Continued efforts, and continued problems...

Robert Kyle Buckley
Jun 2, 2021
2 min read

It’s been over 6 months since I wrote my last blog entry – I’ve been busy as a school teacher, and also have been slowly recovering from pleurisy and pneumonia, which is not the most fun experience in the middle of Covid-19 and teaching in-person. Am on the upswing now, and ready to get the project moving forward again:

The number and scale of ongoing racist experiences in professional soccer games has been profound. While the challenges continue to present themselves, I have been incredibly encouraged to see an increased effort at calling attention to the issue within professional soccer. Let’s focus on some of the positive efforts from the past 6 months, and then follow that up by keeping it real and acknowledging the negative experiences that have also occurred at that same time:

Positive efforts of late:

Complete social media blackout by clubs in the Premier League: As a demonstration of their commitment to finding solutions to this issue, the Premier League conducted a league-wide blackout of all social media. What is encouraging about this is that it is a visible and organized effort by the league in its entirety; hopefully more leagues will also look to implement league-wide efforts to call attention and look for solutions.

Demba Ba has shared a suggestion to help address the issue: He recommended that UEFA provide the appropriate education to professional referees before allowing them to officiate UEFA games. I really like this idea, as in the past we have all seen issues in games where players were outraged and upset, and the referee had no guidelines or idea what to do or how to appropriately handle it. I believe that in-game punitive action is one part of the overall solution to this, to help provide clear boundaries, expectations, and consequences.

Ongoing negative experiences that need to be recognized:

Racist abuse via social media continues, despite the attention it now gains (and perhaps because of it?).