Quote Originally Posted by Titchfieldbaggie View Post
Have to agree with this. The vast majority of people in this country are now unwittingly playing in a turf war between extreme left and right and we should call both out, equally. Using race relations as a political weapon is odious.

If we think that taking the knee is an issue for football, at the moment, just wait for the Olympics.
For me there are two issues here, racism and Black Lives Matter.

On the first I firmly believe racism is wrong and we need to do what we can to overcome it. However, it is so inbred in people that I don’t expect it to disappear in my lifetime. I worked in Edinburgh for two years and know full well that racism is not confined just to the colour of ones skin. One of my best mates is Indian born and arrived in the UK from Kenya. He tells me even now the racial hate between most Indians and Pakistanis is extreme and again colour is not the issue. How we control and communicate those intolerances or biases are what defines us as individuals and unfortunately some do it a lot worse than others.

As to Black Lives Matter and taking the knee I really don’t like the way this is being used in England. Other multi cultural and multi ethnic footballing countries such as France, Germany, Holland, Belgium all have highly mixed race teams but BLM seems not to dominate the game anywhere near as much at club or national level. In many at best it is given lip service. Some of the predominately white countries such as Spain, Italy, Scotland, Greece also don’t seem to be following what BLM want them to do either.

I am far from convinced taking the knee and BLM is a problem for football. It seems to me BLM and taking the knee seem to be far more a problem for English football rather than football in general. Maybe something that my Asian friend always says, which is you English are the most tolerant and accommodating country he knows anywhere in the world and he has travelled a fair bit!