Journalists Cliona Foley and David Kelly joined OTB’s Saturday Panel to talk about the experiences of racism that professional athletes have shared over the week.
Simon Zebo was one of the athletes that made his experiences of racism known on Wednesday Night Rugby during the week, with Ultane Dillane sharing his experiences in the Irish Independent on Saturday.
Kelly and Foley agreed that education is the key to getting rid of racism in modern society.
“We educate our children, we speak to our children as parents, that’s where it starts and it starts in our schools as well,” Foley said.
“It is really, really important.”
Foley, who also spoke to basketball player Mimi Troy about her experiences of racism in July, said that many of the players say it is not on the pitch but in everyday life that they have these experiences.
“What really is fantastic is to see athletes of colour speaking out now,” Foley said.
“It is terrible that they have to do it, but I think by speaking out [they can make it known].
“The Ultane Dillane case is interesting because he said he clearly made a complaint, it was followed up, and the guy was forced to apologise.
“You’d hope that that’s what changes things.
“This has to happen now; people have to take action and that includes all of us.
“If we are in a stand or in a group of people at a match, or in our normal day to day life, we speak out when we hear racism.”
Kelly, who was conscious of the fact that the conversation was three white people talking about racism, acknowledged that society had not taken responsibility for racism up to this point.
“I spoke to Curtis Fleming… and we did talk about racism and him being racially abused, and his mother telling him: ‘You are black, be proud of being black’,” Kelly said.
“I remember speaking to Curtis and apologising because I remember he was racially abused in Harold’s Cross.
“He said thanks for remembering that and I said I want to apologise not be thanked, because I did nothing about it. None of us did anything about it.
“That was my life growing up; I did nothing about racism for many, many years.
“As a society we did nothing about it.”
Queens Park Rangers Assistant Manager Curtis Fleming. Mike Egerton/PA Archive/PA ImagesEducation over gestures
With the global call for athletes to take a knee at the start of matches, Kelly suggested that it may be more beneficial to educate people rather than insisting on gestures with little actual action behind them.
“I think education is more important than gestures; gestures are just so easily ignored,” Kelly said.
“They are like T-shirts; they are like armbands. I am not too sure that that’s the piece we should be getting at.
“I think we should be getting at education at a much younger age.”
Many people do not speak up when they see racism, for whatever reason, and Kelly laments this in his own past.
“My education has come too late,” Kelly said.
“I wish I had the knowledge then that I do now, because then I might have done something.”
He went as far as saying that by not stopping the racism he saw he became complicit in it.
“I was silently racist, and I think a lot of people are silently racist,” Kelly said.
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