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There are two big things mentioned there. First is sport, which is quite active. Second is racism, which again, unfortunately, is still quite hyperactive.
Amnesty International reveals that bullying is being triggered with mobile phones. It said “the kids in schools send me text messages on my mobile phone saying you black nigger bastard and I am afraid to look at my messages.” That’s what a racist is: a bully. What then is behind all of this? Ignorance is behind it all. Fear and ignorance is the lifeblood of racism. The unbelievable ignorance is stemming from the fact that a person is not educated, or their education is not making them aware.
The counteraction of this is awareness, which has its lifeblood from education. Integration in society is a natural occurrence that must occur with democratic principles. When this happens, it’s a natural flow of things. According to Amnesty International 36% say of Irish people in the Western world had reported to have had no contact with non-irish nationals within the country of Ireland. That is a startling statistic. It means that there’s a lack of the integration going on from some stations if not from all sites. If racism comes from ignorance, if it comes from a lack of overall education, then surely there is a lack of awareness that’s going to stem from that. There’s going to be naturally a racism going on. There are partnerships like he league of games in Ireland, the Gaelic games. These have partnerships, thankfully, with the societal leaders, with local community areas and projects. This is a really good thing because education is allowed. Integration can flow and there’s going to be good things happening.
Soccer, perhaps popular team sport in the world is co-linking with integration bodies as well. Sporting bodies are beginning to open up and educate people and this is happening in Ireland, surely this can happen other places.
Lewis Hamilton is a fantastic racecar driver from the UK, and he said in the recent past that the whole idea of racism in the modern day is absolutely crazy. That it exists is despicable, when we have so much internet, so much television ,so much stuff that is just educating people instantaneously. We learn that social media is really providing new platforms new places for people to use all prejudices, unfortunately. It’s giving way for this. But remember, it can also give way to more extensive projections of humanity, where we can actually go out there and group together in a social way, and we can fight against racism.
We need to be able to use sport as a conduit to carry positivity, to carry awareness and education, to use it as a vehicle to overcome such powerful ignorance that says mixed people of origin, or Chinese, or black people, or Asians are inferior to the whites, or are inferior in other ways.
We need to let sport grow the differences and use those colors, as we have both different colors of jerseys in a game. We can use this to just eradicate racism, we can use it to stop the actual instances of racism. It comes from ignorance. Ignorance will never teach us anything but incorrect ways of doing things. If we can learn from sport, we can learn from life. If we can learn from racism, we bring it into sport and bring it in to life as well. Equality in sport requires trying to figure out the different experiences that some players have, and leveling playing field.