Negrito

Racism in football - a friend of mine from the UK disclaims every conversation about soccer by saying "you call it soccer, we call it football" - runs rampid in some Northern European countries. It's at the point where analysts and race specialists, are beginning to interpret words, hucked at by racist football fans on to some of the worlds greatest players, as merely 'terms of endearment'.

Oh, that's what you call it.

Negrito - which is translated to mean 'little black man' - in Latin American countries was described as a term of endearment by Mark Sawyer, the director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Politics at the University of California Los Angeles. He also said that it is about the context and translation of the word. But, if it's OK for Mark Sawyer to say that it's a term of endearment and he is a black guy - and it begins to happen more often that black commentators are comfortable with professing that slightly racist words are endearing - you have to understand that you may be speaking for yourself. We can't always write things off and have a numb reaction.

Today, 'Negrito' to most Americans would be like calling a black person a Negro. Here in America - the USA- I believe that people of Latin American descent would understand that they could not call a black person a 'Negrito' because it is not tolerated. It would be the equivalent of being called "boy" back in the 1880s, and even today (if conjured from an understanding that its meaning has an entendre). "Boy" is a term of endearment if a white guy calls a younger white guy 'boy'; When black guys say, "this is my 'boy'" that's OK; BUT if it comes from a white man to a black man, I doubt it would be OK.

Even though these games are not played in America and if the term is understood as being endearing...the people your saying it to might not have come from a Latin American country to understand that it IS a term of endearment. There might be a few African players who don't, you know, like the term. And some Latin American countries do not interpret 'Negrito' as being endearing. So world, let's be a little PC.

On a side, random note.... Where does this perpetual 'hate' -- My father (who grew up in Oklahoma during the 1950s-1960s) always corrects me by saying "hate is a strong word, Rachael, you dislike something" -- come from? I wish the penalty for using these words would require the person to explain why he/or she used the word in the first place. My guess is that the response would be absolutely stupid.

What do you think?

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/17/sport/soccer-word-controversy/index.html?hpt=hp_c2