Anti-racism chief: Why 'taking a knee' shouldn't become an empty gesture

  • Sanjay Bhandari took the helm of Kick It Out, English football’s equality and inclusion organisation, a year ago. In a wide-ranging interview he talks about his fight for a more inclusive, fairer form of football.

Former Southend United player Anton Ferdinand has spoken about his experience of suffering from horrific racist abuse in a new documentary.

Anton Ferdinand, pictured with his brother Rio Credit: PA Images

Ferdinand, 35, who still lives in Essex, opens up about the abuse he suffered in the aftermath of is high-profile racism case against the then Chelsea star John Terry back in 2012.

Ferdinand, who was even racially abused on social media on Wednesday in promoting the documentary which airs on the BBC tonight (November 30th).

While football has come along way since the likes of Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Justin Fashanu plied their trade steps, racist abuse is still prevalent.

Trail blazers, players like Cunningham, Fashanu and Regis endured horrendous abuse

Just last year ex-Ipswich Player Tyrone Mings was subjected to vile abuse while on England duty against Bulgaria.

England's Euro 2020 qualifier was stopped on two occasions following complaints of racist chanting in the stands.

Those two incidents will be all too familiar to the chair of the anti-racism charity Kick It Out.

Sanjay Bhandari, who lives on the Essex/Herts border, stepped into the role 12 months ago. He says more work needs to be done to rid the game of the blight of racism.

In a wide ranging interview with ITV News Anglia, Mr Bhandari spoke of the need to:

  • Capitalise on the momentum generated by the Black Lives Matter movement

  • Ensure 'taking a knee' didn't become an empty gesture

  • Increase diversity in leadership roles at all levels of the sport.

Asked whether football club's adopting the powerful symbol if 'taking a knee' he said it was important to have a gesture, but it had to be driven by the players.

  • Donovan Blake talks to Northampton boss Keith Curle about the FA's plans to increase diversity

In September Les Ferdinand, the Director of Football at Championship side Queen's Park Rangers said the gesture had been diluted.

Ferdinand issued a statement following criticism that his club hadn't observed the symbolic action.

In a statement on the club website he said:

"The message has been lost. It is now not dissimilar to a fancy hashtag or a nice pin badge. Taking the knee will not bring about change in the game - actions will."

Mr Bhandari has some sympathy with Ferdinand's view.

"I think it's really important that Les has raised the question. All symbols have a kind of lifecycle where they start as spontaneous gesture, then move into more wide-scale adoption... then they sort of start to stagnate and decay when they become performative and you start policing non-compliance with the gestures and then ultimately the gestures become wallpaper.

"...We should be focussing on what the gesture stands for and in football what that means is creating change, particularly in representation of black people in coaching. Black, Asian and mixed heritage people in senior and leadership.

"We shouldn't be policing people about whether they do or don't make a gesture, and I think that was the point Les was making."

Picking up on the point about senior leadership, Mr Bhandari spoke about the recent departure of Greg Clarke from the FA after a string of controversial comments he made while answering questions from MPs at a parliamentary select committee.

"I think Greg's comments probably say more about Greg than the FA. There are many people there that are working very hard, and I've worked with many of them over the past year.

Mr Bhandari also said the anti-racism movement needed to be a broad church.

"I suppose I go with the Civil Rights Movement, there's not one person that's responsible for black people getting the vote in the 1960s. It's a combination of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis and James Baldwin and also Lyndon Johnson.

Going forward he hopes Kick It Out will use data and analytics to identify and address needs.

"Our responsibility is to continue to keep score, I want us to be much more data-driven, to create the transparency of reporting around this and other areas of representation and inclusion in football."

  • Watch the entire interview here: