Why do they hate Lamine Yamal?

BarcelonaA match between Barça and Real Madrid, the Ballon d'Or gala, or withdrawing from the Spanish national team and returning to Barcelona to recover from pubalgia. These three events, among others, made Lamine Yamal the primary target of racist insults on social media: from "dude" to "I'm dying of shit." According to the latest study by the Spanish Observatory Against Racism and Xenophobia, the Barça star is the athlete who receives the most insults based on his skin color or beliefs, among other reasons linked to hate speech. Lamine Yamal is the focus of 60% of the insults, more than double that of Real Madrid's Vinícius (29%). To a lesser extent, Real Madrid's Mbappé and Brahim Díaz, Barça's Balde, and Athletic Club's Iñaki Williams have also been targeted.

The fact that Lamine Yamal receives by far the most racist insults symbolizes a clear paradox, because he is not only the star of Barça, but also of the Spanish national team. His mother is from Equatorial Guinea and his father from Morocco, but he, who was born in Catalonia and grew up between Mataró and Granollers before going to live at La Masia, chose to play for Spain. "That he is the target of certain discourses has nothing to do with who he is or what he does—or doesn't do—in his private life, but with what he represents at this historical moment and in this political context. In the hegemonic racist imagination of Spain, a Guinean-Moroccan boy in the football elite continues to be perceived as an increasingly paranormal phenomenon," explains Ainhoa ​​Nadia Douhaibi, a researcher on institutional racism, at the ARA.

"Structural racism is present in various spheres, and football has its own particularities. It's a sphere that has been deeply masculinized and where it's generally understood that it has its own set of rules that are applied differently than the rules that have existed in society. This has led to racism in football being very normalized, very present, and often seen in Nazi insults in the 90s against Rayo Vallecano goalkeeper Wilfred Agbonavbare, through monkey gestures and shouts directed at Samuel Eto'o and Dani Alves, to the insults that Lamine Yamal, Vinícius, and Iñaki Williams receive today," explains Moha Gerehou, a journalist specializing in anti-racism.

"The results of the report on the target groups of racism in football and on social media are consistent with the groups historically affected by structural social and economic racism in other spheres: the Black and Muslim populations. Racism is an easy insult," Douhaibi points out. "The fact that Lamine Yamal is Muslim adds another layer to the hate speech he receives. In recent times, rhetoric against Muslims has become more radicalized in Spain, especially in politics. Islamophobia is a historical issue in Spain, and this also affects Lamine Yamal when analyzing the racist insults against him," he explains.

The contradiction of Spain's fans

"The fact that some Spanish national team fans are racist towards their own players is more related to their idea of what Spain and Spaniards should be like. In a racist and white supremacist worldview, a Spaniard is a white person, and if they are not white, they cannot be Spanish. In France," Gerehou continues. "There are people who don't understand that a person of color and Muslim can also be Catalan, as is the case with Lamine Yamal. There is a general rise of the far right, and that fuels racism, including in football. It's a competitive space where Lamine Yamal can be treated like a hero if he plays well, or he can be the target of insults," says Karvala, spokesperson for Unity Against Fascism and Racism.

Karvala mentions the case of England, where anti-racist movements have been organized among fans themselves, and footballers have become more actively involved in the fight against racism. Gerehou believes that footballers in Spain should take a stronger stance and highlights the example of Iñaki Williams and Athletic Club. The captain of the Basque team, involved in a pioneering lawsuit filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office in 2020 against two Espanyol supporters for insulting him, announced that Athletic would walk out of a match if such an incident were to occur again. "We've talked, and if they give us the loss, we wouldn't care.

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Although racist insults are still very prevalent in football, Douhaibi points out that the problem is even more acute in many other areas. "If we have a historical, political, and structural understanding of racism, and we understand it as a system that legalizes the dispossession of fundamental rights, produces regimes of super-exploitation of labor (cheaper workers because they are paid less and have less labor protection), and normalizes exceptional forms of physical and symbolic violence against racialized people, segregation of bodies, etc.), I don't think it can be said that professional football is the area where there are the most dynamics of racism," concludes the researcher on institutional racism.