I sincerely hope that young English players of Nigerian descent who plan to play for England ahead of Nigeria will learn a few lessons from the Raheem Sterling racism storm. I hope they will realise that their careers and how they are perceived lie mostly in the hands of the English media.
A typical example is that which was used by Raheem Sterling to argue his points. Two young players bought houses for their mothers. One, Phil Foden, the white boy,was portrayed as a nice kid next door, doing something nice for his mum while our own Tosin Adarabioyo was portrayed as greedy and thick.
It doesn’t seem to matter that they are both youngsters trying to get on with their careers in the same club, what seems to matter was the colour of their skins.
The English media is dominated by white middle class men who never really had black friends. They are the types who will cross to the other side of the road if they see a black man coming towards them. To them, black people are criminals who only make money through crime and drugs.
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So, when they see a confident, young black man who is rich, they become uncomfortable. They become more uncomfortable when they see a black man who is very good at what he does.
Sterling and a few other black people are victims of this prejudice.
Consciously or unconsciously, the media go out to cut the black guy’s wings so “he can be kept in his place”. That was why ages ago John Barnes was mostly singled out for blame whenever England played badly. When he left, the blame game shifted to Emile Heskey. Now, if England has a bad game, the press blame Raheem Sterling.
There appears to be a tight brotherhood of white middle class men in the English media and they set the agenda for the rest of the white folks on how black players and managers are perceived.
You hardly see a black face nor hear a black voice in the mainstream media.
Every Saturday, SkySports has a special programme called Soccer Saturday, it is anchored by Jeff Sterling, a white middle-aged man, he brings in former football players to talk about the games of the day, and there has never been a black player on that panel.
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Sky TV has a problem called Sunday Supplement, where sports journalists discuss stories in the day’s papers.
The programme went on for so many years without a black journalist being invited. They only brought in Daily Mirror’s black reporter Darren Lewis this year and it was just to discuss the uproar over Raheem Sterling’s gun tattoo in the run-up to the world cup.
The media is so tightly controlled by the white folks and they only allow jovial types like Ian Wright and Chris Kamara to create comic relief or safe and nice types like Jermaine Jenas to fill in the quota.
Any young black player who intends to play for England should realise that his talents may not be enough to bring him success, he must know that he has these white middle class men to contend with. For to them, every time he puts on an England shirt, he is denying a white guy his chance.