Recent events indicate a somewhat confusing front, don’t expect any comedy.
Long has it been something that the world would be better off without, much like the battle with cancer, humankind doing everything in their power to eradicate it from the world and yet the deadly disease continues to runamok.
As you probably well know racism has made an appearance recently, as mentioned in my previous article, events involving Suarez and JT being the main areas of focus.
To tackle the issue of racism, which in past years was exponentially more rife, the organisation Kick It Out was created, which “works throughout the football, educational and community sectors to challenge discrimination, encourage inclusive practices and work for positive change” and 2014 will mark 20 years of campaigning and the organisations existence. Its has proven to be a productive thing both raising awareness and intervening only when necessary.
One part of the mentioned protest is that there are not enough black people in managerial roles in football, have people not thought that it’s a simple case of black people are simply not involved in managerial positions by choice?
One curious aspect recent events was a number of players refusal to wear the t-shirt supporting the cause. The action hasn’t really been thought through if you consider it for a moment. The whole tradition of eradicate any form of negative in life is to show a united front, a collection of people supporting a cause, when it is undermined the tradition is to reinforce it and remove/punish all those who undermine it when it comes to humans.
Cancer is much the same, its a negative thing in life, we do and continue to do everything in our power to remove it from the world.
To refuse to wear the supportive t shirt encourages suggestion of lack of support, creating a contradictory effect where when a statement should be made to reinforce a sense of “this sort of thing is not welcome in our sport” the numbers that support this cause diminish.
So what you need to ask is what else could have been done to make a statement to racists out there?
In my opinion racism will be one of those things, you will never eradicate it fully, much like cancer.