Sports not exempt from all civilities

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At left, Chelsea captain John Terry exchanges words with QPR's Anton Ferdinand while walking with Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic. At right, Manchester United's Patrice Evra has words with Liverpool's Luis Suarez. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

Racism and sport have always had a difficult relationship.

The arena, to the athlete, is a place where the laws governing civilian society simply cannot reach, where once having walked from the parking lot to the pitch the rules have somehow changed.

This is understood and necessary -- and mostly good -- since one wouldn't want to be the victim of a lunging tackle on the sidewalk.

To the fan, as well, the stadium represents something separate from greater society, and once through the turnstiles it becomes acceptable to shout abuse at the authorities, sing with more passion than you ever would in church and scream an assortment of four-letter words at the opposition.

Once again, there's nothing inherently wrong with this. Sport is, for participants both on the field of play and in the stands, a platform for expression. It is not, however, an excuse to abandon civilized behaviour, a time machine that takes you back to a place and period where certain slurs were an unfortunate part of the vernacular, and where using them bore no consequence.

You could forgive Anton Ferdinand and Patrice Evra for thinking they had somehow taken a ride in that time machine last October.

In the space of eight days both defenders were racially abused by opposing players, and in the three months since both have been peppered with questions about how they'll react when they next face their abusers.

The fans, meanwhile, have been instructed to behave themselves, and now everyone is anxiously awaiting today's FA Cup matches, as if what transpires at Loftus Road and Anfield will somehow settle the racism question once and for all.

For Ferdinand, the question is whether to shake John Terry's hand ahead of kickoff. The Chelsea and England captain, is alleged to have made racial slurs at Ferdinand, a Queens Park Rangers defender, and is now the subject of a police investigation.

Evra's situation is rather more convoluted, as the Liverpool player who is said to have repeated a slur at the Manchester United defender as many as eight times is sitting out the final match of an eight-game ban handed down as punishment for the abuse.

For Evra, the offending party is less Luis Suarez than Liverpool Football Club, as it was the club -- in its absurd and unwavering support of Suarez -- that actually attacked his dignity, questioning whether he was a trustworthy witness when Suarez was dragged before an FA inquiry.

Then there are the fans. While many have stayed above the fray through all this some have behaved despicably, whether singing derogatory songs about Ferdinand while on a Champions League visit to Belgium, swamping Facebook and Twitter with unrepeatable remarks about Evra or hurling abuse at unsuspecting Oldham midfielder Tom Adeyemi, who just happened to visit Liverpool when frustration at the Suarez ban was raw. Just this week Ferdinand received a bullet in the mail.

It's at this point the authorities are well within their rights to step in, to interfere and even dismantle the sport-as-separate-from-greater-society paradigm.

Police are often viewed with disdain when thought to be intruding on the self-governing realm of sport, but when the harassment doesn't actually have anything to do with the game being played it's sport overstepping its bounds, not the police.

It's disappointing that their involvement is required at all. Racism is something we like to think was extinguished in the '60s and '70s, that ours is a post-racial society. But the sad fact of the matter is that it's still here, on our streets and in our sports -- an outlet for the very basest expression of those who lack the intelligence to communicate frustration in any other way.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 28, 2012 C8