What Vinicius' tears say about racism in football and across Spain

Star Brazilian footballer Vinícius Junior recently broke down during a press conference ahead of a match with Real Madrid, saying he feels "less motivated" to play the sport amid repeated racist chants against him at games.

The 23-year-old athlete's call on football's governing bodies to "do more" has revived, almost a year later, a conversation about the racism he continues to encounter on and off the pitch. The problem goes beyond football and directly to the racism problem engrained within Spain itself.

Last year, when Vinicius called out Valencia CF fans for slinging monkey sounds and racist insults, the phones of race analysts and anti-racist organisations in Spain didn’t stop ringing for weeks. I was among the one fielding calls, attending to media questions nonstop.

I remember that nearly every interview started with the same question: Is Spain a racist country? I always answered the same way: yes.

Spain is a racist country because racism is structural there, just like sexism or classism. We can find it ingrained in every area of our society.

As a Black person born in Spain, I know this from my own experience for as long as I can remember: as a child, helping family members with immigration proceedings; as a teenager, suffering racist police stops; and as an adult, receiving job application rejections or fielding racist threats on the internet.

My life is not an exception, it’s the rule for Black people. For years I have been analysing it from multiple perspectives.

In Spain, there is limited official data on the impact of racism, but we do know that 80 percent of real estate companies agree not to rent to immigrants; police racial profiling affects a higher percentage of Roma, Black and Arab people; and school segregation is more evident every day.

Despite the evidence, Spain still denies the existence of racism or tries to convince us that discrimination is a rare event. Recently, football stars such as Spain's Carvajal or Brazil's Donato said Spain is not a racist country. But my question is: if Spain is not racist, why have there been so many episodes of racism for decades?

When it comes to football, officials should know better. Vinicius is neither the first nor the last case. A few days ago, in one weekend, there were three examples of racist insults: to Cheikh Sarr, goalkeeper of Rayo Majadahonda, to the Roma coach of Sevilla, Quique Sanchez Flores, and to the Argentine footballer on the same team, Marcos Acuña.

A decade ago in 2014, Dani Alves had a banana thrown at him from the stands. In 2006, the Cameroonian Samuel Eto'o tried to leave the stadium in the midst of monkey sounds. Further back, in 1993, Nigerian goalkeeper Wilfred Agbonavbare said he heard at the Real Madrid stadium shouting about the "Ku Klux Klan" and invitations to pick cotton wool.

Last year, Iñaki Williams, an Athletic Club de Bilbao player born to Ghanaian parents, took racism in football to court for the first time.

During professional football games, there are usually lots of cameras around and thousands of fans in the stands. Ones who chant racist slogans should be relatively easy to identify. But it would be a mistake to think this only happens at the elite level.

It goes further, even among fans. In February, prior to a game between Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid, an adult man hurled racist insults and threats at an eight-year-old girl wearing Vinicius' jersey on the outskirts of the stadium. A few months later, he was arrested.

I remember my time as an amateur player in Huesca, a small town in northern Spain, where at the age of 12 years old I was already hearing racist insults from rivals. And worse, from their adult relatives. Nearly 20 years later, the memories are still clear in my mind. My life is not an exception, it is the rule for Black people who have played football in Spain - amateurs and professionals.

And in the face of all this, what does La Liga do? Is society changing? In my opinion, they always take the easiest path with the least impact. The Spanish League has opted to transfer complaints to regular courts, delaying the procedures and possible sanctions.

The protocols don't take into account in-competition repercussions, such as shutting down stands and stadiums or taking away points, as the Premier League is contemplating doing.

But the key lies in community. We learn racism from a young age through language, the media, social networks, and politics or institutions that perpetuate racism. As long as we do not replace this learning with anti-racist knowledge, these behaviours will continue to be present on and off the football stadiums.

Vinicius' tears at the press conference symbolise the impotence generated by a deep and daily problem such as racism.

They are the tears of those who, like the Brazilian player, see how the years go by and the progress towards an anti-racist society is slower than we would like. His experiences on the field reflect a deeper and more widespread problem than we think.

But Vinicius' tears have also put the spotlight on the effects of racism on mental health. His actions off the field expand globally the urgent and necessary conversation about the fight against this disease.

All that visibility has made the Spanish population talk, think, reason, read and listen to arguments about race, an indispensable conversation if we want to initiate any transformation. Because what is not named, does not exist.

My dream is that in the future, interviews about cases like Vinicius' won’t start by asking me if Spain is a racist country or not.

My dream is to start talking about what Spain is doing to be an anti-racist country. That is the real conversation we should be having.

The author, Moha Gerehou, is an independent journalist who contributes to print, radio and television outlets. He is also a member of Conciencia Afro, former president of SOS Racismo in Spain and author of the book "Qué hace un negro como tú en un sitio como este" (What's a Black guy like you doing in a place like this?)

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of TRT Afrika.

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