Chelsea FC owe Clatternburg an apology

If racism is to be taken serious when genuine mistakes around racial language are made - sometimes words get lost in translation- we must be quick to rectify them.

To call someone a monkey or describe them as one is without doubt a racial slur. Any attempt to disguise that fact, as some are now doing by claiming their reference to Black people as monkeys was a discussion about anthropology, is frankly risible.

But equally we must be honest to the fact that we do use the word ‘monkey’ in our rich tapestry of language in many ways. For example, when its freezing cold we say its ‘brass monkey’ weather, fooling around is ‘monkey business’. And of course, ‘I don’t give a monkey’s’ usually means I don’t give a damn.

A friend of a friend who works at Chelsea FC reliably tells me that it was this latter comment was what got Clattenburg into trouble: Protesting footballer, demanding this and that, and the ref turns to him and says ‘I don’t give a monkey's’.

To a Nigerian football player John Obi Mike, perhaps unused to these old English phrases only heard the word ‘monkey’. Of course he’s entitled to question the potential abusive language, but surely once it is established that the phrase gets lost in translation, the spectre of being racially abusive must be immediately lifted with apologies all round and even a smile as to how such an innocuous mistake could be made.

But not Chelsea! When Terry’s unequivocal racism was exposed, they locked down to an institutional denial. As a result careers were destroyed, including the then England manger Fabio Capello and reputations including the games were seriously tarnished.

Because of the explosion of social media, racial abuse is on the increase, even more worrying is the fact that racial discrimination in too many areas of life is also on the rise. We must demand that our society deals effectively with all these aspects, which include helping individuals, organisations and institutions deal with sometimes complex areas of racism.

The Chelsea fiasco holds back that debate, and if we're not careful, it will push people to be less open and unwilling to effectively confront the many layered areas of race inequality.

Chelsea should now do the decent thing and apologise for what Clattenburg and his family went through. But even wider than Clattenburg Chelsea should openly talk about this genuine mistake, encourage others to do likewise whilst still demonstrating their full commitment to deal with the scourge of racism.

Simon Woolley