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| Saka, Sancho and Rashford with Raheem Sterling - who did not take a penalty and was an England star |
As the footballers say, I hold my hand up and admit to noticing that the three players who were successful in the England-Italy penalty shoot-out three weeks ago were all white, while the three who missed their kicks were black. More to the point Harry Kane and Harry Maguire were seasoned professionals as was the goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, who made a couple of decent saves from the Italians. In comparison, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were young and inexperienced, the latter two still in their teens, born after the millennium.
It seemed like a rare wrong move by the England coach Gareth Southgate to give the responsibility of taking penalty kicks to these young players, particularly as they took the later kicks when the pressure was growing on them to score in front of a huge audience. Whatever the colour of their skin, the pressure of scoring against an Italian goalie with a spotless record in shoot-outs was always going to be immense. And they all missed.
Saka later said that he knew that his miss would lead to abuse on social media and that much of this would be racist in character. With depressing predictability a bunch of idiots used the notorious ‘N’ word in blaming the black players for England’s eventual defeat and publicised their prejudices on Twitter. Equally predictably, this prejudice attracted interest and condemnation.
However, let us be accurate here. The condemnation of black players by racists is not the result of 'institutional' racism but of what better be called pervasive racism. It does not come from above but from below. Like it or not (and I do not) people often take against those of a different skin colour – in a way they do not for people of different eye or hair colour. This type of racism is proving much harder to eradicate than institutional racism.
I think it is worth making this distinction because it is important to accurately recognise the nature of a problem if you want to eliminate it. Institutions in Britain today fall over themselves to appear anti-racist and justification for racist views is actually quite rare. This is undoubtedly progress from the days when posters appeared comparing the skulls of monkeys to those of people of African origin, something I remember from my younger days.
It is also important to identify racism that is stubbornly deep-rooted but not officially sanctioned because the word ‘institutional’ is so close to ‘irredeemable’. It is a counsel of despair to say that racism is condoned and encouraged by our institutions when it is manifestly not. Racism may exist in these institutions but it is not supported by them. There is a difference between what is hard to eliminate and what is inevitable.
Let’s take some examples. The Nazis were institutionally racist and eliminated Jews in order to try and create a pure Aryan race. With their gas chambers and the machine gunning of Jews they made little secret of this attitude. The South African state and its police force were also institutionally racist in their treatment of back people, who were regarded – and treated – as second class human beings.
Whatever its faults, Britain does not tolerate those kind of attitudes. I worked in an office when what was then known as race relations legislation was passed and we were told that it was illegal to discriminate against people on the basis of their ethnic origin (skin colour), religion or nationality. Since then the grounds for illegal discrimination have been widened to include factors such as gender, sexuality, disability and age.
Yet, despite being a theoretically equal opportunity society, it is still harder to get an interview - let alone a job - if you have an obvious foreign sounding name (like Saka) than if you are called Smith or Jones. That applies even if you have the same or better qualifications than Smith or Jones. Often without realising it, people who decide who gets a chance tend to favour those from their own racial groups.
This is why people of colour can achieve success in sport while they still suffer discrimination in employment. Basically, the man or woman who can run faster, jump higher or score more often is the one who wins the prizes, whatever the colour of their skin. Sport is the ultimate meritocracy and allows people to succeed whatever ethnic background they come from.
It does not protect them, however, if they are perceived to have failed when they were expected to succeed. That is when the old stereotype of the black player who bottles it at the moment of greatest pressure resurfaces. In fact, any young player, black or white, would have found the pressures very hard to handle. It just happened that the players in question were all black.
The building of a mixed race team – and their taking the knee to show their commitment to racial equality before kick-off – reflects the reality of life in Britain today where people from ethnic minorities make up about 15% of the population. Many of these are of Asian origin and so the proportion of black footballers in the England squad actually exceeds the percentage of black people in the country.
The Italy team in contrast was exclusively white. The one Italian black player of note, Mario Balotelli, helped to knock England out of the World Cup in Brazil but he is thirty now and probably past his best. Balotelli had been subjected to racist abuse by ‘fans’ of Italy who thought that no-one could be Italian if they were black. Italy may have won the trophy but they are way behind in racial equality.
Gareth Southgate deserves huge credit not only for taking England farther in this and previous competitions that his more celebrated predecessors did but also in building a team that is not only multi-racial but openly anti-racist. The team reflects the multi-cultural and racial nature of the England of today. Sadly, the abuse received by its black players also reflects the fact that racism is still far from finished in Britain.
Just remember that it is racism which comes from below - not from above.
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
Edwin Lerner
