Football, Race, and Language in the UK
Last weekend, Gary Neville received praise for drawing a line between the racist abuse aimed towards Fred during the Manchester Derby and the racist language, both overt and veiled, used by the Prime Minister:
Neville’s right to highlight this connection. When our elected officials, especially those in major leadership positions, perpetuate racist ideas without being challenged, without being held accountable, without apologising, it shifts what’s considered as permissable behaviour for the general public.
That’s not to say that Boris Johnson being a bigot creates racism — in all likelihood, the bloke making monkey noises and gestures at Fred has been a racist for a considerable amount of time — but it does embolden racists to act on their impulses and ideas and helps create an environment where racism is seen as acceptable. When public discourse is littered with slurs, and both migrants and refugees are demonised, racists no longer feel the need to stay dormant out of fear of social opprobrium.
But Neville could have gone a step further. He could have looked at the way he and his fellow pundits are complicit in creating an environment where racial tension is rife.
Every time pundits and commentators describe a black player, there are three words that are certain to appear: Pace. And. Power.
Having pace and being powerful are obviously useful attributes and tools to have at your disposal as a professional footballer, but if those are the only adjectives you use to describe black players and if they are the first things that jump to your mind when you’re describing black players, you need to interrogate why that is.
It reduces black players down to their physiques and misses out on the nuances of their game. The “pace and power” label is one that gets attached to players as varied as N’golo Kanté, Paul Pogba, and Sadio Mané. If they’re all being described using the same words, without elaboration on how they apply and utilise their physical gifts to be incredibly effective footballers, then the variety and range of their respective abilities is not being captured.
If these terms were applied evenly it would be less of an issue, but white players who are reliant on their athleticism like Andy Robertson, Ben Chilwell, or Harry Kane rarely have their games framed purely in terms of the pace and power they possess; there are always other aspects of their footballing ability that are focused on ahead of or in conjunction with their physical qualities.
And the reduction of young black men to their physical stature has troubling historical precedence. This sort of thinking underpinned a lot of the propaganda used to justify slavery: black people were depicted as unthinking brutes that pose a threat to society because they are controlled by base, physiological urges. Minstrel shows worked on this twisted logic and were a significant method of spreading these hateful ideas, helping to popularise the idea among racist white communities that black people were subhuman. In turn, these associations were a part of the justification for lynching, colonialism, and slavery — animalistic black people needed to be civilised by the enlightened white man, according to the colonists.
That’s why seemingly benign stuff like chants about Romelu Lukaku’s cock or a tifo of a photoshopped Divock Origi is actually harmful. Even though the white fans singing these songs or creating these banners might think that these are positive stereotypes, they’re peddling the same associations that were used in the early part of last century to demonise black people — by sexualising black players like this, they’re literally objectifying them and repeating the same ideas that were used as to perpetuate the myth that black men were going to sexually assault white women en masse. It might not be intentional on behalf of modern day fans, but that doesn’t make it any less racist.
A related phenomenon is the way that foreign players are spoken about more generally on televised football. On Sunday during the West Brom vs Swansea game on Sky, Matheus Pereira went down under a tackle without much contact (something that had also happened on the previous Monday night when he won a last minute penalty for his side), and I had to listen to Don Goodman sanctimoniously describe that exaggeration of contact as a “scourge on the game”.
Even if you subscribe to this particular view on diving, the same level of scrutiny and outrage isn’t applied when British players exaggerate contact. Couple that with Sam Allardyce’s incessant bleating about the lack of opportunity for English coaches at the top level (even though half the coaches in the Premier League are now from the UK & Ireland) and you’ve got plenty of xenophobic ideas about foreigners coming over here taking our jobs, having negative impacts on our culture that are poisoning the well of football discourse.
So Gary Neville is right about the current political climate fuelling racism in football, but politicians aren’t the only ones who have petrol on their hands. The way they discuss black and foreign players creates associations about those minority groups that contribute to an atmosphere where racists are unafraid to openly act upon their views. As broadcasters, their job is not just to inform and educate us about football, but to challenge and reflect on public attitudes. It’s time for Neville and the rest of the football commentariat to examine their own language.
It’s not within the FA’s scope to solve racism as it’s clearly a societal problem; supporters racially abusing players is simply a symptom of a wider malaise. But something needs to change in how English football is reacting to these symptoms.
Clearly these racists aren’t phased by the individual ramifications of their actions — they are making monkey gestures at players while sitting in the front row, knowing that the game they’re at is being broadcast on television across the world — so issuing life time bans as punishment isn’t a sufficient deterrent.
Instead, the FA needs to find something to punish that they care about in order to give them pause before they act.
These fans (presumably) care about their football clubs as they’ve paid their money to attend home matches. A simple answer, then, would be to punish the club for the actions of individuals. Make the club in question play behind closed doors, give them point deductions, find a way to make individual acts of racism detrimental to a club collectively.
That would probably be unfair on the majority of well-meaning fans but if the costs are so high, the fear of damaging their club’s fortunes and the potential loathing of their peers might prevent these racists from acting on their ideology at games.
This doesn’t cure the problem of racism and merely masks it, but it would help ensure player welfare and create an atmosphere at matches where overt racism is frowned upon.
I’m not a big believer in deterrence as a method of solving problems but in a case like this where the options for tackling the issue are limited, something different is worth pursuing.
It’s probably not a viable solution, given the high threshold of evidence that would be required to make any accusations of racial abuse stick and Premier League clubs would inevitably be reluctant to sign off on policy where rogue actors could cost them a point deduction — given the enormous quantities of money at stake in the Premier League, the difference between staying up and being relegated, between qualifying for the Champions League or not, can lead to financial ruin. But something drastic needs to be done to try and arrest the slide into racism on the terraces becoming commonplace once again.
