Read This Everyone

[tglover]

Dear Board,

On the 19th of April, 2004, CricInfo submitted an article saying that 3 more BLACK players might side up with Heath Streak and his 14 other rebels. Those BLACK players are Hondo, Nkala and Dion Ebrahim.

See this article at:

http://aus.cricinfo.com/link_to_data...18APR2004.html

Now you guys tell me, yes Hondo and Nkala are BLACK, but is Dion Ebrahim? Is anyone from Pakistan/India/Bangladesh BLACK...Negro? NO! Dion Ebrahim is Indian Gujrati!!! All subcontinentals are from the Indo-European (Aryan) Race (except for Dravidians in South India - but even they are NOT Black! They are Dravidian - they are NOT Negro)!

CricInfo is run by a bunch of ignorant Westerners sitting in England with laptop computers getting paid shitloads of money.

I sent them the following e-mail from my account requesting them to change this article.

I would appreciate it guys if you could also send similar articles requesting this change. Do you all want to be associated with Negros? Or do you want to be who you are?

I know there should be no racism/etc on this board, but I am not the one being racist. CricInfo is. And we are at war with them!

E-mail them at submit@cricinfo.com for them to change this.

My response to them is below:



ARCHIVE/CRICKET_NEWS/2004/APR/127989_ZIM_18APR2004.html

You stated in this article that 3 'black' players (Hondo, Nkala and Ebrahim) are set to join the 15 White Players.

Well, althought this news may be true, Dion Ebrahim is *NOT* Black. He is an Indian Gujrati. His race is Indo-Aryan of the Indic Stream.

Black refers to the Negroid Race. There are 4 main divisions of race in the world. Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid and Australoid. Dion Ebrahim is a Caucasoid (same race as British, Italians, Slavs, etc), Hondo and Nkala are Negroid.

Also refer to: http://www.aryanrace.net/

And if you still continue to ignore this and not call Dion Ebrahim "Gujrati Indian" rather than "Black", then at least go by the colour and call him "Brown". Hondo and Nkala are black. Dion Ebrahim is brown. You have many photos of him in your gallery, refer to your own media.

You can get sued for this comment. Imran Khan sued Ian Botham 1986/87 for similar stupidity when Iam Botham called him "Black". Imran Khan is of the same race as Dion Ebrahim, although Imran Khan is fairer, this is a normal variation that comes from the subcontinent. You get white to dark brown in India/Pakistan.

Please have this corrected A.S.A.P.

[chinaman]

Ebrahim, Hondo and Nkala are believed to be considering a boycott

[tglover]

Thanks Chinaman for the photos. Now you tell me, does Ebrahim have the same colour as Hondo and Nkala?

Its either I am blind or CricInfo is.

[Piranha]

errr...i dont think think a discussion of race belongs in bangladesh cricket...

[tglover]

I succeeded

CricInfo changed the article as at 4:03PM Perth Time (8:03PM GMT).

The article now reads "Coloured trio set to join Zimbabwe rebels" instead of "Black trio set to join Zimbabwe rebels"

Tell me what you guys thought.

[billah]

tglover: There is nothing wrong in being black, I'm sure you would agree. I understand your point here, but, you might wanna stop using the term "Negro" in a manner that implicates negativity.. Cricinfo, with it's routine unfair bias and willful calousness, might have noted a wrong race for a player, but if we think that this was an insult, we join the rank of racists, don't you think?

[tglover]

Billah - you are right. But I was not saying it was bad to be called negro.

I was saying it was stupidity and ignorance on CricInfo's part to associate two completely different races with each other.

Refer to http://www.aryanrace.net/

[chinaman]

Dear tglover

You have valid points here. And your enthusiasm is quite reasonable, admirable and understandable. However, I do think that what they tried to establish was to make a generalization of all non-white people to distinguish them from the so called "white revels". Race in my humble opinion is sensitive and delicate. Since they are not addressing me as black, and I have my own headache to take care of, I'd just leave it to those people, who were addressed in the first place to initiate the protest.

No, I'm not ignoring it; just not willing to play as an unnecessary or unwelcome lead activist. People call us miskin, call us joke. What can we do? We can only reply by improving ourselves. Let's put our energy to do just that for now.

[tglover]

Yes you are right Chinaman in a way. If people call the Bangladesh cricket team a joke, then you have to shut up and imrpove. Then when the day comes when you win - you can tell those people who critized you that you won.

But about race, its not as if you can 'change' your colour (unless you are Michael Jackson). You cannot 'wait' for a day for your skin colour to change.

They are the ones at fault with their ignorance and they should be corrected. Thats all I am saying.

Anyway - they corrected it and it worked in the end.

[chinaman]

"improving ourselves" doesn't mean to change ones color. Recall that the white (jews) were slaves too but they improved to become the masters. Anyway, congratulation to you for an extraordinary one of a kind success.

[reinausagi]

Well done tglover. You took on a cause and saw it through.

[say]

Am I the only one to find this whole complaint by tglover a kind of reactionary-racism? TG is right to point out the initial racist overtone by terming every non-white player to be black. But the subsequent wooing of us - the Bangladeshis - to empathize with Deon because his not "negro"!! - looked like a politician looking for support by playing a racist card... (Even our Chinabhai fell for it. He 'looked-up' how Deon really 'looks' - as opposed to or contrasting the 'black' players. Was the 'picture' really needed as a 'visual proof' in this case?)

Did I misinterpret the whole episode??

[chinaman]

Originally posted by say
Even our Chinabhai fell for it.

Hmm, Say, you are smart, very smart.

[Zunaid]

Originally posted by say
Am I the only one to find this whole complaint by tglover a kind of reactionary-racism?

no ..

[Aryan]

To say that tglover's initial complaint about Dion Ebrahim being termed "black" is reactionary racism is as preposterous an idea as saying to call a spade a spade is some sort of a violation of societal norms.

People all over the world these days have become vulnerable, hypersensitised and susceptible to following what is generally considered "normal" by the masses, without analysing all the inevitable aspects pertinent to the issue at hand. Often, a person is labelled as a racist, or a bigot merely because he is being realistic.

It is almost imperative these days for any educated subcontinental person to show how he does not care about "race" or "skin colour". Subcontinentals have become pacifistic towards the inhabitants of developed and more advanced nations.

Ask any Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi student living abroad in a Western country "Does it bother you if they call you black?" There is a 9 out of 10 chance he would follow the norms of today's society and say "Of course not! What difference does it make anyway?".

What some of you have done here is just a prime example of blind following of societal norms. You see tglover's initial reaction to this whole Dion Ebrahim being labelled as black enigma as being reactionary racism, while I see tglover as being realistic. He is calling a spade a spade. Apples are apples and oranges are oranges. We do not create these differences, God does. We have to accept these differences and live with them peacefully. Notwithstanding, living peacefully does NOT, and I repeat NOT, mean that a "Desi" has to accept the title of "black".

The term Black applies to those inhabitants of Africa who are of a Negroid lineage, as well as to their descendants throughout the world. African-Americans are BLACK. People from the Caribbean are BLACK. Native AFRICANS of non-Berberic and non-Egypto-Hamitic bloodlines are BLACK. Nelson Mandela, Pele, Colin Powell, Garfield Sobers, Will Smith, Michael Jackson, Densil Washington and Muhammad Ali are ALL examples of the BLACK NEGROID RACE. People from Subcontinent origins DO NOT belong to the same racial subdivision of human anthropology. Negroids are are a distinct category of human races. Now, making Dion Ebrahim a part of THAT NEGROID race is like calling an Apple an Orange, and calling the Orange an Apple. It is neither about racism, nor about reactionary racism. It is about the abolishment of ignorance and of course, ACCURACY. It is important to get the person's race right because if you do not, you will lose your sense of pride, honour and dignity in your identity, in being who you are, and the end result of assimilation with the wider world, and the denial of your own cultural heritage would mean that you morally killed yourself.

Whosoever could not defend their identity throughout history was enslaved, subjugated, oppressed and colonised by a more advanced nation to whom identity, pride, dignity and honour DID matter. Point is, if you care about your origins, you have done yourself a favour by keeping yourself morally alive.

For several centuries, European Imperialists have been TRYING hard to label the people of the Orient as "coloured" or "black", in spite of the fact that MANY of those so-called Orientals are WHITER than Europeans. Why do they do this? They do this because in order for them to justify their expansion into your backyard, they have to portray you as being INFERIOR. They achieve this by labelling you as "black".

If you belong to the Middle East, or to the Subcontinent, or Central Asia, you must NEVER, NEVER, NEVER accept the label of "black", no matter how BLACK your skin pigmentation may be. The moment you accept this label, you have surrendered yourself, and sold your racial and cultural pride to a race of Barbaric origins, who wishes to enslave you. Morally, if not militarily. Well, they already enslaved you militarily in the past and drained all the wealth out of the Subcontinent anyway.

Last but not least, we now reach the conclusion that tglover was RIGHT to have complained about this ethnologic inaccuracy which Cricinfo dared to show. It was about calling Apples, Apples, and calling Oranges, Oranges. tglover's reaction was NOT, and I repeat NOT, reactionary racism. Cricinfo got 2 oranges and an apple and tried to call ALL THREE of them Oranges. This is what they did, and, I take pride in tglover's efforts to have this moral disintegration of a man of subcontinental descent, eliminated. Congratulations on your courageous email which you chose to send to Cricinfo tglover.

Visit http://www.aryanrace.net for further information.

[fab]

Why do I get the feeling that tglover == Aryan?

Anyhow, you can call a spade a spade if you like, but in the end they are all just tools.

So Dion Ebrahim was called a black. Big deal. It is such a non-issue.

[James90]

I never negro was directly related to black

So your saying aboriginals shouldn't be referred to as "black"

[Edited on 19-4-2004 by Habibul_fan]

[chinaman]

Dear Aryan aka tglover

You were right all along to say that it was inaccurate to call what the called. You fought bravely and won. My salute goes to you once again.

Having said that, I like to reiterate that nobody called me a black yet. And my identity and pride is too high to drop dead even if someone calls me such while my identity and pride is too small to be inflated by some rightful comments. I'm what I'm now. If someone mistakenly or intentionally for that matter calls me tglover, I know I'm still chinaman. I'll use my discretion to protest or not to protest as I go along. You used your judgement and won. Hat's off to you. Now let's put a happy ending to it. Cheers.

[abhs]

Originally posted by Piranha
errr...i dont think think a discussion of race belongs in bangladesh cricket...

Yes, the thread should be moved to Forget Cricket. I cannot understand why even after pointing out by Piranha, it still belongs to Bangladesh Cricket.

It is misleading!

[mahbubH]

BBC is still using the word

[mzia]

It does not matter who what is saying in the street, club, pub but it is not appreciating matter to write or say some thing indecent in a official forum. Perhaps some peoples have divided the Globe in White & Non-White category but who cares…

[Edited on 19-4-2004 by mzia]

[Hasib]

Originally posted by chinaman
Having said that, I like to reiterate that nobody called me a black yet.

A few ppl hav called me black... but some even called me white... I'm confussed

[Navarene]

Originally posted by Zunaid

no ..

..add me too.

[Navarene]

Originally posted by sports_fan_bd
BBC is still using the word

and this is the same BBC who enthusiastically publishes the anti-racism news of cricket.

Is Cricinfo or BBC really biased in regard of cult, creed or colour? I think one needs to examine the issue of how one conceptualises “racism” and “a racist.” It is easy to take a neo-Nazi as a typical racist and from this typification move to the argument that anyone who is not a neo-Nazi or anyone who does not openly express vilification of others of different skin-colour is not racist. This is oversimplified reasoning.

The racial biological argument is absolute nonsense. Simply put, biological "race" can NEVER be used as a serious independent variable if it is not quantified in an accurate way, and there is NO WAY to quantify it accurately. Thus, the whole complaint by tglover is pretty overwhelming, over egoistic, over emotional and reactinary-racism in my point of view.

[rafiq]

Ebrahim doesn't look like any Gujju boys I know! Dion - a Gujrati name? Whatever.

What's preposterous is half-Dravidian Bangalees thinking they are white.