Greg Clarke - ex-FA Chairman

[johnr]

Has resigned for using the word 'coloured'. Good.

[Snake Plissken]

I thought that it was his comments about the IT department that did for him. Either way, I agree with the sentiment.

[johnr]

GREG CLARKE FFS. (I have a friend called Phil Clarke. Lesson to self, don't post when I'm the bath)

[johnr]

Is it possible to change the title, Snake?

[Snake Plissken]

Already done.

[johnr]

Ta.

[diggedy derek]

Good. The two comments today (two!) were from the dark ages.

[diggedy derek]

Two? God, just catching up on Twitter and I see that he'd suggested being gay is a "life choice".

[Snake Plissken]

The two I saw were to do with race - he hasn't said something stupid about gay footballers as well has he?

[Satchmo Distel]

I thought that it was his comments about the IT department that did for him. Either way, I agree with the sentiment.

My initial reaction was that the comments about the IT department were far worse because they clearly reflect the racist assumptions used when recruiting people, whereas "coloured" is more about not being arsed about choosing terminology that doesn't dehumanize the BAME population. However, on reflection, trying to choose a "worse" from two clearly racist behaviours is rather pointless here. They were both way beyond the threshold needed to sack him.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Did they find a suitable old white bloke to fill in while they look for a new chair?

[ursus arctos]

Isn't that descriptive of the entire pool of prospective candidates?

[1974ddr]

Apparently this bloke's 'looking for a new challenge'...

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Forgive me, I'm just after clarification. Just yesterday the Guardian congratulated Kamala Harris on its headline as being a "woman of colour".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...vice-president

So it's "coloured" that's a dreadfully racist phrase but not "...of colour"? I'm not being provocative I just genuinely want to get it right if I feel any need to use either, frankly, going forward.

[johnr]

Clarke is seven years older than I am. I'm at a loss as to how, as the leader of a national organisation, he can make the comments above (plus the one about being gay being a lifestyle choice, and that girls don't like getting balls kicked at them). I mean, what can have possessed him? He's from the dark ages. Has he being saying this stuff for years, but this is the first time he's ever addressed those things in public, or was it some sort of meltdown?

I know that many public figures are shit. Still, this one is doing my head in.

[johnr]

Forgive me, I'm just after clarification. Just yesterday the Guardian congratulated Kamala Harris on its headline as being a "woman of colour".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...vice-president

So it's "coloured" that's a dreadfully racist phrase but not "...of colour"? I'm not being provocative I just genuinely want to get it right if I feel any need to use either, frankly, going forward.

People of Colour describes people who are non-white (there's some that don't like that term either, as it differentiates from 'white', which is also a colour). 'Coloured' has a whole history of subjugation behind it, across time and continents - one example would be South Africa.

[sw2borshch]

Forgive me, I'm just after clarification. Just yesterday the Guardian congratulated Kamala Harris on its headline as being a "woman of colour".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...vice-president

So it's "coloured" that's a dreadfully racist phrase but not "...of colour"? I'm not being provocative I just genuinely want to get it right if I feel any need to use either, frankly, going forward.

The 'coloured' thing seems like a clumsy slip of the tongue, not least because it used to be the polite term, although he definitely should have known better*, but the other stuff was just crass. The former he could have rode out, the latter he couldn't.

The pity is he should have gone weeks ago over his plans to ruin football, but hey.

*our dad would likely say 'coloured' it being the civilised way to speak when he was younger, but he's 75 and not working in a current corporate environment. And to my mind it's not 'a dreadfully racist phrase' but an unthinking, outmoded, do-better phrase that it doesn't take much reflection to see why it is a bit rubbish, really.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Anyone who doesn't know better has no place being in charge of anything, let alone football.

[Patrick Thistle]

It's not hard to say "black" is it. It's not like it's a difficult word.

[Amor de Cosmos]

People of Colour describes people who are non-white (there's some that don't like that term either, as it differentiates from 'white', which is also a colour).

Technically 'white' isn't a colour either. It's either total lack of any pigment (in a subtractive colour system) or total saturation with every pigment possible (in an additive colour system.) Clearly "white people" are not white by either definition ("pinko-grey is maybe about as close as you can get) and "black people" are not black by the same reasoning.

[ursus arctos]

[diggedy derek]

Snake, he described being gay in passing as a lifestyle choice – it was in a section intended to be inclusive, talking about those who face challenges and discrimination, but clumsily summed it up by bracketing it under "lifestyle choice".

[Patrick Thistle]

What he said about women players doesn't ring true to me. All the women I've known who play football are hard as nails. And a large number of men don't like getting footballs kicked at them.

[Diable Rouge]

Forgive me, I'm just after clarification. Just yesterday the Guardian congratulated Kamala Harris on its headline as being a "woman of colour".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...vice-president

So it's "coloured" that's a dreadfully racist phrase but not "...of colour"? I'm not being provocative I just genuinely want to get it right if I feel any need to use either, frankly, going forward.

Certainly not the place of a white person to determine the correctness of racial terminology, but would personally seem that if one has to refer to individual characteristics, "heritage" appears preferable than the minefield of "POC".

[NHH]

Clarke's a wally bozo who should never have been Chair of the Football League, still less get the gig to do the same job at the FA. The white man who has the interim job is Peter McCormack, formerly solicitor to Leeds United when Ridsdale took over, latterly defending Lee Bowyer in his criminal trial (and the other players) and defending Luis Suarez when Evra called him out on his racism, and was a shooting mate of Richard Scudamore who still managed to find his mate exonerated when the latter was done for sending misogynistic emails. I had a very limited engagement with him when I was at SD, but still found time to come the view that he was a rude unpleasant supercilious cunt. He sounds like just the man for the job!