I really thought I wouldn't comment any further to your comments once you've dismissed the texts as just "bad taste" . The only and last point I would make in response to you is that I was not/am not defending Tan and in a way the issue is not about him although he may have been instrumental in bringing this to the fore. He may be an unsavoury caracter and yes he may have chosen this moment to get his revenge for whatever grievance he had against Mackay. We can all speculate but there is nothing solid against him. My points were about Mackay and the texts. I will repeat: the man himself admitted fault, apologised unreservedly and declared that he needed equality and diversity training. In plain language he meant that he needed education regarding his behaviour towards other races and issues such as gender and sexual orientation. Not once at any time has he said or even implied that the club or the owners did anything wrong. I never said that we ought to condemn people for their thoughts. I said originally that if people said or texted unacceptable things about work colleagues and they came out then they have to suffer the consequences. I accept that many people say the same things in the pub and get away with it. As someone said there are rules of an organisation or of a profession and once you are an employee or a member of a profession you have to abide by these rules. I am an employee of an organisation so I have to abide by the rules of that organisation including professional behaviour and its terms and conditions (like Mackay should have done). You just cannot be a "leader of people" as he said in his interview and yet privately send these nasty texts about individuals (even if these were not meant to be read by others). I hope you have a good Sunday.
I accept your points as far as they go. However, I am concerned that you appear to have been able to remove the comments from their context and feel free to make comment about the character of an individual you have no real knowledge about. I also find it very confusing that you can use information gained from a supposedly confidential source to justify your comments without any approbation for the way these details became public knowledge or the reasons why they were leaked. Therefore I truly believe that your position is flawed. "You just cannot be a "leader of people" as he said in his interview and yet privately send these nasty texts about individuals (even if these were not meant to be read by others)." Now that truly is one of the most naive statements that I have read.
Mackay deserved sacking, as even an arsehole of a boss should demand basic respect. But that's easy, and not the point. We were rather discussing the man's character, his morals, his worth as a human being and as a manager. I think Mackay's offences do no merit public humiliation, shattered reputation, or career assassination. Truth is: an honest man's thoughts are sometimes violent and filthy, but if they are not hurled upon a subject, they are merely a 'videogame', a 'valve', and sometimes a helpful valve. We just can't assume that Mackay acted out any of his toxic private banter. He's innocent till found guilty, but at this point not even investigation is warranted as his banter was too general and contained no actionable harmful intentions. So, he's clean by me.
Anybody harbouring racist thoughts is racist. To put them down in writing goes a step further even if it's a joke or a positive comment regarding a persons race since being racist doesn't mean highlighting the negative, it means picking out differences between races. If you say 'she's really pretty for an Asian/Chinese ... girl', 'the best athletes are black', 'the top doctors are Jewish' ..... they are all racist comments. We are all racist.
i think there are two philosophies here. at least a the end you said WE are all... that means everyone is and that leads some to throw their hands up and excuse bad things cos nothing can be done. the other view of just cos a guy in angers said that stupid X he is not racist he just went too far is in danger of also excusing bad things Why can't we have any common sense middle ground that say... mcay is a stupid f'r... what a moron and also see tan is up to something too.
We are all racist. I think it's a lot to do with stereotyping and/or generalising of whole groups being hard to shake off. When people see the word 'racist' - snarling, violent, thug type images appear in their mind, but there's a softer racism that I believe we all harbour. Speaking specifically about Mackay, he may have put into words what a lot of people in his situation would have been thinking, but not all people. I wouldn't have, but I stop at labelling other races, for instance his use of ch... - I don't subscribe to that so it would never enter my thought processes no matter how much provocation, or perceived provocation I felt I was under. You're either a person who goes to those words, or you're not - I'm not. The easiest thing in the world when engaged in arguments, is to bring out and attack the physical description, so someone goes from being a **** to being a black **** because the 'victim' feels the insult needs qualifying by adding race, gender etc. If you don't have 'discriminatory' thoughts about individuals who are different to you, then there's none there to bring out when you're angry.
♫Everyone's a little bit racist, sometimes. Doesn't mean we go around committing hate cri-i-i-imes♫
One of the first truisms that any manager must come to terms with is that he is responsible for the development well being and performance of his staff. He is not there to be their friend or lover. Provided he meets his own managerial responsibilities he does not even need to like them very much. Provided that he achieves that, his own attitudes and beliefs are immaterial.
I think as long as all of humanity is including in this philosophy ok. but others all all creeds, colors etc are guilty of it. it is at its base tribal.... I do firmly beleive the term is recist is emotive and as such as to be held for the nazi/KK types... that's my opinion. in the end if we all are then the entire planet is therefore there's an awful task to say if one person does x cos he is but others don't he's wrong. After all tribal goes as far are two cities split by a half hour of road annoying each other on football forums for no other reason than to entertain themselves. It can also involve on a totally other side ISI and executions on fialure to convert. There has to be clearer lines than we are all racists.
not quite... as long as his staff don't know he hates them he can achieve. If his staff know he has done x or y then his abilities to do the job are affect. He simply can no longer sit for example in a review at the end fo the year and say to his (and i'll be deliberate) chinese engineer, secretary or material buyer and say.. hey you didn't meet your targets you don't get a bonus cos sure as hell the immediate suspicion is on his motives. you just have to be above reproach in this regard Its why a charge of sexual harassment in the work place is the ultimate career ender now. It is why if someone levels that charge it is viewed as the very highest issue and at best once levels it puts a glass ceiling in a career if found false. eg if someone is accused as a mid level manager you'll find them shuffled about forever and will never make director if the company has high profile that needs good rep. The woman accusing often finds she can't get a job or at least is shunned cos references are gone and the workplace shuts down even if it says it doesn't... wrong yeah but there you go. The only question is did the 3 texts amount to proving macay doesn't like gay people, jewish people or chinese people really? there is a scale of wrong doing here and so macay's problem is while he's probable just insulted a few specifci people he is now labelled a rascist, homophobe in the press.... and you know... it'd never affect his actual ability to manage a footballer but it materially affects an appointing club so his career is over as nobody will hire him.
As human beings we learn by observing (listening to others is a form of observing) looking for patterns, and then drawing conclusions. The very basis by which human beings learn, is slanted towards people developing racist ideology. It takes logic and forethought for people to throw off any misconceptions. Racism, is often based on some fact. For example, before I had a car that automatically locked the doors once it started moving, if I pulled up to an intersection and there was a young black man standing on the corner, I'd probably be more likely to lock my doors- than if it were a white woman. Biggoted behaviour on my part? Certainly- I'm showing both racism and sexism there! A white woman is just as capable of whipping out a gun and carjacking me as a black man. However, statistically in my area, black men commit more crimes. 50/50 population wise in my city- but black men large majority of crimes committed. (usually socio-economic reasons involved... nothing to do with colour of skin, but still my locking the door would be a pattern-based racism response. I didn't know that that man was safe, just as I might not know that a white lady pushing a pram on the street corner might have a gun on her and be psychotic looking for someone to shoot). So in the example above, me locking my doors, is probably the soft racism that JohnsonBaby refers to. Now, if I were to meet that said individual on the street corner, find out he is a fine upstanding citizen- I'd trust him, I could be friends with him, etc. Some people won't. They will continue to demonise him for his race- or fail to look at facts of his personality and base their dislike on him on skin colour. That's more a hard racism. It is all racism- some of it is clearly more malice based than others. Everyone needs to recognise when they have it, and try and correct it. We all have it to a degree- I wouldn't believe anyone (of any race) who said they never had a racist thought or reaction.
Foredeckdave; ''One of the first truisms that any manager must come to terms with is that he is responsible for the development well being and performance of his staff. He is not there to be their friend or lover. Provided he meets his own managerial responsibilities he does not even need to like them very much. Provided that he achieves that, his own attitudes and beliefs are immaterial''' Unless he verbalises them Dave, then it's up for discussion! You're right, the word 'racist' does has negative connotations, as does the word 'discrimination' - and we could turn this into a debate about the finer points of those words and their usage [which aren't always negative] but for the purposes of this thread and talking specifically about Mackay, we fall short of calling him a racist or sexist because we use common sense and can see this case for what it is, a few angry men venting with [as far as we can know about these things] no deep seated hatred of blacks, Chinese, women or Jews. However, we live in a world that's longing to change by introducing measures like 'kick racism out' campaigns etc. etc. and every time a Mackay [Suarez, Terry] situation arises, we knock it back a little bit further to the racist chanting norms of yesteryear.
Regarding Mackay: I've no idea if he were expressing frustrations or is genuinely maliciously racist. Problem is though, a club has to act as if it were malicious. Anything else shows clubs as being tolerant of racism, and setting up a bad PR image. No club wants to be "the racist club", which is why Mackay probably won't have any prominent role at any prominent club. He knew potential repercussions, and so at very least shows an inability to measure his responses. / Everything you ever type is permanent and almost never as private as you think.
Milk - ''It is all racism- some of it is clearly more malice based than others. Everyone needs to recognise when they have it, and try and correct it. We all have it to a degree- I wouldn't believe anyone (of any race) who said they never had a racist thought or reaction.'' You've reiterated here what I've said about being a racist and I agree with you. I disagree with you about Mackay not getting a prominent role again, I think he will. Football has a very short memory - when it wants to - he has apologised and that seemingly is all it's about [see Suarez].
Ron Atkinson never got a gig again.... Now go to Spain and Italy and the like and they laugh at this stuff wouldn't they? They are wrong but not because purely they are in the past or worse they simply don't see this stuff Hell France by forcing people to conform is then worse etc Utopia ain't going to happen so Macay is tame compared to say when people will throw bananas at England's next away game
a lot of famous *cough* people have made silly mistakes that doesn't seemed to have hurt them too badly, off the top of my head i can think of keyes and gray, then there's that one who was mates with Jonathan ross? both of them seemed to be doing fine, you have murdoch who has done wrong etc etc, ****s prosper in this day and age, please show me where they don't anyone ?
Atkinson was different, he was a pundit saying it on air, albeit he didn't know it was going out and maybe he never tried for another tv job, who knows. That's more like the Keys/Gray thing and they got jobs again. Time will tell, who will be desperate enough to want him.
I suppose it depends upon what you mean by "verbalising them". On this occasion he was texting a mate. It was to all intents and purposes a private conversation. Even if Cardiff City believed that the use of their equipment/network made the contents a disciplinary action, that action itself should have remained confidential - though the results of the disciplinary procedure could be revealed. Ok he was ill-advised to use electronic media but are we better advised to use supposedly confidential material as the basis of witch-hunt? What really worries me is not the debate about what does or does not constitute racism or sexism or whatever 'ism' becomes the trend of the moment - debate is good. However, it is the way that the debate is always hijacked by self-interest groups such as Kick It Out to demand that their voices are the only ones that should be listened to.
Gray and keys was sexist in a sexist sport and frankly I would say in Italy racism is as laughed at as thier sexism was here Just saying...... Atkinson was only on itv and at the end who knows if say carra or Neville did likewise.... Who knows!!!
