Daniel Burdsey - Race, Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues

Race, Ethnicity

and Football

Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society

1. Sport, Masculinities and the Body

Ian Wellard

2. India and the Olympics

Boria Majumdar and Nalin Mehta

3. Social Capital and Sport

Governance in Europe

Edited by Margaret Groeneveld,

Barrie Houlihan and Fabien Ohl

4. Theology, Ethics and

Transcendence in Sports

Edited by Jim Parry, Mark Nesti and

Nick Watson

5. Women and Exercise

The Body, Health and Consumerism

Edited by Eileen Kennedy

and Pirkko Markula

6. Race, Ethnicity and Football

Persisting Debates and

Emergent Issues

Edited by Daniel Burdsey

Race, Ethnicity

and Football

Persisting Debates

and Emergent Issues

Edited by Daniel Burdsey

First published 2011

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Simultaneously published in the UK

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2011 Taylor & Francis

The right of Daniel Burdsey to be identified as author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Race, ethnicity, and football : persisting debates and emergent issues / edited by Daniel Burdsey.

p. cm.(Routledge research in sport, culture and society)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. FootballRace identity. 2. SportsSocial aspects. 3. Racism in sports. 4. Race discrimination. 5. Multiculturalism. I. Burdsey, Daniel, 1976

GV706.32.R29 2011

796.332089dc22

2010045889

ISBN13: 978-0-415-88205-7 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-81711-7 (ebk)

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of Mark Dacosta Alleyne (1961-2009). During the early stages of this books production, Mark passed away unexpectedly during a study trip in Guatemala. Mark was an important influence during my early years as an academic, helping specifically to shape my ideas about race and antiracism, and more broadly demonstrating what a life in the academy entailed. An erudite scholar, passionate anti-racist, dedicated activist and respected teacher, Mark was also a great friend, a brilliant wit and possessed a personality that would literally light up the room. I hope that this volume does justice to everything I learnt from Mark about critical, interventionist scholarship in the field of ethnic and racial studies.

Tables

Figures

Acknowledgments

An edited collection is a very different entity to a single-authored monograph and so my first thanks should go to the contributors involved in this volume for their hard work, enthusiasm, and responses to my queries and requests throughout the writing and editorial process.

I would also like to express my gratitude to colleagues in the Sport and Leisure Cultures area at the Chelsea School, University of Brighton for their continuing support for my academic endeavours, and their constructive feedback on my work. In particular, I would like to thank Alan Tomlinson for his continual mentorship over the last six years and for allocating the funds which allowed me to hold the one-day conference on which this book is based; and my Head of School, Jonathan Doust, for awarding me a sabbatical in 2010, which not only provided me with the opportunity to edit this collection, but also allowed me the time and space to read, think, write and reflect.

The work of many of the contributors in this volume has been of great influence on my own scholarship, and they continue to be important friends and colleagues with whom I discuss issues around race, ethnicity and popular culture. Along with these individuals, I would also like thank Ben Carrington, John Doyle, Floris Mller and Stan Thangaraj for their continuing input, discussions and advice in this area.

No acknowledgments would be complete without a further expression of gratitude to my family, for supporting me throughout all stages of my career and for ensuring that I keep it real during periods of often intense and isolating scholarship. Of special note are my niece and nephew, Holly and Alex, the latter of whom is less than a day old at the time of writing!

Finally, I would like to thank Jane Traies for her invaluable feedback on my introductory chapter; Simon Whitmore and Max Novick at Taylor and Francis for agreeing to the original idea for the book and their support in bringing it to fruition; and Melissa Andros and Ryan Kenney at IBT Global for expertly overseeing the production process.

DB

Brighton

August 2010

Introduction

1 They Think Its All Over It Isnt Yet!

The Persistence of Structural Racism and Racialised Exclusion in Twenty-First Century Football

Daniel Burdsey

Football: Whats Race got to do with it?

During the early stages of this books production, a debate developed in the media regarding the significance of race in contemporary British society. It followed the comments of the then Labour governments Communities Secretary, John Denham, in January 2010 that focusing on somebodys race or ethnic background to explain their achievements or opportunities is far too simple (cited in Travis 2010). Detailing the social changes that Britain had undergone during his partys tenure, he spoke instead of the salience of individuals class status in underpinning contemporary inequalities, adding that we must avoid a one-dimensional debate that assumes all minority-ethnic people are disadvantaged (cited in Sparrow and Owen 2010).

In one respect, this was simply another intervention from a party that displayed an inconsistent stance on race equality during its administration. Having overseen the Public Inquiry into the murder of black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, in 1993 and the introduction of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, this government also introduced draconian legislation around immigration, asylum and the so-called war on terror (Pitcher 2009). Yet, in another sense, Denhams comments signified a broader shift towards a neo-liberal approach to engaging with race and racism. Through this increasingly pervasive way of (avoiding) thinking about racial phenomena, in diluting, if not erasing, race in all public affairs of the state, neo-liberal proponents nevertheless seek to privatize racisms alongside most everything else (Goldberg 2009: 331). Either way, it was a particularly crude dismissal of the enduring spectre of race at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The relevance of the debate to this book was immediately apparent, with Denhams claims closely echoing commonsense discourses within British football about the decreasing influence of race and racism in the recruitment and selection policies of professional clubs and national federations. Whilst few would posit its total absence from the game, racism is now viewed by many people as confined largely to history and/or remaining predominantly the preserve of a small number of residual bigots tucked away on the terraces, rather than permeating the clubs, structures and organisations that comprise this area of popular culture. Increasingly, in football as in other aspects of society, the individualization of wrongdoing, its localization as personal and so private preference expression,