AAs a World Cup reporter with white skin and red hair, you are in the middle of the process in the Main Media Center in Doha, which you otherwise only perceive from a distance with the same characteristics in Germany: racial profiling. Media people with microphones are constantly slouching through the workroom and addressing those who look as if they could come from the country that has their national team as the next World Cup opponent. It sounds like this: “Are you from Belgium?” Or something like this: “Are you from Serbia?” Or something like this: “Are you from England?”
And of course you can only have so much fun in this column because as a white reporter you don’t have to be afraid of people with microphones, against whom you can always defend yourself with a “Sorry, I’m busy” – unlike as a black reporter Man in front of some pistol-carrying police officers who, if you want to defend yourself with words, in the worst case press your knee against your neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. The racial profiling that is happening in the world is a huge problem. The “racial research” that takes place in the Main Media Center in Doha, however, is not.
Answers for a quick end
If you weren’t really busy, you could finish it quickly. To do this, you would have to proceed as follows: you could say to a colleague who wants to know something about Belgium that the team is playing so poorly at the moment because they can’t stand the fact that the European Union, which has its headquarters in the Belgian city of Brussels lets people die at its external borders.
Colleagues who want to know something about Serbia could be told that national coach Svetislav Pešić simply doesn’t know anything about football. Colleagues who want to know something about England could be told that the players are suffering because Britpop isn’t what it used to be either.
And if none of that works, you can always turn to FIFA President Gianni Infantino and cry about bullying. So from redhead to ex-redhead.
