Leicester City’s owner: why should it be offensive to say he was a migrant?

[urban.spaceman]

 

 

 

Leicester City’s owner: why should it be offensive to say he was a migrant? | Afua Hirsch

Afua HirschTue 30 Oct 2018 18.34 GMT

Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha was truly loved by the fans. Yet it seems we can only mention race when the person is a criminal

 

Tributes to Leicester City owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha at the King Power stadium, 30 October 2018. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/BPI/REX/Shutterstock

Football and race have always made uncomfortable bedfellows. My first piece of journalism, from when I was 13, was about the Let’s Kick Racism Out of Footballcampaign (now known as Kick It Out), which launched in 1993. More lasting than the impression the campaign itself left on my young mind – as relayed to me by the QPR players I interviewed back then – were the experiences of racism that motivated its creation. I’m still yet to meet a black football fan from that era who doesn’t have a heartbreaking story of being abused: not by the other side, but by supporters of their own team.

Since then racism has changed. The need to end it is agreed by everyone in any official position, bar the odd American president.October is now celebrated as Black History Month, even by a Conservative prime minister who in recent memory was deporting black Brits. There have even been attempts to make the England flag marginally less scary after decades during which it symbolised not the inclusion of black people in this country but the continuing threat to their safety from the far right.

The far right has changed too. I was more or less tolerated on an English Defence League march (I was there as a journalist) because, although I’m black, I’m not Muslim, and so am marginally more bearable. And just at the moment when nativism and imperial nostalgia have taken hold of politics, we are capable of a huge, united show of loss for a foreigner of a different race and language with – dare I say it – a hard-to-pronounce name.

It’s one of the many tragedies about the helicopter crash, which killed five people outside Leicester City’s stadium, that it took their deaths for most of us to know anything about their lives. Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha in particular, the Thai billionaire who bought the football club in 2010, seems to have commanded touching levels of devotion and respect among many people in the East Midlands.

Srivaddhanaprabha’s life was by all accounts a remarkable one. He built up his King Power duty-free empire from scratch, starting with a single shop. His surname was an honour bestowed by the former king of Thailand in recognition of all he had given back to his nation from his wealth – it means “light of progressive glory”.

It seems the affection for him in Thailand was matched in Leicester, because after rescuing the ailing club in 2010 he led it to a fairytale Premier League triumph in 2016. Right now, as England faces an unprecedented wave of hate crimes against people from visible ethnic and religious minorities, and feels gripped from top to bottom by anti-immigrant sentiment, here was a migrant who was truly loved.

Only here’s the thing: apparently that is a bad thing to say. According to many of those mourning Srivaddhanaprabha on social media – and there are many – to point out that he was Thai, that he had a different heritage, faith and language and yet they loved him, is very offensive. It’s a particular offence of “mentioning someone’s race when they were actually a really good person”. 

There is a positive side to the appearance of this new offence – consistent awareness of which across Twitter Britain has, I must admit, taken me by surprise. This is that people who are no friends of antiracism are perfectly capable of seeing someone from a different race as “one of them”. They are perfectly capable of embracing migrants. They can revere and hold up someone who was born poor in Bangkok as a part of their own family – sentiments on ample display in the recent outpourings of genuine grief.

I say they are no friends of antiracism because on social media they’ve been pretty damned quick to throw racial slurs my way. But I guess that’s because I’m bad: bad immigrant, ungrateful woman. One person went so far as to tell me his country had given me shelter and a passport, and I should conduct myself accordingly.

In the past, I thought the problem in Britain was that race was something we chose not to see. And, as should be self-evident, “not seeing” something is unlikely to facilitate a sophisticated analysis of it. But the problem is becoming more complicated.

Seeing race has become a means of attack, strategically directed only at the visible “others” we don’t like. So this week callers on a radio phone-in told me it was crucial to frame the abhorrent criminal activities of paedophile grooming gangs in racial terms. “It’s an Asian problem,” they told me, and one of which – as the home secretary, Sajid Javid, suggested – all people of Pakistani heritage should feel ashamed. Ethnic minority offending is highly visible (Asian grooming gangs, black-on-black crime) whereas white offending completely invisible. Paedophiles who groom children online – 100% of whom are white according to the most recent research – are not “white paedophiles”, they are just paedophiles. The endemic abuse within the church, or children’s homes, or as unearthed by the #MeToo campaign was not “white abuse”, it was just abuse. A consequence of “white-on-white crime” remaining just “crime” is that there seem to be sections of the population who genuinely believe terrible offences are something on which ethnic minorities have a monopoly.

But Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha did not have a race, because he was good. Deracialising him – an honour reserved for the “good” immigrant – is a final benevolent gift of thanks that the people trolling me this week can give him.

This is not to speak ill of Srivaddhanaprabha in any way. On the contrary. His death is a terrible loss. The accident was devastating. But it’s clear that some people, such as those on social media, think calling someone an immigrant is an insult, whereas I don’t.

And by ignoring the heritage of an outsider thriving in Britain, people seem able to continue to demonise migrants as a group while celebrating the few they find useful. That is precisely how things do not change.

• Afua Hirsch is a Guardian columnist

[Cincinnati Fox]

I don’t think it’s correct for this journalist to be using Vichai as an example to their agenda in the days following his passing.

[Countryfox]

 Unbelievable.    But somehow not surprising.    This woman should just stfu.

 

 

 

 

Edited 30 October 2018 by Countryfox

[Jaspa]

I don't think anyone has hidden away from the fact Vichai was a Thai businessman and a lovely bloke, and that you can't regard him as both. I don't see how reading a load of Twitter comments from some idiots gives you a reason to say otherwise.

 

A complete drivel article, sorry

Edited 30 October 2018 by Jaspa

[Tielemans63]

That article is so flawed I don't know where to start. Maybe making incredibly misguided and sweeping generalisations about the British public on the basis of a few Twitter comments isn't a great basis for an article.

[Patrick]

Please, no divisive Guardian IDpol at a time like this. 

[Sharpe's Foxes]

Should join Dan Roan in the gutter.

[grobyfox1990]

I have no idea what this jumped -up sanctimonious preacher is trying to say. Is she extrapolating a few troll comments she's received from some Twitter idiots to explain the whole nations attitude towards migrants? I don't know but either way I'm annoyed she's even said Vichai's name

[HighPeakFox]

I really really think this would be better avoided right now.

[urban.spaceman]

Just imagine being so narcissistic, so narrow minded, so self righteous, so tone deaf, so ignorant and so utterly insensitive as to write something as vile as this. 

 

And imagine being the editor that signs off on it. 

 

There’s a reason The Guardian is constantly begging for money. Maybe they should stop paying people to write this filth. 

[davieG]

The problem with these twitter bloggers is that their whole focus seems to be what's written on their and other social media sites as if that is a true reflection of society as a whole. 

 

Even on some football sites you can get a very blinkered view of the fans of a particular club.

 

Perhaps it would help if these people got out into the real world more and met a bigger cross section of society rather than those that just seem to spout their nonsense on social media.

[Izzy]

That article can get right in the bin. What a crock of shit.

[Tielemans63]

1 minute ago, urban.spaceman said:

Just imagine being so narcissistic, so narrow minded, so self righteous, so tone deaf, so ignorant and so utterly insensitive as to write something as vile as this. 

 

And imagine being the editor that signs off on it. 

Imagine not knowing the difference between a migrant and an immigrant and then writing an article that demonstrates just how little you really know about the subject.

 

Imagine being the editor and either not spotting such a glaring error or being so desperate that you publish this shit anyway.

[Mike Oxlong]

I don’t think we should be publicising something like that on here at this time. 

[UniFox21]

I don't understand why the press feel the need to make articles like this. By all means spread the word of how much a brilliant man he was, spread the word of his kindness, but why focus on aspects like this? 

The family deserves better than cr4p like this printed

[The Doctor]

****s sake. I agree with the authors sort of point about race seeming to be made most prominent when the reporting is negative, but how can they possibly think now is the time, let alone to use a man's death to make a political point?

[ST20]

She is such a “victim”. How narcissistic can someone be? To try and garner attention for herself from an extremely tragic event. She needs to take a hard look in the mirror and get a grip.

[st albans fox]

It’s not even worthy of comment .........

[Dan]

She was praising that revolting tweet from some journalist saying that the angry responses are a sign of the strength of the point being made. An absolute delusional idiot who talks a load of embarrassing, insensitive bollocks.

[bovril]

One of the worst articles I've ever had the misfortune of reading for all the reasons above. Also, certain posters seem to have the need to trawl through the internet to find stuff to be outraged by in relation to the tragedy, which I also find weird. 

[urban.spaceman]

5 minutes ago, bovril said:

One of the worst articles I've ever had the misfortune of reading for all the reasons above. Also, certain posters seem to have the need to trawl through the internet to find stuff to be outraged by in relation to the tragedy, which I also find weird. 

It comes up on your Twitter feed if you follow the Guardian twitter account or follow someone who follows the Guardian twitter account. This article was printed in a national newspaper not some random blog. 

[splinterdream]

She is vile. everything the woman says is vile

[UpTheLeagueFox]

When talking about how he was a cut above other owners and certainly other foreign owners to come here, I said on air something along the lines of: "He was from a different country, a different culture, a different faith. But he fitted perfectly into our football, into our wonderfully diverse city and into our hearts. We and him were a Leicester family."

 

Fuuck knows whether I've said something terrible when it was intended as a rousing compliment.

[bovril]

5 minutes ago, urban.spaceman said:

It comes up on your Twitter feed if you follow the Guardian twitter account or follow someone who follows the Guardian twitter account. This article was printed in a national newspaper not some random blog. 

Why I don't use twitter. If anything the last three days have proved to me once and for all I need to use the internet less. 

[Dan]

13 minutes ago, UpTheLeagueFox said:

When talking about how he was a cut above other owners and certainly other foreign owners to come here, I said on air something along the lines of: "He was from a different country, a different culture, a different faith. But he fitted perfectly into our football, into our wonderfully diverse city and into our hearts. We and him were a Leicester family."

 

Fuuck knows whether I've said something terrible when it was intended as a rousing compliment.

It's only terrible in the definition of idiots like her - worryingly a high number of them seem to have a say these days.