It appears that this remark was brought to the notice of the match referee, Clive Lloyd, by
the Sri Lankan management. One would expect all the ICC referees to have addressed
the issue as a serious infringement; but since Lloyd, a West Indian, falls within the
category “black whatever,” the situation was deeply ironic.
So, basically he's asking, "Clive Lloyd is black; why wasn't he just as offended by the comment as anyone else and why wasn't he as harsh on Lehmann as everyone else?". I must admit, this statement is a little ambiguous. Just what is he saying about Clive Lloyd? Is he saying that Clive Lloyd SHOULD have been more offended and SHOULD have acted in a harsher manner? I don't think it's in question that Lloyd knows his responsibilities as match referee VERY well so again, what is he saying? I would have preferred if he'd gone into this in much more detail and expanded upon what he is saying here.
The latter were satisfied with this remorse and did not wish to pursue the
matter further – a case of damage control no doubt.
This is just rubbish? Damage control? HOW?? Sri Lanka would have had nothing to lose and everything to gain (from a PR perspective) from pressuring Lloyd to inflict a heavy penalty for Lehmann. So why didn't THEY press further?
But in line with my previous writings I wish that the ICC would go further and take action against demeaning obscenities and masculinist vocabulary in general. Should our modern gladiators be allowed to freely disparage women by referring to their genitalia and using other words, such as “c… er” that we are not allowed to print? I will leave that issue in the air however and attend to the immediate aftermath of the Lehmann obscenity.
That word "c**t" is generally not considered masculinist terminology anymore as feminists around the world have attempted to reclaim it as a positive word (it's derivations are positive, apparently). So by labelling it as such, he's re-enforcing the original meaning and by banning it, the same would happen. Words are only afforded the meaning we give them and by using the original meaning in interpreting what Lehmann said, Roberts is perpeuating the derogatory meaning of the word and be default, perpetuating the use of the word as a term of derision. Maybe he should keep up with his social sciences if he wants to be taken seriously.........
Speaking as a social scientist, let me emphasise that it is at moments of pressure and
stress that one reveals one's innermost feelings. Hate-speech erupts when someone is
drunk, angry or aroused by an alarming piece of news.
Rubbish. When someone is under pressure or stress, people's DEFENSIVE feelings and thoughts come out, not their deeply-held ones. Drunk, maybe, but being under stress doesn't always do this. He's saying this like it's a fundamental assumption.
Look at his argument logically:
"If I am under stress, then my inner-most and honest feelings will be expressed."
By inference, the statement says that this is always the case, which is patently not the case because a defensive (but honest) reacton could also come out. A subconscious defensive reaction which was generated by one's upbringing could also be the one to come out, particularly if one's upbringing included racist parents. It's certainly possible that Lehmann was influenced by people he saw growing up in such a way that he would just say the first angry thing that came to mind without actually thinking about whether he actually means it, hence the defensive reaction.
The most contentious statement would be what is ultimately inferred:
"If I am under pressure, my most honest feelings will be expressed every time."
This is most certainly not the case as the nature of where those feelings are derived from is ambiguous. In this case, the the antecedent cannot affirm the consequent and in drawing up some truth tables, there will obviously be cases where the premiss will be true but the consequent will certainly be false.
This is where I really take issue with Robert's comment. He can't, with any certainty, say his statement is true in all conditions so I can only surmise that this is a reflection of his own self-righteous beliefs, without actually thinking about how true they may be, probably to sell more papers and make a name for himself rather than anything else.
Take one famous occasion during the finals of the ODI series in Australia in 1996. In the course of a cameo innings Sanath Jayasuriya hit Glenn McGrath for fours in typical, slashing-Sanath style. As he reached the bowling crease after one such stroke, the camera caught McGrath shouldering Sanath and saying something. The camera technicians with audio turned low would have heard his words and any professional lip-reader could have read the expression. The story in Lankan circles is that he called Sanath a “black monkey.” McGrath's actions were not mere aberration. His words expressed gut-feeling.
A perfect example. McGrath may have called Jayasuriya a 'black monkey' but did he actually put thought into this, decided he hated Jayasuriya for looking like a monkey and then decided to call him so? Or was it a defensive reaction in a time of stress with little thought about the racial aspects of it where he just shouted SOMETHING because he was angry? I don't know but I'm damn sure that Robert's doesn't either and in affirming a statement which suggests that he thinks he DOES know, he loses credibility because he can NEVER know what McGrath meant.
Censor the staments and punish those who say them, fine. No issue there. But don't pretend you know exactly what they meant or know exactly WHY someone might have said something, particularly if they were under stress at the time. Again, as someone who has my own black heritage, it's all too easy to think you know exactly what's going on in someone's head purely on the basis of something they said whilst under stress. The thing is, you can never know what type of reaction it was or how they may have been influenced in growing up etc.
Someone like Viv Richards has the most mature attitude of anyone I've ever read on this. Quite a few times in the 1975-76 series against Australia he said he was called black c**t and much, much worse and even though he said with certainty that guys like Jeff Thompson were abusive, he could never bring himself to say they were racists. He, in fact, recognised the complex nature of why someone like Thommo would say something like that in that it was probably purely to gee himself up and get under Viv's nose a bit too, more than outright racial abuse, the objective of which would be to assert racial superiority.
As he said, although you can comment on what someone says, you can never truly know what's in another's heart and deep down even after all that and getting to know Thommo, he said that he probablty wasn't a genuine racist at all.
The ICC has within it's powers a simple remedy that would obviate the need to have disciplinary tribunals: all they have to do is to insert a clause in all contracts with the firms that tender for TV rights stipulating that stump-audio has to be turned full-on. That would constrain the Haydens, Bouchers, Halls and Kallises of today's world of cricket from exercising their foul-mouth
obscenities at the same time as they restrict racial vilification.
Typical. Stop it from happening on the field and therefore you've eradicated the problem, right? If we don't hear it on TV, it doesn't happen..................suuuuuuuuuure. Yet another short-sighted solution which just hides the problem rather than helps to solve it. Good idea...............
A journalist with wide experience and a heart in politics, Ted Corbett insists that cricketis one of the last institutionalised bastions of racism in the world today, albeit a racism that operates in insidious and subterranean ways -- through inbuilt assumptions as much as taken-for-granted practices.
Againm he's making an asinine statement without any proof to back it up. Cricket the last of the institutionlised racisms in the world today??? You MUST be kidding me. All I have to do is point him in the direction of the AFL (Australian Football League) tribunals every year and there's at least ONE player in trouble for racial abuse. How many more don't get reported? I have plenty of cousins that play football almost professionally (a couple professionally) that would show his statement to be palpably false. Too easy to disprove and if Roberts seriously expects a statement like that to help his argument, he's on shaky debating ground.
But I bet if someone were to question him on it, he'd disavow any ownership of it saying "I didn't say that. Ted Corbett did.". The way the paragraph is written he doesn't actually suggest whether he agrees with it at all. He just quotes Corbett and leaves it at that. Very suspicious.
