Why It’s Important To Stamp Out This Racism Against Asians!

Date: 24th August 2021

Celtic’s summer signing Kyogo Furuhashi has been a delight to watch so far this season. 

The Japanese player constantly plays with a smile on his face. His off the ball runs are super intelligent, he’s regularly hitting the target and he seems delighted to be plying his trade in Scotland. 

Unfortunately some rival supporters have decided to racially abuse the forward, making up derogatory songs and using stereotypical gestures that shouldn’t be seen in a modern day society.

Rangers fans were caught on film doing such disgraceful acts on one of their supporters buses as they travelled to Dingwall this past weekend. Rightly the clip was called out by people of all backgrounds on social media. 

As a football club Rangers were quick to act as within twenty-four hours they announced that they had banned not just the individuals involved on screen but the whole supporters bus as they were complicit by not standing up and stopping that kind of nonsense from taking place. 

It’s extremely important that the whole of Scottish football takes note of this situation and doesn’t get complacent in the face of this serious issue. 

In the past eighteen or so months, we’ve seen an increase in violence and abuse towards the Asian community. This can probably be attributed to the global pandemic which people state came from China. There is absolutely no excuse for any hatred to be aimed against any Asian person, none whatsoever.

As a nation, Scotland should always be welcoming to new arrivals. Kyogo seems to have gone out of his way to check out his new surrounds and learn about Glasgow. That should be applauded and respected.

Some might say that there’s no issue with Scots against Asians and that this is an isolated incident that you’ll just find at one club or just within the game of football. I don’t think that’s strictly true. Still in our country we have too many that will use derogatory terms to talk about a takeaway restaurant or a local corner shop.

That’s why we have to act now and have a zero tolerance policy against such actions that we witnessed on that bus journey. It is a point that needs to be hammered home now or we risk a lot more of those scenes popping up and spilling into normal day life too.

It is interesting that Scotland boasts a fairly large Asian community within our population. Yet not many of them seem to be stepping into our professional game. Incidents like Sunday’s will just put certain communities off, in my opinion. Our game would be all the better with a make-up that reflects our society and I still don’t think we are close enough to that goal.

While I respect how quickly Rangers reacted to the issue, I do think their statement could have went further. I believe they should’ve mentioned why these people were going to be banned and they should also have ended it with warning that the same punishment awaits any other fan that gets caught doing similar in the future.

Some people will say ‘what about this’ issue and that issue. While I understand that there are plenty of other issues that surround our game, we should correct this problem before it becomes regular thing. Part of our other problems are due to not stamping them out a lot sooner and letting them fester and grow. We should have long term ideas in fixing those, mainly looking at education but I do believe we can fix this hatred towards Asians now.

We need to continue to stand up for what it is right and speak out for the minorities that are the victims of abuse!

Posted in: Latest News