Racism in English Football and the Rooney Rule (Part 1)

I have been working on a post about racism in English football for some time. My initial premise was that the minimal number of minority managers in English League football was prima facie evidence of racial discrimination.  However, the recent announcement by Jose Mourinho that “[t]here is no racism in football” made me reconsider my approach.  Not because there is no racism in football.  That is pure nonsense.  I doubt Jose Mourinho actually believes this. Given his statements on other subjects, he must have seen some sort of advantage to him or Chelsea in staking out this ridiculous position.  I claim no skill in plumbing the depths of Mourinho’s mind, but the advantage might have been as minimal as just avoiding answering a difficult question.

Of course, there is plenty of racism in football—just like there is racism in every other part of life. Giving Mourinho the benefit of the doubt, he might simply have been claiming that racism is not a factor in the hiring of players, managers, and coaches in English football.  That claim would also be false, but it is a little closer to reality. Or maybe he deliberately made a ridiculous statement to force more discussion or action on the issue.

In any case, any contention that there is no racism in football is nonsensical when you consider the wide range of ways racism can manifest.  At the very least, there is racism on the part of some fans since incidents of racist abuse of players by fans abound.  No doubt the problem is worse in a number of other countries than it is in England.  For example, Hulk, reported being racially abused in Russia just last month.  It was the second major racism incident in the Russian Premier league in the same week. 

Setting aside racist behavior by fans, there is a wide range of other racist behavior that can and probably does occur.  Detecting racism is not always easy because not all acts of bigotry are deliberate, overt, or even clear cut.  Usually, when people act for racist reasons, they do not announce their true motives.  Other times people act for racist motives, but do not even realize that they are doing so.  Finally, sometimes the racism is institutionalized into an organization’s structure so that no current member has to actively work to keep the racism going.

These kinds of racism can affect hiring decisions, transfer decisions, playing decisions, and pay rates.  If a referee happens to be racist, either consciously or subconsciously, his bias can, obviously, affect virtually any call he makes.  For that matter racism could play a part in which players get work permits.  Given the vast number of decisions that are made every day in football—most of them without public scrutiny—no one can reasonably argue that racism never plays a part in English football.

Certainly, racism has been a significant problem in the recent past.  This summer Jason Roberts (Wikepedia biography here ) talked about his encounters with racism while playing English football.  The interview can be found here.  A few points are worth noting.

He said that racism was not much of an issue for him until he started playing football. At age 9 (1987 or so) he was in a locker room with his uncle when someone made a racist remark.  When he was 13 or 14, in 1991 or 1992, a teammate’s father used a racial insult on him.  He, apparently, continued to suffer racial abuse of varying types and degrees throughout his career.  Since he only retired this year, I do not think this can all be put in the distant past category.

There is an organization devoted to fighting discrimination in football, Kick it Out, which many of us know through its connection with Football Manager.  They have created Equity Standards for clubs to implement to fight discrimination of all kinds, not just racism.  The standards can be found here.  The Preliminary Level is not particularly difficult to accomplish.  Effectively, it requires nothing more than a devotion to fighting discrimination and relatively modest steps to demonstrate and implement that devotion.  Yet, according to their web site  only eleven English teams have taken these relatively minimal steps and only six teams have made the somewhat greater effort to achieve the Intermediate and Advanced Levels.  Unfortunately, Southampton FC is not one of those 17 teams, which, quite frankly, is embarrassing.  Our club should move forward on this immediately.

Of course, all the news about racism in English football is not bad.  Four and a half years ago a study appeared to show that racism was not a factor in the decisions by referees to hand out yellow cards.  That does not prove that there is no racial bias in refereeing, but it is something.

Given the high profile, cosmopolitan nature of the BPL and the money at stake, it is very likely that racism is not a major factor in the decision of what players to sign and, probably, what players to play.  Possibly it might be a factor in how much a player is paid—although my research has not located a study of that issue.  Certainly, minorities (or more accurately, blacks, but not Asians) are more common as players in the BPL than they are as residents of England.  According to Wikipedia’s summary of the 2011 Census,  whites are 85.4% of the population, Blacks are 3.5%, and Asians are 7.8%. According to the BBC, 25% of the professional footballers in England are non-white.  Presumably, non-white players are more common in the BPL than in lower divisions—if only because foreign players are more common in the BPL than in lower divisions.

Very likely, the lower profile and lower stakes of the lower leagues leave more opportunity for racism to come into play.  Certainly, it is unlikely that racism plays absolutely no part in personnel decisions on the part of anyone in English football—especially given how prevalent racism was in the recent past.  Remember that it was less than six and a half years ago that Paul Ince became the first black man hired as a BPL manager. 

The primary recent focus has been on the lack of black managers in English league football—right now there are just two.  The debate as to what, if anything, should be done about this can be analyzed by considering three questions:  Is there actually a problem?  If so, should the authorities try to fix the problem?  And, if so, is the “Rooney Rule” the right way to go about fixing the problem?

I am not going to devote much more effort to answering the first question.  I think that the brief survey of racism I have already provided should be enough to answer that question.  Anyone who thinks there is no problem is either being willfully blind or is okay with discrimination against minorities. Also, I just discovered Clarke Carlisle’s 2012 56 minute long documentary , “Is Football Racist?” which I am going to watch.  It is available on youtube here.  If he answers his own question with a “no” I will reconsider my analysis in my next post.

If not, my next post on this subject will consider the other two questions which will inevitably start with a discussion of the “Rooney Rule.”  However, I want to leave you with a thought experiment.  Consider Wayne Rooney.  (No connection to the "Rooney Rule.")  He makes £300,000 a week and is the captain of the English national team.  Given his skill level and history of misconduct, would either of those facts be true if he were a black Englishman?