Racism in football. final chapter - Essay Example

We can consider anti-racist campaigns as organisations, which aim to suggest a programme whereby the public and organisers tackle racialised inequalities. The first part of the chapter will explore the various types of initiatives and discuss how effective they have been. A crucial point here is that there is no ‘real’ way of knowing how effective a campaign is or was. This is because one could interview fans to see their thoughts and attitudes throughout the years but there would still be questions raised about the reliability of the answers and the idea of how to ‘measure’ the change in attitudes.

To begin with I would like to discuss ‘fanzines’ and the role of the Football Supporters Association (FSA). Fanzines are magazines, which aim to shift the idea of the football fans as ‘mobs’. These fanzines are produced independently from the football clubs and set out to raise issues about racism and football generally1 thus they can clearly be used as an anti-racist campaigning device (Back et al., 2001). The FSA is a pressure group that aims to express the opinions of supporters and its main aim is to gain an improvement in the facilities and services offered to fans as well as a legitimate way to represent all football fans.

Liverpool supporters established it in 1985 and it was an organisation where supporters could talk about football in a positive way. The FSA and fanzines worked in conjunction to promote a message to the fans and the general public. The issue of racism is a complex one, especially when fans are portrayed in various fanzines as racist skinheads. According to Back et al. this image overshadows the ‘banal and the very ordinary face of racism…’ (2001:188) and the racist is seen in a very narrow sense.

Therefore, one weakness of these fanzines is that racist fans are constructed in a stereotypical way and a move away from these images may