"At some point we probably need to grow up and agree what we will and will not allow in our football grounds. Right now, anything goes, except for racist, anti-Semitic and — but seemingly only if Rangers or Celtic are playing — sectarian abuse. And, at some point, we need to ask ourselves why we ban certain speech in football grounds. Is it to make some sort of social statement? Is it simply a commercial decision, to make our stadiums more inviting and pleasant? Is it to make ourselves feel better?

"Increasingly, much of the anti-racist stuff in the mainstream media is motivated primarily by the latter two. Nothing wrong with that, of course, unless it lulls us into a false sense of achievement, a sort of "pat-on-the-back" self-congratulatory attitude which leads us to ignore the reality that racial prejudice — if not outright racism — is real and all around us."

Episode Eighty Six of the Blizzard Podcast revisits Gabriele Marcotti's 'The Race Card' from Issue Three, originally published in December 2011, which tackles the tricky subject of abuse in our stadiums, and the double standards that sometimes surround it. 

This article contains some language that may not be appropriate to all listeners, so discretion is advised. 

Read the full article here: https://www.theblizzard.co.uk/article/race-card

Issue Three, like all issues of the Blizzard, is available for £12 plus postage on www.theblizzard.co.uk. Since we’ve relaunched the website, all our articles, including this one, are available to read for free. Non-subscribers get 3 free articles a month, while subscribers have unlimited advert-free browsing, as well as access to digital downloads of all our issues in eBook formats.

Those who want to buy one-off eBooks can still do so – from the Kindle and Google Play stores.

The Race Card

The Blizzard is a quarterly football publication put together by a cooperative of journalists and authors. These podcasts feature some of the best articles from our back catalogue, and recordings of live Q&A events we hold with our writers around the UK. 

Our main aim is to provide a platform for top-class writers from across the globe to enjoy the space and the freedom to write what they like about the football stories that matter to them.

For more details – www.theblizzard.co.uk