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Richard Keys in trouble again







Lady Whistledown

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jul 7, 2003
47,641
People say things all day everyday that wouldnt be acceptable the first time you meet someone but in a male dressing room type environment ,are, i have a scar on my left eyelid , during my time in the army someone dubbed me isaiah, why ? cos one eye's higher than the other ! did it pisss me off ? no , it comes with the territory of all male environments, if i met someone for the first time and they took the piss they could expect a right hander, i expect david johnson would feel the same if he was truthful.

Possibly. I assume the comment about the scar was from a mate, or at least a colleague you knew reasonably well.

What constitutes racism and what doesn't is (no pun intended I swear) not a black and white issue is it? Sometimes I'm not sure why certain terms make me uncomfortable, but I just know they do. I would never in a million years refer to anyone as "chocco" either when going about my work or in the course of a private conversation, any more than I would "paki" or "coon".

I'm not sure Souness comes out of this with great credit either to be honest, but fortunately he's been rather well sheltered by the flavour of the month Keys on this one.
 




Goldstone Rapper

Rediffusion PlayerofYear
Jan 19, 2009
14,865
BN3 7DE
Whatever his intent, racist or not, what is clear is that Keys took no responsibility for how his words would land with Johnston (who wasn't there) or anyone on the production team who actually was there who may have experienced that word used in a negative way. Pretty disrespectful. You'd have to pretty close to someone, be very clear about your intent (and - to be watertight - get permission to use that word!) for that word to be meant in an undemeaning way and to be sure that it would be accepted as such.

And, so yes, to concur with Edna, it's generally not a good idea to be going around calling people 'chocco' because of their skin colour.

I remember being in a flatshare many years ago where a flatmate said that where she grew up in the Midlands, 'Paki' just meant short for Pakistani rather than being an abusive label. For me, words like that trigger off memories of kids abusing kids of ethnic minority backgrounds at school.

You never always know what shit that people have dealt with in their lives. What bullying and name-calling they've been on the receiving end of, whether at school, at football matches or in social settings. To use a term that people may have mainly known in negative situations will often take them back to the feelings and anxiety they experienced at the end of the abuse.

Generally, I think, best to leave it to others to decide what's OK about how they themselves are called. And I don't know any black people who want to be called 'chocco'.
 


Lady Whistledown

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jul 7, 2003
47,641
The other thing is, Keys has done the classic turn of assuming that, because the people around him all look broadly the same as him, he's in a "safe" environment to make whatever comments he feels like making. It simply doesn't occur to him that it's not only those who are on the receiving end of whatever remarks are made who might feel offended by them.

He wouldn't have made the comments about Sian Massey had he been in a room with women present, nor the one about hanging out the back of Louise Glass, and he almost certainly wouldn't have called a black guy "chocco" with Dion Dublin around, no matter how good "mates" he claims to be (aaahh, the old "some of my best friends are...." defence). So is it not a bit spineless for him to throw that kind of thing around only where he thinks nobody will question it?

There is an assumption sometimes that because people look like each other, they won't find certain comments offensive. I remember doing some enquiries at an address in Brighton a few years ago, asking a guy about the previous occupants of a particular flat. He, being white, looked at me, also being white, and said, in all seriousness "it hasn't been the same round here since they started moving all the bloody darkies in". Astonishingly, to me at least, he then described the occupants of the flat I was enquiring about thus "well, they're, you know, I don't think I'm allowed to say it am I?". I replied "black?" (I was looking for someone Nigerian), to which he said "yes, you just don't know what you can say these days do you" and followed it up with a casual remark about "spear chuckers".

So here was a guy afraid to describe someone quite legitimately as black, but who was quite happy to call people darkies and spear-chuckers? How does that work?? Incidentally, I didn't think anyone had used the expression "spear-chuckers" since about 1910. :ohmy: :shrug:
 




Lord Bamber

Legendary Chairman
Feb 23, 2009
4,366
Heaven
I think the most telling thing is that not one single person who he has worked with IN NEARLY TWENTY YEARS has come out to defend him or to say that he's not as bad as he's being portrayed - this was absolutely not the case when Ron Atkinson made his racist comments.

The fact is that everyone who's ever met the man seems to consider him to be one of the most unpleasant people they've ever met.

The silence is deafening!
 








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