City games?

I'll let you know after Saturday's match at Luton.

You just know there will be a few in the crowd who just can't help themselves.

Particularly when the racism is towards Asian people - who are under-represented among fans as well as on the pitch - as opposed to black people.

As a society, we undoubtedly do still have a problem with racism, more usually in the sense of negative stereotyping and invisible discrimination than overt or violent racism.  However, I like to think football has actually proved a positive fulcrum for change in attitudes. Working-class communities, who considered themselves in job competition with immigrant groups in the 50s and 60s, were quite hostile to non-white migrants. However as working-class football supporters got used to admiring black footballing heroes at all of England's club, the overt racism of the 60s and early 70s started to make less sense and fade away. Going to school with, and then working with people of other colours has also accelerated this change in attitudes.

My kids simply can't understand racism. It's an alien concept to them. 

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37 minutes ago, Stortz said:

He is being condemned because literally every single time he posts it is solely to denigrate both fans of football generally and City fans specifically in a sneering, supercilious fashion.

If he didn't take every single chance he has to demean and belittle us, people may be more willing to consider his points, but, beyond mockery and insults, he refuses to engage with others.

Racist 

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On 15/10/2019 at 14:01, Mr Popodopolous said:

2-3 times a season though!

Okay by elaborate I guess I'm getting at how many- a group or one or two? Isolated ,short- or more sustained?

Nothing from stewards or club, that one surprises me too!

Part of the problem is when someone can't even talk in good faith about what they've heard without being doubted...

I've not heard racism at AG that I can remember, but 'let's all wave at gay boy' and 'does your boyfriend know you're here' has been sung plenty of times, doesn't that raise its own issues?

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11 minutes ago, RonWalker said:

Part of the problem is when someone can't even talk in good faith about what they've heard without being doubted...

I've not heard racism at AG that I can remember, but 'let's all wave at gay boy' and 'does your boyfriend know you're here' has been sung plenty of times, doesn't that raise its own issues?

What about the poor ginger guy . . . . .

Let's keep this in perspective

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The OP's posting history has definitely given the impression that he/she is a Rovers fan.

Not trying to give City fans a bad name by any chance?

There simply isn't a 'racism problem' at AG in my experience - the very, very occasional incident we hear about - always concerning one individual - while disgraceful, does not equal a problem imo. that should in any way infer City fans are racist, or that racism generally is a problem at AG.

The very fact these extremely isolated incidents provoke such discussion only goes to show how rare they are.

Personally haven't heard any racism at AG for years (decades in fact) and I suspect the same would apply to the majority of regular attendees.

Also puzzled by why this post by the OP, which I'm sure I originally viewed as a post within the Bulgaria v England thread, appears to have been lifted out to prominence to become a thread starter and major discussion point of it's own?

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3 minutes ago, Nogbad the Bad said:

Also puzzled by why this post by the OP, which I'm sure I originally viewed as a post within the Bulgaria v England thread, appears to have been lifted out to prominence to become a thread starter and major discussion point of it's own?

The topic was split because originally it was in a thread talking about which games were being played over the past week, then it digressed into talking about the England match and then onto the problems from that game and then another line of topic was about problems at City games - hence why the original thread was split three ways.

There were too many different conversations going on within one thread 

The reason why this is the first post in this thread, is because they were the first person in the other topic to mention City

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17 hours ago, RoystonFoote'snephew said:

This definition does not extend far enough for me, as racism can certainly be tribal. You'd better believe that racism exists between African nations on tribal lines. 

As for City fans, we're at Luton on Saturday and there have been plenty of racist chants from the city support there over the years. Let's see what happens. 

When I was first over in the Cayman Islands, I went to watch a friend's team play in the local league. There was another game on beforehand, so we arrived to watch the end of that. Of note, in the Caymans the native population are mix of Caucasian through to African (the latter by virtue to some extent of the immigration from nearby Jamaica). One of the teams had a Jamaican lad playing for them. I was astonished to hear the shouts from a mixed raced woman supporting the other team, directed to this Jamaican lad, on the lines of "F-off back to the jungle you F-ing monkey". This was mid 1990s.

The last time I recall hearing anything from our support was away at Leicester in the early 1990s (think in the Osman era), with various chants aimed at Leicester's big Asian community.

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2 minutes ago, One Team In Keynsham said:

When I was first over in the Cayman Islands, I went to watch a friend's team play in the local league. There was another game on beforehand, so we arrived to watch the end of that. Of note, in the Caymans the native population are mix of Caucasian through to African (the latter by virtue to some extent of the immigration from nearby Jamaica). One of the teams had a Jamaican lad playing for them. I was astonished to hear the shouts from a mixed raced woman supporting the other team, directed to this Jamaican lad, on the lines of "F-off back to the jungle you F-ing monkey". This was mid 1990s.

The last time I recall hearing anything from our support was away at Leicester in the early 1990s (think in the Osman era), with various chants aimed at Leicester's big Asian community.

2010 at AG v Leicester too?

Minority at that time I'm sure but...

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7 minutes ago, phantom said:

The topic was split because originally it was in a thread talking about which games were being played over the past week, then it digressed into talking about the England match and then onto the problems from that game and then another line of topic was about problems at City games - hence why the original thread was split three ways.

There were too many different conversations going on within one thread 

The reason why this is the first post in this thread, is because they were the first person in the other topic to mention City

Understand the thinking phants, but perhaps an error to elevate it to such prominence on this occasion imo.

Seeing who the poster was my immediate thought on originally reading it in the England v Bulgaria thread was the incidents described were almost certainly fabricated in order to try and give City fans a bad name.

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