Fight against racism should not fall only to Sterling
England player’s response in Podgorica was superb and game’s authorities now need to follow his lead with strong action
Sterling’s ear-pulling celebration should be framed as an image of defeat for ignorance
Raheem Sterling does not need to fly to Montenegro to be racially abused. He can get that in London, or other British cities, or on his social media accounts, from fellow UK citizens who lack the Balkan excuse of “lack of diversity” to hide behind.
Many white British football fans felt terrible for Sterling, Danny Rose and Callum Hudson-odoi on Monday night. The monkey chanting aimed at England’s black players appalled and depressed them. But they – we – cannot know how it actually feels to be cast as an ape in a football ground, at your place of work, in a game you love. The closest we might come is to observe the pain and bafflement in the faces of Hudson-odoi and Sterling, who spoke so powerfully about the experience.
Whataboutery is a road to nowhere, but it was striking to remember that Sterling endured vile abuse from the crowd when Manchester City visited Hudsonodoi’s club, Chelsea, in December. So the increasingly statesmanlike Sterling must feel he is on a European tour of prejudice, made worse by the shocking leniency of the authorities: particularly Uefa and Fifa, though the five-match ban for Sheffield United’s Sophie Jones for racially abusing Tottenham’s Renee Hector hardly inspires confidence in our own authorities either (Hector has since received dehumanising taunts from the social-media quagmire).
The worst reflex on the morning after England’s rousing 5-1 win is to fixate about East European bigotry and pretend this is an issue only for “backward” countries. The venom is everywhere: here, among us, as much as there, among them, just in different forms. Across Europe and the world it expresses sociopolitical convulsions and the freedom people now demand to express thoughts, prejudices and hatreds that were there, but under a tighter lid, in more stable times.
The reflexive cry of, “How can we stop this, what can we do?” is not confined to football. Across daily life in Britain minorities are subjected to stinging, belittling insults. They also come into contact with love, friendship and open-mindedness, but that must feel like scant consolation if a blockhead is trying to demean you across an advertising hoarding at a football stadium.
We could start, of course, by ceasing to treat racism in football grounds as a bureaucratic postgame nuisance that sets in train a long investigation that ends with a fine or a stadium ban for the individuals, as if excluding them one by one weeks later is a sufficient deterrent. For Sterling, Hudson-odoi and countless others to feel protected at work – in their lives – the justice needs to be instant, in real time, with specialist teams replacing ordinary stewards, who are ill-equipped to stride into a grandstand racism row and play the magistrate.
Platitudinous statements from governing bodies three hours later “condemning all forms of racism” are also fairly useless, especially if people at the very top stay silent until they are asked about it. Chelsea’s shift towards saying racist fans are not welcome – are not really Chelsea fans at all, but a stain on the club – was welcome. Football has to create a climate of overwhelming hostility to cowards who use it to demean others. Not just in Montenegro, but here.
In this miasma, Sterling and this England team are exceeding their duty to help. They are breaking new ground. Even better than the side’s impressive development, and the entertainment they provide, is that they have found their voice. No longer cowed by fan and media hostility, they are fully present as people. Sterling and Hudson-odoi did more in their post-match interviews to shame and isolate the Podgorica monkey chanters than a hundred governing-body press statements. They made the bigots look pathetic, small.
This willingness to expose and confront has a power beyond the usual hand-wringing by those of us who have never been racially abused. And Sterling’s ear-pulling goal celebration was another level up from the smile he directed at his Stamford Bridge abusers. It was instant, triumphant, inarguable: delivered on the back of a goal that displayed his talent and put Montenegro to bed. It ought to be framed as an image of defeat for ignorance and inhumanity: a moment of transcendence.
But the job of indicting overt racism should not fall to Sterling, Rose or Hudson-odoi. They can do their bit, but they are not the police, not the governing bodies. The Uefa assessor in the stands apparently heard the abuse, and now returns to his Swiss canton with more paperwork for a very high stack of cases. For a second, I had a nightmarish vision of Uefa punishing Sterling for a “provocative” goal celebration and fining Montenegro €20,000. Please, no.
“We can only bring awareness and light to the situation. It’s time for the people in charge to put a real stamp on it,” Sterling said, echoing Lord Ouseley of Kick It Out’s assertion after the Stamford Bridge incident that “leadership in football is not active and responsible as it should be”.
Like the average back four these days, xenophobia, which is ineradicable but can be contained through education and tougher policing, is no match for Raheem Sterling.