There’s a common trope in science fiction where aliens come to Earth and the world comes together to stop the invading menace. As we’ve seen over the last eight months, if an alien force came to our planet today, humanity would be as divisive, vitriolic and hate filled as ever, turning on each other in an instant just to save themselves.
At least, that’s the impression I get after seeing hate-related incidents rose a startling 42 percent during the 2019-20 season, even with fans unable to attend matches for the last third of the campaign because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The anti-racism group Kick It Out released its report for the 2019-20 season in England on Thursday, stating there were 446 reports of discrimination, up from 313 the season prior. Incidents of racism in English football were up 53 percent, with reports of abuse based on sexual orientation up 95 percent. And that’s just the incidents that were reported.
ANNOUNCEMENT: our latest annual report released today, shows shocking increases in the levels of race hate and homophobic abuse. Read the full story here https://t.co/02DaaSoxIr pic.twitter.com/Md8oj0y9Af
— Kick It Out (@kickitout) September 3, 2020
“This year the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd turned the world on its head,” said Sanjay Bhandari, Chair of Kick It Out. “Football responded positively with clubs increasing their work in the community and with the players symbolizing the demand for greater equality of opportunity, by taking a knee. But beneath the surface, hate and division in society remains a lurking pernicious threat.”
Kick It Out compiles reports of all types of discrimination in English football, from both in-person verbal abuse to racism on social media. (See the full report here.)
It wasn’t just in the professional game that saw an increase in hate. Grassroots football saw 94 reports of abuse. While this is a 14 percent decrease from the previous year, all matches from March on were canceled by the pandemic. Taking into account the number of matches played, there was an 11 percent increase, Kick It Out reported.
Kick It Out said more reports are now coming in via social media (229 percent increase), but fewer were coming to Kick It Out directly, with more people learning to report abuse to specific social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, etc.).
The organization also polled 1,000 football fans, with 30 percent saying they witnessed racism in the stands at a football match, 71 percent witnessing racism toward a player on social media and a further 51 percent witnessing racism on social media toward fans of opposing teams. Additionally, 32 percent witnessed homophobic comments at a football match last season.
None of this is a huge shock to fans of English football. The numbers rose last year as well and there were plenty of public instances this past season.
“The FA has made huge strides in recent years to ensure that English football is a diverse and inclusive game, but we know there is more to be done,” said Paul Elliott, chair of the Football Association’s Inclusion Advisory Board. “We strongly condemn all forms of discrimination and ... we investigate all reported forms of discriminatory abuse in English football at every level of the game.”
Elliott’s feels like an empty statement at this point, given how little England — and Europe as a whole, and let’s just throw the U.S. in there too — has actually done to combat racism. It’s not enough just to say “racism is bad” — leagues must be more proactively anti-racist. In the U.S., NBA players initiated strikes that spread across sports to protest police violence and systemic racism, which certainly raised ante on what sports can do to raise awareness of the prevalence of racism in our society.
Despite what the average Facebook user might post in our comments section, racism still exists, and it’s not just “a few bad apples.” This Kick It Out report on racism in English football makes it painfully clear it will take more than an alien invasion to bring our species together.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
