Kick It Out snub an act of folly by the Ferdinands

 
22 October 2012

Any racist looking back at the third weekend of October 2012 would have to put it down as the most encouraging for decades because football, after so much steady progress — as most of us would see it — suddenly cracked and split.

This is the folly of the gesture made by Rio and Anton Ferdinand, Jason Roberts and other players. The united front symbolised by Kick It Out — which, if its budget is £300,000 a year, must be the most cost-effective campaign ever — has been disturbed. No fascist had to hurl a half-brick either — he and his like just had to sit back, grin and pinch themselves.

The more it continues, the more the issue plays into their hands.

Rio Ferdinand is hailed as a martyr to free speech when he has said nothing and Sir Alex Ferguson, a white man demanding solidarity with the black cause, is undermined, along with Lord Ouseley, who was fighting against discrimination — on a personal level Rio Ferdinand could never remotely have experienced, for all his Peckham proclamations — before any of these protestors were born.

The mind is drawn back nine years to when Ferdinand could not see why the missing of a drug test disqualified him from an England match.

Ferguson took his player’s side in a furious row then and, while he may have come to regret it, I doubt that Ferdinand ever did because even the more intelligent and worldly of footballers tend to be as embarrassingly poor at thinking things through as you or I would be at performing in the Champions League.

No wonder they like Twitter: it is about their level. Which is all well and good until they are lured into as serious a subject as this. They should shut up and join the establishment — because anti-racism is still established.

Just about.

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