One of the worst things about this racism is how pre­dictable it con­tin­ues to be. Racism has long been found in Eu­ro­pean and South Amer­i­can sports and is in­ten­si­fied when play­ers of colour are put in the spot­light dur­ing ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions. A tweet in re­sponse to the ha­rass­ment cap­tures this phe­nom­e­non: “When you score, you’re Eng­lish. When you miss, you’re an im­mi­grant," the Con­ver­sa­tion stat­ed.

In the penal­ty shoot-out that saw Italy de­feat Eng­land in the UE­FA Eu­ro 2020 fi­nal, the skill of the goal­keep­ers was over­shad­owed by the per­ceived fail­ure of the Eng­lish play­ers who missed their shots. Three young play­ers – Mar­cus Rash­ford, Jadon San­cho and Bukayo Sa­ka – were sub­ject­ed to tor­rents of an­ti-black racist abuse. There has been so much talk about racism and how it needs to be se­vere­ly dealt with.

It wasn’t on­ly Eng­lish play­ers who ex­pe­ri­enced such treat­ment dur­ing the tour­na­ment. French play­er Kylian Mbap­pé faced on­line abuse when Swiss goalie Yann Somer suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed his penal­ty in the sec­ond-round clash that sent les bleus home. Racist abuse resur­faces con­stant­ly.

Fast for­ward to May 2023 and one Google search on "Viní­cius Júnior" and you can get a fair idea of how far we've failed to reach. Pep Guardi­o­la sub­se­quent­ly said: "The prob­lem is that there is racism every­where. Not just for gen­der but for colour, for at­ti­tudes. We be­lieve that our lan­guage is bet­ter than the oth­er one, and our coun­try is bet­ter than the oth­er one. We need to ac­cept di­ver­si­ty as a strength, like a hu­man be­ing, and still right now, we are far away from that. Hope­ful­ly, it can be one step to get­ting bet­ter in Spain, but I'm not op­ti­mistic. I know a lit­tle bit about the coun­try and I'm not re­al­ly op­ti­mistic. There are a lot of Black peo­ple step­ping for­ward to de­fend what they should not [have to] de­fend. Hope­ful­ly, jus­tice can help to do it, but at the same time, is it go­ing to change any­thing in Spain?"

Like him, I al­so do not be­lieve that much is go­ing to change. Last week Va­len­cia's pun­ish­ment fol­low­ing the racist abuse of the Re­al Madrid for­ward was re­duced on ap­peal. The par­tial clo­sure of the club's Mestal­la Sta­di­um has been re­duced from five to three match­es. And their fine has been cut from 45,000 eu­ros to 27,000 eu­ros (£23,400) af­ter the Span­ish Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion ap­peal com­mit­tee said it had de­cid­ed to "par­tial­ly up­hold" Va­len­cia's ap­peal. So what does this tell you? That those in charge and with the abil­i­ty to force re­al change are pre­pared to re­duce the pun­ish­ment. To me, what this re­sults in are per­sons who in­flict racism and pain will have a re­al fear of con­se­quences the next time they de­cide to act. It's sim­i­lar to a crim­i­nal com­mit­ting a crime. He does it with full in­tent be­liev­ing that not much pun­ish­ment, if any at all will fol­low.

The mas­sive in­crease in the vis­i­bil­i­ty and pop­u­lar­i­ty of sports over the past cen­tu­ry, thanks to tele­vi­sion, ra­dio and the in­ter­net, has in­ten­si­fied the way that fans re­late to play­ers as lo­cal and na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Ath­letes be­come the face of a na­tion, and many of us pin pa­tri­ot­ic hopes, fears and frus­tra­tions on them.

When vis­i­bly di­verse teams win world cups, it is seen as an an­ti-racist tri­umph. It is one rea­son South Africa’s win in the 1995 rug­by world cup was so sym­bol­ic, com­ing so soon af­ter the col­lapse of apartheid. The French men’s foot­ball team in­spired waves of pride in French mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism af­ter their 1998 and 2018 wins. This was sym­bol­ised in the slo­gan Black-Blanc-Beur (Black-White-North African) – a riff on bleu-blanc-rouge (blue, white and red) the colours of the French flag.

When fans en­gage in racist abuse, they are tar­get­ing play­ers be­cause they are seen as “not be­long­ing”. Per­haps re­ject­ing them feels safer than re­ject­ing peo­ple who share an imag­i­nary “gen­uine” white na­tion­al iden­ti­ty, and strength­ens a sense of su­pe­ri­or­i­ty.

Racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion have ex­ist­ed in our re­gion but no­tably not as much as in oth­er parts. But the fact is, it ex­ists. At the end of a 2010 World Cup qual­i­fi­er in San Sal­vador against El Sal­vador, the Trinidad and To­ba­go mem­bers were sub­ject­ed to racial slurs while walk­ing off the pitch fol­low­ing a 2-2 draw. The T&T lock­er room was sit­u­at­ed where the up­per re­gion of a wall had just lat­tice cov­er­ing. This was ev­i­dent to the home fans in a pub­lic space on the oth­er side of the wall. Lines such as "You Blip, Blip". You suck. Get out of here" along with mon­key chants went on for at least ten min­utes af­ter the match. There were sim­i­lar slurs as well as bags of urine di­rect­ed to­wards the con­tin­gent as we neared the lock­er room fol­low­ing a 2-1 win over Guatemala in a 2018 World Cup qual­i­fi­er in Guatemala City.

The 0-0 draw with Mex­i­co at the 2021 Gold Cup was not in­ci­dent free with on­line abuse and threats to Alvin Jones and Mar­vin Phillip fol­low­ing for days af­ter the match.

We know that in­ci­dents like this can go un­re­port­ed and when we look at the sports ecosys­tem, they on­ly scratch the sur­face. These in­ci­dents not on­ly high­light the scale of abuse and dis­crim­i­na­tion faced by in­di­vid­u­als with­in the sport, but they al­so serve as a con­stant re­minder of the work that is still to be done.

Dress codes and uni­forms make room to turn a lot of “isms” in­to poli­cies since typ­i­cal stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al dress and sports uni­forms are, at the core built around, racist, sex­ist, and clas­sist views, ac­cord­ing to a re­port in in­clu­siveem­ploy­ers.co.uk.

We saw FI­NA ban­ning swim­ming caps de­signed for afro hair to be worn at in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions – such as the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Soul caps are swim­ming hats de­signed for the Black com­mu­ni­ty. Afro hair is nat­u­ral­ly dri­er than oth­er hair be­cause it has few­er cell lay­ers. The chem­i­cals found in swim­ming pools can dry it out more, lead­ing to dam­age. Hav­ing a uni­form and manda­to­ry dress that is de­signed in a spe­cif­ic way, can be a huge bar­ri­er but the re­al­i­ty is that the his­tor­i­cal and on­go­ing lack of di­ver­si­ty across the sec­tor means that bar­ri­ers such as these will con­tin­ue to emerge if we can­not find a way to bring in the ex­pe­ri­ence and in­sight re­quired as we de­sign prod­ucts, pro­grammes, poli­cies and strate­gies.

Pro­fes­sion­al­ism as a Racial Con­struct can man­i­fest it­self in dif­fer­ent ways in­clud­ing ar­eas such as pay and pro­mo­tion.

A study con­duct­ed by North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty con­clud­ed that white ap­pli­cants re­ceived 36% more call­backs for jobs than equal­ly qual­i­fied ap­pli­cants with Black-sound­ing names. Peo­ple with clas­si­cal­ly South Asian and East Asian names were 28% less like­ly to get called for an in­ter­view than their white coun­ter­parts. In the Unit­ed King­dom, a per­son named Adam was of­fered three times as many in­ter­views as some­one named Mo­hammed. Be­fore Black and Brown com­mu­ni­ties can even think about ap­ply­ing for a role, there is the risk that un­con­scious bias may put in­di­vid­u­als at a sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tage. It is not un­com­mon for ap­pli­cants to fake a name on job ap­pli­ca­tions to al­most can­cel out bi­as­es or racial stereo­typ­ing.

Black ath­letes are usu­al­ly giv­en cred­it for their “nat­ur­al ath­leti­cism,” while white ath­letes are cred­it­ed for their “hard work,” “dis­ci­pline” and “knowl­edge of a game”. Black ath­letes are usu­al­ly giv­en cred­it for their “nat­ur­al ath­leti­cism,” while white ath­letes are cred­it­ed for their “hard work,” “dis­ci­pline” and “knowl­edge of a game”.

These sports stereo­types can al­so have an im­pact on peo­ple gain­ing sports roles. Most em­ploy­ers are not con­cerned with an em­ploy­ee’s nat­ur­al ath­let­ic abil­i­ties, how­ev­er, stereo­types of be­ing ‘ath­let­i­cal­ly su­pe­ri­or’ for the most part could be­gin to ex­plain why Black and Brown com­mu­ni­ties are over­rep­re­sent­ed in sports se­cu­ri­ty roles.

When stereo­types be­gin to in­sin­u­ate that cer­tain races have cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics, whether they be pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, they fall in­to the same racist gen­er­al­i­sa­tions that are at the root of racism and race-based dis­crim­i­na­tion.

As­so­ciate pro­fes­sor Cyn­thia Fris­by pub­lished a study ex­am­in­ing the me­dia de­pic­tions of Black male ath­letes, where she found, af­ter analysing a decade’s worth of news clip­pings, that black male ath­letes re­ceive “sig­nif­i­cant­ly more neg­a­tive cov­er­age” in the form of hard news sto­ries about do­mes­tic and sex­u­al vi­o­lence; where­as their white coun­ter­parts are the hero pro­tag­o­nists of fea­ture sto­ries that lay bare the shades of their hu­man­i­ty. Clear­ly, words mat­ter. Words hurt. And yet there are few if any, con­se­quences for big­ot­ed lan­guage.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and the 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com