"Go sell peanuts in the Métro"

Can anyone — an American or a European or a third-party national — imagine going to a football game (or a basketball game!) in the United States, and having the black players submitted to a litany of racial insults?

Strangely enough — given the Europeans' propensity to giving the Yanks lessons on solidarity, harmony (racial, social, and otherwise), and "humanistic" ties between men of all colrs and creeds — that is far from unheard at European football (i.e., soccer) games. Reporting from Paris is Jerome Pugmire:

Warming up on the sidelines, a black player jogs toward fans at the Parc des Princes soccer stadium. As he gets closer, a barrage of monkey chants explodes — "OOOH! OOOH! OOOH!" — and racist insults fill the air.

Such scenes are increasingly common at the home stadium of Paris Saint-Germain, or PSG, one of France's top soccer teams. And they stain elite soccer leagues elsewhere in Europe, raising fears a global sport that calls itself "the beautiful game" is getting uglier.

…Soccer, with its many black stars, should be a showcase of multiracial harmony — especially in France, which draws heavily on talent from its former African colonies.

Instead, brawling soccer fans have emerged as the extreme fringe of a deeply troubled France — one whose problems include grappling with stiffening resistance to immigration. After the riots that engulfed immigrant-dominated French suburbs last year, beer-fueled racism in soccer has taken on an even more menacing tinge.

Unlike soccer hooliganism elsewhere, in which the antagonists are fans of rival teams, the clashes outside Parc des Princes are largely between fans rooting for the same team — PSG.…

PSG, where George Weah of Liberia and Ronaldinho of Brazil once displayed their magic, is not alone in facing racist outrages.

In Spain, Barcelona striker Samuel Eto'o of Cameroon threatened to walk off the field after Zaragoza fans subjected him to monkey chants in February. In Italy, right-wing fans have displayed Nazi and fascist symbols and anti-Semitic banners at Rome's Stadio Olimpico.

But some black players say the atmosphere at Parc des Princes has become intolerable.

"I'd have to think twice before setting foot there again," Senegal-born Patrick Vieira, a midfielder for the French national team, said.

During one match, a fan yelled at PSG midfielder Vikash Dhorasoo, a France international midfielder of Indian origin, "Go sell peanuts in the Métro." It was among the least offensive shouts in a tirade of vulgar epithets for blacks.

As the 2006 World Cup draws closer, we have more examples of European sportsmanship and sophistication from Spain.

We should be very grateful for the Europeans on this planet. If it weren't for them, we would not realize to what extent America is a racist country and culture. (As I have personally had the blessed opportunity to discover several times.) It is true that places like Europe (indeed, any place that is not the U.S.), and above all France, serve as a real model of racial integration and harmony that the oafish Yanks should emulate, if only they shared the Europeans' capacity of reasoning and their sense of sophistication.

In fact, a big part of the Euros' argument is that they complain that people (Americans or "un-lucid" Europeans) are generalizing in an unfair way; if only those people would understand the exact of the problem, they would see (somehow) that racism (or anti-semitism or whatever form it takes) is not that big of a problem; or it is a problem, but they are doing their best to fight it.

Not a bad argument; unfortunately, when it comes to examples (large or small, and real or imainged) of racism in America, such considerations are swept aside in favor of …generalisations, scorn, and disgust with American racism. In fact… this brings us to the most important point about European racism. Indeed, as we ponder the words of Martin Luther King Jr, pause to reflect on the fact that the most offensive, the most revolting, and the most dangerous part of European racism has not been treated above.

And that is anti-Americanism.

As eminent British historian Paul Johnson has written,

anti-Americanism is a function of cultural racism. … The view is that sophisticated, civilized Europe has nothing to learn from "adolescent" America. … This cultural racism is particularly directed at the supposedly "know-nothing" President George W. Bush and his "gung ho" Texas background. The European intelligentsia gets its notion of America chiefly from Hollywood, TV soaps like Dallas and fiction. Few of them have any experience of America, outside of three or four big cities. Middle America is unexplored territory. The fact that the U.S. has proved a highly efficient crucible for melding different peoples into a human sum greater than its constituent parts is seen as a misfortune in Europe because it produces a cultural stew that lacks purity of any kind and is therefore at the mercy of commercial forces.

European elites tend to look at Americans as a subcivilized mass, whose function is to be obedient consumers in a system run by big business. The role of competition in U.S. economic life — and in every other aspect of life — is ignored, because competition is something Continental Europeans like to keep to a minimum and under careful control. … Although Americans are seen as highly materialistic consumers, they are also despised and feared for their spiritual interests, their participation in religious worship and their subscription to creeds of morality. Europeans see no inconsistency in their condemnation of the U.S. for being at one and the same time paganly unethical and morally zealous.

The truth is, any accusation that comes to hand is used without scruple by the Old World intelligentsia. Anti-Americanism is factually absurd, contradictory, racist, crude, childish, self-defeating and, at bottom, nonsensical.

In that respect, the Euros' haughty view of "adolescent" Americans (aka their "American friends", which is more like the neighborhood's dopey American teens) is little better than the cry, "Go sell peanuts in the Métro." In fact, it is just as bad or worse. Read Johnson's entire text…