Are English football’s power brokers actually serious about tackling racism?

Hundreds of footballers have undertaken a 24-hour social media boycott in protest at recent outbreaks of racist abuse

In 2000, a student at the University of Wisconsin by the name of Diallo Shabazz was informed by a friend in the admissions office that his picture was featured in the latest edition of the prospectus. When Shabazz picked up a copy, he saw to his bemusement that his face in fact adorned the front cover: one of a number of people standing in the crowd at a college football game, laughing and cheering along with his fellow students.

There was one problem. Shabazz had never been to a football game in his life.

You may be able to guess what had happened here. In seeking to blazon the wonderful diversity of their college, someone in the Wisconsin admissions office had got a little creative. And so, presented with a picture full of white faces, they had simply Photoshopped a random black student’s face into the crowd, hoping nobody would notice. As it turned out, plenty of people – the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and Shabazz himself – did notice. The university was forced into a grovelling apology, with thousands of copies of the prospectus recalled.

For the rest of us, meanwhile, a reminder that not everyone who preaches the gospel of tolerance does so for straightforwardly virtuous reasons. On Friday, hundreds of footballers undertook a 24-hour social media boycott in protest at recent outbreaks of racist abuse in the game, under the hashtag #enough. These included black players and white players, British and foreign players, male players and female players, players at every level of the game.

It’s something, at least. A start. And a gesture that – certainly as far as I can remember – is without direct precedent: a mass mobilisation of a group that has traditionally been among the most politically apathetic of professions. Of course, like all mass movements, it’s often far easier to work out what it’s against than what it’s for. “Taking a stand against racism” and demanding that authorities and social media sites take “stronger action” are positions so nebulously feeble as to be essentially meaningless. What do we want? Something indeterminate to be done by someone! When do we want it? After an appropriate consultation period with relevant stakeholders!

Complicating the issue is the haste with which corporate entities like Sky Sports and Fifa have leapt on the bandwagon. Can a brand – essentially an inanimate consumer product and therefore incapable of emotive reasoning – be against racism? Can a governing body throw its weight behind an anti-discrimination campaign after it has handed a World Cup to Qatar, a flagrantly racist state where migrant families are effectively banned from certain public spaces and housing zones?

The optimistic view is that this is the sort of concerted, collaborative action we need to tackle racism once and for all. A more cynical view might conclude that some within football have finally realised that racism might be bad for business, and have concluded that the admissions prospectus may need a touch of Photoshop magic.

Last month, the Premier League launched its No Room For Racism campaign, which according to its own promotional material, aimed to demonstrate “its continued commitment to equality and diversity”, and “make clear that racism is not acceptable in our competition or the wider sport”. Yet for a quarter of a century, it has sold itself as an entertainment product on the basis of its fierce tribal rivalries, on the sort of untrammelled, eye-popping aggression often absent from other leagues. Only now has it dawned on them that the two may not have been unconnected.

Raheem Sterling reacts to the crowd’s racist abuse in Montenegro (Getty)

“In creating exciting, passionate environments,” its outgoing chief executive Richard Scudamore admitted in December, “we have inadvertently fostered safe places for excessive aggression to be displayed. We all need to take a close look at where that boundary should lie: between the adrenaline of passionate support and the wholly unacceptable vitriol and abuse masquerading as tribalism.”

It was a strong statement, although perhaps influenced by the fact that Scudamore was already merrily beating a path out of town. Seven years earlier, in the wake of high-profile racist incidents involving John Terry and Luis Suarez, Scudamore was far less contrite. “Outside of the stadium, it is clearly someone else’s responsibility,” he said. “That is for governments and police, and Twitter and other social media. English football’s record of dealing with this is good.”

But back then, of course, we could afford to be bullish. The era of banana skins and overt racist abuse was confidently believed to have been consigned to the past. The racism, the bad racism, was something that happened abroad. Business was booming. And so nobody was very fussed about things like the paucity of black managers at the elite end of the game, or the frequent use of racially-loaded terms like “monster” or “beast” to describe black footballers, or the widespread abuse still continuing in grassroots football.

Moise Kean celebrates his goal in front of the racially abusive Cagliari fans (Getty)

So, it’s reasonable to ask: why now? And, as an adjunct to that, how sincerely should we be taking English football’s Damascene conversion to the cause of tolerance? Would it extend, for example, to football clubs offering proper scrutiny of who they choose to do business with? Would it extend to governing bodies taking responsibility for their own pathetic efforts to police the game over recent years? Would it extend to players taking a genuine interest in the underlying social and political factors underpinning football-based racism, rather than simply tweeting a hashtag? And would it extend to the media addressing the stark racial imbalances within the press room, in which those doing the writing and filming and presenting and interviewing are overwhelmingly white, whereas those serving them their food are overwhelmingly of colour?

In short: is English football actually serious about tackling racism? Or do they just want to stop talking about it? Are owners and sponsors prepared to discuss the myriad ways in which capitalism fuels racism, from its entrenchment of existing inequalities to its disregard for basic human dignity? Are fans and clubs prepared to have a proper debate about football’s culture of aggressive masculinity, the antagonism and one-upmanship that frequently fetishises the transgressive and actively seeks to provoke outrage?

Are the media and politicians prepared to stop fuelling vitriolic rivalry and naked hatred in order to sell newspapers and win elections? Are we all prepared to admit that if you make snarky comments about women’s football, or lobby your child’s school to prevent them from teaching homosexuality, or make snarky comments about trans athletes, then your opposition to racism is worthless? This is, after all, a problem of maddening, bewildering, back-breaking complexity. Anyone promising you an easy solution is probably trying to sell you something.