STAMP OUT THE ABUSE
FORMER BASKETBALL STAR ACHARA SAYS MORE MUST BE DONE IN WAR ON HATE
EX-BASKETBALL STAR JOINS CALL TO OUTLAW TOXIC ONLINE HATRED
Battered by racist abuse in his playing days, former Great Britain basketball star Kieron achara has become accustomed to dealing with vocal assailants. Now, though, the Olympian has added his voice to a growing number of sports people calling out ill treatment on social media.
In football, former arsenal and France striker thierry Henry has recently removed himself from social media, citing racism and bullying, while Wales captain Gareth Bale has also admitted that he would join a boycott if more is not done to tackle the toxic abuse across platforms.
For Stirling-born achara, the problem is so acute that merely turning off connections is not the answer.
He told Sportsmail: ‘thierry Henry taking a stand, deleting his account? I love that it has brought attention to it, but can you imagine if you just walked away from every situation? If you just said: “I’m getting abuse in my neighbourhood, so I’m going to move house”?
‘How easy is it to just say that, when it’s eating away at you? the reality is that social media is part of our lives now and we shouldn’t have to walk away from that. It should be: “We’re the victims, let’s look at the people doing the targeting and let’s look at trying to clean that up”.
‘I can put a video up on social media with a song on it and it will get taken down in a split-second because of copyright infringement or whatever, but racist comments, everything else, they linger.
‘I don’t understand how it is possible to say they don’t have the capability to change things.
‘they really do. that boils my blood at times.
‘the dilemma is: do you say nothing, stay quiet and allow it to happen? Or do you actually bring it to people’s attention that it’s not OK?’
Changing attitudes is part of what makes achara tick. Now working in the world of mental health and career progression, the 37-year-old is immersed in problem-solving. His quest to understand what drives people to become abusive online has led to a fascination with those committing it.
‘I’ve got to the point I go looking for it at times,’ he said. ‘It’s an awful thing to say, but you get so fixated by it. every time I see a black player who has made a mistake in a game or got a red card, I know as soon as I go into the comments that there will be something there.
‘and with women’s sport, too. You go into twitter and I guarantee you will have targeted abuse. this shouldn’t be happening.
‘there are people who get so obsessed with their own club or affiliation to that sport that they don’t want change.
‘Black Lives Matter was a huge thing for me personally. It opened up a whole can of worms and that wasn’t just anonymous people. that was friends or people I knew who were now saying things that left me thinking: “Wow! that’s abuse, that’s actually racism!”.
‘When you looked at the whole BLM movement, it made a lot of people uncomfortable — rightly so — because you’re now bringing something to light that was always there but no one spoke about.
‘When you bring attention to something people don’t want to talk about, it’s something they want to hide from. they don’t want to talk about social injustice and it starts to shake things up.’
While the former Glasgow rocks favourite speaks with passion on the subject, he admits that a sense of battle fatigue can set in and that he has to be careful when to intervene to highlight online abuse.
‘You have to accept it’s out there,’ continued achara. ‘You live in Scotland and you want to accept everything is rosy and fine and you know deep down it’s not. there’s misogyny, racism.
‘I essentially go looking for it and then I try to become an ally to that situation but it does get tiring. You have to pick your battles very strategically because you’re not always in the right frame of mind.
‘Sometimes, you are more vulnerable than other times. everyone has insecurities. It’s finding that balance between when to engage in social media and when not to.’
as a player, achara travelled the world and starred for numerous clubs around europe. However, the 6ft 8in Scot experienced first-hand the pitfalls of being an athlete in the public eye.
recalling an incident in 2013, he said: ‘When I was playing in Greece, there was a game where two fans started pointing to me and making monkey noises. I’m usually quite controlled but I lost it and pointed to a security guard to ask what was going on, but nothing happened.
‘My coaches told me to calm down and subbed me out of the game because I was quite emotional.
‘after the game, I went to the locker room and apologised to my team-mates for losing my control.
‘I never once addressed that until the time england considered walking off the pitch (in a euro 2020 qualifier in Sofia). I was like: “Why was I apologising like I was the problem? Why were my coaches not protecting me?”.
‘the fact not one person said: “are you OK? that should never have happened, let’s kick that fan out”. that’s the reason the situation is as it is and why I hope, with the online abuse from fans, that they get punished.
‘there are a lot of people that show hatred and think it’s acceptable. We need to stamp that out first and foremost.’
the recent europa League game at Ibrox, in which Slavia Prague’s Ondrej Kudela is alleged to have made a racist comment towards rangers midfielder Glen Kamara, is another example where achara predicted that online racism would follow an on-field incident, namely the red card shown to rangers striker Kemar roofe following an awful collision with the visiting goalkeeper.
roofe has since revealed the highly insulting language and emojis used by online trolls in the wake of his sending-off.
achara said: ‘When something negative happens and there’s a black person involved, I go: “Here we go again”. When Kemar roofe made that tackle, I knew what was going to happen. that’s my trigger. every time I see a post about BLM, I know what to expect.
‘When Kamara started to walk away and I saw (Rangers defender) Connor Goldson’s face, I knew exactly what it was. I hate to label things, though. When a person makes a racist comment to me, I think about why they made it. I don’t say that person is bad. It’s just that they said a bad thing.
‘I’m trying to have as much empathy as I possibly can and not fight hatred with hatred. It’s counterproductive.’
Achara is trying to be ‘a voice and a champion’ for athletes targeted for abuse.
‘They’re just normal people — in essence, entertainers — but that doesn’t mean they should be abused,’ he argued. ‘They’re afraid to speak up because they know as soon as they speak up, people will target them.’
He feels that his childhood in Stirling sheltered him from a lot of the abuse he may have faced growing up as the son of a black father and a white mother. But he admits that times were not always easy for his family.
‘The flat we lived in in Stirling, whenever something happened to this one house down the road, this man would come to your window and shout: “Go back to where you came from!”,’ recalled Achara.
‘I don’t believe there hasn’t been progress. There has been incremental change and maybe the abuse is more keyboard abuse than physically in your face. I’d get comments like “there ain’t no black in the Union Jack”, so it was there.
‘I always knew I was different. Now, when I go for a run, I make sure I’m giving the biggest smile, saying “hi” to people. I don’t want people to be scared or judge me. We’re all just people and we have so much in common. First and foremost, I’d say to anyone, think before you write. I know a lot of people are angry but don’t write from a place of anger. Consider what you’re writing — would you want your family members saying that? Would you say that to my face? If not, check yourself.
‘But if that’s actually how people are thinking, something needs to change. We’re doing something wrong in society if that’s actually how people are thinking, if people think that’s OK. There’s a lot more we can do — call it out, let’s help educate. They’re not necessarily bad people, they’re just saying bad things.’