Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / The World Cup Is a Map of Colonialism
Transcript
- Malcolm: So it's like The World Cup is the most watched sporting event on earth. And if you know how to read it, it's almost the most comprehensive map of where slavery and colonialism actually went. ⁓ so a TikTok creator, ⁓ Adiv, he he went through this and he talked about like all the different teams and the composition of them, right? So 21 of France's twenty-six players are of African descent, England fifteen, Netherlands fourteen, Belgium and Germany, nine apiece, twelve of the United States, twenty-six are black, Argentina Zilt, right? And so in eighteen hundred. Black people more than a third of Argentina's population. By 1875, the government has stopped counting African descendants in the National Consensus census together. ⁓ the president's ⁓ President ⁓ Sarmiento's era has been described as a covert genocide. In eighteen fifty three, the Constitution was engineered to draw European immigrants, Italian, and Spanish arrivals reshaped the country between eighteen eighty and nineteen fifty. ⁓ and so former Argent Argentine ⁓ president Carlos Menem once declared plainly, like I'm talking about like no No switch up on a quote in Argentina, blacks do not exist. That is a Brazilian problem. Right? Even the culture was taken. Tango grew directly out of Afro Argentinian communities. Tango is a word ⁓ from Kikango meaning time. The erasure was complete, it was the people, and then the cultural origins. In England, in a sense, the same a more complicated version of the same exact problem. England also has 15 black or mixed race players in the World Cup. including Bellingham, Saka and Rashford. They're carrying the team. They're cooking. You know, Harry Kane's doing this thing too. But England still hasn't figured out how to root for them without certain conditions or societal like context or pretext. Like it's all these things, right? So ⁓ It's nasty. So, like as an example, like when Jude Bellingham, he saw frustration frustration that being substituted in the World Cup qualifier ⁓ caused a national outrage. ⁓ and so you know, Ian Wright's defense of him was like if you get a pogo or a Bellingham and you get that kind of energy, it doesn't sit well with people meaning, you know, they get the angry black man energy. ⁓ you know, for so for someone like Jude, for some reason that frightens people because of his capability and this inspiration that he can give. ⁓ so yeah, it's it's a little nasty. He's been called two American or an ego driven showman, despite having no cultural or fanf ⁓ you know, family link to the United States. ⁓ they have criticism at Sterling and Rashford for their behavior on and off the ⁓ the pits. And so it's like when non white English players step outside the cultural norms about how players in that space conduct themselves, their behavior is no longer seen as an individual personality. It becomes a sign of some broader cultural difference tied to skin color. ⁓ So yeah, nasty, right? So it's like there have only been eleven black managers in the top tier of English soccer. ⁓ and in an interview, John Barnes said that black Englishness is policed. ⁓ black people are allowed running, singing, and dancing, but there is a perception in society and specifically in soccer that acts the questions, can we think? Can we do more than just be athletes, then dance, then sing, then just be sources of entertainment, right? Can we think? Can we be our own people? Can we be individuals? Can we be creatives, right? ⁓ And then can black people players also be trusted with leadership and authority? And so in practice, and what we've seen through events like these, the leader, the answer has unfortunately been no. And I I'm like really I think this World Cup is kind of like putting a really bright light on like some of the people that are from African descent or like you colored people who are like kind of carrying their teams. It's really good. It's putting on like this the most the largest, you know, display, exporting display in the world. and essentially Argentina and England, they represent two different versions of the exact same dynamic. ⁓ Argentina, they erased their entire black population and England built a national team with black people and still trying to decide whether they actually want to support black people or let black people lead it. ⁓ so yeah, it's it's really tough. ⁓ in the World Cup, like I said, it's not just football, it's a geopolitical map of where black people were enslaved, displaced, and built things that got claimed by somebody else. So this is like one of those kind of like you gotta it's like the lesser of two evils when it comes to like what team you're rooting for.