Next “shock” in England: when racism is the norm

Former professional cricket player Azeem Rafiq testifies at a parliamentary hearing about the humiliating racism at his ex-club. Great Britain reacts in shock – the Rafiq case is not an anomaly, but a sad normality.

Yorkshire County Cricket Club is something like Bayern Munich for its sport. The club has garnered more championships than any other English team since it was founded in 1863. The club represents the traditional county of Yorkshire, still referred to by its residents as “God’s Own County”.

On Tuesday, the venerable club and the entire cricket nation were confronted with the racism that has been eating away at the sport and its culture and system for years. In tears, ex-professional Azeem Rafiq gave an emotional testimony at a parliamentary hearing about his devastating experiences with racism in the cricket club of “God’s County” – and shook the whole of England. In doing so, he simply pointed out the bitter reality of the Asian community and of other minorities in Great Britain. Because the Rafiq case is everything else startling anomaly.

One step back. In 2018, Rafiq, who was born in Pakistan and emigrated to England with his parents at the age of ten, raised awareness of the racist dressing room culture at the Yorkshire Cricket Club for the first time. He played for the club from 2008 to 2014 and from 2016 to 2018. The club ignored the complaints of its cricketer, who was also struggling with the stillbirth of his child. It wasn’t until the former English U19 captain made them public in 2020 that an investigation started.

Two and a half months ago, the club concluded that Rafiq had indeed been “racially harassed and harassed”. Yorkshire “apologized” to the 30-year-old. The full report was not made public, however, and the club stated that it would not take any disciplinary action against players or staff. Leaks subsequently revealed that the report dismissed Rafiq’s racist slurs as “friendly and good-natured jokes” or “banter” between teammates.

Among other things, it was about the regular use of a derogatory term for people allegedly from South Asia (particularly Pakistan), which is mainly used in the United Kingdom. For those affected and people who have experienced racism, such degradations are anything but “good-natured jokes”. And unfortunately also a sad reality. Older generations of immigrants in particular have heard this kind of racism often in Great Britain. But the Rafiq case shows that today’s world is not very different.

It is about the exclusion of an individual. A derogatory term always has a certain dehumanization as a result, which in turn leads to worse treatment. In this way, minorities are deprived of their true identity to a certain extent. For Rafiq and many others it was and is a normality that shouldn’t be.

And the reaction of the Yorkshire Cricket Club revealed a rampant problem in many places: The dominant group or majority still wants to determine, in cricket as in the rest of the country it is white and British-British about what constitutes racism and what is acceptable and what is not. Minorities should accept the guidelines of the majority culture. But there are no two sides to racism and only those affected feel the insults and disadvantages.

As Rafiq now told the parliamentary committee, white leading players had given him and other players of color the blanket derogatory term “Kevin”. This was also “an open secret” in the English national team. The racist game is said to have gone so far that one of the professionals even named his dog because it was black. Rafiq was also said to have been called “elephant washer” all the time.

“Very early on, there were comments like ‘Your bunch is sitting near the toilets’ for me and other people with an Asian background,” said Rafiq. Those in charge would have simply accepted something like that. Players with a Muslim background were blamed for team mistakes during their Lent. The ex-pro said the racism he witnessed in Yorkshire is “without a doubt” found across the country.

When asked if he thought cricket in the UK was institutionally racist, Rafiq replied, “Yes I do.” The extent of the problem is “terrifying”. Everyone in the sport knows there is a problem. But he “saw that life is made hell if you say it,” said the ex-professional.

“Do I think I lost my career to racism? Yes, I think so,” Rafiq concluded. He now wants to give a voice for the many people who cannot be heard. Not just in cricket. He has noticed since 2018 that no one from the community came forward to support him because they felt helpless, because they feared that they could not defeat the system and that no one would believe them. “I hope that we will see a big change in five years,” said Rafiq about the reason for his public appearance.

After all, there are initial consequences, rarely in such cases. “I agree that the handling of the report highlights problems related to institutional racism,” admitted Tom Harrison, head of England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), to MPs. The ECB has banned Yorkshire, the sport’s FC Bayern, from hosting international games for the time being because of the “totally unacceptable” reaction to the racism that Rafiq was confronted with. Sponsors, including the outfitter Nike, are canceling their contracts. The reputational damage is enormous.

Fans and experts were also shocked. “Yorkshire culture is stuck in the past,” even announced Roger Hutton, the club’s outgoing chairman because of the uproar. But he was wrong. Racism is not a phenomenon of the past, comes in many different forms and in many places is still the sad present and normal. Especially in a country with such a bloody and persistent colonial past.

This time it was the United Kingdom, but it could just as easily have been Germany. Whether in professional football or among the amateurs, whether in the stands or on the field, racist insults are still being made in this country. This time it was cricket. But it could be any other sport, any other area of ​​life. How deep the racism still sits in Great Britain became evident not only recently after the final of the European Football Championship, when three black players from the English national team were pilloried for having missed their penalties.

People of Color have known for a long time, of course, that many people experience racism as normal. Now “God’s Own County” also knows, now the sport of cricket knows it. In 2018, at the same time as Azeem Rafiq’s first disclosure of the racist processes, the ECB published a study that showed that people of South Asian descent made up a third of recreational cricketers in England, but only four percent of professionals. In the past ten years, the latter figure is said to have dropped by as much as 40 percent.

.
source site-59