Racism and the World Cup

by Randy Shaw, 2006-07-02

Prior to France’s upset of Brazil, right-wing Frenchmen had criticized the team for having too many black players. Previously, Spanish fans had shouted racist monkey chants at the African-dominated French team. Now, with France pulling off the upset of the Cup, the team’s success is being framed as a victory against racism. But how different is African immigrants leading France to success from African-American Jessie Owen’s famous rebuff to Aryan superiority in the 1936 Berlin Olympics? In both cases athletic success is being used to cover up the ongoing racial problems of the player’s host nations.

In the American mind, “the French” are white café dwellers who get too much vacation time and are jealous and hostile toward America. This sterotype emerged as recently as 2003, when France’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq led Congress and conservative fast-food outlets to rename a popular food, “Freedom fries.”

But earlier this year, massive protests in the suburbs outside Paris highlighted the second-class treatment given both Arab and African immigrants to France. Representatives of both groups felt that they would never be considered “truly French,” reaffirming the perhaps worldwide stereotype of a French citizen as a white person.

France’s World Cup victory using black players in 1998 did not change these stereotypes.
But the national team is now so dominated by African immigrants that the true source of French soccer power can no longer be ignored.

Nevertheless, Saturday’s shocking victory does not mean that the French government will suddenly pass legislation helping its large pool of unemployed African immigrants. If past experience is any measure, France’s black soccer players will have advanced the nation’s stature without any corresponding economic benefit to its immigrant population.

America has seen this script before. The 1936 Olympics in Berlin were supposed to be a test of German leader Adolph Hitler’s belief in Aryan Supremacy. Newsreel footage of black American Jesse Owens winning the most track gold medals was spliced with photos of Hitler angrily leaving the stadium.

The message in American history and sports books since 1936 is that Owens’ victories were a direct rebuff to Nazism. Whereas Nazi Germany believed in Aryan Supremacy, democratic America believed in equal opportunity for all.

Of course, not mentioned in any media coverage of the 1936 Olympics (other than in the Communist Party press) was that if Owens tried to exercise his democratic right to vote while living in the American South, he would have been refused.

America may have believed in equal opportunity, but the nation sure did not believe in practicing it.
Owens victory triggered a public relations offensive for the American way of life. The film clips shown of the 1936 Games still show Hitler leaving the stadium in disgust at Owens’ invalidating Aryan Supremacy----even though historians have reported that Hitler was not even in the stadium for Owens’ victories.

That an event could be such a powerful propaganda tool for the undisputably false claim that America was color-blind should lead folks to think twice before concluding that American ignorance about the truth only began after the election of George W. Bush.

The Owens propaganda also explains why the great African-American intellectual W.E.B. DuBois said during those years that it is hard for a thinking black man to maintain sanity in America. It was customary for American political leaders, journalists, and white intellectuals to insist that America was a land of equal opportunity, DuBois’ protestations and evidence notwithstanding.

With four colonial powers left in the Cup, whom should a good progressive root for?

Brazilians are cheering for their former colonial power Portugal, and this seems the popular choice. But it is hard not to see a France victory as a rebuff to the Bush Administration, so they are also worthy of progressive support. Whoever comes out of their semi-final match will be the progressive favorite against either Germany or Italy, both of whom were Faschist powers during World War II.

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