The French Football Federation recently announced its intention to file a legal complaint over “racist and discriminatory remarks” made by Enzo Fernández and other Argentinian football players. Fernández had shared a video on Instagram featuring him and his teammates singing about the rival players, specifically those of African heritage. “They play for France, but their parents are from Angola. Their mother is from Cameroon, while their father is from Nigeria. But their passport says French,” sang the artless athletes.

Possible overtones?

Invited to respond, Argentinean President Javier Milei and Vice President Victoria Villarruel shrugged and said Fernández was just being truthful. Aurélien Tchouaméni and several other players on the French national team are of Cameroonian descent. Ousmane Dembélé is of Senegalese, Mauritian and Malian descent.

Days later, football fans in Argentina were repeating the chant. Fernández was investigated by association football’s world governing organization, FIFA, which has prioritized the fight against racism in the sport. The players can be suspended for up to 12 matches if the chant is found to be racist.

Is it racist?

I asked a Spanish-speaking friend for a translation of the comments, and he confirmed the above is accurate. He reckoned the chant had racist “overtones,” meaning it implied that to be properly French, you had to be white. I accept there were overtones. I also accept that the verse was derogatory and insulting to France’s black players. But I am still not convinced this is racism. Then again, racism itself changes.

The myth of race

In 1950, UNESCO published a significant report titled “The Race Question.” This report was one of the first major efforts to expose the scientific invalidity of race as a biological concept. It concluded that “for all practical purposes, ‘race’ is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth.”

Despite its mythic status, no one doubted the devilish concept’s potency. “Racism” referred to thoughts and theories predicated on the validity of “race” and the corresponding assumption that the human population was divided naturally into a hierarchy, with whites permanently at the top.

“Racialism,” on the other hand, described language or behavior that reflected those beliefs. So, racialism, or racial discrimination as it was often called, was obviously much more damaging to groups conceived as lower in the purported hierarchy. Anti-discrimination laws and policies were designed to manage racialism rather than educate people.

During the 1980s, the terms racism and racialism converged in academia, public discourse and policy discussions. “Racism” increasingly described both the belief in racial superiority and the resultant discriminatory behaviors. The focus shifted to recognizing that racist beliefs and actions were part of a larger, interconnected complex of injustice and subjugation.

Institutional racism

The term “institutional racism” was first used by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and Charles V. Hamilton in their influential book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. Over time, the term became closely associated with the UK’s report on the death of Stephen Lawrence, published in 1999. In this case, institutional racism was defined as “the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behavior which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”

According to the report, institutional racism is not only about overt acts of racism but also about the more subtle and systemic practices that lead to unequal treatment — what are now known as microaggressions. Institutional racism and plain racism were soon used interchangeably to mean widespread discrimination.

The parameters have shifted so that the concept of “race” is no longer germane. In 2018, for example, many people from Wales felt they were discriminated against on the grounds of national identity. Under the UK’s Equality Act 2010, these concerns could be considered justified. The Welsh were a “protected group.” The defining feature of racism, in this conception, is not “race” but vulnerability to discrimination. 

The Boy Who Cried “Wolf”

The benefits of categorizing racism in this way are many. Groups that have been treated wrongfully or prejudicially, be that presently or historically, are protected by law and can use the emotively powerful claim of racism in their defense. Offenses motivated by a victim’s supposed ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability or similar characteristics are now grouped collectively as hate crimes. The defining characteristic is the perpetrator’s intention, not the victim’s attributes. A claim of a racist attack on a cisgender, fully abled, while male heterosexual has merit.

But there are dangers, the most obvious one captured by the phrase “cry wolf.” The fable of the tricksy shepherd boy who playfully misleads people with false cries of, “Wolf!” is illuminating. When a wolf actually does appear, others are so used to the boy’s stunts that no one takes notice. Repeatedly claiming “racism” calls attention to an unpleasant and widespread presence, but may also devalue such claims. The enlargement of the concept to cover all manner of discrimination tends to trivialize racism in the form it once had.

Racism has disfigured America’s history from the 17th century and Europe’s from the 1950s. It has provoked slave uprisings, riots, protest marches and other forms of civil disobedience. Torture, mutilation and death have been its grimmest byproducts. To cluster these sins under the same rubric as microaggressions against the Welsh lessens their significance in the eyes of many.

Racism in the Fernández case

I am certainly not condoning the behavior of Fernández and his teammates. It was not just careless, but wrongheaded, pernicious, arguably defamatory and possibly malicious. France’s black players were subject to abuse on social media following their World Cup defeat to Argentina in 2022, so these kinds of irresponsible deeds can have consequences. But was it racist?

Fifty years ago, no. Thirty years ago, still no. In fact, in 1998, France won the FIFA World Cup with a multicultural team that included Zinedine Zidane, Patrick Vieira, Lilian Thuram and Marcel Desailly, among others. Had Fernández’s video been released then, it likely would have been ridiculed and dismissed as a case of “sour grapes.” But today we err on the side of assuming malignancy.

The impact of racism has been diluted by our eagerness to recognize it in any situation in which hatred of particular groups is involved. This is not a bad thing and in a great many instances, there has been a racist component buried among other sordid motivations. Yet the danger lies in spurious attributions. Some offenses, even hate crimes, are not impelled by spurious beliefs about race and should be treated as conceptually distinct.

None of this excuses Fernández et al. But perhaps we should laugh at their idiocy and childlike attempts to make fun rather than dignify them — which is what we do when we endow them with serious motives.

[Ellis Cashmore is the editor of Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies]

[Emma Johnson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.