Football at Its Finest - International Campaign to Fight Racism
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Image from UEFA.com |
As I watched the Sunday finals of the UEFA 2012 where Spain was
taking on Italy, I was reminded of the campaign that Europe has taken to fight
racism present in the region.
Mario Balotelli, player for Italy, has received loads of racist calls
referring to images of monkeys and other derogatory terms. There were other bouts of violence and
racist exchanges between crowds of Russians and Czechs in earlier games. Yet, regardless of the game, there were
electronic ads each game that blazed the words “RESPECT” and to end racism
across the European area.
Even before the UEFA 2012 began in June, football teams
would take their entire teams to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp. Europe as an entity of intertwined
states has come to terms with World War II and the consequences of extreme
nationalism and e.g. racism. The
RESPECT campaign was an international effort to campaign against racism in the
country, and there have been consequences for those who have violated the rules
of UEFA. Many a fans and football
clubs have been fined for inciting racial slur violations during games.
On this Independence Day in America, I hope that we can rise
up as a nation to combat racism in this nation. There may be a black President currently in the White House,
but the fight is long over from racism in the U.S. And it takes a whole country, person by person, and municipality
by municipality, to combat it.
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