Racism in Football: What needs to change

Guest post by Ezra

Hi, this is Ezra taking over my mum’s account for my work experience. This is my second and final guest post. In this post I will be giving my views on racism in football and the social media abuse faced by Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho following the penalty shootout of the Euro 2020 final.

To start off, I just want to say that I think the social media comments that Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho have been facing are disgusting, cowardly and pathetic. Of course I realise how big it was for England to have its first chance of winning an international trophy in 55 years. We had our hopes up after scoring first but in the end we were beaten after the penalty shootout.

However, this in no way excuses the manner in which some people have been behaving over the last few days. No matter how significant the event, no matter how many mistakes people make and no matter how that makes you feel, there is never a reason to racially abuse someone.

 Of course this isn’t the majority of England fans as in the last few days, these players’ social media accounts have been flooded with positive and supportive messages and most of the negative hate comments have been flushed out. I applaud these people for standing up for what and who they believe in and for being compassionate towards these young Black men. Still, whether the comments are seen or not, whether they are posted on public, private or anonymous accounts is irrelevant. Even if no one views these racist comments and beliefs they are still completely unacceptable. 

The people making these comments need to be held accountable for their actions because if they aren’t, they will never learn. Furthermore, people who haven’t been making comments might think that they can just get away with anonymously degrading people. People need to know that racism in football and elsewhere has to have consequences.

It is imperative that current and future generations are discouraged from behaving inappropriately on social media. I also believe that more people need to take action rather than distancing themselves from the ongoing problem that is racism. If you are truly against racism and support movements such as Black Lives Matter you should get yourselves involved instead of saying things like “I’m not racist” or “We aren’t all like that”. 

I also believe that more people need to take action rather than distancing themselves from the ongoing problem that is racism. If you are truly against racism and support movements such as Black Lives Matter you should get yourselves involved instead of saying things like “I’m not racist” or “We aren’t all like that”. 

A number of media outlets are blaming racism in football rather than focusing on the real problem: supremacist mentality. Certain people believe that they are better, more powerful and more valuable than others on Earth. It is this flawed belief that led to the social media abuse that we’ve seen, not a football match. It’s not fair to blame a sport for people’s disrespectful and disorderly behaviour. Football can be a breeding ground for people to let their emotions take over but, at the end of the day, humans are the ones responsible.

We have to stop creating the idea that humans aren’t in control of their actions because that gives us an opportunity to offload blame rather than learning from our mistakes and growing as people.

Unfortunately, racism seems to be an issue that humanity is going to have to deal with for a long time to come. We hear about many things on the news such as police brutality and ironically, injustice in the courtroom. Racism is institutionalised and until we can fix that issue, there is always going to be prejudice and unfair treatment of ethnic minorities (global majorities) in society. 

To me it just seems idiotic to slander and scapegoat the same players who played a massive part in getting the England Football team to the Euro 2020 finals. The outcome of a tournament should not cause someone’s degradation and dehumanisation.

I’ve seen a lot of people saying “the players are young and inexperienced” but that shouldn’t be relevant. We shouldn’t be making excuses for the people being abused, we should be taking action against those responsible. A person’s age, gender, ability or wealth should have no effect on whether they experience oppression. An old man should be treated respectfully, and a young child should be treated the same.

If more of us accept responsibility for how we behave and treat others, I truly believe we can make progress. That’s why we must work together to rid the world of prejudice and stop racist trolls. This can’t happen every time England loses in a major sporting event. This has to stop.