I wish people who have not spent a considerable amount of time in Latin America would stop imparting their wisdom about what a “post racial” place it is. It is NOT. South America, specifically, is a place where racial identities have, for the most part, been erased. Where skin color is still a very big factor in socio-economic outcomes, where casual racism is rampant, where there are institutionalized forms of oppression (I wrote extensively about the sterilization of Native Peruvian women in the 90s to give one such example).
Argentina got rid of the most visible portion of Afro descendants by sending them to a bloody war that resulted in what only now is being acknowledged as a genocide. British media, in an effort to defend this football player glosses over the realities of racism by claiming all South American players use the word “negro” as a term of endearment. That is simply not true. Context matters in this case! Just like the N word in North America has one contextual meaning when African Americans use it, the same applies to “negro” when these football players use it referring to one another. However, I might be expecting too much nuance when these newspapers are only appalled by the financial loss the club will incur now that the player is suspended.
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