Warning! Very long entry alert!

This comment was originally triggered by F1 Fanatic's provocatively-titled The Genocide Grand Prix, though several events in the last few weeks have contributed towards the feeling that I need to write this entry.

The vexed relationship between sport and (proper) politics does not often crop up in relation to F1. Yet there is a growing feeling in the blogosphere that the relationship between the two should be higher up the agenda.

First there was the test in Barcelona earlier this month. I avoided commenting on it much at the time, partly because I don't trust testing results very much (for all that I smiled at Fisi being fourth on the first day, I wouldn't predict he'd be fourth in the Australian GP on that basis!) The second reason was because the main story of the weekend was one on which I wasn't sure how to report properly.

On the one side, the fact that a group of people had turned up wearing costume that could (and was) construed as racially insulting against Lewis Hamilton was seriously big news, especially since there were (then) no previously recorded instances of racially-based stupidity in Formula 1.

On the other hand, I didn't want to give these same people too much coverage in case it tacitly supported the predictable media publicity that these people received. This was uncharted territory for my blog as much as it was for the Formula 1 world.

Now, with the perspective lent by three weeks of considering other matters, it may be a good time to tackle the matter in its context.

For what it's worth, I think the people who were most in the spotlight were Carnaval celebrants who made a seriously stupid choice of outfits. Carnaval is a Spanish fiesta (with many parts of the world having an equivalent festival) that occurs just before Lent and drifts a week or more afterwards. Part of the celebration is that people dress up in costumes, which sometimes poke fun at other people, especially those that have recently been in the news. However, they are not meant to be insulting or make people upset. As such, choosing outfits that used skin colour as the basis of the fun-poking was an incredibly stupid move.

That move had far-reaching consequences. McLaren have since spent their testing more or less barricaded into their pit compound, with the gates opening for a select few; one might even wonder if the rumoured move into the fifth pit box (which is normally reserved for the fifth-placed team in the championship - the better-ranking pits are bigger and nicer) was facilitated by the authorities wishing to make it harder for undesirables to get to the McLaren pit should they get into the paddock against security.

The testing barricades are sensible while the initial risk of copycats fades away, but moving McLaren to the middle of the pit lane won't solve the problem in the long term. Better security might, but some racist acts are very difficult to police ahead of time. People yelling racial taunts, for instance, generally look like everyone else until they open their mouths. More likely more cynical reasons are in play for McLaren's possible move to the fifth pit box, such as subtle pressure from Ferrari not to let McLaren have the slight advantage given by the end pit, or the realisation that the Brand Centre could do with somewhere to park...

The press from the UK and Spain accused each other for fuelling the fire, giving further cause for concern for those who believed the standard of F1 journalism was decreasing.

The FIA has launched threats to take races away if there are any repeats of the Barcelona incident, to a background of denouncements of racist behaviour by the Spanish authorities and also by Fernando Alonso (link in German). They've also announced a program called "Racing Against Racism". Without any details, however, it is hard to judge whether they will be effective in preventing the spread of wrong-headed attitudes.

It would do well to start with the press. In the last 12 months, the team-mate fight at McLaren between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton has had several levels of complexity. The mainstream press in Britain and Spain has, by and large, chosen to ignore them. Instead, both countries' presses had increasingly shallow pieces pitching the fight as ever more adversarial (apart from some harsh press statements from both parties - possibly under pressure from these same press people - and some serious indiscipline at the Hungaroring, there was little evidence of tension between the pair - it was more Alonso v Ron Dennis than anything else).

As a consequence, Hamilton's initial popularity with Britain has faded (except among the casual spectator and the British press which sees casual spectators as walking pound signs). In Spain, he never was popular and he ended up seen as "Alonso's opponent" rather than "Lewis Hamilton". Alonso has been vilified in the British press and lionised by the Spanish press (though even the more obsessive Spanish F1 does not seem to suffer from saturation effect the way their British counterparts are - perhaps they are more used to it, since the Alonso obsession in the Spanish media dates back to 2003 and Alonso's arrival at Renault).

Granted, neither driver helped their cause with some unwise acts at times. But they're F1 drivers, not plaster saints, and a realistic portrayal of their actions would have allowed us to put them into perspective. A pity the press and perspective go together like oil and water these days...

The lack of perspective meant that we ended up with fans from both countries who had effectively been brought into the sport, learned to love one driver (of their own nationality) and been implicitly made to assume that to love one driver means that any driver who does not share some single key characteristic should - and anyone who poses a threat to that driver must be hated. For the casual viewer, in the absence of information about F1 customs regarding support, will simply copy the journalists, particularly the commentators, with modifications to fit the viewer's culture and background. Absent perspective from the press, the fans will be equally lacking in perspective when expressing their opinions. When they find that their nearby peers think the same way, group acts such as that seen in Barcelona become possible.

Lewis Hamilton's one-sided fans in the British press room have already caused some people to unsubscribe from F1 Racing and demand alternatives to ITV. La Marca are the most obvious Spanish equivalent for one-sided coverage. Apart from it having a specialism in sport, it can be regarded as what The Sun in Britain would be like if the libel laws were more lax. Frankly, any paper which is prepared to go to the extremes it did to fool its readers into believing Roldan Rodruigez had a better chance of a 2008 F1 seat than he did should not be taken very seriously. However, the sorts of things that have been printed about Lewis recently constitute dangerous manipulation of attitudes and would certainly fuel racist behaviour.

Spain's main sports before Alonso came to the fore were football and bull-fighting, both sports which tend to encourage support for one side against the other. In football, the home team (from the viewer's perspective) is supported against the away team and in bull fighting, the toreador is supported against the bull.

Formula 1 is much more complicated, with twenty-two "sides" to choose from (thirty-three if you count the teams). There are many shades of grey and a wide variety of hues, and F1 confounds any attempt to understand it in simpler terms. The many who watched motorcycling before F1 will have a reasonable feel for this, but by now a very large number of Spaniards watching the sport-cum-soap-opera would not the sort of background to balance out what the media were saying.

Nationalism can be a good thing because it encourages people to think beyond themselves and particularly beyond their immediate community. The downside of this affiliation is the same as the downside of all group affiliations everywhere. To join a group can be to lose your individual identity and in losing that identity, reduce everything to “Us” and “Them”. “Us” being whoever is in your group (with those worst affected struggling to sense where their individual, original thoughts end and their memories of what their group has said or implied it wants begin). “Them” is everyone else, considered inferior to “Us”. That sort of parochial attitude is the basis of all discrimination.

The moment there is an attempt to comprehend a global activity through nationalism or any other variety of parochialism, the true meaning of the activity is lost to discrimination of those elements that come from outside your country. When the group is challenged by another from outside the group, the "pack mentality" of the group means that the most obvious point(s) of difference is/are used to attack the outsider. The hope being to defeat that outsider. In Lewis Hamilton's case, that happened to be race. Any other obvious and irrelevant indicator of difference could have been used as well, because xenophobia (the technical word for parochialism) knows no bounds.

This is why excessive nationalism led to latent racism and why it eventually came out into the open.

This is only one of several directions membership of a group can take, which is just as well because otherwise we would have to ban all group activities. It does however make sense of the transfer some people make from nationalism to racism and other discriminatory activities, and also explains why F1 has this problem now, why it's surfaced in Spain (rather than Malaysia, China or some other nation with an emerging F1 supporter base) and how the perpetrators might not have been aware they were doing anything wrong, despite how obvious it was to many in the English-speaking world.

The "pick one side to support against the other" approach simply doesn't work for F1. It is, after all, a global enterprise. The question is, has anyone told the casual Spanish F1 viewers (and press) yet?

The British media do not have this excuse, which makes their behaviour less understandable. F1 Racing has, in a nice touch, acknowledged this in its March 2008 edition. Hopefully this will mark the beginning of more objective journalism from them and that other journalistic outputs will follow suit.

Perhaps Barcelona could have been put down as a one-off incident. However, it has been revealed that there were people behaving in a racist fashion at the China 2007 GP. The situation will need to be carefully watched, a role that the "Racing Against Racism" scheme could usefully perform.

Speaking of China, that leads to the second instance of politics and sport mixing in F1 this month. The Genocide Grand Prix deals with an issue that has been latent since 2004 (the ethics of staging the Chinese GP), but has come to the fore due to the Olympics and Paralympics being held in Beijing later this year.

From the moment China won the Olympics and Paralympics, the decision was criticised. China has a very poor reputation for human rights, possibly because the Chinese concept of human rights has been based on a completely different philosophical tradition to Western human rights, causing much tension between those attempting to establish universal human rights.

This is not the only reason for poor human rights in China - classic political stalling and inertia, combined with the pre-eminence given to strengthening the economy and the Chinese government not accepting the wisdom of certain measures contribute to a country with which the likes of Stephen Spielberg will not do business.

Bernie Ecclestone was never likely to be one who had that sort of ethical discomfort. His ethical system is the ethics of the Almighty Dollar, so when China told him they could afford the circuit, Bernie's rate ($22m in 2005, $27.5m in 2006 and increasing by similar amounts since) and would allow the race to take place, he took their money and made the race happen. Should it have been that easy, though?

Some people have argued that F1 should not go to any race where the governance makes immoral decisions. The trouble with that is that every country makes immoral decisions. Some discriminate according to race, some by social or economic status, some by health, some by place of residence, some by all the above. There are a few places that manage to contrive unique "excuses" for discriminatory practise as well. And that's just discussing the discrimination side of politics - political ethics is multi-dimensional and some countries which excel in some elements do very poorly in others.

In fact, even Bernie practises discrimination of a sort, favouring those who will pay him, directly or otherwise. However, he's a single-minded professional businessman and that sort of comes with the territory. Ethics requires some sort of consideration for the consequences of actions, and if your only criterion for measuring consequences is financial, then the discrimination-by-money is not a surprising thing to note.

Still, that does not get us out of the problem, for most of us have a code of ethics, and very few will share Bernie's extreme interpretation of capitalist ethics. So what to do about China?

Boycotting the race to show disapproval with its staging has been suggested. If only financial criteria are understood by the likes of Bernie and the people who run the event, then a lack of foreign capital going inwards would make China sit up. However many locals step in to fill the spaces in the grandstands, part of the reason China has a race is to attract foreign capital and thus strengthen its economy. Absent that capital and the purpose of holding the race is diminished. PR, which is another reason the Chinese have a GP, would also be adversely affected.

As it happens, I don't get a choice over whether I boycott attending the Chinese GP or not. The Chinese entry requirements make it quite clear that anyone with a mental disorder, sexually transmitted disease or infectious disease is forbidden from entering China altogether. No exceptions.

Infectious disease I can understand. No rational government wants to allow its citizens to be infected with diseases from outsiders (who would generally come into some sort of contact with the indigenous population during their stay). Sexually transmitted diseases are a rather odd restriction, which says something about how Chinese people with STDs are regarded in their home country. But mental disorders?!? Why are they not allowed?

Anyhow, I have Asperger's Syndrome, a neurological (brain wiring) condition at the “mild” end of the autism spectrum. Asperger's Syndrome is classified as a mental disorder. So despite being a peaceful, law-abiding individual who doesn't randomly explode into purple goo on touching foreign soil, I am forbidden from spectating at the Chinese GP itself. Let's just say I have yet to talk to anyone who sees this as a sensible restriction on the Chinese government's part...

There's the ethical element (discriminating people on the basis of their neurology is as wrong as discriminating them on the basis of race). There's the self-interest element (surely venues should want more spectators, not fewer). There's the financial element (as well as paying for a ticket, the extra foreign capital flowing into local restaurants, hotels and evening entertainment locales would surely boost the Chinese economy). There's the numbers argument (a rule that bars 1 in about 150 people from entering the country before they even make themselves known to the authorities would seem pretty strange).

Even if Bernie doesn't care either way (it was once rumoured that he would hold a Mediterranean GP at his Paul Ricard circuit with no spectators at all, surely the Chinese government should have seen sense and admitted people according to whether they posed a risk to China instead of whether they fit into some artificially-produced boxes.

In short, xenophobia affecting F1 is not just practised by a handful of easily-photographed individuals, but by a variety of sources, with consequences going some way beyond hurting the feelings of the athletes competing. Sport may be at its best when politics doesn't get involved, but politics is pervasive. Sport has to take measures to control its influence in ways that benefit sport.

One could joke that the Spanish authorities could prevent future Chinese mishaps by making racism a psychologically-certifiable condition, thus preventing anyone engaging in racist behaviour from being able to enter China in the first place. Since psychological conditions have a lot of stigma attached to them in the Western world, this would be a disproportionate reaction, though.

It also wouldn't stop such people from going to the other 18 F1 races, where people with mental disorders are permitted (in case you're wondering, even Malaysia and Singapore of the current F1 venues allow people with mental disorders to enter without additional impediment, though the USA won't allow people with mental disorders to participate in the Visa Waiver Programme).

More sensibly, Spain and all other countries hosting F1 races could team up to ban any known troublemaker (whether the trouble is racial or on some other universally-objectionable grounds) from any sporting event in those countries. If this could include non-F1 races as well, this would be even more effective, for there is no reason to believe the behaviour of a given individual will be more responsible in some sports than others. Neil Horan proved that when he made a nuisance of himself at the 2003 British GP and the and also at the 2004 Olympic marathon.

Such an international agreement would need to be supported by an information campaign explaining clearly and precisely what actions are considered unacceptable. Yes, the broad-brush version is on the race tickets themselves, but how many people actually read them, especially if they're in a language in which the ticket-holder is not fluent? That, and a reasonably strict and clear interpretation of the rules should prevent too many further problems in the long run.

Bernie and Alonso have since questioned the need for "Racing Against Racism" on the grounds of it being a one-off. I am 100% sure that the specific troublemakers at Barcelona won't repeat their error because it was originally made through ignorance. That won't stop deliberately racist people in future, though, and in the coming years there is a serious danger that they will appear on the tracks of Grand Prix racing.

While F1 continues to expand into new territories, those countries whose populations actually respond to F1's presence will continue to bring new problems and new expressions of old problems into F1. A flexible response is needed. Perhaps “Racing Against Racism” should have its scope widened and be re-named “Racing For Ethics?”