Different Ways of Promoting Equality
Isn't it great to see the Millwall manager coming out and asking for the nation to find a different way to promote equality, because Millwall are just a misunderstood club who desperately want to not be a bunch of racist cnuts, if only someone else could find an acceptable solution.
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Really, really poor from Rowett, but you have to wonder if he'd have said the same were he manager at a different club. Is he just trying to give himself a quiet life?
Anyone who had a serious problem with the attitudes that prevail at Millwall would not touch the manager job with a barge poll. Rowett seems to have no problem working in such an environment.
When you take on that job you take on responsibility, everything they do gets highlighted due to their reputation and incidents that happened in the past and you can either play it all down and wish none of it was real or you can be an example and a leader.
Glad we haven't got to play them season (watch as we go and draw them in one of the cups).
It is the people booing who need to change because what they are doing is racist and offensive and doesn't have a place in a society which believes in equality.
Surprising to myself I am much more impressed with Sky News than I am with Gary Rowett, Sky have these from Danny Mills and Jobi McAnuff on their twitter thread:
Aside from identifying and banning those who identify themselves as racists by booing there are any number of things Millwall could do to stop it - don't sell tickets to the section of the ground where the booing started. Write to every season ticket holder, (again if they have done it already). Their 'us against the world' culture does not have to be racist.
There are two final ideas which I think are important.
1) Millwall fans should not have the right of veto over a short inoffensive anti-racism gesture.
2) I think any search for a "better way to unify people" on the issue of discrimination will not find a way which is acceptable to those at Millwall who boo taking the knee.
Really poor from Rowett. It's not up to Millwall fans and their manager to be dictating the debate on racial equality. I'm pleased to see that he's being called out on his statement, as he is effectively condoning the fans who are booing players taking the knee.
I think this sums it up well
Looking forward to the follow up interview where Rowett says 'the fans, the players and the board have all got together and here are our suggestions'
You would really have not to have done your homework to think that all people opposed to this particular gesture are so-minded because of racist inclinations. How that opposition is expressed is a separate matter.
Re 1): I don't think that is necessarily the claim. I do think that fans of club X should have the right to veto, or at least criticise, certain elements of their club's structure or behaviour of their players. This is not equivalent to distancing themselves from that club or those players (cf. Parker, Josh).
Re 2): Whether accurate or not, this is a biased supposition. Further, very few approaches to matters of common interest have universal agreement or support. Separately, I invite comment on the question of what actual effect the knee-taking gesture is a) intended to have, and b) is having.
In answer to b) it's winding up racists
In partial answer to 2b), it is encouraging and keeping alive the debate that racism is endemic in football (and obviously elsewhere).
Those of us who do not experience racism in our daily life have zero authority to tell those who do how they choose to try and express their feelings about it.
Their colleagues have the freedom of choice as to whether to express their support for their team mates views or not.
As spectators inside the ground we are faced with similar choices. We can express our support for their gesture by (currently) applauding it or we can choose to disrespect their actions and their cause by booing. Indifference and apathy is of course a third option, but with where we are at the moment I see that as siding with those who actively disrespect taking the knee.
It is as simple as that.
Taking the knee is a simple, regular reminder that the issue exists, hasn't gone away, can't be ignored and that the vast majority of players support the cause. It's there, right in front of people every game without impacting on the actual game, so is as good a gesture as any.
Plus, as Eric says, if it winds up some racists, all the better. Hopefully they'll stop going to games.
You're right obviously, they're not all racist. Some of them are just ignorant, thick fucks who believe what a few billionaires tell them to believe.
Someone say the M word, go on.
Let's all slag off greedy players for earning too much money and buying too many flash cars and then leap to make out their taking of the Knee is firmly rooted in overarching lefty ideologies whilst clearly ignoring there repeated statements that it's a simple protest at continuing racism.
Think of the poor Anti Anti Racist's, they can't even boo black players at the footy these days whilst they ask not to be racially abused.
Have just seen someone point out that the likes of Rowett never suggest an 'alternative', do they? Hmm...
Are some still linking the knee taking to a rather rogue element of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US?
Or has that misunderstanding been put to bed now?
"We're not racist guv, it's pol-ittt-ical innit"
Wonder if they're the same people who still claim covid 19 is just like a cold.
They'll come up with something lame if pressed but why should those who boo be the ones allowed to set this rather than those who are affected by the racism and have been brave enough to stick their heads up.
If you don't like it don't do it, don't stand in everyone else's way though.
Is there an anti-racist gesture that won't upset Millwall fans? Whatever blah de blah pretend sniff you're all so kneejerk and stupid it's not racism it is simply heightened political awareness arguments are made to justify the actions of a famously intolerant racist club...everyone knows why the players are doing it now and if you need to boo something that is an anti-racism gesture that takes two seconds you are a racist who wants to make sure the players know it. It really is that simple.
The only gesture that would be acceptable to these mouth breathers would be the reintroduction of throwing bananas on the pitch.
Thank you for the various feedback. I am interested that no-one has yet seriously articulated the arguments that exist among those with reservations on the subject in order to counter them nor, among those who took the time to downvote my earlier post, to say what it was I said to which they took objection and why.
You seem to have a strange bee in your bonnet with this one @HCblue . Both on that previous thread and this one.
I'd say booing an anti-racist gesture is, er, anti-anti-racist. It doesn't take a genius to join up the dots from there.
If you were after those arguments you could look at the thread from the last time you raised it.
I'm not sure I've ever heard a coherent argument in favour of the booing by anyone prepared to admit it in public.
Yeah, BLM is a named organisation, and some of its members have extreme views, I'm sure nobody booing does...The FA and many of the players have made it very clear that the gesture pre dates this organisation.
If player A and player B tell me they are taking a knee as a brief gesture to highlight racism I can agree or disagree without pissing on their chips and aligning myself with racists.
Sorry, didn't see @Wendoverman had already made the same point. Yeah, that.
It's easy to characterise people with a different perspective in the worst possible way, as has generally been done so far on this thread. This is very unappealing to me and makes me want to push back. By all means have a thread where everyone can agree they don't like the fans of club X because they are (insert bad human characteristic) to a man and thus that all thoughts or ideas they adopt are, by definition, wrong-headed but don't pretend to moral superiority as you push that line of thinking.
It does take an informed understanding of the anti-racist movement, though.
Perhaps taking away the element of the gesture that upsets some, (which I believe is the closed/raised fist), I think that's what they see as the "political gesture". Maybe swap it for arms across each others shoulders? Then if they still boo, you know that they are simply racists.
Just an idea, don't shoot the messenger please.
Your last paragraph pretty much describes my feelings on the matter, too.
Yes, It would be abhorrent for people to be lumped all in one group and judged accordingly by the law perhaps because of a characteristic or effect of birth. If a group of people had experienced that over decades if not centuries they'd surely want to protest. Probably less so because someone disagreed with them on a forum.