AWhen the Bundesliga protested a few weeks ago for the “BlackLivesMatter” movement and against discrimination and intolerance, sport took the lead in the racism debate – but recently it has gotten itself into a headlock, especially in America.
The indigenous people no longer put up with anything. Hardly a day goes by without them confronting sport with the sins of its past. What suddenly happens reminds many of Cassius Clay, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali in the mid-1960s and thus triggered an avalanche. This time it concerns the clubs. Club names and logos jiggle everywhere, and many busts and monuments tip off their pedestals.
The Eskimos have played out: The Canadian football club from Edmonton wants to rename itself
Quelle: Getty Images
The weekend came the news that the Edmonton Eskimos from the Canadian Football League also want to get a new name. The sponsors are to blame, “Boston Pizza” has already left, an insurance company wants to follow, but the pressure from the indigenous peoples is particularly massive. Natan Obed, one of her spokesmen, says: “Inuit people are not mascots.”
The Cleveland Indians were the first to accept the changing times in the US baseball league. They were twice the proud winners of the World Series, in other words, world champions in short, but they have understood that their name is only good for the garbage heap of history. They also abolish their coat of arms with the head of the Indian chief “Chief Wahoo”.
The Washington Redskins in the NFL football league are no less consistent. They also give up their scalp voluntarily, including their names and coat of arms. Redskins means redskins – and many Americans, President Barack Obama sensed five years ago, feel offended by the word.
Even a statue comes away from the Redskins
The “Washington Post” then checked the thesis by means of a survey and then quietly disagreed: “Nine out of ten indigenous people do not feel offended by the name Redskins.” Club owner Daniel Snyder rubbed his hands on it, recommending it to the revolutionaries, in future only one To ask Indians, and dictated the oath to the press people in the block: “We will never rename ourselves – and you can never write this in capital letters.”
Today he knows: Never say never.
Snyder has given in. The events of the past few weeks have overwhelmed him, and his rethinking does not even stop at the dead, at least not before the Redskins founder Preston Marshall. He was reluctant to tolerate black players in the past, and that’s why his name is now removed from the “Ring of Glory” in the stadium, and his statue has to give way. Donald Trump can only prevent him from being banished from the “Hall of Fame” of football by deploying the National Guard.
An ex-IOC president is also targeted
Even Avery Brundage is dragged off the pedestal, the head of the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972. “The games must go on”, he called after the terrorist attack in Munich, but his game is over. An art museum in San Francisco wants to dismantle the bust of its former patron because of “racist and anti-Semitic assessments”.
So more and more busts in the grave turn around and more and more names disappear. The Redskins, Eskimos and Indians are like the “Negerkissen” and “Mohrenkenken”, whose racist potential has long been overlooked. In Astrid Lindgren’s “Pippi Longstocking” the “Negro King” is now called “South Sea King”, and it remains to be seen when Johann Strauss’s “Gypsy Baron” will prevent you from entering the opera houses or the master singer Ernst Neger (“Humba Täterä”) in the chronicles of the Mainz Carnival is renamed.
At least the ZDF boxing reporter Werner Schneider has survived. In the 1960s, under the protection of black humor, he reported from the ring with impunity: “You can recognize the negro by his white trousers.”
These are sensitive times that change a lot
The political correctness now watches over every misconduct and does not even stop at the best goalkeeper in the world, to whom a “Spiegel” critic recently asked the question: “How can it be that Manuel Neuer has a song on vacation? right-patriotic Croatian rock band is singing? ”It happened in a beach bar, the song was called“ You’re beautiful ”, and Neuer bobbed along.
In the past, one would have left it with a wink, but in these sensitive times, such a swaying quickly fulfills the criminal offense of incitement, which as a minimum punishment is social ostracism and banishment from the national gate. The critic mentioned is obviously curious, he writes: “It is still unclear what will happen to Neuers Sing-Along in Croatia. The DFB did not want to comment on the case when asked about ‘Spiegel’. “
Football may have more urgent problems to solve, especially the racist sins of the past do not only have to be dealt with by the Eskimos, Redskins and Indians. Franz Binder is one such case. He was once a big scorer, national player for Austria and Germany, and he went on a tour of North Africa with Rapid Vienna in the 1930s. In a cinema in Egypt, the Viennese saw the film “The Cyclone”, the African leading actor was called Bimbo, and because he reminded Binder of his running style, he had his nickname for the rest of his life: Bimbo.
It went well for a long time. But suddenly the sensitive question arises: What will become of the “Bimbo Binder Promenade” in front of the football stadium in his native town of St. Pölten?
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