Sterling has always rejected violence... one tattoo can’t change that

Just a shame some rushed to judgment

THE outrage and angst which greeted the news that Raheem Sterling had a tattoo of a gun inked on his right leg reached such a stage of apoplexy last week that the inevitable corollary must surely be that both player and artist receive a nomination for the Turner Prize later this year.

Parts of the leg have got form in the competition already: Damien Hirst won it with a calf in 1995.

There are some who would prefer it if Sterling pursued an alternative career now that he has made such a heinous contribution to the collapse of society.

The most risible moment of the whole farrago came when it was suggested that the Manchester City forward should be banned from England’s World Cup squad for his body art. That suggestion got what it deserved — laughed out of town.

He was singled out for blame after England were eliminated from Euro 2016 and labelled ‘Obscene Raheem.’ Now it was as if Sterling was being made a scapegoat for their performances in Russia before the tournament had even started.

It is not that he should be exempt from criticism or that he is immune from making mistakes; his failure to turn up on time for training at St George’s Park last week drew a deserved rebuke from manager Gareth Southgate.

Sterling is not beyond reproach, but nor is he the baddest man on the planet.

The truth is that Sterling’s tattoo shone a light on all of us and held up our hopes, fears, prejudices and suspicions to general view.

The reaction to it said an awful lot more about the preconceptions of those who condemned it than it did about Sterling. It told us about our society, the divisions in it and our sad ignorance of each other.

It told us about the divisions between black and white, between the young and the not so young.

It told us about how quick we are to judge on appearances, just as some judge Paul Pogba for a blue- and-white haircut.

Their impudence is judged by those who were once judged for their impudence themselves, although they have forgotten that now. It was left to Southgate to offer the most reasoned observation on what had unfolded.

He is making a happy habit of pricking balloons of hot air like this with darts of insight and common sense. This time was no different.

‘A tattoo is like any work of art,’ said the England manager. ‘The intent is all with the person.’

People who knew nothing of Sterling and the story of his young life looked at the image of that gun tattooed on his lower leg and they saw crime and death.

They imagined nightmarish scenes on London streets. They saw blood pooling on pavements, kids in gangs and the glamorisation of lawlessness and murder.

But Sterling has never been about that. They saw an impressionable kid whose head had been turned, a spoilt, rich kid who was trying to gain some gangsta kudos.

They saw a kid who was setting a bad example to those who revere him as a hero, a young man in thrall to the gang culture that is inflicting misery and pain on families across London. But Sterling has never been about that, either.

Sterling’s entire existence has been about avoiding violence. His mother, Nadine, took him away from the Maverley district of Kingston, Jamaica, where his father was murdered when he was a child.

She wanted something better for her son. When he was six, she extricated him from that world of shootings and drugs, and brought him to north-west London with her.

If Sterling wanted to live and die that way, he had plenty of opportunities when he arrived in England and spent his early teenage years near Wembley. North west London is a hotbed of gang culture. It is a place where kids still feel scared to venture if they are wearing the wrong colours. Sterling chose to escape that life, too.

I talked to him about that decision when I met him at the house he bought for his mum in Buckinghamshire two years ago.

‘There was no regret for me in leaving London,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get out because you are probably doing stuff you shouldn’t be doing and getting in with the wrong crowd. I remember when I left, everyone was getting stabbed.’

Sterling said that his tattoo was in memory of his father, who was gunned down in Maverley. It was a symbol of the fact that he had vowed never to use a gun, he said. It was pointing downwards because it was meant to signify that he would do all his shooting with his right foot.

That was Sterling’s explanation. The rest of us see what we want to see. I see a gun pointing down towards the ground, not being pointed at someone.

I see something clever and artful, thought-provoking. But that is not the way we are conditioned to think about black youth in this country.

We are conditioned to think about young black men and crime and gangs from the areas of north-west London that Sterling escaped from.

He could have stayed but he chose get out. He went to Liverpool, away from troubles that could have left him in prison or worse.

But Sterling is rarely given credit for the fact that he turned away from that way of life and made a success of himself.

He had the strength of character to choose to dedicate himself to football, not to violence.

It is a shame some ignored it in the rush to judgment.