Rugby Union must face up to its past.
England and at least also Wales did not pick Black players for the international team. It's policy was racist. Fact
Singing swing low when a black player enters the field is unacceptable. Unpalatable but true.
NZ RFU has apologised for its appalling treatment of the Maoris, England MUST do the same
As this is your first post on the forum, I'm not sure I should be riled up by it, because I wonder if you've only joined to bait people. I usually don't comment about anything non-rugby on here, but congratulations, you've riled me.
Here's the thing about history: it changes. Constantly. The world is not the same now as it was 20 years ago, or a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. And in 20 years time and then 100 years time, it will be different again, and the morals and ethics of today may well be looked on as backward and barbaric by future people with a sense of moral superiority and a desire to virtue signal. Homosexuality was legal in the ancient world, then banned by various churches, made illegal by the Victorians (but only for men, coz Victoria was a sexist!) and then legalised again in the 1960s. In the future, it may be made illegal again as moral compasses swing once more, or maybe instead other sexual preferences will be legalised as the world becomes more liberal. Who knows? Will they then look back at today and demand apologies and reparations from people of the 2020s who kept their pleasures illegal? Will they be right and us wrong? Will we even be alive, or will they just be tearing down statues of long-dead people, because they only thing they can find to support their sense of outraged injustice?
The point is, Swing Low was sung by slaves, yes, but its meaning has now changed. It's not about going to heaven to be released from slavery, its about England rugby playing well and bringing the trophy home. Its meaning has changed over time. That's what happens in real life. Change is the one constant. Hell, play any song to a dozen people and you'll get half-a-dozen different interpretations of its meaning, regardless of who first sung it. That's how songs work. And songs mean different things in the mouths of different singers. Every Breath You Take was a song about a stalker when sung by the Police, and about someone who died and was missed when sung by Puff Daddy. Same song, different singers, different meanings. Can black people not sing Over the Hills and Far Away because it was sung by white British troops about going to war and dying against Napoleon's armies? Would it be racist for a black person to sing it as there were no blacks giving their lives for Britain at the time? If you thinks its racist for 80000 fans to sing Swing Low when cheering their team on, made up of more than just blacks and whites btw, then you are entitled to your opinion, but that doesn't make your opinion any more valid than mine or than that of the 80000 fans, made up of all ethnicities under the sun btw. It's just an opinion and everyone's got one, and no-one person's opinion is more important than anybody else's, regardless of what sense of moral outrage is currently boiling in them. Should we ban God Save the Queen because the founder of the Royal Africa Company that bought the slaves from the West African markets for transport to the colonies was Elizabeth I, and that the major source of income for the monarchy under Charles I was his shares in the company? Are Anthony Watson and Kyle Sinckler being damaged by singing it before every match, coz they don't seem overly bothered to me. Should we go to Mali and tear down all symbols of their history because their empire was built on slaving their fellow blacks? Should we refuse to play Italy because the Romans slaved millions of people for 500 years, including thousands of Britons? Should we ban any Pacific Islanders from playing for us because they ate Captain Cook!?
Change is something that people need to get their head around. Consider the change in meaning to the word 'racist'. It's now flung around so often and so casually that it's lost its original meaning. Consider the word '*******': it used to mean born out of wedlock, which in the past was morally wrong and therefore it was a bad slur. But when people call other people a ******* these days, we just mean they're a git who we disagree with, because being born out of wedlock is no longer considered morally unacceptable. Things change. And that's what's happening to the word racist now. By crying racist at anything and everything, it loses its meaning, and therefore its impact. With so many people using the word racist to silence disagreement, get people sacked and justify vandalism, the word is now just a general slur. It's like crying wolf: the more its cried without justification, the less and less people take notice of it.
Martin Luther King was a great,
great man, because he got it, he really did. He said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character." And yet here we are across many nations talking about 'blacks' this and 'whites' that, as if the skin colour determines who someone is, gives them certains traits and feelings and characteristics and a united opinion, belief and purpose, rather than them being individuals and therefore all different. Well you can forget it. I'm an individual, not a skin colour, and that's why I believe in what Martin Luther King said. It's just a shame that so many people didn't understand the message. If they had, we wouldn't have these ludicrous attempts to ban anything and everything.
God, everyone takes themselves so seriously these days! Why can't people learn to laugh at themselves, take things in good humour, shrug things off, be a bit self-deprecating and toughen up a bit. I know the lockdown is causing us all to be a bit uptight, but we've gone from annoyed to silly season and it's really getting on my wick. Man, I need some rugby!
