Yorkshire Cricket Club under stress

Subject: Yorkshire Cricket Club under stress

Our obsession with the past and it's different values to those present today has spawned a host of critiques each failing to acknowledge that cultures change with the passage of time and holding the current crop of people responsible or even in some ways indictable is plain silly. Books abound detailing the inferior position black people held and its argued, hold, even in today's society. It fails to confront the plight of "the other" be it a black person, a foreigner or more prosaically, the under nourished, poorly educated white person living in towns where they have always been exploited and today, even worse,  ignored as the need for them to labour in the fields or factory  has passed.

This bias in the media regarding the views of people wishing to grind the grist of racial profiling to the detriment of white people is so counter productive if the complainers wish to gain the ear of the majority white folk. No one likes to be cast in a mould. Not the black person nor the white person since stereotypes are nearly always harmful. There are of course truths within the stereotype but the essence of an individual is missed by indulging in preordained prejudice.

Currently there is a serious spat going on with the Yorkshire Cricketing Board accused of institutional racism. Racism and banter are close bedfellows in that things are said in a jokey way without any vitriol intended. The comedians of the 50s reflected a view which whilst held in parts of our cities regarding the changing face of those inner cities as people arrived from overseas invited by the government without any provision for them to be accommodated let alone assimilated in the existing environment. One way to let off steam about this influx of cheap labour with the then alien customs was to make the situation comedic, laughter after all is a great healer so long as the intent  of the joke is not hateful. It was a time when opinions were very divided as to the size and extent of immigration and its repercussions particularly on the way of life of the people who had just emerged from the depredations of a world war and all the pain it had brought those towns were now being inundated with what were foreign people.

The phrases used to describe the in comers were in some cases derisory but often not and were used as a form of banter between friends who perhaps drawn together in a team use nicknames to illustrate their friendship. The Pakistan allrounder  Azeem Rafiq has accused Gary Balance, the Zimbabwe born player, both playing for Yorkshire at the time of using racial slurs against him. Balance says that it was all banter and that  Rafiq had responded with his own name calling. What a sad place we are in when teammates can't joust with each other for fear of litigation. As we walk on eggshells, ever fearful of being called racist, ever mindful that the terms used towards Balance and his Zimbabwe heritage were not classed as racist, he was after all white. Words are thrown about in the heat of the moment but here it’s suggested by one side at least there was no heat only banter. One has to ask why this is raised by Rafiq, (who was no wilting violet) now and not then or is there an active force afoot determined to trawl through comments made years ago in a context very different. Blasphemy laws which effect Muslim people, (example, the pictorial depiction of the Prophet Mohamed) but deemed normal by the non Muslim are respected here by dint of our wishing to enable the two societies to live together  

Do we follow this injured party Rafic in his renouncement by a counter renouncement or do we say let's live and let live for a complex multicultural society like ours to function. If the flood of resentment doesn’t stop we might soon live in a country riven by real strife much like the homelands of many who wish to live here. The placid temperament of the bulk of people who were born here after generations of conditioning as well as the general confidence in the laws which govern us will probably see us though but it’s no help if a vociferous minority keep demanding their exclusivity.