Originally Posted by
life on mars
Intresting article sure to upset some:
The rather talented Crystal Palace winger, Wilfried Zaha, has said that he finds being cajoled into taking a knee before matches “degrading”. He has also objected to wearing T-shirts supportive of Black Lives Matter. He is “fed up” of “charades that mean nothing”, believing that the kneeling business is simply a kind of virtue signalling which hides a lack of real action on the part of the authorities. He also refuses to put his name to BLM campaigns, believing it to be simply a “box-ticking” exercise.
Zaha is not alone among players who feel uneasy about the whole knee business, apparently. The elder statesman Les Ferdinand, now director of football at Queens Park Rangers, has said that the impact of taking a knee was “diluted”*and QPR didn’t do it. (Until recently, when they started again. I don’t know why.)
Lyle Taylor, the Nottingham Forest striker, is eloquent on the matter, stressing his opposition to racism in all its manifestations, but saying: “I do not support Black Lives Matter as an institution, as an organisation. I’d request anyone who blindly supports Black Lives Matter to have a look to what that organisation does and what it stands for, because it’s scandalous the fact that the whole world and the whole world’s media got behind Black Lives Matter. Standing behind Black Lives Matter, all the big institutions, all of them sitting there saying Black Lives Matter — not a good idea.”
Zaha, despite his unease still takes the knee
Every week, however, the Premier League clubs are seen kneeling. It is unclear if any degree of coercion is involved: Zaha, for example, still kneels down despite his complaint. That it has gone on so long is at least partly a consequence of fans being absent from matches and therefore unable to make their feelings heard.
While there is near unanimous support for the English Football League’s “Kick It Out” campaign and a disgust at racism, there is no great love for BLM among fans. During that brief interregnum when small quantities of fans were allowed in to a minority of grounds (largely in the south of the country), there was booing from the stands when kneeling took place at Millwall, West Ham Unted and Colchester United. My lot, Millwall, no longer take a knee, but stand in solidarity with “Kick It Out” and were warmly applauded when they did so by fans.
The kneeling has spread, meanwhile. The England rugby team now do it, or some of them do. Not Billy Vunipola, however. The Saracens forward, of Tongan ancestry, is a devout Christian and objects to the policies of BLM. “They were burning churches and Bibles — I can’t support that,” he said. “Even though I am a person of colour, I’m still more a person of, I guess, Jesus.”
And you wonder: were the team asked to kneel? Was it an imperative or simply a matter of choice? In the event, six did not kneel before the Scotland defeat and none of their opponents did so. The Irish team did not kneel before their game against Wales and an opinion poll suggested that 85 per cent of their fellow countrymen thoroughly approved of this radical, er, inaction.
Devout Rugby Player* Christian Billy Vunipola chose to stand
Meanwhile, in cricket, the England players knelt in last July’s series against West Indies but did not do so against Australia. The Australians themselves didn’t kneel either but stood in a circle or something to express their solidarity with indigenous Australians. It has become something of a pantomime.
So, you can see what both Zaha and Sir Les mean when they suggest that the message has become diluted, or is a “charade”. Perhaps more to the point it might also be seen as divisive, given that some players are doing it and others are not — while others are doing it and hating every second.
The obsessed left would have you believe that those who don’t kneel are unsupportive of the fight against racism — but that is a difficult accusation to make of players who are black and have actually experienced that racism first hand.
I would maintain that it is impossible to separate taking a knee from BLM, as supporters of the kneeling business now (rather late in the day) suggest we should. Nor was there any attempt to separate the two back in the summer when the Premier League was handing out BLM T-shirts and TV pundits were wearing BLM badges.
Perhaps if Fifa and the Premier League had done even half as much research as Lyle Taylor into BLM the “charade” might never have started.
Rod Liddle
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