I wonder who Baddiel will blame for a group of Chelsea fans being racist this time
In all seriousness though, every club will have some racist fans it's an unfortunate fact. Kick It Out and other organisations are always keen to impress the idea that it's a societal problem, and they're right, but it's time to start really taking this seriously at football level, club level and fan level. This is where KIO rightly comes in for criticism, which they always get very defensive over. This isn't an isolated incident, this won't have been the first time these fans have been outwardly racist and they certainly aren't the only fans that will be vocally and physically racist this season. Simply put they got caught on this ocassion. The more we try and brush it away as a minority of idiots or allow this to become some football issue where rivals use it to stick the boot in and fans of the club become a bit defensive* the more we give cover for these people. If the problem is dealt with passively and the incidents condemned in a reactionary way then we allow the minority to continue to exist and pass on down the generations here.
Who goes to games on a regular basis? And who here knows what procedures are in place to report racist behaviour either at the ground or in travelling to a match? Me neither, I'm sure there are numbers on the KIO website and the club website, if you look hard enough, but that's just passive and unless I'm in minority, it is missing the target audience by a mile. Why can't there be a sticker on the back of every seat with the numbers you can text or call if you see any discriminatory behaviour at the match? It wouldn't be hard to get a quick text off at half time and help the club direct stewards and any evidence gathering equipment to where it's needed. Clubs can't be watching us all each game and neither should we want them too but if they don't have the ability to react to complaints of a discriminatory nature then we're not going to change anything.
Still, we can have all the procedures in place, all the visibility of the message and still get nowhere if no one's reporting it. If that guy hadn't recorded the incident last night would anything be discussed about it? Surely he wasn't the only witness that understood what was going on there. This is the crux of it, the issue is only raised when it's unavoidable, like in this case it tends to be found through footage of the incident. The reason these cases are rare is not because they're one offs but because there's rarely footage or complaints. If we're all honest, do we really each think we'd report other supporters of our club in an incident like this? The honest answers are likely "no, it's grassing", "no, it damages and embarrasses our reputation" and " maybe, it depends on the situation". That's what KIO should be addressing but they don't, they provide quotes for incidents like this and little else they do is visible to the average fan.
* Just so you know, this isn't a cheap shot, I think it's a very natural reaction to have, and besides this is a general point not specific to this particular case.
