British institutions are inherently racist

The beautiful game, as they call it, was supposed to bring people from around the world together, enabling nations and races to mix on the field, playing a sport love by all. Yet, it seems in England, the beautiful game has an ugly side, not from the fouls committed by the players during the match, but from the very top of the governing body ruling the sport, The FA.

The chief of the English Football Association, which is one of the world's oldest and most respected, has resigned after a storm ensued following the use of language used by the boss when describing black players making their living in the English leagues.

Greg Clark was forced to apologise after he used the word coloured to describe black players, a term that's derogatory in nature and highly offensive. Furthermore, he also used other discriminatory slurs against other minorities in the sport, including women.

Institutional racism in UK

It seems in the UK, Black Lives DON’T matter, as institutional racism is still at the very heart of most British institutions.

One would have imagined that the UK of all nations would have taken note of the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in the US, with a protest, even hitting the streets of the UK in the process.

Yet, it seems that the banners, adverts and campaigns to stop racism in Britain are facing an impossible battle, In particular when the very highest echelons of authority are themselves racist.

Incurable racism in sport

Football in particular, is most interesting in England, with players taking to their knees before each match as a sign of respect to the Black Lives Matter protests. Yet, as one professional football player puts it, the only disease in the world right now that appears to be unbeatable, is racism, with Raheem Sterling himself suffering horrific abuse on the pitch from racist fans.

But the truth of the matter is that Britain has been pulling wool over the eyes of many by claiming that racism doesn't exist in the country. However, this could not be further from the truth.

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The illusion of racial equality

No matter how many television adverts portray mixed race couples living together, or the government, appointing token black and ethnic minority ministers, the fact remains that Britain is racist to the core from the top down.

So how then can Britain truly put an end to this horrific discrimination with this in mind?

It's certainly true there has been a lot of effort by governments, both labour and conservative, over the years, to try to tackle the problem of racism, including in sport and especially in football.

But as we saw in the case with Mr. Clark, who used a term to refer to black people, which these days is not acceptable, he very quickly was under pressure to resign and accepted what he had said was unacceptable.

But what's happening is that in all parts of society and all companies, including sports companies, apparently people are going through what's called unconscious bias training. In other words, they may not think they're racist, that they need to learn how to relate to people of different ethnicities, what sort of language to use so as not to be unintentionally accused of bad behaviour.

Johnathan Fryer, Author & Lecturer

Subconscious racism

Across the UK, the race divide is highlighted more than ever around the towns and cities of the country, with many of the poorest areas having large populations of black and ethnic minority residents living within their boundaries. This has sparked a subconsciously racist approach in the way that certain institutions deal with such minorities across Britain.

The police force, who claim to be improving their diversity quotas, are one of the most racist institutions in the UK, with one ex officer claiming that being a minority in the police means dealing with racism by one's own colleagues is a daily occurrence.

With racism clearly an issue within police stations around Britain it is even worse on the streets with reports claiming that the Metropolitan Police in London, which is the UK’s most diverse city, is more than four times more likely to use force on black people than on other races, hence cementing the point further.

But such issues can be seen throughout the nation, with more favourable facilities being granted to white British people over ethnic minority races, ranging in inequality at educational institutions, housing, medical care, social benefits and fighting poverty, with the racism filtering top down when it comes to how certain areas are dealt with.

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Wake up and feed the disadvantaged

In spite of high profile faces, such as Manchester United star Marcus Rashford, aiming to get the government to wake up and feed the disadvantaged proportions of the population, the UK government and its range of institutions are simply picking and choosing who they help based, not on merit and need, but on race and social class.

When the first black and Asian immigrants came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s they did indeed take much of the low paid work in the public transport sector, in factories, cleaning jobs and so on, and so the communities were much poorer. Since then there has been greater social mobility though, we see black people and Asian people as university professors, Mayor of London, certain government ministers, though still there are a lot of BAME people who are in the lower paid jobs.

Johnathan Fryer, Author & Lecturer

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