All I'm reading into this is Gary Lineker stating that the attitudes of the time would have meant that even someone having slightly darker skin would have been considered 'different' and open to racist abuse. I certainly don't see where he claimed he was black!

comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
He’s worded it badly but I get what he was trying to say. But probably best if he had just not said anything at all but he seems to love the sound of his own voice. Last week he compared going to Qatar to present MOTD for the WC to journalists who report the war in the Ukraine.
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It’s not badly worded. It’s clearly how he felt approx 50 years ago, as did many people.

Re Ukraine, he rightly said attending an event / location doesn’t mean you support it.

comment by Sheriff JW Pepper (U1007)
posted 32 minutes ago
comment by פlǝuƃɥᴉs (U19365)
posted 23 minutes ago
comment by Bobby Dazzler (U1449)
posted 7 hours, 26 minutes ago
comment by Lexington 125.2 (U8879)
posted 8 minutes ago
comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 9 minutes ago
I thought this would be Gary Neville when I started reading the OP.
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Think of it as a test to see how famous a Gary, Lineker is.

For me he’s the 5th most well known Gary, apparently.
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I’ve got
Gary Neville
Gary Bailey
Gary Numan
Gary Oldman
Gary Glitter

All ahead of him
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I'd put Gary Busey ahead of that lot.

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For point Break and Under Seige alone
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Gary Ablett

comment by Diafol Coch 77 (U2462)
posted 1 minute ago
All I'm reading into this is Gary Lineker stating that the attitudes of the time would have meant that even someone having slightly darker skin would have been considered 'different' and open to racist abuse. I certainly don't see where he claimed he was black!
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Not would have. Were.

comment by Ole dirty Baztard - penited and penandes (U19119)
posted 21 minutes ago
I see twitter going mad about this. Again shows so much that’s wrong with the world by the responses.

_—-

A sizeable part of what’s wrong with the world is Twitter.
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yeah...this....it's a fackwit's charter

Attention seeker !

Of course its badly worded because it implies being English means you have to be white which even back in the 60s and 70s is incorrect.

Also a white guy saying he was racially abused just sounds stupid and insulting even if his complexion is darker than average.

This is why it's best to stay off news/social media websites. They're just full of sensationalised garbage.

Yesterday there was a story on the BBC and Sky News about a toddler that was killed by a monkey. It happened in Tanzania. Why are UK-based news websites elevating such a story to headline news? Not like it happened at Chester Zoo - clickbait.

I saw people frothing about what Linekar said. To be honest, he does look like you wouldn't trust his ancestors if they came baring gifts so I can see why - 50 odd years ago - his pigment might've drawn some comments. Not read the article though, so don't know the context. Either way, does it matter?

comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 8 minutes ago
Of course its badly worded because it implies being English means you have to be white which even back in the 60s and 70s is incorrect.

Also a white guy saying he was racially abused just sounds stupid and insulting even if his complexion is darker than average.
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It doesnt imply everyone thought that.

It tells us that Lineker, as a child thought that.

Lineker is just a muppet yes man working on behalf of the wokey propaganda spewed out of the BBC - he’s boring and irrelevant

1982 if someone was calling him racist slurs how would u describe the abuse he got?
Again this is if the stories are even true.

comment by Erik Don Hag (U22703)
posted 1 hour, 29 minutes ago
comment by peks - 1974 (U6618)
posted 1 hour, 6 minutes ago
comment by Erik Don Hag (U22703)
posted 5 hours, 13 minutes ago
Don’t forget, this abuse would have been 50 years ago, when attitudes were different and anyone not white would have been considered foreign.
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he is white....he just has a more olive skin tone
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Yes. I’m talking about his view from 50 years ago that English = White.
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from an ethnological point of view ofcourse English = White

Nigerian = Black , for the same reason

comment by HEY, WE'RE BACK (U22866)
posted 22 minutes ago
Lineker is just a muppet yes man working on behalf of the wokey propaganda spewed out of the BBC - he’s boring and irrelevant
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I'm thinking you don't know the meaning of at least 50% of the words you just wrote.

Nick

Hard to say because I’m not white. But being called racial slurs that have no relevance to myself would just seem a bit strange rather than offensive.

I get it probably wasn't nice to receive but it’s just an odd thing to say publicly because it was always going to get a negative reaction and doesn’t really help the issue of racism imo. Instead it just looks like Linekar is looking for attention and maybe some sort of sympathy which would be ridiculous if so.

Reading this just reminded me that a couple of kids at my school tried to make a racially tinged nickname for me (a white kid) a thing after I mentioned that my parents were working in Asia when I was born. It didn't catch on because, I guess, it was a bit of a stretch for one thing and they didn't have much clout in the social hierarchy. Kids are always looking for some vulnerability in each other, aren't they?

I suppose there must be lots of cases where a white kid got 'racially abused' at school in ways similar to what Lineker described. It's important to acknowledge that this is absolutely different to experiencing racist attitudes as an ethnic minority. In the first case, it's a subset of bullying and it's localised to the individual culprits. In the second, someone is identified by their skin colour and *generally" subject to different treatment across society.

It seems to me Lineker was asked a question, gave a reply, could probably have worded it slightly better or it came across differently in word than in speech... Then the rags got hold of it and triggered those non-snowflakes like the OP

Nothing wrong with his comments. He's not saying black people can't be English. He's saying that he had experience of being called racist names despite being white and English.

Why do people keep saying that he received black racial abuse? He grew up in Leicester which has a large Asian community (mainly Indian).

comment by HEY, WE'RE BACK (U22866)
posted 2 hours, 5 minutes ago
Lineker is just a muppet yes man working on behalf of the wokey propaganda spewed out of the BBC - he’s boring and irrelevant
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I would say the amount he earns from the BBC for doing next to nothing is rather relevant

comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin - It's Beekers! (U2958)
posted 1 hour, 55 minutes ago
comment by HEY, WE'RE BACK (U22866)
posted 22 minutes ago
Lineker is just a muppet yes man working on behalf of the wokey propaganda spewed out of the BBC - he’s boring and irrelevant
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I'm thinking you don't know the meaning of at least 50% of the words you just wrote.
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50% of something is better than the 100% of nothing like yourself - muppet

On a completely unrelated story , what happened to Rachel Dolezal?

comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 hour, 7 minutes ago
Why do people keep saying that he received black racial abuse? He grew up in Leicester which has a large Asian community (mainly Indian).
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I don't know enough about this to be sure, but I believe the large South Asian community in Leicester mainly came about in the 1970s, when something like half of the Asians expelled by Uganda ended up settling there. I guess they may not have been equally distributed across the city at the start, so depending on where Lineker went to school, it might have still be quite a monocultural environment. I also read that the Leicester council took out adverts trying to dissuade Ugandan refugees from settling in the city (something which backfired, as it had the result of alerting them to the fact that there's this city called Leicester which is a potential place to settle!) so there could well have been heightened hostility to people with darker skins around that time.

comment by HEY, WE'RE BACK (U22866)
posted 50 minutes ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin - It's Beekers! (U2958)
posted 1 hour, 55 minutes ago
comment by HEY, WE'RE BACK (U22866)
posted 22 minutes ago
Lineker is just a muppet yes man working on behalf of the wokey propaganda spewed out of the BBC - he’s boring and irrelevant
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I'm thinking you don't know the meaning of at least 50% of the words you just wrote.
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50% of something is better than the 100% of nothing like yourself - muppet
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The razor sharp come back i expected from someone who uses terms like "wokey propaganda".

I should know not to tangle with such brains of Britain.

comment by Diafol Coch 77 (U2462)
posted 4 hours, 20 minutes ago
All I'm reading into this is Gary Lineker stating that the attitudes of the time would have meant that even someone having slightly darker skin would have been considered 'different' and open to racist abuse. I certainly don't see where he claimed he was black!
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That’s how I took it too. Also, Twitter’s making jokes about him claiming to be black, if you look at some of the photos of him when he was younger, he looks “a bit Asian”, which is probably what the comments referred too.

A couple of white lads I went to school with were “jokingly” referred to as “p*ki” due to their olive skin, so to me at least, it’s not that far fetched.

I haven’t listened to the podcast so I don’t know if they asked him to exapnd on the nature of it, I know it’s hosted by Jake Humphrey, inventor of podcasts, so probably not…

Russian

Thanks for the info. He could have well received abuse thinking he was black but it could have been some other racial slur. Just interesting that virtually everyone has stated it was black.

I’ve never even been to Leicester but was always aware it has a very large Asian community, much like a lot of the midlands.

I remember on the last day of school the school bully came up to me looking really confused and said ‘someone just told me you aint white!?’