It is difficult to believe in Kick It Out

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!