How Can This Be Okay?

Before I start this blog post properly let me explain something. I am not into football. I am not into sport in any real way at all. This makes me strange, I know, especially in the area I live. I've had it all my life, the dread of the "Did you see the match?" question that invariably comes from any other man trying to make small talk. The confused look when I say no and explain that I didn't even know there was a match. The feeling that I've let them down, I've closed down the one bit of conversation, the one bit of shared experience they thought we would both have. I've tried, oh how I tried. I even had a Newcastle top when I was 11 but I just don't get it. I just can't give a shit. So why am I saying this? A lot of you know it already, why is this something I'm saying now? Well there's something that I've been thinking about, pondering you might say, something that has been slowly brewing and it's finally time to put finger to iPad screen.

A week or so ago a van with a political advert for the British National Party got stuck under a bridge in Sunderland. For those who don't know, the BNP are a far right, racist and despicable political party here in the UK. It was quite funny, to see it and it's message of hate and intolerance stuck there. Quite rightly there were quite a few humorous tweets about it. In amongst them was a tweet from a person I like and respect a lot who also happens to be a Newcastle United supporter. This is what it said:

"Delighted the BNP hate mobile got stuck under a bridge in Scumderland. That's the best place for trolls anyway. Cretins"

Now I'd like to point out that I don't want to get at the person who wrote this, as I say I like him and I value his friendship too much to do that, I just want to use his comment to illustrate my point. But does anyone else see the contradiction here? He's very rightly condemning the BNP, something I applaud but couching it in his own message of hate. Is "hate" too strong a word? I'm not sure. But where does this come from? I've just googled the word racism, something the BNP is famous for. The first definition is:

The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

So I think we can all agree that racism is a bad thing. Why is it wrong to believe that all people with one colour of skin posses the same characteristics but okay for someone to call the entire population of a city scum? A neighbouring city at that. To believe that they all posses the same negative characteristics?  A city where they look and talk the same as you. And don't give me the "they don't talk the same" line. Yes, we as north easterners can tell the difference between a Geordie and a Mackem but nobody else can. Try asking an American. The only reason is because of football. Is the same level of hate aimed at people from my city of birth Durham? It's no further away than Sunderland is from Newcastle. No it isn't, because Durham doesn't have a football team. Well it does but Durham City don't really count. 

Okay, having said all that I know the person who wrote the tweet doesn't really hate people from Sunderland, he's far too intelligent and nice a guy for that. In fact I know that he has tweeted things in the past reminding fellow supporters that it's about the teams and the football not the people. The problem is that I know there are people on both sides who don't think like him. There are plenty of people on both sides who would quite happily abuse someone just because they support the wrong team or have the wrong accent or happened, by accident to wear the wrong colour shirt in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know, that last one has happened to me.

So why did I mention at the beginning that I don't follow football? It's because I'm preparing for the inevitable "You don't like football, you don't understand" comments. You know what, you're right, I don't understand and to be honest I don't want to. I will never understand why anyone would spend so much time hating another group of people for no particular reason. Because I'm sorry but "They support xxx" isn't a reason to hate someone in the same way "They have a different colour skin" or "They believe an a different god" isn't a reason.

What I'd finally like to say is that this is something we need to start talking about. It's ridiculous, if it was just friendly rivalry and light hearted banter it would be fine, and I know for a lot of people it is just that, but when you get people who won't travel to the opposing city just because of football then we should maybe start talking about it. Start thinking about it, because in a world where racism, xenophobia, homophobia and sexism are slowly becoming things of the past  it seems weird that we still allow this unchecked.



PS - Halfway through this post I had to swap from my iPad to my PC because although I quite liked using it to type the page wouldn't display properly and I got sick of not being able to move the cursor around properly to edit what I'd written. God how I hate Apple............oops, see what I did there?