In particular the reluctance to immediately publish all the evidence and reasoning behind their decision is troubling
I understand they accepted Suarez explanation that the term 'negrito' had not been used as an intentional racial slur but felt that it might be interpreted as such by someone outside of South America. However, having made what was a not unreasonable judgement they then proceeded to spoil it by slamming an 8 game ban and a £40,000 fine on him. Given that if Suarez had physically kicked Evra off the park he would probably only have got a 2 game ban this seems wildly excessive. Moreover, it seems the FA have made no attempt to investigate Evras role in the incident. He is an educated man, the son of a Senegalese diplomat who has lived in Europe since he was 12 months old and speaks 5 languages. As a French speaker in a league where English is the main language he must have made a conscious decision to engage in conversation with Suarez in Spanish. If he did call Suaraz a 'sudaca', as some claim, then there is a definite suspicion that he may have deliberately chosen the insult Suarez in the hope that it would elicit a response that he could use to bring a charge of racial abuse. This is an area where Evra does have some previous form.
Needless to say the British media and tribalist football fans from other clubs have not bothered to wait for the fineprint about the reasons for the FA judgement and have immediately leaped to the decison that Suarez as a 'racist' is now fair game for any amount of abuse.
The incident has also revealed quasi apartheid cultural stereotyping through which race is handled by officialdom in the UK. With its rather limited sets of racial groups such Black African, Back Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani etc it is really happiest when it can pigeon hole people into a few pre selected boxes. It simply can not handle true cultural diversity. For example, if you look at the tick boxes you find that the Spanish and Portuguese speaking Latino culture of Central and South America simply does not exist. It is therefore not suprising that it has trouble handling Suarez a typical mixed race South American with at least one black ancestor and probably some Native American as well as Spanish roots knocking about in his family. The truth about the UK is that while ,it has eliminated one load of prejudices, others regarding the Spanish speaking world are alive and well. You only have to catch some of the comments about Suarez in the press to know that the Black legend is still in full swing in Northern Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend
Personally, the most dismaying thing about this whole affair is that has more to do with the poor discipline and lack of sporting etiquette of modern day footballers than with real racism in sport. To my mind Pele was spot on in highlighting the fact that the very presence of large numbers of foreign and black players in the English game was a sure sign it was not dangerously compromised by racial prejudice. It was sad that so many papers dismissed his comments out of hand so keen were they to put the boot into Suarez. It seems everyone has forgotten the genuinely racist era of the 1960's and 1970s when black players like Clyde Best at West Ham struggled to get a game. For me the reality of what it is like to play sport in a genuine racist environment was highlighted in the recent BBC TV documentary on the Cape Coloured South African cricketer Basil DOlivera. In his cricket career in his native land he suffered relatively little racial verbal abuse on the pitch for the simple reason that under apartheid he was simply not allowed to play against whites or blacks at all.
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