Bayern Munich’s CEO, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has blamed Mesut Ozil’s agent for fabricating claims of racism as he makes himself look and sound completely ridiculous.
There are few things worse than being told, as part of a minority, that you are not experiencing the ‘-ism’ that is affecting your life by someone from the group doing the persecuting. Not only does it say your feelings don’t matter, it is a reminder of your place in society as ‘other’ and ‘less than’.
As the German circus around Mesut Ozil shows no sign of dying down, Rummenigge has decided to add his inflammatory views to a debate which has merely highlighted Ozil’s claims of racist treatment even further.
“He was not criticised because he has Turkish heritage,” Rummenigge laughably told Sport Bild. “That is a tale that his agents tell us.
“And that is something that annoys me more and more recently. Nowadays agents do many interviews and statements. Sometimes it is like a fairy tale audition.”
What annoys me, Karl-Heinz, is people who are in no position to experience racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist or xenophobic abuse telling people who are what they are experiencing.
You know what else really annoys me? People who dismiss racism like this.
Mesut Ozil made it perfectly clear how he feels about how he has been treated, using words he was happy to publish. To say that how he feels is a ‘fairy tale’ is insulting and indicative of an institutional problem that only sees issues from a place of privilege.