I spent most of the weekend in the Twin Cities, visiting my daughter. We went to see The Producers, with Mathew Broderick and Nathan Lane. It was marvelous, and marvelously offensive to both ends of the political/cultural spectrum.
Sunday morning, while I was eating my continental breakfast at the Days Inn, Roseville, I saw something on TV that was much more offensive than anything imagined by Mel Brooks. Bryant Gumbel summarized a three year investigation into racism among European soccer fans. Large sections of the bleachers at European soccer events are occupied by organized racists. They display racist slogans and fascist banners. Whenever a black player gets the ball, they make loud monkey calls (a guttural oo! oo! oo!), and throw bananas onto the field. If a black player gets close enough, say during a corner kick, they spit on him in mass. It would be bad enough if this were confined to a section of the fans. But at a Spanish event such behavior spread to almost all the onlookers. Continental breakfast indeed!
It has long been a claim of my friends on the left that racism, among other social dysfunctions, is caused by economic disadvantage. If a society provides for the basic needs of its citizens, then racism, crime, etc., will largely disappear. So the welfare states of Europe, much more generous than the U.S. in such things as health care, housing, minimum income, etc., can be seen as a half-century long social experiment.
Well, ladies and gentleman, the results are in. Despite having addressed the "root causes" of racism, European societies are, for the most part, much more racist than the United States. Racism is hardly absent from U.S. sports. But I have never seen or heard of anything happening at an American sports event that remotely resembles what is routine at European soccer matches. Whatever may be the cure for racism, the European social model ain't it.
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