Quote Originally Posted by ccfc_is_my_life View Post
Actions tend to weigh more though.

In the 70s with the backdrop of racism, it took balls for Atkinson to really push those black players - incredibly risky because if they'd flopped the backlash would have been immense. The gamble clearly paid off and had a massive, massive effect upon getting more black footballers into the game and also in changing and fighting racism amongst fans.

Have his actions had more benefit fighting racism than his stupid racist comments triggered racism? I'd say yes. Doesn't make his comments acceptable or excuse them.

As I said, quite the paradox. If Atkinson was a dyed in the wool NF style racist, then he'd have gone the safe route and not played Regis et al. Whilst the comments Sludge highlighted were clearly unacceptable, I've not heard of anyone within football citing examples of racism whist actively managing.
Do you really believe that he was pusing those black players out of the goodness of his heart,or because he thought they could make HIM successful?

There is definitely a bias in how black players are described though, a lot of the time from people who would be shocked if anyone thought they were being racist.
When Naby Keita was signed from Leipzig he was variously described as being like Ngolo Kante or Patrick Vieira amongst others neither of whom he's really anything like as a player, the only similarity is he's black.
We have deep ingrained prejuduces about what black players can be and what they can do. Yaya Toure is another good example, always described predominantly as "powerful" when really he was phenomenally skillful. A premier league scout/analyst sais his game is most similar to Zinedine Zidane than anyone else, but you would never see that kind of comparison made.

American sports went through a similar learning curve - once upon a time quarterbacks were overwhelmingly white, but these days more and more black quarterbacks are coming through each year.