Recent discriminatory acts show we still live in climate of hate
I was a contributor to a couple of very powerful documentaries which aired last week on ITV. Called Out Of Their Skin, they marked 40 years since Viv Anderson became the first black man to pull on an England first-team shirt.
As I watched the final versions, I went cold as I heard the incredible testimonies of Paul Canoville, Vince Hilaire and Brendon Batson, among others, as they talked about the monkey chants, the racist songs and the bananas. But I did not once feel comfortable that the kind of hatred they endured was safely consigned to the past.
It might be four decades ago, but it has not gone away.
You might not hear it as openly or so many people doing it, but I know it is still there.
In October, the Home Office told us that there had been a 40 per cent surge in hate crime directed at people in England and Wales because of their religious beliefs. Three-quarters of those involved racism. Our own statistics at Kick It Out released just last week showed an 11 per cent rise in reports and more than half of them were to do with racism.
Some of the reasons for both of these sets of figures may be that people feel more confident about reporting and the authorities are taking the issues more seriously. Maybe.
It could also be that there is a lot more hatred around and the sight of a banana skin on a Premier League football pitch just in front of a black player – Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – celebrating a goal has to be seen in that context.
Yes, as many people have said, it is a horrible and chilling throwback to a different world.
Yes the perpetrator will, unlike 40 years ago, be caught and banned.
But that banana was not some kind of message from the 1970s – it very much belongs to the climate we live in today.
