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Raheem Sterling deserves the utmost respect for finally standing up to an industry that has irresponsibly reported on his personal life for years now. And that’s an incredibly disappointing thing to say, as part of that industry – the sports media – considering he’s still just 24.
Most young men of Sterling’s age probably don’t even know who they really are or what they want to do with their lives just yet, but the England international has already had a personality and profile drawn out for him in public by hacks with their own subversive agendas.
Indeed, Sterling’s response to the incident at Stamford Bridge was a real eye-opener for those working in the industry that now need to question the integrity of their own reporting on the Manchester City winger and others, harking back several years.
While it doesn’t seem to apply to all black players, Sterling has highlighted undeniable, systematic prejudice against minority footballers who – for one reason or another – are pushed into a certain narrative that has subliminal ethnic demonisation at its core.
But there’s another layer to the awakening Sterling’s unleashed onto an entire industry. If immoral reporting has helped to create an environment where those supposed Chelsea fans – and I use the term supposed because it’s inexplicable that a racist can be a true supporter of a club that in 2012 voted Didier Drogba their greatest ever player – feel hurling racist abuse is acceptable, how long exactly has this problem been going on for?
Judging by the fact the accusations came by those watching on TV rather than nearby attendees at Stamford Bridge, and coupling it with the banana incident in the North London Derby the weekend prior, it seems that racism has been rife amongst sections of football supporters for some time now. Perhaps it never truly went away.
And in fact, when Playmaker FC recently held an exclusive interview with Jermaine Jenas (video below), the former Tottenham midfielder revealed that he always received racist abuse after North London Derbies. Jenas started playing for Spurs in 2005, nearly 14 years ago now.
Of course, nobody is naive enough to think racism hasn’t been a problem in football during this time. But after the horrific monkey chanting of the 1980s, there has been a perception of English football cleaning up its act – the incidents requiring the most condemnation largely taking place abroad.
Whenever there has been an incident, it has often been dismissed as a one-off, the inevitable failure to stop small-minded individuals or the tiniest of minorities. Never, really, have events like Mido being subject to Islamophobia from Newcastle fans in 2008 and Chelsea fans pushing black travellers off the Paris Metro in 2015 been perceived as part of the same tapestry – a tapestry of tacit acceptability amongst supporters, further vindicated by what’s printed by the newspapers.
That’s why Lord Ouseley continues to argue that the FA and the Premier League hide behind Kick It Out, and his colleague Troy Townsend continues to demand more funding, while insisting there are players who feel let down by the powers at be.
That’s certainly the feeling which is now coming across; for far too long, the key organisations at the top of football have treated racism as isolated occurrences, whereas the recent incidents and Sterling’s response have shown the problems are far more widespread and systematic.
Of course, it’s important not to perceive racism in football as a byproduct of the media alone. Newspapers can set the agenda for society but they also reflect the opinions that currently exist within it. In other words, the publications wouldn’t be able to get away with the callous manner in which they’ve covered Sterling’s personal life, which has unquestionably included racial undertones, if there wasn’t a willing readership for it.
Such reporting isn’t limited to sports figures either; from immigration and Brexit to benefits frauds and crime reports, the subliminal messages on ethnic lines span all areas of the media, not just football.
But what has become unequivocally clear, is that another push to stamp racism out of football is greatly needed. For far too long, the English game has rested on the laurel of the situation being far better than it was in the 1980s and thus intrinsic racism has become a marginal problem, an issue that only touches the fringes of fan bases and football clubs.
That, ironically, is partly because Kick It Out has done such an incredible job with limited support from the governing bodies since its creation in 1993. But Ouseley and Townsend can’t do it all on their own; they can’t transform an industry or completely re-educate the ignoramuses of the terraces.
Which is what’s so frightening about what Sterling’s brought to light. If only now, the white majority and the media industry are realising that the last six years of reporting on Sterling and a variety of black players has been viciously subversive, and if that has legitimised if not further fuelled disturbingly racist underbellies of supporter groups, and if Jenas had experienced racial abuse after every North London Derby from 2005 onward – how long has this been going on?
How long has racism been acceptable amongst substantial portions of fan bases? How long has the media influenced, incubated and indoctrinated that way of thinking? And, most troublingly of all, how long have we all been ignoring it?
