Greetings, gentle readers.
"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."
– Bill Shankly, 1981
Football, as one of the most accessible and universally appreciated sports in human history, has the power and potential to act as a unifying social catalyst. Correct me if I am wrong, but my interpretation of the liberal democratic social contract involves bromides like "We are strong not in spite of our differences, but because of them," and "The fundamental principle of peace is the respect for diversity."
It was puzzling to me that the substitute appearance of the youngest-ever player in the history of the World Cup (Women's or Men's) should be accompanied by a strange factoid released by the Korean Republic's football federation.
Hot Dogs
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| Half-breed Casey Phair |
For those that don't know or haven't heard, when (South) Korea played Colombia on 25 July, Casey Phair was substituted onto the field of play in the 78th minute. She was just 16 years and 26 days old, making her the youngest player ever to grace the world's stage at this level, regardless of gender. As soon as her boots hit the turf, commentators were quick to mention the note that had been released to the press by the Korean federation, announcing that Casey represents the "first multi-racial player" to represent Korea at this event.
On first inspection, one might think that this represents a great step forward for Korean sports in terms of diversity, inclusion, and all those other laudable values. And then one would remember that it's 2023. The fact that the Korean women's team only fielded "purebreeds" up until this tournament indicates one of three things: girls with only one Korean parent or grandparent in a mixed reproduction scenario have either been universally untalented, completely unrecognized, or intentionally disqualified.
I sincerely hope that a sixteen-year-old girl is welcomed like a younger sister into a team completely populated by women selected by what appears to be an historically different methodology. The weird ripples of Korea announcing that their women's team have hitherto been representing a homogeneous ethnostate seem to contrast with the Korean Men's Olympic Ice Hockey team that competed in the Pyeongcheang Olympics in 2018.
Since winning its bid to host the Winter Games seven years ago, South Korea has been steadily recruiting Canadians — even fast-tracking their South Korean citizenship to allow them to join the Olympic team (dual-citizenship is prohibited in South Korea, but the government has been granting special dual-citizenship rights to "talented" individuals).
One might suggest that the value of female Korean ethnic purity is of a higher value than that of male ethnic purity, and suddenly we're confronted with a gender issue rather than a racial issue.
Who Wins the Human Race?
Racism is a word that expresses a value system based on a profoundly ignorant lack of genetics or empathy that generates ill will and hostility between people. There are very few redeeming features of this concept. That being said, political scientists have known the solution to racism for decades —creolism. If one accepts the fact that one cannot be racist towards the member of one's own family, then the solution is to accept other, different cultures and ethnicities into one's own familial unit. I'll let Warren Beatty express the concept more succinctly in the film "Bulworth."
To be honest, discussions about race are becoming more and more anachronistic. In 2018, when France won the Men's World Cup, Daily Show host Trevor Noah commented that "Africa won the World Cup," which caused a rather large stir in France. The BBC article that details the furor can be found here. The bottom line here is that France considers itself such a diverse and integrated society that it no longer needs to identify the quality or quantity of its plural constituent ethnic communities.
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| France's Sarina Karchaoui — Amy Winehouse would like her eyelashes back. |
Historically, the movement of peoples between France and North Africa has been happening since people could float boats capable of crossing the Mediterranean, but the vagaries of the Napoleonic Wars, the fall of the second empire during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, the era of the communes during the third republic, and other sociopolitical upheavals made Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia sources of food, safe haven, and commercial opportunity. Everyone remembers "Casablanca" as the film that depicted French African colonies as a form of underground railroad taking fugitives away from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Similarly, Brazil harboured the Portuguese royal family in the 19th century. The genealogical difference between the colonizers and the colonized was always fated to become blurred over time. Perhaps the insular nature of some cultures just takes longer to erode.
As a fun exercise, try and connect the players on the left column with the country that they represent at this Women's World Cup in the right column.
And that's all of the typing that my disobedient limbs will allow me to publish today. Until next time, good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS
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