Welcome. A pre-semi final (final) blog this week. As ever please read, comment, commend, subscribe. And of course stay neutral.
Taking the Knee; and loving Raheem.
A blog of two halves. Firstly a lightly edited version of my article in this month;’s ‘Voice’ on taking the knee and the significance of memorialising for Christians. Then a reflection on whether changed attitudes to Raheem Stirling represent a real change about racism in public attitudes.
Taking the Knee.
You may well be reading this before England’s Euro semi-final against Denmark, preceded as usual by England’s players somewhat controversial taking the knee.
Why take the knee? It became widespread with the murder of George Floyd, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter protests, with a whole range of public figures, such as Sir Keir Starmer, expressing their solidarity with the Movement, and with Premier League teams joining in. Whilst it has since become institutionalised in football, its origins were the exact opposite. When Colin Kaepernick took the knee during the singing of the Star Spangled Banner at a ball game in 2016 it aroused the ire of President Trump and his fellow Republicans, and cost him his career. It was taken up by the (white) captain of the US women’s soccer team, Megan Rapinoe, again on her own.
By contrast, taking the knee has now become routine; quite possibly semi-compulsory in the sense that it would be a bold footballer to step away from team solidarity and remain standing. Yet Wilfrid Zaha of Crystal Place has stopped taking it. Zaha, whose social conscience was indicated by giving his property rent free to NHS workers during the first lockdown, believes it is an empty gesture, diverting attention from much more needed initiatives to improve education and stopping on-line racist abuse. Les Ferdinand, director of football at Queens Park Rangers (and uncle of Rio & Anton) has expressed similar reservations.
Routines can win support, but also trivialise and divide. Do compulsory school prayers really help people to draw close to God in their hearts, or become boring and generate resistance to any move towards faith. What would be the response if a Premier League team insisted on huddling together to pray before a game (as the Nigerian team has done)? I can still remember when cinemas used to play the National Anthem at the end of the evening. As the rush of people leaving before the music started began to increase, so the gesture of national solidarity was dropped.
Memorial gestures rise and fall in popular support. During the 1960s and 1970s Remembrance Sunday declined in significance as memories of World War 2 faded. The Falklands War in 1982 gave it a slight boost, and then the succession of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Remembrance Sunday has brought back to solemn attention the memorialising those have died in wars.
The Christian faith has a deep-seated interest in routine gestures of remembrance. God commanded the Jews to keep the rituals of Passover annually, and Jesus took this up in telling his followers to memorialise the giving of his body and blood on the cross.
So too God commanded other memorials. I love how the people of Israel were commanded to erect a cairn of twelve stones to memorialise their crossing of the river Jordan, so that when their children asked the inevitable ‘Why?’ question, they had a good and important story to tell them. We also keep important personal reminders, for example celebrating wedding anniversaries and birthdays, which underline that all our lives have a shape and a meaning.
So how should the memories of injustices to black people, focussed on the death of George Floyd, be retained? One problem, as Wilfred Zaha suggested, is that memorials can lose their bite. They can even become counter-productive. Some people may remember that at the end of the Civil War in Sri Lanka in 2009, Tamils mounted a protest encampment in Parliament Square. My memory is that for a time this gained publicity and sympathy for their cause, but eventually irritation at the disruption and untidiness of the protest did their cause more harm than good. Similarly the Occupy encampment in St Paul’s churchyard morphed from public interest and support through to boredom and irritation, ending with an embittered rump of frustrated supporters.
People who initiate public protests ought to give thought at the start to what their exit strategy will be. Otherwise the ending can be untidy and dispiriting, and give the impression of being defeated. Does the England football team intend to be still taking the knee at, say, the 2034 World Cup? Or will they create an end-date now, such as after the 2022 World Cup? (Where a protest at the deaths of all the Nepali labourers involved in building the Qatari stadiums would be more relevant, and certainly – in the spirit of Colin Kaepernick – more courageous and disruptive).
To say we will go on ‘till we have defeated racism’ would be an empty ambition. We can’t define ‘racism’ let alone defeat it; but letting taking the knee slowly and forlornly peter out would suggest racism has won. ‘Stop while you are on top’ is often a wise slogan. Taking the knee has the support of the players, the footballing authorities and most of the fans. It is good for fans to show a level of support for anti-racism by cheering down those who would boo. But it won’t last for ever. People won’t always be wanting to spend half a minute of their lives watching twenty-two men kneeling.
Jesus told us to keep on marking his sacrificial death through the service of Holy Communion ‘until he comes’ again. Football may not last that long; players and authorities need an exit strategy for taking the knee now.
Learning to love Raheem.
The cheerers seem to be winning over the booers for taking the knee. What does that say about the current hold of anti-racism on popular attitudes? One indication of the strength of English racism was in the ratings given to English footballers by BBC viewers during the 2018 World Cup. Raheem Sterling was consistently rated worst in the team, which said little about his performances, much about the deep-seated prejudice of the BBC-viewing football fans. Rashford and Alli were also lowly rated, but the hatred for Sterling (starkly revealed in his abuse by Chelsea fans caught on live tv in December 2019) was peculiarly intense.
Why? It may be significant that like the other black footballer who has received particular hostility from crowds, Ashley Cole, both were involved in high profile, lucrative and controversial transfers. Black players who toe the line get less hostility, but those who step out of line receive intense vilification. (Inviting comparisons with the Duchess of Sussex?).
However in the current Euros Sterling has received high ratings, usually third best, whilst Bukayo Sako was rated our best player against the Czech Republic. Does this indicate that popular racism really is declining? Especially when put alongside the fact that advertisers presumably are discovering that sales and brand approval increase by featuring black (though not South Asian) actors, who are now suddenly ubiquitous in tv adverts.
To speculate further, what effect will the England team’s taking the knee have? Had we once more flopped in a major competition would that have strengthened popular hostility to anti-racist gestures as being part of a wider narrative of national decline? But does being successful (up to the semis at least?) generate national pride in a racially mixed team, so that thereby taking the knee displays our national virtue over against backward-looking and racist Europeans?
Has Black Lives Matter really boosted an important change for the better in popular attitudes to race, or merely taught us how to virtue signal?
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Add ons
Joel Edwards RIP. So sad to report Joel’s death from cancer last week at age 70. Not only was he probably the leading black Christian of the last thirty years, but also a wonderfully warm, godly and loving man. A fuller tribute next week.
Last week’s special offer of my ‘Building Multi-Racial Churches’ and ‘Worship in a Multi-Ethnic Society’ for £7 post free (combined value £8.45) gave my email address wrongly. Please contact me at stjames.john@gmail.com for the offer
Race & Education as Significant Variables
The graphs below are from the USA; nonetheless I think the story they tell applies to the UK as well.
1. Black people suffer from historic, continuing but also declining disadvantage.
2. Whilst the black/white difference is decreasing, the graduate/non-graduate difference is increasing; with non-graduate life expectancy now actually decreasing. Presumably reflecting the decline in well-paid non-graduate jobs, especially in manufacturing.
3. Accordingly black graduates now have longer life expectancy than white non-graduates. Thus whilst an audience of white businessmen (almost entirely graduates) might well feel appropriately chastened by a seminar on ‘white privilege’, white non-graduates (who probably don’t get paid whilst attending such seminars) might well feel seriously misrepresented. Over the thirty year period whites-without-degrees are the only group to have decreased life expectancy.
4. Presumably the size of the respective cohorts varies considerably, so that absolute figures on race would show greater white/black disparity.