I have a problem with some of the mainstream media coverage of Arsenal left-back Myles Lewis Skelly over the last ten days or so. A big part of that is because I am an Arsenal fan who, probably like a lot of you, is trying not to get too exhausted about the relentless discourse that circulates for days and days and days every time an Arsenal player has his shirt slightly untucked.
I am fighting to not allow the utterly ceaseless po-facedness draw too much of my energy. It does feel a lot like the fun is simply being sucked out of being an Arsenal fan by bad faith actors, some of whom work for broadcast companies we are obliged to pay large sums to if we want to watch Premier League football in the UK.
But leaving that aside, there has been, to my mind, an undercurrent to the coverage of Lewis Skelly, both his overturned red card against Wolves and his goal celebration against Manchester City, that feels more worrying and serious than portrayal of supposed club bias. I think a lot (not all) of the discussion around Lewis Skelly has been irresponsible and, at best, clumsy.
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In December 2018, Raheem Sterling posted on his instagram account the day after he suffered racist abuse in a match against Chelsea. In his post, he compared two Daily Mail headlines. One illustrating how the publication framed 18-year-old City academy graduate Phil Foden buying a house and one that showed the publication’s headline when City academy graduate Tosin Adarabioyo bought a house.
Needless to say, the framing was very different. ‘Look at how the newspapers get their message across for the young black player and then for the young white player,’ Sterling wrote. ‘I think this is unacceptable, both innocent, have not done a thing wrong but just by the way it has been worded, this young black kid is looked at in a bad light, which helps fuel racism and aggressive behaviour.’
Unfortunately, incidents of black players being racially abused, either in stadiums or on social media, are utterly commonplace. On Thursday evening, when Manchester City Women travelled to Arsenal for a League Cup semi-final, City’s top scorer Khajida ‘Bunny’ Shaw was omitted from the squad to ‘protect her mental wellbeing’ after she had been racially abused on social media over the weekend.
In this Guardian column from December 2019, writer and broadcaster Musa Okongwa, quotes Professor Ben Carrington, a sociologist who has written extensively about football and race, ‘The online abuse is a form of social sanctioning. It’s a formal disciplining of black footballers, and it also sends a warning to the other black public figures that if you want to speak out on certain issues around racism and politics, then there’s a cost.’
The examples of racial abuse for black footballers are upsettingly frequent. I guarantee you that more than one black professional footballer will be subjected to it over the weekend. This is one of the many reasons that the media, be it mainstream or fan related content like ours, needs to be very mindful about the words that we use and the way that we frame incidents around black footballers.
Often when you say something like this, you will be greeted with pushback from people who complain about applying different, more favourable treatment for minorities. I think this misunderstands that the pursuit of fairness is not about treating everyone and everything exactly the same, but appreciating different contexts and being mindful of deeply entrenched power dynamics.
When the situation and the context is different, then yes, that should be met with a more mindful approach. Let me give you a simple analogy. If my best friend approaches me and says, ‘alright you cunt,’ and gives me a light dig on the arm, I laugh and probably respond in kind.
If a complete stranger approaches me in the street and says it with an accompanying dig, it’s quite different and probably yields a different response. It’s the same set of words but the intention and impact is very different and I think that, in reality, that ought to be very simple to understand.
Clearly, that is not to say that black footballers can’t ever be criticised or even disliked by fans and pundits. But there has to be greater care taken in the way that we frame incidents and opinions that flow from them, especially by those of us who are white. So when Jamie Vardy (hilariously) winds up Spurs fans with a mocking goal celebration, we are greeted with his funniest goal celebrations being compiled for social media. (As they should be, it’s a fun part of the game!)
Everton’s Iliman Ndiaye was booked recently for flapping his arms like a seagull after scoring a goal against Brighton. Watford’s Kwadwo Baah was shown a second yellow card after the final whistle last month after doing the Fortnite ‘take the L’ celebration in front of Portsmouth fans last month.
In November, when Bunny Shaw scored for Manchester City against Hammarby in a Women’s Champions League match, she was met with a flurry of objects being thrown at her by Hammarby supporters as she celebrated with a very mild open arms gesture. She was booked for ‘unsporting conduct’ by the referee.
Even leaving aside the absurdity of the concept of being booked for ‘excessive celebration’ it isn’t to say that players of colour should not be subjected to the same rules. But it is just so clear that the treatment of players of colour in these circumstances is framed differently, intentionally or otherwise. And that has a wider impact.
When Myles Lewis-Skelly breaks out the ‘Haaland celebration’ after scoring his first senior goal against Manchester City, the commentary is very, very different and has an uncomfortable ‘stay in your lane’ feeling to it. Some of the comments from certain individuals were a good deal more troubling than that too. Especially when there is evidence of those same individuals taking a different view to white players who do – or don’t – celebrate in a provocative manner.
Again, that is not to accuse particular individuals of being virulent racists. But there has to be greater care taken and greater awareness of the optics of this and its potential knock on effects. Has there been a similar or identical incident involving a white player? What did I say about it? What did I think about it?
The framing of Erling Haaland as a wizened sage offering cool headed advice to Arsenal players in September rankles too because what really happened was that he enormously lost his head and blew a gasket at anyone within a five yard radius.
Again, this is not to say that everyone that described Haaland as some kind of freelance psychologist and Lewis Skelly as an upstart is a devout racist, but one has to be conscious and responsible about how we frame these things and how they can continue to embed and breed prejudice, intentionally or otherwise. It has a wider impact.
With that in mind, I found comments from Premier League’s Chief Football Officer Tony Scholes this week alarming. We should say, in the interests of respecting context, that this was not an official Premier League statement. Scholes was answering a question at an event, so he could have been speaking a little off hand, or he could have been a little blindsided by the question.
‘There’s also a balance. We like to see celebrations. Some have been very funny, entertaining,’ he said. ‘But there’s a line and once it crosses over into mockery or criticism then we’d need to deal with it.’ I found the failure to observe the potential optics of his answer troubling.
To my mind, it showed a lack of awareness of the very serious subject of how we talk about black footballers. Honestly, I find it worrying that it wasn’t in his mind. I am not accusing Scholes personally of anything more than a lack of awareness and, again, while the question referred directly to Lewis Skelly, he was speaking generally.
But against a backdrop of Ndiaye being booked; Vardy not (and I don’t think Vardy, or any player, should be booked for his regular types of celebration either, to be clear); Baah given a second yellow card and Lewis Skelly dragged over the coals and told, ostensibly, to ‘stay in his lane.’ ; at a minimum, the optics are bad and ought to be given far more consideration.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the US in 2020, players began to ‘take the knee’ before Premier League games kicked off in response to global and long lasting discrimination towards black people (the messaging was later diluted by the Premier League as a kind of catch all inclusion gesture). There was a global recognition that this represented a sensitive cultural moment for race relations.
The taking of the knee became controversial in its own right and we saw pushback from areas of the media and certain politicians. One such politician who took umbrage at the taking of the knee was then Home Secretary Priti Patel. Patel refused to criticise fans who booed the taking of the knee before matches. ‘I just don’t support people participating in that type of gesture politics,’ she had told GB News.
A few weeks after that interview, Patel (clearly no stranger to facing racist abuse herself) tweeted her condemnation for the racist abuse meted out to Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka in the wake of England’s Euro 2020 final defeat to Italy.
Aston Villa and England defender Tyrone Mings took umbrage, reposting Patel’s tweet with the missive, ‘You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against happens.’
It is disappointing that after a lot of these very public (and for many, very painful) discussions that we are still seeing a lack of care and curiosity, a lack of evidence of challenge and self scrutiny, a lack of acknowledgement about, at an absolute minimum, how some of this looks. How it feels for people.
And we should also be clear that this is not merely about optics, there are several layers of the onion beneath that that need to be peeled away and dissected. The story here should be of a brilliant 18-year-old who has usurped a £50m Italian international and a four time Premier League winner to become the first choice left-back for Arsenal (he had never played at left-back before this season!).
It’s a trajectory that is probably going to take him into the England squad well before his 19th birthday. A young player who was asked by Erling Haaland ‘who the fuck are you?’, and responded by smashing the ball into the net against Haaland and City (on his right foot, no less) just four months later. He firmly answered the question with his feet and, it must be said, Haaland doesn’t seem too bothered by it at all.
It further exposes the nonsense ‘You have to win something before you can do that’ pushback (Lewis Skelly has 10 senior appearances, guys) that dominated the discourse. HE SCORED A FUCKING GOAL! He didn’t just randomly crack the celebration out, he DID ACHIEVE SOMETHING FIRST!
When talking about Lewis Skelly and Nwaneri recently, Mikel Arteta highlighted the confidence of the two players and Lewis Skelly’s goal and celebration illustrated just that, his confidence and his skill. You don’t get into Arsenal’s starting line-up at 18 without that.
So it’s disappointing to see that weaponised against him. Whether intentional or otherwise, it feeds attitudes and discourses we should seek to actively reject. Nobody is saying that black players should not be criticised but there is absolutely a duty of care to understand our framing, our language and how they can contribute to attitudes that need to be dismantled.
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