Alright, deliberately provocative title.
But I’m really glad that the England women’s football team has stopped going down on one knee before playing.
James O’Brien clarified it for me. It was never anything more than stupidly naive to believe it would make any difference.
For me, it was like changing your Facebook profile picture to Je suis Charlie, or putting a yellow and blue border around it. You might feel better, but it had zero effect.
Why were they going to one knee?
Virtue signalling.
For what?
That’s not true.
https://www.kickitout.org/reporting-statistics
Encouragingly, for the fifth season in a row, Kick It Out’s reports per incident rate has increased, suggesting fans are becoming less tolerant of discriminatory abuse.
The data shows a significant increase in reports of discrimination at grassroots level, up 25% from last season (242 to 303), and on social media, where reports have more than doubled (281 to 589). There has been a small drop in reports related to the pro game (484 to 440), down by 9%, although the number of incidents reported to Kick It Out has increased.
At the grassroots level (where taking the knee didn’t happen) and online, instances of racism increased. However, at the professional level, the number of incidents was lower and the number of people reporting those incidents increased.
IMHO I don’t see any harm in making a gesture - and as footballers etc are role models for many it might make a difference.
Maybe it will maybe it won’t - but if we give in to cynicism then nothing will change.
An organisation which is funded to serve a particular purpose claims it has been effective?
It says there have been more reports of racism. That might mean two different things, though the obvious interpretation is that there have been more incidents of racism, and the fact that the organisation interprets it in a way which helps itself should come as no surprise.
And, of course, there is zero evidence that the pointless posturing led to less racism, which surely was the only point. In fact, the evidence - including the expressed reasons for stopping it - suggests the opposite.
Yes you do. Musk, for example.
I would think the point would have been to draw awareness about it. Which you did since I had no idea why they were doing it. So I guess their goal was achived! Good Job!
Huh? The taking the knee initiative started in America after an American football player refused to stand during the National Anthem.
Kick It Out is a UK organisation focusing on discrimination of all forms in football. They didn’t initiate the taking the knee movement.
Sorry - I’d heard of the organisation you referred to but didn’t know what it was for. I thought it was you who made the link.
Being less facile, @ChrisMann (it would be hard to be more, even for me 
), I dislike gesture politics because for many people it’s where activism ends.
How can doing something be less than doing nothing?
Muted thread.
BLM.
Remember those guys? Got a lot of donations and their allegedly Marxist leader purchased a very nice with them.
Yes…? I don’t think “Virtue signalling” means what you think it means.
How do you define it?
Sorry, but that is a reckless assumption. The alternative is that there has been an improvement in the percentage of incidents being reported due to a change in societal attitudes. It is quite possible for the number of reported cases to increase at the same time as the number of actual incidents goes down.
Yes, that is the second of the two possibilities I identified. I didn’t think it needed setting out: sorry if you were confused.