http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/sports/soccer/in-england-star-players-accused-of-racist-comments.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha27

Click on the NY TIMES link for more on racism in European soccer. I posted a few weeks ago about this. I post with a certain schadenfreude, of course. Euro relatives and colleagues never tire, it seems, of recounting America's racist past and hold up the "cosmopolitan" nature of major European cities as some sort of counter-example to provincial (and racist) America. Certainly one never wants to deny continuing problems of racism in America today -- but Europe as a model? London? Paris? Berlin? Amsterdam? Really? Certainly the kind of racist sports incidents cited here are unthinkable in the NBA or NFL or Major League Baseball. Can you imagine? History matters. Europe is a place where people immigrate away from, not to...and it is only recently that that pattern is changing. Old habits die hard.