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A thread about my greatest career regret (prompted, improbably, by news of the imminent retirement of an American brand of pancake syrup https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/17/business/aunt-jemima-logo-change/index.html).
In the summer of 2014, I travelled with the American Outlaws – the US soccer team’s biggest fan group – to the World Cup in Brazil. The idea was to write a book that would be part gonzo yarn, part travelogue, and part exploration of the growth of soccer fandom in the States.
(I would also cover games for The Guardian, and a few other places, as I went. That part of the plan, at least, did work out.)
The book, as you may have gathered, never happened. I got as far as writing a proposal, drafting the first chapter and plotting out a detailed chapter list. I spoke to a literary agent, who was enthusiastic. And then, being perfectly frank, I dropped the ball.
I can give you some excuses. My phone, on which I had been keeping many notes, voice clips and photos, got corrupted after I was caught in a spectacular rainstorm at the USA’s final group game, against Germany. The phone got wet, refused to turn off, and eventually fried itself.
(I do mean really fried, btw. I wound up sending it off to a forensic recovery place and they still were only able to salvage a small amount of what was on there. It was honestly pretty devastating. I refused to buy phones without removable batteries for several years after!)
That isn’t the whole reason, though. If I had been in the right headspace, I still had enough material to develop into a book. But I wasn’t. There were things going on in my personal life at that time that were bigger and I just couldn’t find the focus that project needed.
I still think it was a great story. More World Cup tickets were being bought in the US than in any other country. And the numbers were almost doubling from tournament to tournament – c. 70,000 in 2006, 130,000 in 2010 and just shy of 200,000 in 2014.
Now, you may already know about the @AmericanOutlaws but to me, back then, they were fascinating – a group launched by a pair of 20-somethings in Lincoln, Nebraska who started a fan group from their front rooms that had got so big they were being talked about on ESPN.
They were getting so many new members in the run-up to that World Cup that one of those founders - Korey - had needed to recruit his parents to stuff membership packs. His retired mum was having groups of friends over every day to help.
(When i visited, they had received 2,000 new memberships in three days. His parents' entire front room was buried in crates of Outlaw t-shirts and bandanas. It was, honestly a scene.)
The tournament itself was amazing. To attend a World Cup in Brazil is an extraordinary privilege and probably still the highlight of my career. Covering Suarez’s bite on Chiellini, and Uruguay’s bizarre denials post-game, might be the most surreal moment of that career as well.
Juggling days of reporting with days hanging out with fans of a country that isn’t mine was also a very particular experience. A lot of fun, definitely, but challenging too, trying to work out exactly what my role was between observer and participant.
I was fascinated, though, by hearing the narratives of different US soccer fans, how they had come to love a sport that sits a little way down the national pecking order, seeing what their rituals were and what they shared/didn’t share with the ones I know from Italy and England
One obvious thing that stood out was how many people liked to attend the games in costume, and as historical figures in particular. Among the Outlaws were General Patton, Uncle Sam, many Abraham Lincolns and, most famously, Teddy Goalsevelt. ( https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/jun/30/usa-fan-teddy-goalsevelt-world-cup-2014)
But there was one conversation that stayed with me, with a woman named Imani Williams, who was part of the Outlaws travelling group. I went for a dig in through my files and managed to track down my transcript.
Imani was black, and told me that she had wanted to dress up too, but that she felt like there was no appropriate patriotic figure available to her.
“I wanted to do a costume but who the fuck am I going to be, Aunt Jemima? I thought about Oprah, but I really didn’t want to have to do anything that required a sign.”
I didn’t know anything about the history of Aunt Jemima at the time. According to the CNN article linked at the start of this thread, “The brand's origin and logo is based off the song "Old Aunt Jemima" from a minstrel show performer and reportedly sung by slaves.”
I wish I had known that, because it lends quite a different context to what Imani said. Her name is on the list I had of people to follow up with for a proper interview post-tournament, so perhaps it would have come up then.
Even without that context, it struck me that it must actually be really hard, to be so committed as to spend a chunk of savings to travel & support your country's team, but not have a single easily recognisable historic character that you felt you could wear for an afternoon.
I don’t know if that was a meaningful thing for Imani or not - because I never had the conversation. Which was already a regret, but paired together with the Aunt Jemima story from earlier it only feels more acute.
Systemic racism persists in part because of things like this – gaps in our knowledge that we don’t even know are there.
So, yes, apologies, this has been a longer stream of consciousness than I was anticipating! Perhaps it is not one regret, but a knot of them.
I don’t have a book to write just now, but I am trying to do better at having the important conversations.
(On a more frivolous note, I will say that I do not miss American pancake syrup. Canadian maple syrup, now that’s another thing entirely…)
(On a more frivolous note, I will say that I do not miss American pancake syrup. Canadian maple syrup, now that’s another thing entirely…)
Post-script: it turns out Imani is on Twitter - @broadNabroad! We are making plans to pick up where we left off in that conversation soon (imminent Coppa Italia final demanding my attention just at the sec!)
