[Cricket] Ollie Robinson suspended by ECB

[Bry Nylon]

OK, I'm gonna say it; "I'm not racist, but...".

I'm not racist, but I grew up in Grimsby / Cleethorpes in the late 80s and 90s. I'm tremendously proud of where I'm from, it's an area that gets a worse rap than it deserves, but it certainly had and still has its issues.

It was, during my formative years, one of the least diverse places in England. A sizeable majority of the town's population were white British, and even now after an influx of people from Europe in the last decade or so it remains a very caucasian part of the world. As such, you are exposed to a reasonable amount of casual racism as a child, including from the likes of my parents and in particular my grandparents who, rightly or wrongly, were from a bygone era.

You weren't sent to the corner shop, there was another word for that. You didn't have a Chinese takeaway on a Saturday night, there was a shorthand phrase for that too. I don't remember specific instances, but there will have been words and phrases that I would never dream of uttering now as a more worldly and well travelled 36 year old, that I used back then. Not because I was a racist, even though the words undoubtedly were, but because they had been totally normalised in my life. I know that an apple is an apple because I was taught that. That's just what those things, those people, were called in the lexicon that I had learned.

I watched Michael Carberry's interview on SSN and I thought he made some good points. He rightly called out Oliver Downden's dismissive oversimplification of this story when he's never had to endure racism himself, as well as the clearly overly PR'd statement put out by Robinson, but I felt he let himself down when he inferred that someone capable of making those comments at 18 cannot be educated or 'rehabilitated'. That, for me, isn't entirely fair. Whilst legally an adult at that age, you are still a kid in many respects and despite how much of a free spirit I thought I was back then I was still very much the product of my environment and upbringing. Some good stuff, some bad stuff, but I'm not sure how responsible I was for either at that stage of my life.

Now, I'm aware of the danger of falling into another recurrant trope trotted out by defensive racists, but my very best friend growing up was an Indian lad. I honestly never gave much or any thought to the colour of his skin or his cultural heritage - I knew him from nursery all the way through to sixth form. It was the same for the kids at school - he was a really nice lad with the same values as the rest of us who everyone seemed to get on with. He was just Gurdeep. I don't ever remember race or religion being a factor at school, even in what was often quite a tough and toxic environment.

In the wider world though it was a bigger issue, particularly once we started drinking in pubs on a Friday or Saturday night. I'd notice very quickly that he'd be subject to everything from casual racist comments to more agressive threats for no other reason than what he looked like. I can think of a number of incidents whereby we both (along with our other mates) ended up in scraps instigated by racist pricks at least 10 years our senior (we'd have been 16 or 17 at the time). One night, after Grimsby had stayed up in the second flight after beating Louis Saha's Fulham on the final day, my mate was accused of being a Fulham fan 'in the wrong pub' because, y'know, we don't have people like that round here. Despite giving plenty of evidence to the contrary, we both ended up taking a beating of a lifetime at the hands of five or six blokes well into their thirties. It was absolutely out of order, but you begin to learn very quickly the damage that racism does.

Not long after that, I remember having a family barbecue to which I invited my mate. It was the summer of 2002, when 9/11 was still very fresh in the memory. As soon as he arrived, my brother in-law immediately went and gave him a pretend pat-down to check for weapons or explosives. Oh, the laughs that prevailed. For the record, he was of Sikh heritage, not Muslim, nor was he remotely religious. It was just a 'joke' at the expense of the colour of his skin. Despite the casual racism I'd been brought up with, I'd witnessed and experienced it from the other side. My mate expressed to me just how sick and tired he was of it all. The quips and jokes. The threats and aggression. Being a rare, Asian man in North East Lincs, in a world where Asians were becoming increasingly marginalised was clearly an exhausting experience for him.

Without a doubt, words and behaviour that might have seemed acceptable to me at 15 or 16 were viewed very differently at 18 or 19. Because, fundamentally, I had had the opportunity at that point to learn from my own experience and forge my own views and opinions. I don't know much about Ollie Robinson's upbringing, but I do believe that it's harsh to judge someone on their mindless musings a decade ago when they may well had not had the opportunity to make their own views on the world. I think that's a really important point.

I guarantee you this - my kids will never be exposed to the kind of casual racism that I was as a child. I hope they never utter a racist word in their life, which is probably unrealistic as you cannot control what they are exposed to via their peers at school, but if I ever hear it they will be quickly corrected. Growing up in Leeds in the 2020's, they're already exposed to a far more diverse environment than I was and it's noticable that they are far less aware of colour than I would have been at their age. They're also growing up in a different era where abuse is far more likely to be called out for what it is than it would have done when I was growing up. But it will take a long time for the world to become completely colour-blind, if that's even possible.

Rather than banning Ollie Robinson from cricket, and rather than him putting out generic, unfelt apologies via PR channels, I'd much rather he explained how he came to hold those views as acceptable at 18 and how, 10 years on, he came to learn that he was so profoundly wrong. We're punishing an individual for society's problem, so instead why don't we use the individual to help educate society - in particular all those 18 year old boys who look up to the likes of Ollie Robinson who might just see the world through a similar lens to how he did at their age.

Really good post; honest, relatable, considered, thoughtful and both funny and sad. Plus it brings far more value and context to this issue than those posts that simply say, "sorry - he did it. Suspend / ban him." If only life were that simple and as if that solves anything, anyway. But it probably makes the 'ban him' brigade feel like the issue is addressed.

Until the next time obvs, when they will sit around wondering how we got back here again.

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

I personally also feel this is being overplayed.

But I don't think he should be instantly exonerated.

The authority have no choice other than to suspend him while they investigate surely? This is what would happen to me in my workplace if the same situation arose.

Is that really the case? If your workplace found a comment, tweet, or some such event a decade prior to your employment with them, that you would be suspended subject to a full investigation, into what, your entire life? I'm not sure that would be the case, and I expect your union (if in one) would have something to say about said suspension if the institution tried to enforce it.

I don't think he should be exonerated, but a suspension could be the end of his international career. Another bowler player could step in, he might not get picked again – that is a very real scenario, and so the punishment for him missing the next test could be life changing. That he had a great debut and may well get picked again is irrelevant, it could be this ends his test career, and to me that would be the punishment grossly out of proportion to the indiscretion.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

No I'm not. I'm highlighting that idiots on twitter are.

Fair enough

 

[goldstone]

I have emailed the ECB telling them that they are out of order. The tweets were 9 years ago. He was a teenager. He has apologised (which was not even necessary in my opinion). We all do stupid things in our teens. Let it go.

 

[clapham_gull]

I have emailed the ECB telling them that they are out of order. The tweets were 9 years ago. He was a teenager. He has apologised (which was not even necessary in my opinion). We all do stupid things in our teens. Let it go.

This incident appears to have offended you.

 

[Blue Valkyrie]

I personally also feel this is being overplayed.

But I don't think he should be instantly exonerated.

The authority have no choice other than to suspend him while they investigate surely? This is what would happen to me in my workplace if the same situation arose.

You would be investigated for something you did 10 years ago ?

Unless it was a serious police matter, I hope not.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

OK, I'm gonna say it; "I'm not racist, but...".

I'm not racist, but I grew up in Grimsby / Cleethorpes in the late 80s and 90s. I'm tremendously proud of where I'm from, it's an area that gets a worse rap than it deserves, but it certainly had and still has its issues.

It was, during my formative years, one of the least diverse places in England. A sizeable majority of the town's population were white British, and even now after an influx of people from Europe in the last decade or so it remains a very caucasian part of the world. As such, you are exposed to a reasonable amount of casual racism as a child, including from the likes of my parents and in particular my grandparents who, rightly or wrongly, were from a bygone era.

You weren't sent to the corner shop, there was another word for that. You didn't have a Chinese takeaway on a Saturday night, there was a shorthand phrase for that too. I don't remember specific instances, but there will have been words and phrases that I would never dream of uttering now as a more worldly and well travelled 36 year old, that I used back then. Not because I was a racist, even though the words undoubtedly were, but because they had been totally normalised in my life. I know that an apple is an apple because I was taught that. That's just what those things, those people, were called in the lexicon that I had learned.

I watched Michael Carberry's interview on SSN and I thought he made some good points. He rightly called out Oliver Downden's dismissive oversimplification of this story when he's never had to endure racism himself, as well as the clearly overly PR'd statement put out by Robinson, but I felt he let himself down when he inferred that someone capable of making those comments at 18 cannot be educated or 'rehabilitated'. That, for me, isn't entirely fair. Whilst legally an adult at that age, you are still a kid in many respects and despite how much of a free spirit I thought I was back then I was still very much the product of my environment and upbringing. Some good stuff, some bad stuff, but I'm not sure how responsible I was for either at that stage of my life.

Now, I'm aware of the danger of falling into another recurrant trope trotted out by defensive racists, but my very best friend growing up was an Indian lad. I honestly never gave much or any thought to the colour of his skin or his cultural heritage - I knew him from nursery all the way through to sixth form. It was the same for the kids at school - he was a really nice lad with the same values as the rest of us who everyone seemed to get on with. He was just Gurdeep. I don't ever remember race or religion being a factor at school, even in what was often quite a tough and toxic environment.

In the wider world though it was a bigger issue, particularly once we started drinking in pubs on a Friday or Saturday night. I'd notice very quickly that he'd be subject to everything from casual racist comments to more agressive threats for no other reason than what he looked like. I can think of a number of incidents whereby we both (along with our other mates) ended up in scraps instigated by racist pricks at least 10 years our senior (we'd have been 16 or 17 at the time). One night, after Grimsby had stayed up in the second flight after beating Louis Saha's Fulham on the final day, my mate was accused of being a Fulham fan 'in the wrong pub' because, y'know, we don't have people like that round here. Despite giving plenty of evidence to the contrary, we both ended up taking a beating of a lifetime at the hands of five or six blokes well into their thirties. It was absolutely out of order, but you begin to learn very quickly the damage that racism does.

Not long after that, I remember having a family barbecue to which I invited my mate. It was the summer of 2002, when 9/11 was still very fresh in the memory. As soon as he arrived, my brother in-law immediately went and gave him a pretend pat-down to check for weapons or explosives. Oh, the laughs that prevailed. For the record, he was of Sikh heritage, not Muslim, nor was he remotely religious. It was just a 'joke' at the expense of the colour of his skin. Despite the casual racism I'd been brought up with, I'd witnessed and experienced it from the other side. My mate expressed to me just how sick and tired he was of it all. The quips and jokes. The threats and aggression. Being a rare, Asian man in North East Lincs, in a world where Asians were becoming increasingly marginalised was clearly an exhausting experience for him.

Without a doubt, words and behaviour that might have seemed acceptable to me at 15 or 16 were viewed very differently at 18 or 19. Because, fundamentally, I had had the opportunity at that point to learn from my own experience and forge my own views and opinions. I don't know much about Ollie Robinson's upbringing, but I do believe that it's harsh to judge someone on their mindless musings a decade ago when they may well had not had the opportunity to make their own views on the world. I think that's a really important point.

I guarantee you this - my kids will never be exposed to the kind of casual racism that I was as a child. I hope they never utter a racist word in their life, which is probably unrealistic as you cannot control what they are exposed to via their peers at school, but if I ever hear it they will be quickly corrected. Growing up in Leeds in the 2020's, they're already exposed to a far more diverse environment than I was and it's noticable that they are far less aware of colour than I would have been at their age. They're also growing up in a different era where abuse is far more likely to be called out for what it is than it would have done when I was growing up. But it will take a long time for the world to become completely colour-blind, if that's even possible.

Rather than banning Ollie Robinson from cricket, and rather than him putting out generic, unfelt apologies via PR channels, I'd much rather he explained how he came to hold those views as acceptable at 18 and how, 10 years on, he came to learn that he was so profoundly wrong. We're punishing an individual for society's problem, so instead why don't we use the individual to help educate society - in particular all those 18 year old boys who look up to the likes of Ollie Robinson who might just see the world through a similar lens to how he did at their age.

I enjoyed your post. It resonates so much more than those from what seems to be a new ‘hang em and flog em brigade.’ A long time ago I worked with a bloke who had been a runner for drug gangs on the south coast. He opened my eyes to Hastings and other places and he shocked me when he said he could go to any town or village in the country and find somewhere to buy drugs. This was thirty years ago. By the time I knew him he was a reformed character who spent considerable amounts of his free time in visiting schools to talk about his life story and try to prevent other youngsters following the same pathway. That should have been the route Ollie Robinson was steered down but instead he has been vilified and is now a political football in the never ending race relations battle.

 

[Billy the Fish]

People who put things like this on social media whatever age have to know that if it comes to light the consequence is more than having to make an apology.

The more likely consequence is that people will learn to keep their racism and sexism to WhatsApp.

Read [MENTION=17745]Poojah[/MENTION]'s excellent post. The only way to beat this is through education.

 

[A1X]

I have emailed the ECB telling them that they are out of order. The tweets were 9 years ago. He was a teenager. He has apologised (which was not even necessary in my opinion). We all do stupid things in our teens. Let it go.

What do you believe they are "out of order" in doing, exactly? He has not been punished, the current suspension is to allow an investigation to take place like that which would happen in basically any workplace in the country.

 

[Paul Reids Sock]

OK, I'm gonna say it; "I'm not racist, but...".

I'm not racist, but I grew up in Grimsby / Cleethorpes in the late 80s and 90s. I'm tremendously proud of where I'm from, it's an area that gets a worse rap than it deserves, but it certainly had and still has its issues.

It was, during my formative years, one of the least diverse places in England. A sizeable majority of the town's population were white British, and even now after an influx of people from Europe in the last decade or so it remains a very caucasian part of the world. As such, you are exposed to a reasonable amount of casual racism as a child, including from the likes of my parents and in particular my grandparents who, rightly or wrongly, were from a bygone era.

You weren't sent to the corner shop, there was another word for that. You didn't have a Chinese takeaway on a Saturday night, there was a shorthand phrase for that too. I don't remember specific instances, but there will have been words and phrases that I would never dream of uttering now as a more worldly and well travelled 36 year old, that I used back then. Not because I was a racist, even though the words undoubtedly were, but because they had been totally normalised in my life. I know that an apple is an apple because I was taught that. That's just what those things, those people, were called in the lexicon that I had learned.

I watched Michael Carberry's interview on SSN and I thought he made some good points. He rightly called out Oliver Downden's dismissive oversimplification of this story when he's never had to endure racism himself, as well as the clearly overly PR'd statement put out by Robinson, but I felt he let himself down when he inferred that someone capable of making those comments at 18 cannot be educated or 'rehabilitated'. That, for me, isn't entirely fair. Whilst legally an adult at that age, you are still a kid in many respects and despite how much of a free spirit I thought I was back then I was still very much the product of my environment and upbringing. Some good stuff, some bad stuff, but I'm not sure how responsible I was for either at that stage of my life.

Now, I'm aware of the danger of falling into another recurrant trope trotted out by defensive racists, but my very best friend growing up was an Indian lad. I honestly never gave much or any thought to the colour of his skin or his cultural heritage - I knew him from nursery all the way through to sixth form. It was the same for the kids at school - he was a really nice lad with the same values as the rest of us who everyone seemed to get on with. He was just Gurdeep. I don't ever remember race or religion being a factor at school, even in what was often quite a tough and toxic environment.

In the wider world though it was a bigger issue, particularly once we started drinking in pubs on a Friday or Saturday night. I'd notice very quickly that he'd be subject to everything from casual racist comments to more agressive threats for no other reason than what he looked like. I can think of a number of incidents whereby we both (along with our other mates) ended up in scraps instigated by racist pricks at least 10 years our senior (we'd have been 16 or 17 at the time). One night, after Grimsby had stayed up in the second flight after beating Louis Saha's Fulham on the final day, my mate was accused of being a Fulham fan 'in the wrong pub' because, y'know, we don't have people like that round here. Despite giving plenty of evidence to the contrary, we both ended up taking a beating of a lifetime at the hands of five or six blokes well into their thirties. It was absolutely out of order, but you begin to learn very quickly the damage that racism does.

Not long after that, I remember having a family barbecue to which I invited my mate. It was the summer of 2002, when 9/11 was still very fresh in the memory. As soon as he arrived, my brother in-law immediately went and gave him a pretend pat-down to check for weapons or explosives. Oh, the laughs that prevailed. For the record, he was of Sikh heritage, not Muslim, nor was he remotely religious. It was just a 'joke' at the expense of the colour of his skin. Despite the casual racism I'd been brought up with, I'd witnessed and experienced it from the other side. My mate expressed to me just how sick and tired he was of it all. The quips and jokes. The threats and aggression. Being a rare, Asian man in North East Lincs, in a world where Asians were becoming increasingly marginalised was clearly an exhausting experience for him.

Without a doubt, words and behaviour that might have seemed acceptable to me at 15 or 16 were viewed very differently at 18 or 19. Because, fundamentally, I had had the opportunity at that point to learn from my own experience and forge my own views and opinions. I don't know much about Ollie Robinson's upbringing, but I do believe that it's harsh to judge someone on their mindless musings a decade ago when they may well had not had the opportunity to make their own views on the world. I think that's a really important point.

I guarantee you this - my kids will never be exposed to the kind of casual racism that I was as a child. I hope they never utter a racist word in their life, which is probably unrealistic as you cannot control what they are exposed to via their peers at school, but if I ever hear it they will be quickly corrected. Growing up in Leeds in the 2020's, they're already exposed to a far more diverse environment than I was and it's noticable that they are far less aware of colour than I would have been at their age. They're also growing up in a different era where abuse is far more likely to be called out for what it is than it would have done when I was growing up. But it will take a long time for the world to become completely colour-blind, if that's even possible.

Rather than banning Ollie Robinson from cricket, and rather than him putting out generic, unfelt apologies via PR channels, I'd much rather he explained how he came to hold those views as acceptable at 18 and how, 10 years on, he came to learn that he was so profoundly wrong. We're punishing an individual for society's problem, so instead why don't we use the individual to help educate society - in particular all those 18 year old boys who look up to the likes of Ollie Robinson who might just see the world through a similar lens to how he did at their age.

What a fantastic post

Sounds like we had similar upbringing albeit at different ends of the country. I was in a predominantly white South London suburb but with many other towns near us that were not so white dominated. The casual racism even in terms of pronouncing the place names was, looking back, disgusting. I am talking about things such as Lewisham being 'Lewisharrrm' with a think West Indian accent, parents would be saying it, even teachers. Racism (and even South v North regionalism) was rife.

Michael Carberry is obviously in a far better and more qualified position to myself to discuss racism in cricket. But I do feel that to say someone at 18 is developed in their views isn't accurate. Many won't leave their home bubble until university when they start to have new experiences and make their own choices. We definitely need Ollie to share why he would speak like this and use that to tackle the root cause which is, as you say, a wider issue in society.

I initially thought that it was unfair to ban him seeing as it was so long ago but all that does, in my opinion, is to say that it is fine to talk like that if you are in your teens and does little to help tackle it in the future.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

Really?
Have you seen the tweets?

from what I've seen there are 4 tweets.

A couple of shit, mildly racist, jokes,made by a, clearly embarrassingly immature, 18 year old.
And a couple of mildly misogynistic tweets.(one of which I'm still struggling to understand what point he was making and whether it was sexist or not)

So basically 2 shit jokes/puns about Asians having different eyes and some Muslims being terrorists, is the sum total of this young man's racism.
If there are moe, then please enlighten me, but that's all I've seen thus far.

Had he retweeted anti-BLM memes over the past couple of years, then, yeah fair enough, zero-tolerance to your hearts content.
But from what I've seen this is not the case.

It just ends up feeding the "These days if you say your British you get locked up" trolls rhetoric.

On one level I agree with you, they are just stupid jokes the likes of which nearly all teenagers are making or hearing all the time, I know I did. Most of us don't write them down and publicise them, which is way more stupid, certainly wouldn't have wanted my family to hear that from my mouth, but then I never had an outlet like Twitter or other social media as it hadn't been invented. Robinson has grown up, and although I don't know him, I'll take his apology at face value.

On the other hand, making a defence of what he said is the more worrying problem here, its worse than what Robinson wrote in the first place as far as I am concerned. Because what are you saying? Effectively that its fine to write this stuff when you're an immature 18-year old? How many people are adopting this line of argument - it wasn't that bad, I've seen worse, its just a joke, he was an immature-teenager and we know what they're like? Isn't that just justifying the stupid misogyny and casual jokey racism so it continues to be spread by teenagers? Because as [MENTION=17745]Poojah[/MENTION] described, jokey racism can be very damaging to people.

England are off to the Euro's with 17 year-old Jude Bellingham, 19 year-old Bukaya Sako, 21 year-old Reece James, Phil Foden and Jaden Sancho. Are people basically saying it would be fine for their social media accounts to be filled with racist or sexist jokes because of their young age?

Maybe for the individual involved its understandable. But for society, it really isn't acceptable to continue on the same path.

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

On one level I agree with you, they are just stupid jokes the likes of which nearly all teenagers are making or hearing all the time, I know I did. Most of us don't write them down and publicise them, which is way more stupid, certainly wouldn't have wanted my family to hear that from my mouth, but then I never had an outlet like Twitter or other social media as it hadn't been invented. Robinson has grown up, and although I don't know him, I'll take his apology at face value.

On the other hand, making a defence of what he said is the more worrying problem here, its worse than what Robinson wrote in the first place as far as I am concerned. Because what are you saying? Effectively that its fine to write this stuff when you're an immature 18-year old? How many people are adopting this line of argument - it wasn't that bad, I've seen worse, its just a joke, he was an immature-teenager and we know what they're like? Isn't that just justifying the stupid misogyny and casual jokey racism so it continues to be spread by teenagers? Because as [MENTION=17745]Poojah[/MENTION] described, jokey racism can be very damaging to people.

England are off to the Euro's with 17 year-old Jude Bellingham, 19 year-old Bukaya Sako, 21 year-old Reece James, Phil Foden and Jaden Sancho. Are people basically saying it would be fine for their social media accounts to be filled with racist or sexist jokes because of their young age?

Maybe for the individual involved its understandable. But for society, it really isn't acceptable to continue on the same path.

There is also the historical context. I don't think people necessarily realised in 2012 that a tweet would exist forever, it was still quite a new thing. His tweets are all directed to a mate. Now fast forward 2021 and we all realise every post and tweet or whatever is a legacy footprint you leave on the internet. I really don't think that was the case in 2012. Hence no one seems to have found any other offensive posts from him since 2013. Perhaps 20 year old Robinson realised he had been acting like a dick, maybe someone picked him up on it, but for whatever reason he stopped. What perhaps he didn't realise is that he needed to delete his past because what he might have thought as disappeared into the ether has come back and bit him on the arse.

 

[Sid in the Sharknado]

I don't think he should be exonerated, but a suspension could be the end of his international career. Another bowler player could step in, he might not get picked again – that is a very real scenario, and so the punishment for him missing the next test could be life changing. That he had a great debut and may well get picked again is irrelevant, it could be this ends his test career, and to me that would be the punishment grossly out of proportion to the indiscretion.

If he only misses the next test because of this (which I suspect is the likely outcome unless anything else gets dug out) there's no way that's the end of his test career, unless the selectors suddenly pull five 6'5" 90mph wunderkinds from out of their backside or wherever they've been hiding them so well.

He's taken 7 wickets on debut and has pretty much the ideal attributes to succeed in Australia. He'll be back in the squad as soon as whatever suspension/ban is finished and will be rotated into the team as soon as Silverwood pulls his name out of the Magic Selection Hat.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

If he only misses the next test because of this (which I suspect is the likely outcome unless anything else gets dug out) there's no way that's the end of his test career, unless the selectors suddenly pull five 6'5" 90mph wunderkinds from out of their backside or wherever they've been hiding them so well.

He's taken 7 wickets on debut and has pretty much the ideal attributes to succeed in Australia. He'll be back in the squad as soon as whatever suspension/ban is finished and will be rotated into the team as soon as Silverwood pulls his name out of the Magic Selection Hat.

I think you are right. Shame about the damage done though. The ECB needs better processes to deal with such problems rather than pandering to shit stirring journalists. These improvements could include better due diligence in the first place and automatic referral to education rather than disciplinary procedure for historical social media transgressions. There are too many people on both sides of this debate using a young cricketer to advance their cause which is quite discomforting to watch.

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

If he only misses the next test because of this (which I suspect is the likely outcome unless anything else gets dug out) there's no way that's the end of his test career, unless the selectors suddenly pull five 6'5" 90mph wunderkinds from out of their backside or wherever they've been hiding them so well.

He's taken 7 wickets on debut and has pretty much the ideal attributes to succeed in Australia. He'll be back in the squad as soon as whatever suspension/ban is finished and will be rotated into the team as soon as Silverwood pulls his name out of the Magic Selection Hat.

Yes, hence I said the quality of his debut was irrelevant. He could have had a poor debut, not taken the wickets but due another chance in the next test. Let's take his ability as a cricketer out of it and look at the punishment. Plenty of players only get 1 or 2 test matches, so this punishment COULD end a career. I'm not saying that will be the case with Ollie, but as said that's irrelevant really.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

OK, I'm gonna say it; "I'm not racist, but...".

I'm not racist, but I grew up in Grimsby / Cleethorpes in the late 80s and 90s. I'm tremendously proud of where I'm from, it's an area that gets a worse rap than it deserves, but it certainly had and still has its issues.

It was, during my formative years, one of the least diverse places in England. A sizeable majority of the town's population were white British, and even now after an influx of people from Europe in the last decade or so it remains a very caucasian part of the world. As such, you are exposed to a reasonable amount of casual racism as a child, including from the likes of my parents and in particular my grandparents who, rightly or wrongly, were from a bygone era.

You weren't sent to the corner shop, there was another word for that. You didn't have a Chinese takeaway on a Saturday night, there was a shorthand phrase for that too. I don't remember specific instances, but there will have been words and phrases that I would never dream of uttering now as a more worldly and well travelled 36 year old, that I used back then. Not because I was a racist, even though the words undoubtedly were, but because they had been totally normalised in my life. I know that an apple is an apple because I was taught that. That's just what those things, those people, were called in the lexicon that I had learned.

I watched Michael Carberry's interview on SSN and I thought he made some good points. He rightly called out Oliver Downden's dismissive oversimplification of this story when he's never had to endure racism himself, as well as the clearly overly PR'd statement put out by Robinson, but I felt he let himself down when he inferred that someone capable of making those comments at 18 cannot be educated or 'rehabilitated'. That, for me, isn't entirely fair. Whilst legally an adult at that age, you are still a kid in many respects and despite how much of a free spirit I thought I was back then I was still very much the product of my environment and upbringing. Some good stuff, some bad stuff, but I'm not sure how responsible I was for either at that stage of my life.

Now, I'm aware of the danger of falling into another recurrant trope trotted out by defensive racists, but my very best friend growing up was an Indian lad. I honestly never gave much or any thought to the colour of his skin or his cultural heritage - I knew him from nursery all the way through to sixth form. It was the same for the kids at school - he was a really nice lad with the same values as the rest of us who everyone seemed to get on with. He was just Gurdeep. I don't ever remember race or religion being a factor at school, even in what was often quite a tough and toxic environment.

In the wider world though it was a bigger issue, particularly once we started drinking in pubs on a Friday or Saturday night. I'd notice very quickly that he'd be subject to everything from casual racist comments to more agressive threats for no other reason than what he looked like. I can think of a number of incidents whereby we both (along with our other mates) ended up in scraps instigated by racist pricks at least 10 years our senior (we'd have been 16 or 17 at the time). One night, after Grimsby had stayed up in the second flight after beating Louis Saha's Fulham on the final day, my mate was accused of being a Fulham fan 'in the wrong pub' because, y'know, we don't have people like that round here. Despite giving plenty of evidence to the contrary, we both ended up taking a beating of a lifetime at the hands of five or six blokes well into their thirties. It was absolutely out of order, but you begin to learn very quickly the damage that racism does.

Not long after that, I remember having a family barbecue to which I invited my mate. It was the summer of 2002, when 9/11 was still very fresh in the memory. As soon as he arrived, my brother in-law immediately went and gave him a pretend pat-down to check for weapons or explosives. Oh, the laughs that prevailed. For the record, he was of Sikh heritage, not Muslim, nor was he remotely religious. It was just a 'joke' at the expense of the colour of his skin. Despite the casual racism I'd been brought up with, I'd witnessed and experienced it from the other side. My mate expressed to me just how sick and tired he was of it all. The quips and jokes. The threats and aggression. Being a rare, Asian man in North East Lincs, in a world where Asians were becoming increasingly marginalised was clearly an exhausting experience for him.

Without a doubt, words and behaviour that might have seemed acceptable to me at 15 or 16 were viewed very differently at 18 or 19. Because, fundamentally, I had had the opportunity at that point to learn from my own experience and forge my own views and opinions. I don't know much about Ollie Robinson's upbringing, but I do believe that it's harsh to judge someone on their mindless musings a decade ago when they may well had not had the opportunity to make their own views on the world. I think that's a really important point.

I guarantee you this - my kids will never be exposed to the kind of casual racism that I was as a child. I hope they never utter a racist word in their life, which is probably unrealistic as you cannot control what they are exposed to via their peers at school, but if I ever hear it they will be quickly corrected. Growing up in Leeds in the 2020's, they're already exposed to a far more diverse environment than I was and it's noticable that they are far less aware of colour than I would have been at their age. They're also growing up in a different era where abuse is far more likely to be called out for what it is than it would have done when I was growing up. But it will take a long time for the world to become completely colour-blind, if that's even possible.

Rather than banning Ollie Robinson from cricket, and rather than him putting out generic, unfelt apologies via PR channels, I'd much rather he explained how he came to hold those views as acceptable at 18 and how, 10 years on, he came to learn that he was so profoundly wrong. We're punishing an individual for society's problem, so instead why don't we use the individual to help educate society - in particular all those 18 year old boys who look up to the likes of Ollie Robinson who might just see the world through a similar lens to how he did at their age.

Excellent post, this.

Out of interest, is your brother-in-law still a complete ****?

 

[Eeyore]

What a fantastic post

Sounds like we had similar upbringing albeit at different ends of the country. I was in a predominantly white South London suburb but with many other towns near us that were not so white dominated. The casual racism even in terms of pronouncing the place names was, looking back, disgusting. I am talking about things such as Lewisham being 'Lewisharrrm' with a think West Indian accent, parents would be saying it, even teachers. Racism (and even South v North regionalism) was rife.

Michael Carberry is obviously in a far better and more qualified position to myself to discuss racism in cricket. But I do feel that to say someone at 18 is developed in their views isn't accurate. Many won't leave their home bubble until university when they start to have new experiences and make their own choices. We definitely need Ollie to share why he would speak like this and use that to tackle the root cause which is, as you say, a wider issue in society.

I initially thought that it was unfair to ban him seeing as it was so long ago but all that does, in my opinion, is to say that it is fine to talk like that if you are in your teens and does little to help tackle it in the future.

Michael Carberry, for me, is wrong and absurdly wide of the mark. And quite why Ramprakash is speaking for Archer (a Sussex team mate who will know Robinson well) and Ali, I don't know.

I honestly despair that we live in such an absolutist society now. Intransigent, righteously indulgent and often hypocritical views, on one side. Divisory and ignorant views on the other. This incident has become a snapshot of my frustration. Some folk are being sensible about it and trying to look at it with humanity and seeking a positive outcome that benefits and enhances the better stream of consciousness we enjoy today. I take comfort in that.

 

[El Presidente]

I wasn't offended by Robinson's posts in 2012
I wasn't offended by Robinson's posts in 2013
I wasn't offended by Robinson's posts in 2014
I wasn't offended by Robinson's posts in 2015
I wasn't offended by Robinson's posts in 2016
I wasn't offended by Robinson's posts in 2017
I wasn't offended by Robinson's posts in 2018
I wasn't offended by Robinson's posts in 2019
I wasn't offended by Robinson's posts in 2020
I am outraged by Robinson's post in 2021, he should never play for England again and should personally apologise for the embarrassment to the game personally to David Graveney OBE, present national performance manager of the ECB, chairman of selectors 1997-2008 and manager of the lucrative apartheid breaking rebel tour of South Africa in 1989-90.

 

[cjd]

On one level I agree with you, they are just stupid jokes the likes of which nearly all teenagers are making or hearing all the time, I know I did. Most of us don't write them down and publicise them, which is way more stupid,

Ok. So it seems that you...and many others posting on this thread admit to these thoughts and sayings etc when you were younger (i'e. with being immature as the excuse ).

So the only difference between you and Ollie Robinson is "stupidity"..! This applies to a number of posters on here calling for him to be hung drawn and quartered.....just for starters.

Now call me out if you want to, but in this day and age (2021) I think casual racism is far more offensive than "stupidity".

Both ironically can be cured by maturity ..( and nearly always is ). Neither, I believe will be cured by punishment.


However...



Education , education , education... I much prefer this.

 

[Poojah]

Out of interest, is your brother-in-law still a complete ****?

Don’t even get me started mate...