Bigots, get off social media. Everyone is welcome to Kansas City’s World Cup | Williams
There are a lot of things wrong with social media and its everyone-has-it accessibility, and one is the way people believe they can hide behind it to spew mean, hateful, racist and bigoted comments. I wish they could be banned — type something racist, and your phone, laptop or computer automatically shuts down: BANNED!
Except that’s a free speech issue, and I’m for free speech.
But two things can be true. So there’s also something good that happens along with the spewing. Because people are so willing to put their ugly racism out there on full display, the rest of us know who the racists are.
News flash: Most of us are tired of hearing from you. Go away.
What am I talking about?
A colleague of mine who covers soccer for The Star recorded a video of families, friends and soccer fans, playing music and having fun in a strip mall parking lot this week in Olathe, and posted it on X.
He said that for the most part, people in the video were metropolitan area residents who are Algerian soccer fans and showed up to show enthusiasm for their team, bond with one another and have a good time.
In the video, the parking is full. Children are playing and running around, men are in team jerseys, and an American flag and an Algerian flag fly side by side. It looks like the businesses there were making lots of money.
That’s exactly what we want our diverse communities to do, as Kansas City and the surrounding areas invite the world here for the FIFA World Cup games
It just seems like whenever racists and xenophobes see the rest of us enjoying our neighbors and friends, having a great time sharing culture through music, food or sport, they try to infect it with their sickness. And I use that term — sickness — lightly, not to diminish the responsibility of the perpetrator or to obscure the sociopolitical roots of oppression.
I don’t know how many of the ignorant posts that were attached to my colleague’s video came from real Kansas City area residents, and how many came from either unaffiliated outsiders or bots for that matter. But I’m pretty sure that their noise, which I will not repeat here, is not reflective of the way most of us feel about our Algerian neighbors, friends, co-workers and visitors.
People opposing the hate quickly jumped to defend the party, pointing out how happy they were to see people enjoying their city.
Daniel Sperry, a freelance writer who covers soccer for The Star, told me that when the Algerian soccer team arrived at Kansas City International Airport, Sunday night, “tons of people” were there to greet them. And when, in the middle of a summer storm, the team rolled into Lawrence (where the Algerian team base camp is located), people lined the streets to welcome them.
The people of Kansas City are some of the proudest of their city that I have ever met. I don’t believe they will let the haters give the world the impression that KC is not a friendly, welcoming city. Is there work to be done here? Yes. But we have come a long way, and the whole city has worked really hard to become world-class and to show off what we have done here.
Now is a perfect time to quash the hate, bigotry and xenophobia. We have four foreign teams setting up camp in the Kansas City area, and their fans will visit to support them over the next several weeks. They are our guests and should be treated as such.
When the haters pop up on your social media, block them. Tell them to go away. No one is interested in that noise.