BBC NEWS | UK | Slovakia face fan ban over racism via lagtime

The Football Association has lodged a formal protest over racist chanting by Slovakian fans at England's Euro 2004 qualifier in Bratislava on Saturday.

A "torrent" of abuse was directed mainly at England striker Emile Heskey and defender Ashley Cole throughout the match.

The complaint to European football's governing body Uefa, which has already launched an investigation, could result in a ban on Slovak fans travelling to the return fixture in England in June.

Other sanctions may include a fine or forcing Slovakia to play their next qualifying match for the championship in Portugal in two years time behind closed doors.

Here is a comment from lagtime

(Heskey and Cole are both black men. According the World Factbook, if there are any black people at all in Slovakia, they comprise the 0.2% of the population categorized as "other." Therefore, Slovakians have virtually no interaction with black people ... and yet they display this kind of horrific racial antipathy toward blacks? How can this be?

His thinking and that of commenters on his blog is that racial hatred towards blacks is innate. I don't think that's true, but I do agree that is a univesal phenomenon in our present world and has been for a very long time going back millennia. I guess it accounts for the distrust and defensiveness many blacks have towards people of other races, perhaps similar to how many Jews feel about Christians and just in general, the "nobody really likes us but us and we must fend for ourselves," feeling.