England’s football culture has been a topic of debate for years. Hooliganism, the controversial chants, now bolstered with the vile taste of racism, continue to be a topic of debate in England’s football culture. Rather, racism is now a global epidemic and Bukayo Saka has felt the dizzying effects of it.
In case you’re wondering if it is about the 2020 Euro Cup finals, then you stand corrected. In the aftermath of yet another loss in the finals, racism has again tightened its grip around Saka’s throat.
It all kicked off after the final in Berlin. Social media started filling up with racist memes and comments directed towards the black players, especially Bukayo Saka. An X (formerly known as Twitter) user posted a picture of Saka with his face edited to look like a furred mammal. The unnamed user who floated the picture first captioned it, ‘This clown has costed us the Euros.’
— 🇯🇲𝕋𝕒𝕟𝕪𝕒 𝔻𝕒 𝕌𝕟𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕒𝕓𝕝𝕖🐝 (@CtRLsMaNkYLOL) July 14, 2024
The picture is similar to the graphics used in the movie ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’. Alterations were made to his nose and eyes to give a similar length and colour to that resembling an ape. The editor even warped his lips outwards to resemble an ape’s mandibles. The nasty edit went viral after the 2020 Euro Final and now has again surfaced.
The disgusting act of racism did not stop there as well. Screenshots of the comments section of Saka’s IG posts showed a picture much grimmer. Dozens of comments with monkey emojis, GIFs of bananas and similar distasteful racist innuendos were on full display, with no hint of shame involved.
The same thing happened back in 2021 after Saka missed a penalty in the shootout loss to Italy in the final. Alongside him, people targeted Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford with racial slurs, and the latter had his mural vandalised in Manchester. According to a study conducted after the social media debacle, 34 of such accounts were of English fans with 123 overseas.
What is more appalling is that the social media platforms take no action against such acts, stating that contents are not harmful as per community standards.
‘Racism is a serious problem that goes beyond any single organisation. All of us — tech companies, governments, civil society, and people — have a responsibility to address this shared challenge,’ a spokesperson for Meta said after pressure mounted on the social media platforms for their inability to crack down on racial abuse.
Not only that, even English print media have been seen promoting news with subtle racist jibes. A famous media outlet’s front page had a caption, ‘Black Ice’ with a Saka’s picture after England lost to Iceland in a previous Euro edition.
Newspaper frontpage labelling Saka ‘Black Ice’
This time, Saka is yet to respond to those hateful comments, but his IG post after converting his penalty against Switzerland said it all. He captioned it ‘Love always wins,’ and so it should.
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