Racism in British Football: Critical Analysis

1.0 Introduction

Many people are influenced by racial ideologies and see themselves superior to people of other skin color, belief or religion (Coakley, 2017). They spread intolerance and hate against other ethnicities and cultural groups through various platforms. One of these platforms is sport, especially football. As football is one of the world’s most popular sport and enjoys the attention of a big audience from all over the planet, it is often used as a platform for spreading messages of discrimination. Especially in European football there are recurring incidents of racism. (Coakley, 2017).

This paper focuses on racism in British football as it is a shining example of the influence of racism on European football. There are recurring acts of racism towards football players of black skin color which are frequently covered in the news such as Raheem Sterling’s or Antonio Rüdiger’s experience. Both players were victims of racism as some fans compared them to a monkey by imitating monkey sounds and gestures (Fifield, 2018; Hytner, 2019). The paper will review and analyze different incidents in British football that resulted out of racial ideologies.

For the purpose of achieving this objective, the following research question is formulated:

In what ways are acts of racism in British football tackled by the football’s governing bodies and are they sufficient?

2.0 Literature review

2.1 Race and ethnicity

More than 200 years ago, people from all kind of places throughout Europe, especially from Great Britain, travelled all around the world while discovering new cultures with people of different skin color, belief and religion. For the purpose of distinguishing themselves from these people, they created a classification system and made use of the term “race” in order to describe people of color and to bring home the message that they are different kinds of human beings. The white people from Europe invented racial ideologies that were based on the idea of superiority (Coakley, 2017). In their logic, people of color naturally possess genetic advances and are consequently physically strong. White people, on the other hand, were believed to achieve much better success, because they would have a much better level of discipline, hard work and especially intelligence as well as leadership skills (Coakley, 2017). Nowadays, racial ideologies are accepted unconsciously by many people because they are getting deeply rooted in their minds during the time of their upbringing and also after. They classify people into different departments, judged on their looking, behavior and religion. (Coakley, 2017). Some people acquire such deep ideologies through social and cultural factors, that they search for ways to convince other people of their ideology. They search for a public platform where they can spread their own ideology. Football is one of them.

2.2 Expressions of racism in British football

As Coakley (2017) mentions in his chapter about racism in sport, there are three expressions of racism in football. First, there is ‘direct racism’ where fans and supporters communicate racism directly to the players by chanting racial songs or by imitating a monkey in order to diminish a player of color. Secondly, there is ‘indirect racism’ where fans are promoting political agendas that have the objective to persecute specific ethnic and religious groups. They promote the through banners or chants. Last but not least, there is ‘racism on the field’, where all the active figures on the field are commenting or insulting each other based on racial ideologies (Coakley, 2017).

In the last two decades, these forms of racism increased immensely throughout European football. As the British Football Association (FA) was established in the 19th century by white man, football kept being a sport for mainly white man. (Cleland & Cashmore, 2014). Over the last decades, more and more British-born black players were entering the Premier League and also England’s national team. As this transition had taken place relatively quickly, the British football supporter’s views on these changes are divided. Some accept the increased integration of black payers into the game whereas other fans could not bear it and consequently express ‘direct racism’ (Coakley, 2017) in form of monkey gestures and racial chants towards the players of color (Cleland & Cashmore, 2014). Beside the supporters, there are also players who express their intolerance and racist thoughts towards players of the opponent’s team. Chelsea Captain John Terry, for instance, was expressing ‘racism on the field’ (Coakley, 2017) and accordingly insulted the black player Anton Ferdinand in a racist way during a game in 2011 (Cleland & Cashmore, 2014). Incidents like this happen on a regular basis in British football as newest incidents will be presented later on in this paper through newspaper articles.

2.3 Anti-racism initiatives

Since the Premier League was established in 1992, there were launching multiple anti-racism campaigns whereas the most popular one was the ‘Kick it out’ campaign. The establishers of this campaign tried to convey rules of behavior towards the supporters which visit the stadium as they main objective of the campaign was to fight the use racist language and behavior (Cleland & Cashmore, 2014). Nevertheless, of many approaches towards fighting racism, it appears that the authorities in British football are failing to control the scope of racism that is present in nowadays British Football. As Cleland and Cashmore (2014) conducted a case study by using qualitative research methods, they came to the realization, that a high level of racism still exists, because the game’s governing authorities ignored signs of discriminative and racist behavior to the greatest possible extent. By doing so, they created the impression that such behavior has been stamped out of British football already. Jamie Cleland and Ellis Cashmore (2014) analyzed thousands of fan responses to an online survey that they conducted. They conclude, that half of all the participants are still experiencing forms of racism when visiting a football game in England. An education-based initiative towards fighting discriminative behavior on and off the field is strongly demanded by the participants (Cleland & Cashmore, 2014).

2.4 Social media as a platform for racism in Britsh football

As the occurrence of racist expressions in British football games continues to disturb the harmony of the football game itself, some supporters found a new platform to spread their racial ideologies and to direct their discriminative and racist views against the professional athletes: Social Media. The anonymous use of platforms like Twitter enables fans to abuse football players verbally without even showing their face to the world (Cleland, 2013). Through the enormous rise of Social Media in the last two decades, the voices of these fans simultaneously increased to an extend as never seen before. Twitter and other message boards can be used to publish posts of any kind throughout the whole day. Even though racist, Islamophobic and other discriminative kind of posts are deleted by the boards after some time, it is still difficult for the platforms to control these millions of posts everyday (Cleland, 2013). Many fans share their discomfort about the presence of football players of black skin color or of Islamic belief. They openly blame them for all the social and also economic problems that the country has to bear (Cleland & Cashmore, 2014). Jamie Cleland (2013) conducted a discourse analysis where he analyzed hundreds of posts that were related to football in England. He examined the different supporter’s views and concluded that the message boards did not prevent the continual occurrence of posts that express intolerance and hate towards the idea of multiculturalism and towards specific ethnic and religious groups. Such posts promoted the ideologies of nationalism and white superiority whereas the content of these posts was mostly rejected by other members of the message boards (Cleland, 2013).

2.5 Newspaper articles

Both selected newspaper articles address examples of racism in British football towards football players of color and how the governing authorities handle these incidents. The black Chelsea player Antonio Rüdiger, for instance, was a victim of racist abuse that involved monkey sounds and racist chants towards him in a Premier League game in December 2019. Supporter of the opponent’s team Tottenham expressed their frustration of their team’s bad performance in form of racial abuse towards the Chelsea player. Tottenham announced an investigation after the game which could lead to an immediate ban for the racist abusers from attending stadiums (Hytner, 2019). The other newspaper article provides information of a similar incident in a Premier League game in December 2018. In this incident Manchester City forward Raheem Sterling was victim of racist abuse in form of verbal obscenities that supporters of the opponent’s team Chelsea directed at him. Chelsea and police started an investigation after the game. The article additionally mentions an incident which was just a few days before, where a Tottenham Hotspur fan was arrested after throwing a banana skin at Arsenal’s player Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Fifield, 2018). The article furthermore addresses the issue of racism in the Premier League by emphasizing the media coverage of two young black football players who were criticized by the media for buying expensive houses despite having never started a Premier League game. Raheem Sterling openly criticized this media coverage as bad publicity that is just used on young football players of black skin color. He criticizes the media for fueling racism and demands fair and equal media coverage for all football players which is not based on prejudices (Fifield, 2018).

All these racist incidents in addition to prejudice-based media coverage in England are clearly connected to the problem of racism in British football. The articles address this issue by mentioning incidents of racist abuse in form of monkey expressions or obscenities as they emphasize that this issue is getting beyond control of the governing authorities. (Fifield, 2018).

3.0 Analysis

The news articles coverage of racist incidents in the English Premier League is mostly neutral. Throughout the articles, the authors do not include their own opinions on the presented issues. According to Fifield “the (racist) incident (directed at Raheem Sterling) came after a troubling week for football” (Fifield, l.17, 2018), where another black player in the Premier League was already abused by fans in the stadium. By emphasizing this, he wants to bring home the message that the presented incident is not a solitary case but that it is one which is recurring over and over again in the British Premier League. Furthermore, the author mentions a statement of Raheem Sterling on Instagram, where the player states, that “he was not surprised by the behavior of the supporters in question” (Fifield, l.25-26, 2018). By including the player’s statement into his news article, the author supports his previous thesis as Raheem Sterling also indirectly states that incidents like this are not a solitary case and therefore are not a surprise anymore. Fifield does not directly criticize the treatment of such incidents, but furthermore uses the criticism by anti-racism organizations like ‘Kick it Out’, which are “calling for leaders in football to take a more proactive approach in dealing with racism in the sport.” (Fifield, l.22-24, 2018).

The racist abuses from fans in form of “racist chants” (Hytner, l.6, 2019), “monkey sound(s)” (Hytner, l.8, 2019) and “(verbal) obscenities” (Fifield, l.10, 2018), that the authors cover in their article, are all a clear example of ‘direct racism’ where fans and supporters communicate racism directly to the players (Coakley, 2017). On the other hand, both articles do not present any incidents of ‘racism on the field’, where the active figures on the field are commenting or insulting each other in a racist way. This shows more or less that the first expression of racism, ‘direct racism’, is the most common expression in modern British football (Coakley, 2017). As mentioned in the Literature Review section of this paper, all the racist abuses like the ones presented in the newspaper articles, are most of the time expressions of people’s views on immigration, which they often do in a racist and discriminating way. They blame the high rate of immigration nowadays for all the social and economic problems they have to face. It is often hard to bear for many people that are rooted in England’s white middle-class, that global migration is nowadays also strongly included in their favorite sport (Coakley, 2017). Consequently, anti-racism organizations like ‘Kick it Out’ are trying to tackle such incidents of ‘direct racism’ by appealing to the governing authorities to tighten the punishments for these abuses. The primary goal of such organizations is to make pressure on the authorities for the purpose of emphasizing the need for more proactive anti-racism strategies that establish ‘racist-free zones’ in sport venues (Fifield, 2018; Coakley, 2017).

Despite all these appeals of anti-racism organizations like ‘Kick it Out’ are trying to pressure football authorities after every racist abuse incident, there is little change seen as the number of such abuses did not decrease in the last two decades. According to Cleland and Cashmore (2014) this caused by an ideology that exist inside the sport’s governing bodies. This ideology disregards existing problems of racism in British football while it punishes such incidents not severe enough. For this reason, supporters of all different generations are demanding much more severe and strategic approaches from FIFA, UEFA and, in this case, from the English football’s governing body FA (Cleland & Cashmore, 2014).

4.0 Conclusion

By reflecting on the news article’s coverage of some racist incidents in the English Premier League, a tendency towards judging these incidents as a negative impact on the sport, can be recognized. As authors of newspaper articles that cover current issues have to be neutral in their coverage without adding their own personal opinion, they use statements of anti-racism organizations in order to judge these racist abuses as a negative impact on the British football, that needs to be tackled immediately (Fifield, 2018). The need to tackle these incidents is consequently clearly addressed in the newspaper articles as well as in the Literature Review section of this paper, where results of a case study show, that supporters of British football demand a more strict approach from the football’s governing bodies towards these racist abuses (Cleland & Cashmore, 2014).

By looking back at the research question that wants to examine whether the English football’s governing bodies are acting sufficient enough towards racism in British football, a need for more strict approaches can be clearly recognized. The football’s governing bodies tend to disregard racist abuses by enacting rules and punishments that are not resolute and strict enough and therefore insufficient (Cleland & Cashmore, 2014; Cleland, 2013; Coakley, 2017; Fifield, 2018; Hytner, 2019).