Newcastle United Defender Tweets Horriby Racist Photo, Quickly Apologies

The topic of race is never too far from the front burner in American sports. Thursday the use of the N-word cropped up again via the Matt Barnes/Blake Griffin spat.

Looks like England will get a dose of this today after Newcastle United defender Steven Taylor posted this offensive image of four black steroetypes on Twitter in a discussion with French teammate Massadio Haidara. Since it’s four different pictures cropped together Taylor had to go through, find all four and put them together. Apparently not for one single moment did he think to himself that people are going to see this and it might be a bad idea.

Taylor quickly apologized and Haidara said it was simply “banter.” When you see stuff like this come out, England loses a little of its moral high ground when it’s soccer authorities condemn places like Russia for its racist abuse toward players like Manchester City’s Yaya Toure.

https://twitter.com/27StevenTaylor/statuses/401346972961243136

It’s another example that professional athletes aren’t exactly the smartest or most cultured people on the planet.

Perhaps white people ought to follow the advice of Charles Barkley: don’t use the n-word, ever. Let’s make an addendum: don’t make jokes about blackface, either. As Barkley said on TNT Thursday night, a lot of questionable language is used inside the locker room where it has different context. Twitter is not the locker room.