Four years ago, I posted this about the World Cup:

Here we are on the heels of the World Cup (2006) and already there are a lot of grown folks calling dark-skinned soccer players monkeys. These “offensive” players are being pelted with peanuts and bananas, slapped, hit, and spit upon. In the name of gaining a sporting advantage (supposedly). One player, Oguchi Onyewu who plays for the Belgian soccer club Standard Lige has been harassed and physically attacked more than once. He and several other African and black American players have been called the M word. But to them it just “goes with the territory”, as black U.S. team player DeMarcus Beasley put it.*

So if you play soccer in Europe and you’re dark-skinned be expected to be called a monkey. In a way, I understand it. On the surface, soccer is life to many Europeans. It’s business. Big business. But there’s also the hate factor too. Hate that’s too familiar to Americans. The type of hate that can’t be legislated away. Hate that just goes underground … read the rest

*Source: USA Today

With South African hosting the FIFA World Cup this year, it seems that things are way different this time around. From GlobalNewsBeat.com:

While apartheid’s demise in 1994 led to little immediate change among fans — whites still tend to favour rugby and cricket, while soccer remains a largely black sport — the almost tribal lines dividing sports are fading.

Whites have come out in support of South Africa’s national team, nicknamed Bafana Bafana, and with the team’s early exit from the World Cup, black and white fans alike don their bright yellow jerseys to see the 16 surviving teams.

Bars and pubs, once the haunts of either a black or a white crowd, now are brimming with both.

Let’s pray this lasts far beyond the last goal. God bless South Africa. God bless the world.

Spicy aromas met me as I stepped in the restaurant. An Asian man, dressed in a modest dress shirt and pants, greeted me with the smile of a long-lost cousin and showed me to a table where my girlfriend sat. He took our drink orders and left us with two menus.

“I usually get the Pad Thai,” my friend said.

Pad Thai sounds exotic, I thought, smiling to myself. I’m going to get some real Thai food. Anticipation bubbled up inside me. What wonderful new flavors would I experience today? I couldn’t wait.

Our waiter returned with his pen and pad. My friend order Pad Thai. I was still mulling.

“What would you suggest?” I asked the nice man.

“This is very good,” he said, pointing at a dish with chicken and almonds, “We make it taste like American food.”

Like what!

I bit back my words and ordered the dish he suggested. Deep down, I wanted to ask him why he felt the need to Americanize Thai food. If I’d wanted American I would have gone to Fridays or Applebees for lunch.

While we waited for our food, my mind went back to my trips to ChinaTown in Seattle and in New York City. They were both lively, flavorful experiences to the tongue and to the eye. I’d gone away deeply happy and full each time; eager to tell others about it. It hadn’t bothered me (or the passersby) that I was the only speck of pepper in the pot.

Being in ChinaTown was not really about race as much as it was about a genuine experience of life. Not the manicured sameness that I called home in Raleigh, North Carolina. And not the do-it-yesterday craziness of American metropolitan life either.

To me it was healthy and loud and spiced-up, yet with everything in its place. It felt much like one of our  family reunions at Somerset — except I sensed ChinaTown’s liveliness was every minute of every day. Not a perfect family but comfortable in its own skin. A family that makes us come back for more without saying a word. One that satisfies something at our core.

Americanize Asian food? You might as well Americanize ChinaTown?

In our American church experience, we end up with something that’s just as appealing and effective as Thai food that ‘tastes like American’. Many churches have just enough flavor to call it a ‘black church’ or a ‘Korean church’ but not enough for the people to call it God’s church.

I say give me the full spicy ethnic experience. What do you think?