It is quite discomforting to hear how the Frenchmen are not behind their own countryman in the otherwise rather regrettable episode at WC’06. The news commentary has been focused on how Zidane was a bad role model to kids and how Zidane should have controlled his temper.
How do you expect someone to control his/her temper if the taunts, if every bit as true as what has been rumored, were racist? Do you expect to tell your kids how you are not supposed to defend your own dignity, or to fight back when a racist threw an insult at you –perhaps an insult at your culture, your history, and your motherland no less? Headbutting may not be the most prudent choice, but now that it was done, can we focus on not what would have been the more prudent choice, but the root cause of why the headbutting action actually took place? Were racist comments thrown? Did the racist comments, if any, reflect the country’s brutal segregation and the lack of a united national identity, despite nearly 40 years of opportunity to unite the country? Did the comments reflect the French’s inability to make good its sins committed as an imperial colonialist?
As a side note, I also wonder if the commentary would have been different had Zidane been a Gallic Caucasian from Normandy, not an Arab immigrant from a former French colony. Would the protagonist, then, not be the thug and the bad role model, but someone who risked it all to openly confront the racist and the status quo?
