Internalised Racism: Let’s Call Iwobi’s Gesture By Its Rightful Name News

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Internalised Racism: Let’s Call Iwobi’s Gesture By Its Rightful Name

By Daily Sports on March 19, 2019

Football-related racism has come under the spotlight recently after some rather unfortunate incidents involving some bigots in the stands of European match venues who use the occassion of the beautiful game to remind us that football is still there to provoke moments of stupidity as the tension of the game rages.

In December 2018, Manchester City's Raheem Sterling was reportedly a victim of racial abuse from a spectator at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge home when City visited and lost last year 0-2.

The backlash against the alleged racist fan was swift, forceful and wide. It showed that if racism was not ready to go away fully from football then, thankfully, many people are not ready to give up the fight to see it stamped out.

While the world has largely focused on the phenomenon of white vs black racism in football, there has been little evidence of black-on-black racism as a phenomenon in fhe game. There's hardly a popular case of that playing out in the playing field of international or high level club football.

But the recent incident involving Nigerian international and Arsenal star Alex Iwobi when his club clashed with Rennes of France in the second round return leg of the Europa cup has drawn attention to what seems a case of internalized racism.

Iwobi (who was a substitute player on the day for Arsenal) had a spat with Rennes black player Hamari Traore in the second half and what ensued was unsavory to say the least.

Iwobi held his nose in a 'stink gesture' and was moving backwards as Traore was angrily speaking with him.

What Iwobi immediately suggested was that Traore had a bad breadth and was not worth his attention.

It was appalling to see because it came across as a gross disrespect of a fellow professional footballer.

Many have called out Iwobi for this action and it seems the right thing to do.

Beyond it being a clear disrespectful behavior towards a fellow professional player, Iwobi's gesture looked like internalized racism at play.

Internalized racism has to do with discriminatory attitude towards one's own group and Iwobi's action against Traore chimes in with this definition because its hard to imagine him exhibiting such attitude towards a white player.

He is mature enough to know this would have been viewed with racial lens if he had held his nose in disgust to a white player.

Iwobi's gesture towards Traore plays into that racial stereotype of black people as smelling dirty things.

Unfortunately intra-racial discrimination is a real thing and it is alive in the minds of many blacks who feel their race is inferior in some way.

Iwobi has so far refused to apologize for his behavior, claiming that Traore cussed him and insulted his mother, which led him to do what he did.

Is this believable? How did Iwobi understand exactly what Traore was saying to him. Does Traore speak English? Or does Iwobi understand French? What was there in that incident (before Iwobi's provocative gesture) to provoke Traore insulting Iwobi's mum?

The challenge to be a better professional and a finer human being includes controlling the impulses to act unintelligently and insensitively in public. Iwobi should learn that going forward.

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