This is the title of a recent article in the Independent, following up the Raheem Sterling racial abuse incident. In it Chief Sports Writer Jonathan Liew writes about the casual racism in football, saying every journalist has a “stack” of stories, such as the Premier League manager who once confided his opinion that black players “belong in the trees”.
Liew goes through the joke and banter defences and other difficulties within football culture of exposing these attitudes and identifies a fundamental problem with discussing racism: “a startling number of people don’t really know what it is. Never suffered it, never been affected by it, never really examined it in any great detail. And thus labouring under the first misconception of racism: that it is, essentially, all about incidents.” And nothing else. What Sterling has done in his recentsocial media posts is take “two forms of discrimination – the violent public act and the insidious, unacknowledged bias – and bind them irrevocably together.” If football is a power for good, it has a responsibility to face up to the deeper issue. It won’t be easy but a “continuous process, a slow and a tough process of education and awareness and sensitivity.” Read the full article here.
