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Well if everyone else is having a go, I’ll pay my money and jump on for the ride.
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| Ferdinand and Terry square up |
The aforementioned incident in Sunday’s game between QPR and Chelsea followed hot on the heels of Patrice Evra accusing Luis Suarez of making racist remarks when Manchester United faced Liverpool earlier this month. Further a-field, Cesc Fabregas has had to defend himself against accusations of racism in La Liga, and the pitiful amount of black managers in the English game - two to be precise - has led to a campaign for the Premier and Football Leagues to force clubs to include an ethnic minority candidate on their shortlists when hiring new managers. This follows a precedent set in NFL where the ‘Rooney rule’ has helped ensure talented black coaches get their chance at the top of the professional game.
So the media storm that’s broken over the last 24 hours is not without foundation. Clearly, there are issues of racism within the game and the authorities, clubs, players and fans cannot afford to put their collective blinkers on and pretend those issues don’t exist. As any manager will tell you; standing still is as good as going backwards in football. However, whilst the recent events do merit discussion, I can’t help feeling that that discussion is taking place without the sophistication required for such a serious matter.
Take Stan Collymore’s Twitter feed this week for example. Now whilst I believe Stan, like most broadcasters, can often be guilty of being deliberately obtuse in order to provoke reaction, his handling of the racism discussion seemed geared towards condemning English football as having returned to the 1970s, when casual racism both on and off the pitch was rife. Stan commented that racism was the elephant in the room; something that surely stops being the case when you’ve managed to devote a whole evening to discussing it?
Oliver Holt of The Mirror has also been a keen contributor to the discussion, having led calls for the Rooney rule to be adopted in football. Personally, I feel uneasy about positive discrimination as a concept, but am also aware that without it, there are limited levers to ensure ethnic minorities are not discriminated against. I would prefer work to be focused on changing attitudes within the administrative element of clubs, rather than using instructions to bring about change. Nevertheless, Holt should be applauded for highlighting the plight of black ex-players, who still, in 2011, find it tough to get managerial positions.
However, like Collymore, Holt has not handled opposition to his calls well. I fully believe him when he says he has had to endure countless abusive messages since he first embarked on the campaign, but he seems to too easily discount anyone not agreeing with the Rooney rule campaign as racist. The thought that people may agree with the sentiments of what he is saying, but not the means he is proposing, seems not to have occurred to Holt.
Both Collymore and Holt - as well as others, admittedly - have worked tirelessly to open up the racism debate to ensure people do not forget the problems that still exist. But what both also do, is forget the immense progress English football has made in tackling racism in the last 10-20 years.
As a child in the 1980s, I remember “black” being freely banded about as a derogatory term for opposition players. I also remember black players still not being commonplace in every team. The idea of a black team captain was still largely something from the future.
But in 2011, we should remember how far we have come. We bemoan the pathetic fines handed out by UEFA to clubs chanting racist abuse, because in England, those chants simply would not happen. Crowds are more multicultural than ever and whilst I’m not saying there are no incidents at all, racist abuse from the stands is something the vast majority of us would never dream of indulging in, and would take issue with anyone around us doing so. On the pitch, multinational teams take to the field every week and are roared on by thousands of adoring fans. And when the debate was being had over who out of John Terry and Rio Ferdinand should captain England, race was not for a second an issue.
Now I’m not saying we should congratulate ourselves for not being as racist as we were 10, 20 or 30 years ago. That’s hardly an achievement of course, but there has been the sort of progress that other countries in Europe, notably Spain and Italy, have failed to keep up with.
To move forward and tackle the issues that remain such as lack of black managers, we must look at what has worked as well as where more work is needed. Whilst it might not seem it this week, there is plenty that has worked well and this work should not be either forgotten or underplayed.
At the moment, the argument is being dominated by either full blown racists, or commentators unwilling to accept alternative arguments and all too easily label people as racist. All this does is create something of a white noise around the issue; making it nigh on impossible that anyone with any real power will take meaningful action. Gentlemen, some rationality please.
