Argentina Football Team Celebratory Chant towards France Sparks Conversation Around Race and Identity

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    The picture I have chosen for this week's blog comes from the controversial instagram live inside the Argentinian football coach of 2024. This event took place after Argentina be Colombia 1-0 in the Copa America (Tournament of North and South American Nations) Final. While celebrations took place on the coach, Chelsea and Argentina star Enzo Fernandez went live on instagram to share the moment with the world. In this notorious video, Fernandez and his teammates are heard singing a racist chant targeted towards members of the French national team. Specific lyrics target Kylan Mbappe and rumors of his relationship with a trans woman. "They play in France but they are from Angola. They are going to run well, they sleep with trans people. Mum is Nigerian, dad is Cameroonian, but the passport says French” (NYT Athletic 2024). This chant shines a light on the marginalization of French people of African descent and what "being from" somewhere really means in our society.
    

    I thought of this event instantly after our class discussion about the cockatoo quote from Individuality and the Intellectuals. There, dark-skinned men paint physical resemblance (for example, to white cockatoos) onto their bodies, and then, looking at the resemblance they themselves have just painted, affirm that they have shared it with those birds and with one another from time immemorial (Fields 2002: 444). This quote addresses the formation of identity through symbolism and ritual. The darker skinned individual begin to believe they are of cockatoo nature through the symbolic ritual of painting it on themselves. The Argentine chant is a poetic reflection of this quote. The black French players are dark-skinned men that assume the identity of a Frenchmen by sporting the historic white and blue jersey. Wearing a national team jersey has significant symbolic meaning in the world of sports, especially football. Any local club rivalry is put aside when players come together to represent the country. The closest experience a black French player has to being collective seen as a French man is when he represents is country. Until then, and even after then, he is an African born in France. This chants pulls the rug from underneath any black player that believed they could truly be seen as the identity they claim. 
    

    The fields interpretation of identity made me realize that black French players (among other European nations) are outside insiders. France has historically been an international powerhouse for producing talent. Some of world football's greatest players (Zidane, Cantona, Platini) call France their home. Many other historic French talents (Mbappe, Henry, Kante, Vieira) are black. They are insiders is the sense of being of the same technical calibre as the others, as well as sharing the field with them to represent their home. However, they are outsiders in the sense of race and cultural background. The historical degradation of African nations created a divide between black French and white French people. No matter how successful the player becomes, they will also be black, always an outsider. 
   

     Ultimately, the Argentina Football Association has not faced any punishment for this event, however many black French (and non-french) players spoke out against the song. The players involved in the video publicly apologized for their ignorance and insensitivity, but this does not impact the greater conversation. Why is this the perspective? In the words of Fields, "Durkheim's argument entailedthe social invention of precisely that French-ness which some of the French were embracing as a matter of common descent to which he had no access" (Fields 2002: 444). In our society, immense success, fame, popularity, and wealth does not replace or equate to one's access to common descent.




Fields, Karen E. 2002. “Individuality and the Intellectuals: An Imaginary Conversation between W. E. B. Du Bois and Emile Durkheim.” Theory and Society 31(4):435–462. Retrieved March 26, 2025 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3108512).

NYT Athletic. 2024. “Fallout from Argentina Chant.” The New York Times Athletic, July 20. Retrieved March 26, 2025 (https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5647005/2024/07/20/fallout-from-argentina-chant/).





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