John Barnes joined Off The Ball for a look back on his career and the conversation turned into a wide-ranging discussion on racism in football.

Barnes was subjected to racial abuse as a player throughout his entire career and has been an outspoken voice on high-profile recurrences of an issue that many had hoped was trending down in the sport. It is perhaps a truism, but the fact that football reflects society was a jumping-off point.

"We all want to judge and we all want to say how terrible other people are when they get caught. But to go back to racism in football: how can we blame a 12-year-old boy at Tottenham for racially abusing Son and then say he's a racist? Do you not think he learned that from somewhere?

"So for us to wait until people then get caught and come down hard on them as if society is any different? This is what society teaches them!

"My big thing about racism in football is this: you have to understand the nuances.

"It really depends what your interpretation of racism is. Our interpretation in the mainstream is that if you shout abuse and throw a banana on the pitch then you're a racist. And if you don't, you're not a racist. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that."

Distinctions are necessary and language important when we are looking at racism, what causes it and how we can work to eradicate it.

"Racism is a construct that negatively affects black people in society, every day of their lives. That is what racism is. When they come out of their houses, when they walk down the street people look at them a funny way. When they go to try and get a job, they can't get a job. A woman clutches her purse tighter when you pass. When you go into a shop to buy something, the shopkeeper is going to look at you.

"That is racism. In football, what happens is a racist incident. If someone throws a banana on the pitch on a Saturday, that is a racist incident. We have to separate them. That footballer suffers from racism on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday when he is driving his car, living where he lives and going about his daily life.

"So racism is something that is ongoing constantly, day-in and day-out, to the black community. Unfortunately, we then feel that if we get rid of racist incidents then we get rid of racism. But it's the wrong way around. We have to get rid of racism first.

"But all we do, when something like this happens, is completely invest ourselves in this incident and then talk about how terrible it is for four, five, six days. Then, if nothing happens for the next four weeks, then we're not interested because it doesn't exist - no-one is throwing a banana on the field. Then, when it does happen, we deal with racism again."

As is to be expected with such a multi-layered problem with literally millions of different actors, one might not be expected to have a catch-all solution to racism. Which makes Barnes' approach, nuanced the whole way through, a particularly refreshing take when social media and news cycles demand issues to be framed in a particular way; with one question and a single answer.

Which brought the conversation, which is more layered and has different side-arguments to what is captured here, to the point of what black footballers should do when a victim of a racist incident.

"The narrative now is that black players are being disenfranchised so we have to support them, but I would say: why is that? If someone was to abuse you as a white person, would you walk off the field? What we would say, as black people, is that because they haven't gone through the history of colonialism, slavery, disenfranchisement - we understand that; white footballers don't understand that.

"[I would say to them] why you are supporting me is because I want to do this. Do you think it is the right thing to do? The answer would be no."

Asked why he felt this to be the case, Barnes elaborated.

"Absolutely, because you hear a lot of managers managing now and they do it. Gareth Southgate would have been playing when racist abuse was being thrown at players when he was a player, and as a manager when he was managing in the league. Why didn't he do it then? He's doing it now - why didn't he do it then?"

With the point made that Southgate, and other individuals in a similar position, may feel that they are looking to support ethnic minority players to respond how the player sees fit, meant the issue of individual choice was under the microscope.

"If black players decided 'these are ignorant people that can't affect my life anyway, I want to play on' - what do you think Gareth would say? I think he'd say 'I'll support you in that as well.'

"It is my right to decide, so you are going to support me whatever I do. So if you're going to support me, then you support me."

John Barnes on racism protocols

Barnes believes that the new racism protocols shine a light on the contemporary situation.

UEFA protocol states its first step is to: “Stop the match and instruct the stadium authorities to read out an announcement, calling upon the spectators to stop the discriminatory behaviour.” Step two is entails “[if] this announcement does not have the desired effect, make another announcement, suspend the match and send the players to their dressing rooms for a specific period.” Finally, step three: “[after] consultation, abandon the match if the discriminatory behaviour still does not cease or breaks out again.”

Barnes believes that the protocols may be changed by the situation in a given game and cited England's victory against Bulgaria in Sofia as an illustrative incident.

"I'm going to give you observations and I will start with Gareth [Southgate] - and Gareth is no different to anybody else. Why we are talking about him is that there was a high-profile incident of players actually walking off. I know Gareth and he is a moral, upstanding person. But Gareth is a product of his environment and unconscious conditioning that we all go through. So, I'm not singling him out to anybody else.

"Let's talk about that Bulgaria game. I never say walk off the pitch, racist abuse or not. I'll tell you why - because you leave it open to things like this. So, we are told that we're going to walk off the pitch and there is a three-step protocol to observe in Europe.

"This is not in England, by the way - the so-called 'champions' of the fight against racism - we don't have this protocol here. But we are insisting that Serbia and Montenegro, who don't have black people in their countries, have to observe this but we don't. That is a bit of a strange situation, whereby we have so many black people - players and supporters - but we have no three-step protocol.

"The first step: any racist abuse? You come on the tannoy and tell people to cut it out. The second step, if it continues, is you come off the pitch. Yes, the referee has to do it, but the players have to do it themselves, which is what the England players did. The third step is to abandon the game - the referee should do it but players can walk off and say 'we're not playing anymore."

File photo dated 14-10-2019 of Match referee Ivan Bebek speaks to England manager Gareth Southgate with regards to racist chanting from fans during the UEFA Euro 2020 Qualifying match at the Vasil Levski National Stadium, Sofia, Bulgaria.

It was the lack of a third step that made Barnes take notice.

"I wonder why England observed the first two.

"The third one should have been observed because [...] it continued. The FA themselves said that it continued but it wasn't as bad. But it continued, so why didn't the referee stop the game? What did the players do - by bringing it to the attention of the manager and coming off the pitch? Why didn't they do it?

"Of course - who knows? Coincidentally, they might have been winning 5-0 at the time, but that is a coincidence. I wonder, had they been losing 5-0, what they would have done? Who knows?

"They probably would have stayed on the pitch because the narrative after the game was 'we didn't want the racists to win'. So why walk off in the first place?"

*EDITORS NOTE OBSCENE GESTURES* Bulgaria fans in the stands during the UEFA Euro 2020 Qualifying match at the Vasil Levski National Stadium, Sofia, Bulgaria.

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