Sport Azeem Rafiq - oh dear!

The lack of action and dismissal of racism as "banter" was a choice made by people.

That infers they themselves are racist or perpetrating racism. The people.

Make people better humans and the institution no longer has a problem.
Sorry, nope. You can have institutional discriminatory outcomes despite having good well, motivated people. There can be institutional artifacts, quirks, policies and roadblocks which can lead to the wrong thing happening. It is quite some phenomenon and I have observed it at first hand.

A simple example comes from recruitment. If an institution has the opportunity to hire 4 people and in all 4 areas the typical gender representation is 67% male:33% female, then one would on average expect 1, maybe 2, of the 4 selected recruits to be female. However if the 4 recruitments are carried out completely independently, you are almost guaranteed to hire 4 men. This cannot be overcome by the good intentions of the selection panels or their criteria, only by wholesale change to the institution's recruitment approach.

Similar types of challenge can emerge in complaints/appeals/disciplinary processes.

It actually makes it harder to overcome these types of emergent problems when people discount it just as "individuals should be better people". It just isn't that simple.
 
I`ll take a fair bet that a lot of folk on here sang along to "Chicken George" at the Manor.

Were they "racist"? No, not all of them.

Was it meant in a supportive and endearing way? Absolutely.

Would it work now? Absolutely not.

Most of us have become better humans.
Good post. Most of us in the London Road sang that song as a support for George Lawrence. I imagine he thought no more about it. The world has gone mad
 
Good post. Most of us in the London Road sang that song as a support for George Lawrence. I imagine he thought no more about it. The world has gone mad
We all sang it and I don’t think George Lawrence wasn’t to bothered
 
We all sang it and I don’t think George Lawrence wasn’t to bothered

We simply don't know how he felt or whether he simply accepted it because the early 80's wasn't the time to speak out against racism.

I don't think the world has gone mad as @windmill says. More that the world has said that enough is enough.
 
Great example of definitions here. The systematic racism was carried out by individuals. The dismissal as banter is one kind of institutional racism, and the lack of action of ECB is the most insidious type of institutional racism.
@EY institutional racism exists and is not perpetrated by individuals. That’s why it has a different name and means something very different.
Agreed. It's naive or simply bloody minded to say that institutional racism doesn't exist and as EY blithely says about 'people', it's also about culture and Sir William McPherson's definition in the wake of the Lawrence report is very clear:

"The collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination through prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people."
 
We all sang it and I don’t think George Lawrence wasn’t to bothered
We didn't all sing it. I've done some shitty, thoughtless things in my time but I was never comfortable with that chant.
 
A simple example comes from recruitment. If an institution has the opportunity to hire 4 people and in all 4 areas the typical gender representation is 67% male:33% female, then one would on average expect 1, maybe 2, of the 4 selected recruits to be female. However if the 4 recruitments are carried out completely independently, you are almost guaranteed to hire 4 men. This cannot be overcome by the good intentions of the selection panels or their criteria, only by wholesale change to the institution's recruitment approach.
....and welcome to Politics 101 - 'the first past the post electoral system'
 
I can't stand this 'Social Media from 10 years ago witch-hunt' that is going on. By all means bring it up, give the player a chance to apologise - and then draw a line under it and move on. Stop dragging up the past - very few people are whiter than white.
Me too.

I find this whole trawling of social media to find ( and often take completely out of context) one snippet of something and then use it to discredit or destroy someone, regardless of everything that they may have achieved in the 5,10,20 years since thoroughly disgraceful.

I bet there was a proper little wankfest all round when the intern showed this to their boss.
 
We didn't all sing it. I've done some shitty, thoughtless things in my time but I was never comfortable with that chant.
The one I didn’t feel at all comfortable with was the one about the colour of a man’s skin and sexual orientation that one was a no go for me but tragically it was sung by a lot of fans, thank fox for progress.
 
The one I didn’t feel at all comfortable with was the one about the colour of a man’s skin and sexual orientation that one was a no go for me but tragically it was sung by a lot of fans, thank fox for progress.
I'm certainly not having a righteous pop at anyone Bazzer - I knew the origin of the name (from the Alex Haley book 'Roots') and the implications that came with it and that didn't sit well with me but I'm certainly not being judgemental. In a lot of people's minds it was an affectionate tribute to the man, who I loved as a footballer.
 
I'm certainly not having a righteous pop at anyone Bazzer - I knew the origin of the name (from the Alex Haley book 'Roots') and the implications that came with it and that didn't sit well with me but I'm certainly not being judgemental. In a lot of people's minds it was an affectionate tribute to the man, who I loved as a footballer.

I know you aren’t.👍
 
Sorry, nope. You can have institutional discriminatory outcomes despite having good well, motivated people. There can be institutional artifacts, quirks, policies and roadblocks which can lead to the wrong thing happening. It is quite some phenomenon and I have observed it at first hand.

A simple example comes from recruitment. If an institution has the opportunity to hire 4 people and in all 4 areas the typical gender representation is 67% male:33% female, then one would on average expect 1, maybe 2, of the 4 selected recruits to be female. However if the 4 recruitments are carried out completely independently, you are almost guaranteed to hire 4 men. This cannot be overcome by the good intentions of the selection panels or their criteria, only by wholesale change to the institution's recruitment approach.

Similar types of challenge can emerge in complaints/appeals/disciplinary processes.

It actually makes it harder to overcome these types of emergent problems when people discount it just as "individuals should be better people". It just isn't that simple.

Institutional culture is driven by people and the better those people are the better the culture of the institution. 🤷‍♀️

Our recruitment process strips out all personally identifiable information, then there is shortlisting based on qualifications, skills etc marked as essential or desirable.
Then there is an interview process by which point the recruiting manager really doesn`t care about race, gender or anything else!
 
We simply don't know how he felt or whether he simply accepted it because the early 80's wasn't the time to speak out against racism.

I don't think the world has gone mad as @windmill says. More that the world has said that enough is enough.
ye sure plenty of countries do nothing about it at least here it is called out and punishment handed out etc .
 
This is all classic far-right what-about-isms.

Firstly Azeem Rafiq's post when he was 19 was wrong. It was made on social media, not in the workplace - plus he has apologised for it, and deeply regrets it. I've done thing when I was 19 that I now regret, as I'm sure have many others - thankfully social media wasn't invented back then.

I can't stand this 'Social Media from 10 years ago witch-hunt' that is going on. By all means bring it up, give the player a chance to apologise - and then draw a line under it and move on. Stop dragging up the past - very few people are whiter than white.

What happened at Yorkshire CCC however was systematic racism, which he has reported to YCCC - and they dismissed it as 'banter'. He reported it the ECB, and they said it was a YCCC matter and couldn't help. This is far worse.

It's one thing making racist comments to a few mates on social media, it's a totally different thing bullying and creating a toxic working environment where you are treated as subhuman due to the colour of your skin or religion. Especially when your employers fail to take action, and dismiss it as just 'banter'.
As a Jew, am I offended. Yes. Am I prepared to accept his apology and accept he regrets it. Yes I am. Would he have said sorry if hadn't been caught out and does he truly not remember it? Only he knows.

Lets be very clear that the systemic racism he experienced was awful. Systems are made up of individuals though. While on the face of it his comments as you say are not the same as the toxic racist bullying he received. However, racism is all one spectrum. If there was a Jewish player at the club, would him and his mates have progressed from their comments to each other to handing out the same treatment he received from others, quite possibly.

His comments don't take away from his awful experiences but as an individual they do demonstrate him to be not much different to some of the individuals he has made allegations against.
 
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