{"id":1413,"date":"2013-01-16T21:02:40","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T21:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/2013\/01\/football-in-black-a-white\/"},"modified":"2020-07-16T11:22:16","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T10:22:16","slug":"football-in-black-a-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/?p=1413","title":{"rendered":"Football: In Black &#038; White"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>By Chirag Patel<\/strong><\/em><br \/>\n<em><strong>NHSF (UK) Vice President<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>During this year\u2019s football season, we have seen some high profile racist incidents involving numerous teams and players. Over the last year, I have become increasingly frustrated with the treatment of footballers from ethnic minorities; by what is becoming a very large \u201cminority\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>What is frustrating me is the way that these crimes are being dealt with &#8211; like a joke! I can almost guarantee that there is no other profession in the world where an employee can racially abuse someone and still work for them again.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Yet for example, Luis Suarez, who called Patrice Evra a \u201cNegro\u201d 5 times and said, \u201cI don\u2019t speak to blacks\u201d during an argument, merely received an 8 match ban and \u00a340,000 fine and still managed to retain his professional career. If the FA is serious about their \u2018Kick it Out\u2019 campaign then they must take the necessary steps to actually \u2018Kick it Out\u2019. In my opinion, Suarez should have been sent to a civil court and be put on trial for this crime. Not only was the punishment from the FA pathetic, but Liverpool FC even supported him which is even more difficult to comprehend for anyone who has been subjected to racial abuse!<\/p>\n<p>The fact is, even though this has been a pretty damning year for the image of football globally, this is not something which is new and publicity is something which will probably not solve anything. The only option I see now is for all players to walk to off the pitch at the sight of any racial abuse. In fact, AC Milan\u2019s Kevin-Prince Boateng walked off the pitch in a friendly match with his team mates behind him. In my opinion, this is a great example of what footballers should be doing to tackle this problem. How long will it take for fans to treat this behaviour as completely unacceptable? Fans that not only pay for their ticket to watch a match but also for their transport, food and sometimes even their accommodation.<\/p>\n<p>I think one of the major problems with dealing with this was nicely outlined by Piara Powar, Executive Director of Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE) who said, &#8220;What does Sepp Blatter (FIFA President) know about what it is to be abused or excluded because you are an ethnic minority, and what might be the right or wrong way to respond?\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that FIFA, UEFA &amp; the FA treat this as poorly as they do is because of the lack of representation from ethnic minorities at the highest level. The problem boils down to one thing &#8211; most white people will not know what it is like to be racially abused.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Chirag Patel NHSF (UK) Vice President During this year\u2019s football season, we have seen some high profile racist incidents involving numerous teams and players. Over the last year, I have become increasingly frustrated with the treatment of footballers from ethnic minorities; by what is becoming a very large \u201cminority\u201d. What is frustrating me is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[740],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hum-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhsf.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}