I guess if you live in one country all your life then it's going to be difficult to see past the attitudes you've been brought up with.
Owen wrote:Clint Planet wrote:Was there any need to make reference to the colour of his skin at all? Would it have been okay for Carragher, for example, to repeatedly refer to him as "black lad"? After all, "black" is not a racist word in itself and "lad" is often a term of affection in Liverpool.
Suarez knew what he was doing.
Exactly,
i doubt if the FA has a list of acceptable and unacceptable words, any reference to someones skin colour on the field of play that gets reported (and admitted to by suarez) is bound to be breaking the rules and under their jurisdiction.
whether the south american comments are just as bad or worse neither Suarez or an official made a complaint about them. You could argue that if in the course of the hearing it was established they were said then maybe evra needs a ban as well but suarez still doesn't have a leg to stand on
I think we can all agree that, in Britain, it is not considered acceptable to refer to someone by their race or sking colour in the way that Suárez did. Indeed, as I suggested before, the FA should have a rule about it and then there would be no excuses and everyone should know what is not allowed and what punishment they can expect if they break the rule. However, they didn't have that rule in place and still don't. They just made up a crime and a punishment. A bit like Owen's first sentence.
A year is nowhere near long enough to fully take on board the cultural mores of a society and bear in mind that I speak from experience as opposed to those who say that it is enough time. For all we or the FA know, Suárez may have considered his way of speaking completely normal and not felt that referring to someone's skin colour was a bad thing.
If there were a rule or a law to say otherwise then he should be punished because it's his business to find out about these things but there isn't.
Bugger off.