Vinicius Junior and The Primordial Racism of The Spanish People
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It’s time for a radical inquisition.
Vinicius junior is one of the best soccer players in the world.
And what’s more, he plys his trade at the biggest club team around — Real Madrid.
Real Madrid’s trophy cabinet is the stuff of great envy as it has won every honour in club football — domestically and continentally.
To the American readers here, Real Madrid is LA Lakers, Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors franchise rolled into one; it is that much of a huge deal.
In Spain, its only true rival is a team called FC Barcelona, which has also enjoyed great success, but on a much lower level than Real Madrid.
The reason I have stated these points is to highlight how much of a big deal it is to be a star player for the biggest soccer team on earth.
But that isn’t the basis of this article.
The point here is to highlight the appalling and grotesque racism of Spanish football and the blasé approach of the authorities of tackling this structural problem.
Last Sunday, for the umpteenth time, Vinicius junior was the target of the ugliest racist abuse you will ever see anywhere.
In the match between his team — Real Madrid — and Valencia, you had huge sections of the Valencian crowd calling the Brazilian star a “mono” —Spanish for monkey.
Vinicius Jr, to his credit, confronted the fans who dared to use the slur and it led to stand off between him and players from the opposing team.
Now there were several things which were galling about that incident.
The Real Madrid team, which has a number of dark skin Black men — Carmavinga, Rudiger, Mendi and Rodyrgo all seemed somewhat sanguine about the whole thing and the captain of the team, who is of North African descent — Karim Benzema wasn’t at all prepared to walk his team mates off the pitch.
