Читать книгу No Win Race. A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport онлайн

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To me and my friends, Tebbit’s question sounded archaic and of little relevance to us. Like many of the kids at my school, I supported the West Indies in cricket, Brazil in football and Great Britain in basketball. Sugar Ray Leonard was my favourite boxer. For me, shared experiences remained stronger than a shared birthplace. I felt safer around my black and Asian peers than white. Practically all the conflict I had faced during school had been the result of anti-black racism. I couldn’t support England, because England rarely supported me. Not every black person felt the same, however. Tebbit’s theory seemed to target people of colour. Not a nationality test. A colour test.

Tebbit’s test mirrored much of casual racist commentary of the eighties. I couldn’t think of a time, a moment, when I was watching cricket through the eighties and regularly buying cricket publications, that white foreigners had faced as much scrutiny. For much of the eighties, black English players, like the footballers, stayed mute.