God, this has made me so fucking angry.
The cheek of BT Sport and their notable employees investigating racist abuse that they've been complicit in enabling with their coverage of Sterling ever since he left Liverpool. The entire media's been at it but they never want to launch an investigation into themselves. I think companies like BT & Sky and every major newspaper in the country love incidents like this. Angry working class racists are a good distraction from middle class racists who've embedded themselves in the media and are cleverer with it. Those Chelsea fans need doing in. As does the bloke who threw the banana at Auba. But so does every "respectable" member of the English press who's spent the last three years following Sterling's every move, never letting him exist, keeping him in the news for whatever reason.
It creates an environment where a cocky dickhead thinks he can shout racist abuse because he knows nobody around him will stop him. He thinks this because he reads stories and watches football punditry that's painted Sterling as nothing more than a target for scrutiny. Sterling's never been allowed to be a footballer or a person. His money's been questioned, his ability is STILL questioned (even by our own fans!), his motives and character are questioned constantly. All by media types who have constructed a narrative that'll follow Raheem for the rest of his career. These incidents, like the Chelsea fans here, aren't flash points. Search Sterling's name alongside the n-word on Twitter and you'll see it's constant.
But that's how the media likes to view these events, as flashpoints that don't represent the behaviour of the general public. It means they can isolate these Chelsea fans and deal with it as an acute case of racism as opposed to a symptom of a chronic illness that they've spent the last few years spreading. They did it with Balotelli before and they've tried it with dozens of other black footballers. You genuinely have to be a lowlife fucking thug like Joey Barton to be white and attract the same level of hatred and scrutiny. This is a man who beat up teenagers and stabbed cigarettes out in their eyes, backed UKIP on live TV and did time for assaulting a teammate.
It's not just how the press like to deal with it either, it's how Britain loves to see itself. It's why we love to view America as a "crazy country" with racist cops and shooting sprees because it's so extreme in its chaos that it distracts from our own crimes. Sterling can be racially abused in the middle of the biggest game of the weekend, in the biggest league in the world, and the most attention it'll get is a quick furrowed brow *after* 15 minutes of pointless analysis about whether somebody dived or not. It's fucking sickening. Nobody wants to confront it.
And it'll get no coverage because these racists show us what we really are - as a race, as a nation, as a people - and the press are so guilty and uncomfortable with their role in it that they'll never look at themselves in the mirror. It's easier to pretend it's not widespread. If the media pretends racism towards Raheem is not widespread then it can pretend there's no problem, and if it can pretend there's no problem then it can pretend it's not complicit in spreading it. Expect a furrowed brow on MOTD tonight, a brief mention on Monday, and silence.
Fuck this. I'd kill for Raheem at this stage.