After some fans booed players ‘taking a knee’ before the start of the England vs Austria game last night, manager Gareth Southgate falsely suggested that the reaction was an attack on black people.
The England-Austria friendly match was played at Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough on Wednesday. Some spectators jeered the virtue signalling gesture, which was introduced a year ago after the death of George Floyd and is inextricably linked with the Black Lives Matter movement, Summit News reports.
“Players have been taking a knee to highlight racial injustice,” the BBC inaccurately reported, failing to represent clubs and players who have specifically stopped taking a knee because they are uncomfortable that it represents a political act and isn’t some vague nod to “equality.”
England manager Gareth Southgate echoed this fallacy, stating, “It’s not something on behalf of our black players that I wanted to hear because it feels as though it is a criticism of them.”
Except it isn’t a criticism of them, as Southgate himself acknowledged in a subsequent statement when he said, “some people think it’s a political stand that they don’t agree with.”
Forsided, 04.06.2021