Don’t Equate Rudeness With Disloyalty
The most memorable scene in “Among the Thugs,” journalist Bill Buford’s grisly 1992 book on British soccer violence, is of an angry fan sucking out a policeman’s eyeball. Week after week of the European soccer season, mobs of fans battle with police and other mobs of fans. Soccer enthusiasts are crushed, stabbed, beaten and sometimes killed. We have never seen such behavior at U.S. soccer matches.
But of course, the uproar over the poor sportsmanship of the pro-Mexican crowd at the Los Angeles Coliseum last Sunday has nothing to do with our collective concern with fan behavior. If that were the case, there would have been greater public soul-searching years back when rowdy Raider fans regularly beat up on supporters of opposing teams.
At the heart of the outcry over pro-Mexican fans showering U.S. team players and spectators with beer, water, fruit and nachos is the same concern that gave rise to California’s perilous contemporary political climate: Will Mexican immigrants assimilate into U.S. culture?
After Sunday’s game--Mexico , in a biennial Gold Cup match of the Confederation of North, Central and Caribbean Assn. Football, defeated the U.S. 1-0--U.S. team defender Alexis Lalas questioned the gratitude and loyalty Latino immigrant fans had to their adopted country. Other mostly Anglo spectators who were rooting for the U.S. understandably found it odd that they were made to feel uncomfortable cheering for the “home team.”
But divided sports loyalties are nothing new to countries with large numbers of immigrants. To misread this split loyalty as disdain for the adopted country is to misunderstand the difficulty migrants have always experienced leaving their country of birth and adapting to their country of choice. To equate sports loyalty with national patriotism is not only specious logic but demeaning to the latter ideal.
A decade ago, Norman Tebbit, a high-ranking Tory minister under Margaret Thatcher, made that mistake and invited ridicule. Tebbit spoke of the “cricket test,” in which immigrant sports fans had to choose their loyalties unambiguously. He implied that immigrants who rooted for their native country over England’s team did not deserve to reside in Britain, and that foreign-born British subjects could not be good citizens if they had even a nominal loyalty to their native countries. And in the case of Mexican immigrants in the United States, nominal loyalty is what is at stake.
Protesters waving Mexican flags at the 70,000-strong anti-Proposition 187 rally in the fall of 1994 disturbed many Americans of a variety of ethnicities. The potent symbol of a foreign flag being waved in a politically charged atmosphere may even have increased support for the anti-illegal immigrant initiative. But the Mexican flag in the context of that march and certainly in last Sunday’s soccer game was not so much a political as a cultural symbol.
Like most immigrants, Mexicans are proud of their culture, but not in any way loyal to the government of a nation whose endemic corruption and mismanagement sent them and millions of others northward to seek work and a future for their families. More than anything else, spectators waving the Mexican flag are demonstrating an emotional connection to their place of birth, a pride of culture, and, yes, a cheer for a team they’ve rooted for since childhood.
Los Angeles, which has always attracted migrants from far-off places, is no stranger to fans rooting for the teams of their birthplace. Older Angelenos will remember attending football games at the Coliseum in the late 1940s and 1950s--the height of Anglo interstate migration--where large chunks of the crowd would be rooting for the Cleveland Browns or the Chicago Bears against the Los Angeles Rams. Did that mean they hated Los Angeles and were undermining its well-being? Did anyone assume they didn’t work hard, pay taxes, care for their homes and show concern for the safety of the streets and the quality of local schools? Was their demonstration of affection for the visiting team a political statement? Of course not.
Nonetheless, as hundreds of thousands of local Mexican immigrants are pledging allegiance to the United States in massive naturalization ceremonies, U.S.-born citizens shouldn’t forget that civic assimilation is a two-way street. In the past 10 years, more than 1 million Latino immigrants have studied English in Los Angeles Unified School District night classes, tens of thousands of families have purchased their first homes and new citizens have begun voting at rates higher than the overall electorate. How have we responded? By stepping up criminal background checks of citizenship applicants and denying benefits to disabled elderly legal immigrants.
The majority of Brits who denounced Norman Tebbit’s cricket test had it right. Rooting for your native country doesn’t undermine your oath of allegiance to your adopted home. But stateside, perhaps we native-born Americans should remind ourselves that being American is about sharing a civic ethos of freedom and opportunity that is neither culturally nor racially exclusive. Patriotism is neither reducible nor defined by our waving of the Star-Spangled Banner. That means we can root against Alexis Lalas and still be loyal Americans. Rude, unruly fans are one thing, patriotism is quite another.
