England players deserve better than their own fans booing them for taking a knee

Authored by inews.co.uk and submitted by tipodecinta

On Wednesday evening, Bukayo Saka scored his first England goal at the age of 19. Imagine for just a moment the intense joy in that exact moment.

Not when the ball hits the back of the net – that’s all multiplayer celebrations and jumping fans and noise – but in the fraction of a second when the ball is yet to hit the back of the net but you know it will, when all is quiet in anticipation but inside you’re already dancing.

Every day of training, every early morning, every extra session after school, every setback, every time you were told you might not make it; it was all for this.

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After the game, Saka found himself talking about racism; that is depressing enough. Before kick off in Middlesbrough, as before every game since supporters were allowed back into England’s stadia, a significant section of the crowd booed players taking the knee before they were mercifully drowned out by applause.

The moment I always dreamt of growing up ????????????????????????????❤️ pic.twitter.com/rlUSEtC6NL — Bukayo Saka (@BukayoSaka87) June 2, 2021

“I don’t understand why they did it,” Saka said with the look of a teenager but the sigh of a wisened, weary old man. “You’ll have to ask the fans that were booing to understand why they did it.” We don’t really need to ask them, although fair play to Saka for giving them the opportunity. After the merited indignation on social media, their explanations poured into social media replies like a foul-smelling leak.

“We’re booing the political message, not the action.” You can see how the line may have become blurred when you look at our political climate, with a Prime Minister whose indirect reward for a history of overt racist comments was to be handed the most powerful job in the country, but this is a matter of human decency not political allegiance. Saka, like so many other players of colour, has suffered racial abuse. Saka, like every other person of colour, exists in a society that has been deliberately and eternally weighted against them. This is their statement of intent, their stand.

“We’re booing a Marxist organisation.” This is how a message of human decency is allowed to be undermined: detractors cling onto a misaccusation and use hyperbole to create a distraction loudly enough to allow the initial message itself to be overshadowed. I didn’t know Karl Marx personally, but it seems unlikely that his dream was to unravel capitalism through the specific strategy of sportspeople kneeling before matches. But that’s not the point; it became a catch-all defence for those who were uncomfortable with an overt display of protest because it challenged their preconceptions of a society that had worked in their favour.

Since the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, professional sportspeople have taken the knee to protest against systemic racial inequality. They followed the lead of equality activists – including Martin Luther King Jr – who knelt peacefully in 1965 to protest against the arrest of a group of protesters. These players understand that they are comparatively few, placed in a position where they can make a point that will be televised to the world.

“It’s just a gesture.” Well yes, perhaps. Several high-profile black footballers have decided against continuing to take the knee not because they believe the message is invalid but because they became concerned that it was not being succeeded by definitive action and so risked being purely decorative and performative. And that is their right.

But other players feel differently. They believe that it might make a tangible difference but, even if it doesn’t, it remains a powerful symbol for unity between each other and their communities. And that’s exactly the point: it’s a matter of choice. Free choices don’t deserve to be booed and I’m yet to be convinced that we can translate those boos on Wednesday as “We agree with your broad point but we think that this may have become a little performative and ultimately allows those who continue to enforce systemic inequality to avoid sufficient scrutiny”. And if you truly are annoyed at the 10-second delay to a football match, just wait until you hear how long people have waited for equality.

“It’s free speech, I can boo if I want.” Yes, you can. While the use of overt racist language towards people of colour is categorised as a crime, expressing your displeasure for anti-racist initiatives isn’t. You are free to boo those taking a knee.

But know this: what you are doing hurts the players of colour who hear them. It angers their teammates and their coaches. If on some basic level you cannot understand the need or desire to protest before football matches, fine (well not fine, but…). If you can’t allow players the freedom of choice to do as they please, fine fine (well not fine, but…).

You are about to spend the next four weeks cheering on these players in a tournament that you are desperate for them to win; they hold our dreams in their hands and at their feet. And on the eve of that tournament, you have expressed to them that you do not care about them as people, only as performing circus animals and gateways to your hopes being realised. You do not deserve their silence. You do not deserve their excellence. They deserve better than this.

opinionated-dick on June 3rd, 2021 at 16:47 UTC »

There are a lot of disenfranchised people out there, especially in Teesside. They feel left out and forgotten as industry and enterprise moved out of there towns and prosperity was lost.

And year after year, they sit trapped in this economic quagmire. All the while the media tells them they are the privileged white few, and black people, Asian people, women- THEY are the real disenfranchised they are told.

Then you get the folks in power who really caused and continue the economic hardship, they sense the anger of the ‘working class’, and so subtly nudge these folk into gentle racism, just like they nudge them to blaming benefit cheats, or the EU. So long as they keep a thriving demographic war no one will blame the real guys who twisted the knife on the British working class economy. Nah, they’ll even vote for them now.

I don’t condone booing of anti racism. But it’s far more complicated a question that simply assuming those unwashed tattoo sporting northerners are just racists. It’s a symptom of an underlying social scarcity war. And to say otherwise is to ignore the true problem and instead let it propagate

Plugfork on June 3rd, 2021 at 14:05 UTC »

There's a concerted effort to make it sound like being anti-racist is a fringe view held by out of touch "metropolitan elites," as a classic wedge tactic to divide the nation. People all over the country are against racism, and it's an insult to suggest that it makes you out of touch with the working class to say so.

thenorters on June 3rd, 2021 at 10:53 UTC »

Knuckle draggers 'KEEP POLITICS OUT OF FOOTBALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'

............... ...............

Also knuckle draggers 'THE NORTHERN IRISH FELLA WON'T WEAR A POPPY!!!!!!!!!!!'

The most inconsistent gaggle of dickheads in the country.