The language we use

I came upon this interesting video essay a couple of days ago, from the recently founded (just coming up on 9 years old...) educational institution, the London Interdisciplinary School.

It makes some rather alarming observations on the way that stereotypical assessments of black football players tend to focus on physical attributes like pace, strength, stamina, and aggression, or so-called 'natural talent', while lighter-skinned counterparts are far more often characterised in terms of more intellectual attributes such as 'craft', 'guile', 'vision', 'imagination' and so on - and by 'hard work', and skills developed through repetition rather than being just a product of innate ability or instinct.

I'm sure I must have been guilty of this myself from time to time. I must try to be more watchful against it.

I think, for example, of Sadio Mané's wonderful career at Liverpool: how often did we hear him praised for his 'natural athleticism' and 'goalscoring instincts',... while so many of his contemporaries or successors - Lallana, Shaqiri, Szoboszlai, Wirtz, even the 'non-white' but much paler-skinned Salah and Firminho - were more likely to be singled out for qualities like 'inventiveness', 'subtlety', or 'game intelligence'. And yet Mané was just as great a player as any of them, with many of the exact same attributes - but you often wouldn't get that impression from the way that pundits discussed his game performances.

It seems that this vice of unconscious prejudice in the choice of descriptors does not only infect our commentators and journalists, but is disturbingly rife among scouts and youth coaches in the game - with potentially very harmful impacts on the development opportunities for young black players.

As the video warns at its conclusion: "The words we use to praise someone can also be the words that limit them."  Well worth 10 minutes of your time.