On a Tough Few Days in Sport and Liverpool
For minoritized classes of fans, the past 48 hours have been quite difficult.
Originally, when I set down to write this morning, I intended to (finally and belatedly) put out the second in my series of small pieces tracking how Arne Slot is changing things up on the field for Liverpool. It’s pre-season, things are light in that there’s always a whiff of optimism and hope in the air because we’re living in a moment that’s almost all about the possibility. It is, for that reason, an easy time for me to be a fan.
But when I cracked open my laptop to peruse social media for any other angles or updates I might have missed, I happened upon the distressing news of violence, fueled by right-wing groups in “response” to the tragedy in Southport, taking place across the UK. Notably, Liverpool as a city has not been spared from this violence as live reports note that the city centre is still being monitored by police following skirmishes throughout the day.
It is a sad moment given that the inciting incident - at least as I understand it - is right-wing outcry rooted in xenophobia and racism with the release of the name of the individual arrested and charged in connection to the Southport killings. A name - which I won’t use here - that is recognized as “foreign” despite reports from trusted outlets noting that the accused was born in Cardiff.
The thing about bigotry, though, is that it doesn’t trade in facts. It isn’t willing to hold that presence as part of the conditions necessary for a crime, also means that the immediate social environment had to play a role in providing the other circumstances for that crime to take place. Which is to say, the reported racist chants targeted broadly to immigrants (not even specific to whatever nation the accused’s ancestors might have originated from) fails to reckon with how this person was raised and socialized within their own beloved Britain; that if their last name happened to have been “Smith” or “Miller,” one would find these xenophobic chants ludicrous.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Fascism doesn’t want to believe facts. Another example having come just a day or so ago as the Olympics Boxing competition kicked off an outrageous swell of anti-trans hate when an Italian boxer quit their match and caused the entire world to obsess over the gender and genitalia of their opponent. Never mind that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is not a trans woman, the dual conditions of her inability to present as feminine enough and that she was seen as too comprehensively defeating a poster-child for white femininity was enough to to misgender a cis-woman all in an effort to once more harm and exclude trans people.
There are so many layers here: the nexus of white supremacists racing to “save” white femmes against the always looming specter of Black or brown violence; the need to defend a homeland from an “invasion” of “foreigners;” and the ways in which trans and gender non-conforming people are viewed as a threat all have managed to collide in this past 36 hours. As an immigrant - though, one in America where, admittedly, things aren’t really any better - it has been tough to see the way in which race has been a loose connector in this. Reading the difficult time some of my trans friends have been having given the news has also brought a heaviness to this moment.
And to see it now, in Liverpool, where the flagship football team’s best player is an Arab and a Muslim, knowing there are foreign-born fans in those stands every match-week, and where our club anthem is a rallying cry for solidarity without exclusions, the scenes today are truly difficult to watch.
I’ve had the unfortunate experience of watching some Reds fans, online acquaintances only thankfully, get sucked in by the TERF movement in the UK. I know people in real life who I need to help move from the awful positioning that there is such a thing as a “good” immigrant or that someone, given the US’s broken system, can do it the “right” way. These are the realities that people in our fan base are either experiencing or that folks who claim to be Reds are beginning to espouse.
When I’ve written in the past here about how there is no separating politics from sport, this is what I mean: Mo Salah cannot divorce his identity from his work on the pitch in much the same way a fan in the stands does not cease being themselves upon entering the Kop. Making a space that is inclusive for all identities necessarily means rejecting ideologies that seek to marginalize and, ultimately, eradicate the existence of entire peoples. It means standing up against fascism and racism and sexism and ableism and xenophobia and homophobia and transphobia and every type of bigotry that one might hear. It requires a persistent refusal to brook harmful rhetoric and action to ensure that our trans siblings and Muslim friends can safely enter our fan spaces.
It requires us to embody the spirit of you’ll never walk alone and make it manifest by loudly and obnoxiously proclaiming that our space is welcoming and includes all people.
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
Post a Comment