Roddy B wrote:
To another black person? It depends really, black people don't seem to be offended by it when another black person says it. I don't recall too many black people anywhere being upset by the name of the old group 'NWA'.
I used to go to school with black people and they used to call me a n***a as a laugh, they used to ask me to say it back as a laugh but I never bothered. The use of the term shouldn't always be deemed racist. I also work with an Asian lad who still calls Pakistani's 'p**i's', as he was born and raised in India and told me that's the term he was raised to use, it's not racist to him, but he obviously can't say it to everyone, but if you overheard him, you might say 'he's being racist', but he's not, he's just using slang that we find offensive, yet he was raised not to find it offensive.
The thing is though that the word 'negrito' has both a positive and negative use in the same way that n***** has i.e. it can be used affectionately or disparagingly. Now I am jumping the gun here but I think the use that Suarez has applied here is the latter because it was to wind up Evra (why else repeat it ten times?). Therefore the intent behind it was malicious.
Again, as stated previously, Suarez played in the Dutch league (where there is plenty of ethnic diversity and I doubt the generation below Seedorf and the like would have stood for him using the word in their league) and will have been exposed to our 'Kick Racism out of Football' campaign (if he hasn't then Liverpool have failed their own responsibility in that area). These factors suggest that Suarez will be aware of racism (and it's terms) and if he isn't then he has to shoulder some of that responsibility for not addressing that himself given his status, background and identity.
Roddy B wrote:
There is no clear rule with these things, which is why things like culture, language, context and malice have to be taken into consideration. Those looking for a clear line will struggle, IMO, it'll be too complex to find a guilty verdict and will probably end up being deemed a misunderstanding.
When it comes to racism its morality is not relative i.e. there is no moral argument to support racism, therefore to be racist is unacceptable irrespective of the culture. If a culture does support racism (and I'm sure people could name some) then that culture is harbouring a morally indefensible position. I can go further into explaining this but we'd get bogged down into neuroscience and the reasons why racism is against our genetics.
