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Let's be realistic, we were never united, but now the issue is on the forefront and being addressed instead of being ignored thanks to all the activists and the players taking a knee. And it's worked, because I'm going to do my best to keep up the good fight for equality.
As people keep asking this, how about:
1. Creating a stronger awareness in the sporting public about racist abuse and actions experienced by black and other minority group players
2. Creating a stronger sense of community and support among those experiencing discrimination and their colleagues in the changing rooms and workplaces that hear of the experiences of colleagues and support
3. Creating a stronger sense of empowerment amongst those groups experiencing prejudice
4. Providing a forum/media platform for individual role models to share their life experiences (as done by Adama Traore today in response to the knee developments
5. It encourages other minority groups to relate their own lives to the experiences of the black and ethnic community in sport, raising the sense of not tolerating the abuse that black and ethnic players experience and how to come together in order to combat abuse
When the players started "taking the knee" they had shirts with "Black Lives Matter" written on the back, they had the BLM "fist" logo on the sleeve of the shirts, in the stands there were big BLM flags with the same logo.
Now they say it's "got nothing to do with BLM".
This is called gaslighting.
Last edited by great_fire; 04-08-2022 at 02:07 PM.
It's called disassociating yourself with a loose cluster of entities that don't appear to be best representing you accurately and just giving the true message you want to portray.
They can't win. People say that they support the message but not BLM. The club distance itself from BLM but keeps the message and then people get all upset that they're being "gaslighted". Mental.
Or that over time, players and clubs felt that they wanted their action to focus more on the ongoing problem that they experience with discrimination and raising awareness and less on blm which, with some justification, was proving to be a more problematic organisation (despite the best intentions and efforts from many within it) and one which they wanted distance from to continue making their point.
I guess to keep trying to say that taking the knee and anti racist actions are just media manipulation, virtue signaling etc is just, it seems to me, a way of trying to convince yourself and others that there isn't a problem here. Clearly, I think things have improved overall in the UK and we are a more inclusive culture than many countries, but you only have to look at social media postings on accounts of well known and even less well known, footballers to see that there is still a long, long way to go. If players decide that taking the knee is past its usefulness and they want to express through other means, that's for them to decide, not us. In my opinion.