Why Is There So Much Discourse Around England Taking the Knee?

 by Maddy Ross

It’s optimistic and trusting to believe that the boos England has been met with in the past few weeks, when taking the knees, is really down to opposition to the Marxist founders of the Black Lives Matter organisation. Yet Jacob Rees-Moggs who has defended those who booed has said that their objection to the anti-racist gesture was actually a rejection of a the ‘underlying political message’ of Black Lives Matter. So why has an anti-racist act become so politicised? 

The England football team aren’t the first ones to want to use their platform in sport to bring awareness to racism. Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, chose to kneel during the national anthem in 2016 in protest against racial inequality and police brutality. His actions were polarizing with some praising him and following suit but with others completely denouncing his protest. It came at a particularly politically turbulent time with Donald Trump actually calling for him to be fired. Kaepernick hasn’t been signed to a NFL team since 2017.

Arguably there’s been a massive shift in the conversation surrounding race since 2017 but the booing at the friendly matches and the game against Croatia is indicative of how much people still want to push back at anti-racist statements. These gestures are so powerful as it forces people to pay attention to anti-discrimination efforts, people who might not have previously engaged with these conversations around race or the news. It signals to viewers that racism is no longer an issue that can be ignored. Footballers are held in such high regard by so many in the country and are idols to so many. I don’t think we can downplay the importance of having these role models to so many actively engaging with anti-racist efforts and in such a public way. 

In sport and recently especially Football, black players are subjected to awful targeted racist attacks. Monkey chanting and online racial abuse is just some of what players have had to endure purely because of what they look like. So it’s clear there’s a need specifically in football to stand up to racism. 

So back to my first question. Why has a needed anti-racist gesture become so politicised? And what are the negative ramifications of this? Some individuals have wrongly connected Black Lives Matter with Marxism such as the previously mentioned Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the Commons. A major factor of this is an interview from 2015 coming out with one of the co-founders, Patrisse Cullors, of Black Lives Matter claiming her and another co-founder are trained Marxists. However, since then, and the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter has grown into a global anti-racist movement supported by millions, few of whom would actually identify as Marxist. No one group or organisation has trademarked the slogan Black Lives Matter. Thus it’s important we can distinguish between organisations and movements as the slogan black lives matter can mean different things to different people but is linked with an central message of anti-racism, particularly in relation to police brutality. Cullors, who left her role in 2015 has since described this mischaracterization of BLM as a far-right smear campaign. 

Gareth Southgate, after the booing and criticism, published the reasons why the team have decided to take a knee, and nowhere does he outline plans to overthrow Western capitalism and establish a new communist order as Nigel Farage suggested on his Youtube Channel. Southgate explains the pride he has in the team and his recognition of how much weight their voices carry. The FA themselves have stated that the act of taking a knee is not related to any one political school of thought and is simply to show solidarity with the fight for racial equality. 

Political objections to taking the knee show deeper issues that arise when we talk about racial equality in the UK. When an issue such as racial equality is politicised, there’s a risk of becoming desensitised to the severity of it, as it is dismissed as a political agenda. Human rights issues and social justice shouldn’t be associated with a particular political ideology because everyone should care about solving these issues. The people should come before the politics.

Priti Patel has dismissed the act as a product of a culture of ‘gesture politics.’ No one has or is claiming that the symbolic anti-racist act is going to transform the lives of black footballers or black Britons overnight. But the impact here is the weight of the footballers voices. Through their gesture they can reach certain individuals who may not be having these conversations around race and have never had to deal with the issue. Seeing their role models acting in this way forces them to evaluate the way they themselves are acting. This won’t be the case for every football fan. Obviously not. But the statement the gesture sends is so important, even more so from who it’s coming from.

Everyone deserves to feel like they belong in a stadium and won’t be racially abused. And anything that signals to racists that their bigotry is no longer welcome in football and on a wider scale has to positive. Anything that shows the team’s commitment to anti-racism has to be doing some good. I accept and recognise that taking the knee will not dramatically change the way the system is rigged against people of colour in this country, but maybe next time a football fan hears a racist comment they’ll have the motivation to call it out, because their role model did.