Do monkeys play football?
by David Catchpoole
Each of the following news reports does not provide a crucial piece of information,
but simply assumes it. Can you spot what’s missing?
- BBC News reported that FIFA (Fédération Internationale de
Foot ball Association) would launch an investigation after Spanish fans ‘hurled
racist abuse’ during an England vs Spain ‘friendly’ played in
Madrid in November 2004. England’s black players Shaun Wright-Phillips and
Ashley Cole ‘were subjected to monkey chants’ from the crowd, prompting
FIFA to condemn this ‘latest surge of racism’.1
Photo stock.xchng
- The Washington Post reported that Italy’s Lazio football club was
penalized by UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) for ‘racist incidents’.
Pierre Boya, a Cameroonian player for Partizan Belgrade, ‘was subjected to
a torrent of monkey noises and grunts from Lazio fans in the stands whenever he
had the ball.’ Belgrade’s other black players received similar ‘monkey
noises’ treatment from the spectators during that 2004 match in Rome.2
- Complaints that an investigation into the death of a black man—a former paratrooper
who died in a British police station while handcuffed and lying face-down—ignored
taped evidence of racist abuse by police officers were dismissed by the Crown Prosecution
Service (CPS). The CPS said it could not be proved that the taped ‘chimpanzee
or monkey-like’ chanting was racist as someone could have been reacting or
laughing at an officer who uttered the word ‘banana’, shortly before
the monkey chant is heard on the tape. But barrister Peter Herbert, a member of
the Attorney-General’s race advisory body, said: ‘Anybody with any common
sense knows monkey noises [are] evidence of racial abuse.’3
- The radio show hosted by Australian Rules footballer Jason Akermanis was axed ‘amid
racist allegations’ after he’d referred to the radio station managers
as ‘monkeys’. (That Australian radio station is part of the National
Indigenous [Aboriginal] Radio Service.) There were even calls for Akermanis to be
barred from playing football. ‘He’s made a racist comment, he’s
denigrated Aboriginal people,’ said one Aboriginal activist. Akermanis issued
a formal apology, saying, ‘I by no way meant this in a discriminative manner.’
The network manager who dismissed Akermanis said, ‘Does this bloke know that
this terminology has been used in racist societies across the country, across the
world? … [D]oes he know what he’s saying and what the full meaning
of the word [“monkeys”] is?’4,5
- Time (Europe) magazine reported that at a soccer match between Barcelona
and Real Zaragoza in Spain in February 2006, a ‘chorus of ape noises’
erupted from the stands whenever Cameroon-born Samuel Eto’o touched the ball.
‘What concerns me,’ said Javier Duran, president of the Observatory
of Racism in Sport, an anti-racism body created by the Spanish government, ‘is
how generalized the phen omenon has become. At Zaragoza, it was the whole stadium
chanting those ape noises, not just a handful of fans.’ Stirred to action,
football’s governing body FIFA ruled that national associations ‘must
punish clubs whose fans are guilty of racist abuse’ by deducting league points,
imposing relegation or disqualification.
6,7
So what’s missing? Every one of these reports omitted an explanation of why
grunts and ‘ape noises’ from spectators, or referring to radio station
managers as ‘monkeys’, is considered racist.
The closest anyone got to hinting that there is something unspoken underlying such
‘racism’ were the comments from the barrister that ‘anyone with
common sense knows that monkey noises are evidence of racial abuse’ and from
the radio station manager asking incredulously whether Jason Akermanis knows the
full meaning of the word ‘monkeys’. Given his protestations
of innocence, apparently Jason Akermanis didn’t know. And who could
blame him, since no-one was courageous enough to explain it publicly?
Image Wikipedia
Making a monkey out of people—racist or funny?
It’s not just black people who are the victims of ‘monkey’ taunts.
Even US President George Bush has been likened to a chimpanzee.8–10
And magazine cartoonists in the 1800s lampooned Charles Darwin by drawing him as
an ape (see examples right and below).11
Although mocking of Bush and Darwin in such a way is considered humorous or disrespectful
(depending on the leanings of the viewer), I’ve never heard it described as
‘racist’. And herein lies the key—when white people are
likened to monkeys and apes, it’s not racist, but to equate black
people with monkeys and apes is racist.
when white people are likened to monkeys and apes, it’s not racist, but to
equate black people with monkeys and apes is racist
To discover why, we can look to Darwin himself. It was his ideas that led to him
being mockingly drawn as an ape—it seems he was the first man ever to be thus
portrayed—and it is his ideas which fuel ‘monkey’ jibes towards
black people today, and explain why such jibes are considered ‘racist’.
Monkeys black, humans white
Image Wikipedia
When Darwin popularized the theory of evolution, he clearly suggested that some
people are ‘more evolved’ than others. In that context, it was easy
for people of European ancestry to forget that western achievements in science,
literature, music, government institutions, etc., arose in large part out of the
energising freedom, mutual trust, and call-to-fruitfulness ideals provided by a
biblical worldview. Instead, many people of British and European ancestry imagined
that their ‘evolutionarily advanced’ societies reflected their superiority
over other ‘races’—especially black ‘races’.12
Thus the beguiling popular drawings showing an evolutionary transition from dark
monkey/ape to white human became increasingly the popular perception/view. So today,
because evolution is presumed to be true, making monkey noises
at a black person is construed as ‘racist’, i.e. demeaning black people
relative to whites.
In other words, when the media reports that monkey innuendoes are racist, they’re
accepting the evolutionary worldview that some people groups are less evolved than
others—specifically, blacks are less evolved than whites. Of course they don’t
dare put it so bluntly—it’s simply assumed. And now the authorities
are trying to stamp out such innuendoes.13
This is a classic example of society reaping the consequences (e.g. racism) of what
it has sown (evolutionary teaching). Many in authority, it seems, have accepted
(if not overtly promoted) the teaching of an evolutionary worldview, yet are unwilling
to accept its consequences.
This is a classic example of society reaping the consequences (e.g. racism) of what
it has sown (evolutionary teaching).
And one has to wonder whether the penalties mooted by the football authorities FIFA
and UEFA14 , for example,
will really stamp out crowd racism. Former England footballer John Barnes, ‘arguably
the most successful black English player of all time’15 and himself the target of spectator ‘monkey
chants’, clearly understands that the problem will not be solved by trying
to control crowd behaviour:
‘If you tell a racist that for 90 minutes on a Saturday or Wednesday night
that they have to keep their mouth shut, and the other six days and 22 hours they
can be a racist, I don’t see how that’s doing anything to stop racism.’15
The solution, of course, is to return to a biblical worldview—the only
effective answer to racism16—pointing
out a few undeniable realities of life along the way. For example, it is people,
made in God’s image, who become professional footballers, and paratroopers,
and managers of radio stations.
Monkeys never have, and never will.
Further reading
Related resources
References and notes
- BBC Sport, FIFA probes Spanish racist chants, 28 April 2005. Return to text.
- Richburg, K.,
Fans’ racist taunts rattle European soccer, Washington Post,
29 April 2005. Return to text.
- Dodd, V., Monkey chants as black man died ‘not racist’,
The 1990 Trust—Human Rights for Race Equality, <www.blink.org.uk/pdescription.asp?key=1010&grp=2&cat
=10>, 29 April 2005. Return to text.
- ABC News Online, Call for Lions to sack Akermanis over radio gaffe, 28 April 2005. Return to text.
- ABC Sport, Aka axed over ‘monkeys’ race
row, 28 April 2005. Return to text.
- Pingree, G., The ugly game, TIME (Europe), 17 May 2005.
Return to text.
- An additional comment from Claude Moraes, a UK member of the
European Parliament, reflects just how widespread such ‘racist’ behaviour
has become: ‘The most horrifying thing was that middle class, professional
people, families and young people were involved and they felt it was normal.’
FIFA.com—the official website of the Fédération Internationale
de Football Association, Calls for tougher action over racism at UEFA
conference, <www.fifa.com/en/fairplay/index/0,1255,114249,00.html?articleid
=114249>, 5 May 2006. Return to text.
- George W. Bush or Chimpanzee?, 17 May 2005. Return to text.
- Political humor newsletter, 17 May 2005. Return to text.
- The Guardian’s Sarah Crown, reporting on a
2006 speech entitled ‘Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right’,
by well-known outspoken proponent of evolution, biologist Steve Jones, wrote that
Jones gained the audience’s sympathy ‘with a few well-aimed gags at
the creationists’ expense’, including: ‘I’m not sure why
Americans deny the truth of evolution, when the evidence [Jones gestures to a slide
of pictures of George Bush juxtaposed with photographs of apes on the screen behind
him] is all around them … ’. Crown, S., Why Creationism is wrong, The Guardian, 5 June
2006. Return to text.
- Browne, J., Darwin in caricature: a study in the
popularisation and dissemination of evolution, Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society 145(4):496–509, 2001. Return
to text.
- Williams, G., ‘A Civic Biology’ and eugenics,
Journal of Creation 20(3): 123–127, 2006.
Return to text.
- United Nations General Assembly, 58th session,
Item 117(a)—Elimination of racism and racial discrimination, <www.hri.ca/fortherecord2003/documentation/genassembly/a-58-313.htm>,
5 May 2006. Return to text.
- Associated Press,
UEFA urges tougher action against racism—Punishments by next season to combat
persistent taunting at games, 5 May 2006. Return to text.
- BBC Sport, Society has to change—Barnes, 5 May 2006. Return to text.
- Ham, K., Wieland, C., and Batten, D., One Blood—The
Biblical Answer to Racism, Master Books, Arizona, USA, 1999.
Return to text.
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