Dealing with Racism in Football

I’ll freely admit that I never got racism, never understood it. Undoubtedly it’s an illogical evil, a disgusting by-product of the human need to hate one another for little or no reason. One that has no place in the modern world that we live in. I’ve been subjected to it more than a few times: professors, police officers, even strangers; but I never let it faze me. Why should I?

Was it annoying, and disturbing? Yes, indubitably, but no sane individual reacts by running away and trying to hide under a rock. It needs to be faced head on, not combated by cowardice.

An issue becomes powerful only when people (perpetrators) know that they are getting under the skin of their intended victims. If it elicits a reaction in the form of fear, anger or intimidation, the offenders know that they have won and will continue their villainy.

Racist behaviour can be divided into two broad categories: discrimination and abuse.

Many would argue that the two are one and the same but we forget that most (not all) times people who abuse have no power to discriminate. Let me illustrate with an example:

If the office janitor (who is your inferior, unless you are the assistant janitor which means that racism is the least of your problems) were to hurl a racist slur at you, would there be much repercussion?

He has very little power over you; none of his decisions can directly affect you or your career as he is not your boss and apart from assaulting you, there is little harm he can do.

But analogously, if your direct superior at work directed racist abuse at you and started to discriminate against you, since the individual is in a position of power with respect to you, his behaviour starts to affect your work, career and life as a whole.

The example may have been crude, but it serves perfectly to illustrate the sort of racism-related problems that plague football today.

Spectators have very little direct impact on the players on the field; they don’t they control the status of contracts nor do they govern the direction of a player’s career. In other words, what the media portrays as terrible and blood-curdling is little more than white noise from certain parts of the stands.

How badly can a player be affected by a bunch of fans screaming racist invectives at them? Is it any worse than abuse being directed at your family? Or just a plain stream of mindless invectives tossed at you?

Anybody who has played a sport knows that the constant tirade of verbal filth, trash talk and rebuttals is apart and parcel of most sports (chess, F1 etc. are probably exceptions for obvious reasons). Players seem to accept this and choose to respond in kind or shrug it off depending on their mood and mental setup. Being called a “w*nker” or even a “mother-f*****” or any number of colorful variants is seen as perfectly acceptable, but being labelled a “monkey” or a “Ni***r” is not.

So are we to understand that most players consider their skin colour to be far more important than their mothers?

The mind boggles.

A fan screaming abuse from the sidelines may serve to lower morale, but why would certain words render a person unable to play or affect one to such an extent that they choose to walk off the field in a sullen sulk?

There are ways and means to combat racism effectively by means of formal complaints, protests, press releases and ultimatums but walking off the pitch and turning your back on the game like a child throwing a tantrum is not one of them, which is why Kevin-Prince Boateng and AC Milan’s recent actions are futile and deserve none of the praise that is being heaped at their doorsteps.

Many have called Cristiano Ronaldo‘s take on the issue “skewed” or “narrow”, but undoubtedly he sees things as they really are rather than through a haze of media hype and public exaggeration on the social media sphere:

“Sometimes things happen and you cannot simply walk off the pitch. We have to cope with people and fans inside the stadium. Maybe these people have a few screws loose. It is not the whole stadium – it is just a few people.”

Now coming to the other manifestation of racism that I had previously mentioned – racial abuse’s far more nefarious and disgusting cousin: discrimination based on race.

This would allude to the latter part of the example I had cited, when discrimination and not just abuse occurs due to one’s race. This is a vile practice that needs to nipped in the bud. Any tolerance of these kinds of tendencies borders on the inhuman and shows that certain people are indeed anachronistic creatures that have no place in today’s world.

The Landscrona’s recent actions are the epitome of this contemptible practice. The Landscrona, the largest of the Zenit St. Petersburg fan clubs, issued an open letter to the club’s management in December 2012, demanding that the club refrain from signing players who are non-white or homosexual as they were deemed “unworthy of our great city”.

I found reading about it a truly puke-inducing experience.

Racism has long been an ugly blot on the tapestry of football culture but the game is governed by antediluvian dinosaurs such as Sepp Baltter whose opinions and ideas are better suited to the dark ages rather than then the 21st century. Effectively combating racism requires understanding, courage, leadership and a strong sense of ethics. Qualities that people like Sepp sorely lack. I’d like to take a few more minutes to mock the man’s colossal stupidity and blind state of denial in which he exists by a few quotes:

“’I would deny it. There is no racism; there is maybe one of the players towards another…”

Most people will argue that abuse and discrimination are two sides of the same coin and in fact one may cause the other or vice versa. This is true, but no entity, be it FIFA or UEFA or the national football governing bodies, can bring about a change in mentality; only education, awareness and time can bring about change and achieve such miracles. “Kick Racism out of football” and other such similar movements and campaigns are little more than eye-wash; their ineffectuality is almost laughable.

If the governing bodies of football wish to take a stand, it can be done in only one way: to impose cruelly draconian measures against fans. Individual bans and minuscule fines are pointless. These need to be upgraded to life time bans for fans found guilty of any form of racism, especially when a particular section of the stands is found to indulge in racist behaviour. But when dealing with racism on a large scale as in Italy and Russia, where large swathes of the fans indulge in deviant and racist behaviour on a disturbingly regular basis, the stakes need to be raised. The fans that are guilty of perpetuating racism need to be hit where it hurts them the most: their beloved clubs.

If Zenit (whose fans are known to be among the most despicable racists in the European football circuit) were to be banned from competing in the Russian league for a few years, the fans would feel pain like no other and even if they aren’t effectively cleansed of their racist tendencies, they would know better than to voice their distasteful opinions in a public location or during a match.

The measure may not bring about the true death of racism in the game, but it will improve the atmosphere of stadia around the world and teach fans that the consequences of their actions will not go unpunished, which is indeed a positive step forward.