For the ‘Kick It Out’
Campaign to be effective black players have to believe in it...
Most football managers in the English Premier League have
criticised Reading’s Jason Roberts for refusing to wear the Kick It Out warm up
T-shirts. The thinking seems to be that all players and managers should support
the campaign even though it has clearly failed. Black players are the victims
of racism in football. To force them to support a campaign that has clearly
failed in its mandate is to misunderstand the reason why the campaign was set
up in the first place. Listening to Sir Alex Ferguson talk about how he was
embarrassed by Rio Ferdinand’s refusal to wear the T-shirt you would think that
he is the one whose family has been subjected to twelve months of abuse. As I
watched Alex Ferguson’s interview in which he promised to punish Rio Ferdinand for
daring to stand up for his personal beliefs I realised how it has escaped our
largely white male football managers that black players are the victims. Alex
Ferguson does not seem to care that, despite denials Rio Ferdinand’s England
career was effectively ended in order to prolong John Terry’s. Very few
commentators believed Roy Hodgson when he said that Rio had been left out for
‘football reasons’. It seems to have escaped him that Chelsea FC chose the
first weekend of the Kick It Out campaign week to announce that John Terry would
remain their captain. What message does this send to black players in the game?
What message is it sending to our children? What does it say about the
commitment to eradicate racism in our football?
Premier League managers need to come down from their high
horses to realise that this campaign has become a joke. Even those black
players who wore the warm up T-shirts have no faith in the campaign. Most did
it for fear of being subjected to disciplinary action by their clubs. At
Manchester United they probably feared the famed hair dryer treatment from Sir
Alex. If his reaction to Rio Ferdinand’s snub is anything to go by then God
help any player who chooses to go against Ferguson’s wishes. As a black person,
if I was a footballer, I would not wear the disgraced T-shirts.
There is a feeling among football fans in some sections of
society that the FA kicked John Terry’s disciplinary case into the long grass
for almost a year because they wanted him to play at the European
Championships. The revelations this week that the police and the Crown
Prosecution Service did not tell the FA to delay their disciplinary proceedings
against Terry lend credence to this conspiracy theory. The four match ban also
reinforces the view that the FA treated Terry with kid gloves. The way the John
Terry case has been dealt by both the FA and Chelsea FC leaves a lot to be
desired.
The Kick It Out campaign has shown that it has neither the
power nor the influence to bring about change in the plight of players
suffering racist abuse. When the campaign’s name changed from ‘Kick Out Racism
from Football’ to just ‘Kick It Out’ it may have lost its focus on racism. Kick It Out
helps those in positions of authority at different clubs in England and Wales
to feel good about themselves because they are doing something about racism in
football. The fact that the organisation is a toothless bull dog does not
matter because clubs can point to the campaign as leading the fight against racism in football.
Fighting racism is not about T-shirts or about campaigns. It is about
attitudes; about actions. Clubs should not force players to do what is against
their conscience just so that they feel good about themselves. This is too serious an issue to be trivialised like that!
