Originally Posted by
drillerpie
To be fair he didn't call him African, he humorously queried whether he had a doctored African passport in reference to the number (comparatively small in relation to the total number of African players, comparatively large in relation to players from other continents) of famous suspected cases of this from sub-Saharan Africa. Neither did he imply that 'all African players have doctored passports', as has been previously suggested.
This happens in sub-Saharan Africa because the state bureaucracy is less developed than in the Maghreb. Many births are registered years afterwards, if at all, which can lead to some flexibility in the official date of birth.
If we want to get technical about it, the players with the passports in question will have had the same kind of skin pigmentation as Enzio, and I don't think he was seriously implying that Enzio has a doctored passport, or that Enzio was born in Africa, but the fact remains that he used Enzio's skin colour as the premise for a joke, which is inadvisable as a line manager in a work context, especially with people you haven't known for long.
How would Doyle react to a joke using Irish stereotypes? He might find it funny, he might not find it funny but it would be water of a duck's back, or he might take offence, perhaps even extreme offence. He might be ok with it if said directly to him with a smile, but less so if it was said behind his back while he was playing, as part of comments critical of his performance. Unless you know the person well enough to know they'llbe ok with it, you have to err on the side of caution, which Ross seems to have acknowledged.
As I've said before, I don't think it's impossible for this kind of joke to be taken in good spirits, but your judgement needs to be spot on in terms of when, where and with whom.
I think a lot of this boils down to details like the context things like this are said in, what you're used to in terms of things like social class, work environment etc. Some people on here clearly see it as a bit of banter, and they are probably used to environments where you get the piss ripped out of you for any distinguishing features whatsoever, and comments relating to nationality or skin colour would pass unobserved. Others may be used to more sophisticated environments where this kind of comment is the height of embarrassment.
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