LIKE CYRILLE, RAHEEM LAUGHED AT RACISTS
RAHEEM STERLING laughed in the face of those who he says racially abused him at Chelsea. What a powerful thing that was to see. It was the way those of us who have known discrimination have been dealing with it for years. This was the year we lost Cyrille Regis, the torchbearer for black players and the one who taught us most about how to respond to it. ‘Never let them drag you down to their level’, is what Cyrille always said. I’ll never forget being in the England setup with him in 1982, when he received a bullet through the post because he happened to be black and selected for the national team. ‘I got a bullet but you got nothing!’ he joked. The racism was far more overt back in those days. It stared you in the face. It’s quietly malicious now — but no less vile and vicious. It was a voice in the crowd that Raheem experienced at Stamford Bridge. The banana thrown on the pitch at Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang the previous weekend was unusual. We’ve become complacent about racism. We think that because we live in a more multi-cultural society that it’s been eradicated. Which is utter nonsense. It is 2018, players are still being racially abused and the fans around those who are dishing it out are not calling them out. Kick It Out, football’s anti-racism campaign, has revealed that there were 520 reports of discrimination last season, well up from 2016-17, and that racism made up 53 per cent of the overall total. The numbers didn’t seem to make much more than a ripple, but they are an embarrassment to the sport. Raheem also feels that there’s a discrimination in the way young black players are reported in the media. That needs to be looked at, too. There’s a mindlessness about the moronic abuse which is dished out. Chelsea have a lot of black players in their team but a socalled supporter will pitch up and vilify an opponent because he’s black. Now that we’ve emerged from consecutive weekends with the taint of racism on the game, perhaps we can wake up to the fact that this scourge on our sport is still very much present. If Kick It Out needs more resources to build on its excellent work, then it should be given it. If black players are asked to join the struggle, in the way that Cyrille did and Raheem is now doing, then I’m sure they will. The game has changed beyond all recognition from the time when I was playing, but it’s the same struggle against prejudice. We can’t let it continue.