Something that had caught my attention today, as if resurrected from the pre-season of 2007, is the mention from Adrian Sutil of race regarding the latest Mclaren fiasco. Personally I think his comments are ridiculous, but then I think all comments regarding Lewis Hamilton’s race have been. F1 has always been, and always will be an international sport. Regardless of how Formula One Management disrupt the calender (no North American races is a bit of a disgrace) there will always be top-level drivers from around the globe competing for seats. Lewis happens to be black, but let’s remember he’s still English, he’s not from Africa or a traditionally black country. Similarly, Barack Obama is black, but he is American lets not forget.
I don’t understand the whole black/white ‘thing’ anymore, I just honestly don’t see people like that. It may be something to do with the fact I’m English and we’re used to by nature being surrounding by people from a variety of backgrounds, but I identify people by where they’re from. Whether Japanese, Brazilian, Icelandic or wherever, I see people as being from those places; I don’t see any of those places being specifically black, white or yellow. I know English people that are black, I’ve met French people that are black, I know African people that are white, I’ve met Scottish people that are black… you see my point. I feel that where you are from is the definitive way to identify somebody nowadays, there are so many different skin tones that every country has people of that colour. Eventually everybody is going to end up brown anyways so I don’t see what all the fuss is about!
I do however worry that the same prejudices that surrounded skin colour may transfer past race to country of origin, which worries me. Being from somewhere does not make you like everybody else. Hopefully the world will become a better place once all this racial are cast aside, but until then the less racism in the world, the better.