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Allsop reports homophobic abuse

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  • perhaps worth remembering "charged" is NOT the same as "found guilty" of.

  • @chairboyscentral said:
    Racism tends not to be a one-off thing... What do you do if you're Stevenage? Wait until the outcome of this? Or get rid now bearing in mind his history?

    They'll likely know whether he's done or said something, or whether it's an internal gripe that's culminated in this.

  • @chairboyscentral said:
    Racism tends not to be a one-off thing... What do you do if you're Stevenage? Wait until the outcome of this? Or get rid now bearing in mind his history?

    Language is becoming an absolute minefield these days. I'm sure a lot of people have shared comments or jokes with friends that if they were written down, without context or relationship would look dreadful.

    However, most of us would utterly brown our pants at the idea of anything we said causing alarm to someone and manage to avoid it. This guy is obviously doing something wrong.
    Or there's the classic "agenda" against him.

  • After what he's said previously, it was a risk giving him the job in the first place.

  • @chairboyscentral said:
    After what he's said previously, it was a risk giving him the job in the first place.

    People have got back into football after getting steaming drunk and creating carnage in their cars and you get a lot of people saying how they deserve a second chance, have served their time etc.

    So surely the same applies to words?
    The first time at least!

  • Also the speed of which acceptable language is changing, especially with jokes, there's bound to be some "casualties" in the process, especially in football where the worker / manager / friend relationships are different to most work environments.

  • If football is to get serious about dealing with racism, people like him probably shouldn't be getting jobs in it.

  • Should probably wait for more details about what he's apparently said. From that I dare say it'll be quickly obvious whether it's justified and he needs outing, or "world's gone mad" material.

    The Allsopp situation was quite interesting, as it's the first time I can remember an offence coming from someone using discriminatory language/behaviour to someone not in the group the language referred to.

  • I take offence depending on my mood. That way nobody knows where they stand. Just the way I like it :wink:

  • People who claim "you have to be careful about what you say these days" are obviously still thinking racist / homophobic / offensive thoughts, otherwise they wouldn't need to be careful.

  • @drcongo said:
    People who claim "you have to be careful about what you say these days" are obviously still thinking racist / homophobic / offensive thoughts, otherwise they wouldn't need to be careful.

    It's not that cut and dried, or you wouldn't constantly have politicians, sports people, news people getting into various storms.

  • Yes it is.

  • Most of us can manage to not get into any controversy.
    But we're not public figures having every single word analysed.

  • How often do you find yourself about to say something racist and then catching yourself?

  • I do think it must be harder for older people, not being able to use terminology that they grew up with because it is now (rightly) regarded as offensive.

  • @drcongo said:
    People who claim "you have to be careful about what you say these days" are obviously still thinking racist / homophobic / offensive thoughts, otherwise they wouldn't need to be careful.

    Same people who think that "You can't say anything these days".

  • @drcongo said:
    How often do you find yourself about to say something racist and then catching yourself?

    I take your point on that being quite easy to not do...but just the other day on the thread about poor songs, I was trying to explain a song stereotyped people from a certain region (to distinguish from just one country for instance), so presumed "Oriental" was the correct word for the "orient" region.
    @Chris , pointed out that's not really the word now, with yourself using "south asia". That's more the sort of changing language thing i'm meaning.

  • @Chris said:
    I do think it must be harder for older people, not being able to use terminology that they grew up with because it is now (rightly) regarded as offensive.

    I manage.

  • @micra said:
    I reckon the only “banter” guaranteed not to offend is self-deprecation, either in an individual sense or from a group, as in “we’re time-wasting bastards we know what we are” - now threadbare of course but I quite liked it at the time.

    Good 'banter' sir. I guess you are joking.
    A trully awful chant that is disrespectful to our players and management. The only time wasted us by the morons chanting it.

  • In fairness that should probably be "east" asia!

  • @Chris said:
    I do think it must be harder for older people, not being able to use terminology that they grew up with because it is now (rightly) regarded as offensive.

    yes, I don't think it's quite as, ahem, black and white as some try to paint it

    A lot of times people need education rather than vilification. Take the description "coloured" for example. I'd say that most people under, say 30, know that that is not an acceptable way to describe someone who is black. But there will be plenty above that age who not only don't know that, but actually think that is the most correct, non-racist terminology. They are not racist.

  • edited November 2019

    There's a need for education on certain things, but I think some have quite clearly always been inappropriate - just because they were in common usage once upon a time doesn't mean that people shouldn't have known better.

  • @eric_plant Yes, ‘coloured’ was the example I had in mind. I remember I was shocked when I started my first job and some people there thought that was the best term to use.

  • @drcongo said:
    People who claim "you have to be careful about what you say these days" are obviously still thinking racist / homophobic / offensive thoughts, otherwise they wouldn't need to be careful.

    That's true in a lot, in fact the majority, of people's cases, but definitely not every case.

    See the Russel Howard link posted before for one example.

    Also, what's acceptable to one group of friends isn't to other groups.

    My close group of friends is extremely diverse and very liberal, and a lot of the "banter" between us in every direction wouldn't be acceptable to outsiders and we'd never consciously use the same language or jokes to the "public", but with social media and everyone having a camcorder now, things do come out. See Bernardo Silva who was a complete idiot posting something privately, but it's clearly an in joke with him and Mendy who are really close friends.

    After reading the article on Sampson, I'm inclined to think he does have a problem, at worst genuine rascism, at best a complete lack of understanding of what jokes are appropriate when working.

  • @chairboyscentral said:
    There's a need for education on certain things, but I think some have quite clearly always been inappropriate - just because they were in common usage once upon a time doesn't mean that people shouldn't have known better.

    Obviously when talking about certain words then yes, it would be difficult for someone to argue that they didn't know it was offensive.

    Saying someone "should know better" is fairly meaningless if they don't

  • I think it was important to come down hard on Bernardo to deter others, even though I'd hope that most people could see the racist connotations of it straight away.

  • @chairboyscentral said:
    I think it was important to come down hard on Bernardo to deter others, even though I'd hope that most people could see the racist connotations of it straight away.

    Posted in a public social media space, they had to be seen to do something.

    From my POV, people who are truly not racist, don't consider race as a factor when interacting as it wouldn't cross their mind to ever discriminate or think less of someone because of race, and that's where Bernardo would fit.

    But you can't have rules based on "intent", and it can easily encourage genuine racists to post their own vitriol with the excuse that so and so posted something else.

  • I give an even older guy a lift to home games and he occasionally describes players as “coloured”. That rankles with me because I always feel that people using “coloured” are doing it deliberately, not necessarily to cause offence but without any consideration or knowledge even of what is currently acceptable. Then I’ll hear a black person referring to ‘people of colour’ and I wind up feeling confused.

    At my retirement lunch 25 years ago I was mortified to hear my sister-in-law (also even older than me) ask one of my black colleagues whether he preferred to be described as coloured or black. Another black colleague, on a separate occasion, remarked that if anyone should be described as coloured it was white people because they went red with embarrassment, blue with cold, green with envy (not sure about that one!) and yellow with fever (?).

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