Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on different ways how racionalizations, raciolinguistic profiling and racism are expressed by fans at Czech football stadiums and on social media as places providing enough anonymity while also arguing that race is a tabooed object excluded from discourse.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is part of a broader research focusing on the integration of African football players in the Czech Republic. As football remains a major sport in which racism is still present to a relatively high degree, this paper focuses on the various ways in which fans in Czech stadiums express racialisations, raciolinguistic profiling, overt as well as covert, sometimes even unintentional racism. Given that the Czech football environment still functions as a white establishment “allowing” players to play its white game, "whiteness" is normative, and race is an absent presence often excluded from discourse because it is a tabooed object. The data was collected primarily through ethnography at several football stadiums in the Czech Republic, closely examining Czech specific language terminology in relation to ideologies of race and racial labelling. The participant observation data capturing social and racial meanings in Czech language usage was combined with content analysis of selected social media posts. Analysing both platforms as places in which one feels "among their own" it provides for much anonymity and unfiltered commentary. The preliminary results of this research point to the fact that although words indicating a clear presence of race are almost absent in the statements of fans, racism is very present and expressed in various ways, often hidden and sometimes unintentional.