One of the individuals who racially abused Bukayo Saka has apologised and bizarrely is criticising Instagram for only blocking his account for 24 hours.
As part of BBC File on 4 programmes, an investigation shows a shocking revelation, out of the 105 accounts reported after the Euro 2020 Final, 79 are still active.
It again shows social media’s refusal to have zero tolerance to racism. This man, in his early twenties, openly admits to sending monkey emojis to a 19-year-old.
He doesn’t fake ignorance; he acknowledges that he understands the context of what he was sending.
If the likes of Facebook and Twitter wanted to, they could insist that any user has to register their details, no different to what you have to do to do online gambling.
The only reason this hasn’t happened is because a lot of people don’t like to share personal information on the internet, and therefore you would lose a percentage of your audience.
Which is fine, I’m not naive enough where I don’t know how a business works, just don’t offend the public by pretending you care.
It’s almost as bad as FIFA pretending they have zero tolerance towards racism by allowing Hungary to have fans in the stadium when UEFA had already ordered them to play behind closed doors.
Why would anyone then be shocked that their World Cup qualifier is marred by monkey chants?
It’s strange in 2021 to see a grown man in the stands make a monkey gesture. He must know that cameras are everywhere so must not care about the consequences?
When I see those scenes though I feel that society has failed him.
Society has taught him that Hungary will get sanctions for discrimination but can get away with it on a technicality.
That the majority of players won’t really have the gumption to walk off the pitch if they hear abuse.
That you can racially abuse a teenager online and you might have to go a day without social media.
The UK Government doesn’t have zero tolerance towards the issue. Some MPs are trying to push legislation to make all online abuse illegal because at the moment there remain loopholes.
Hence this coward who spoke to the BBC is able to confirm he sent a monkey emoji to a teenager, knowing it was racist and yet is not in jail.
Why not just say anyone caught racially abusing someone online goes to prison?
Instead, this man is so sorry, he hasn’t even the bravery to give his name out of fear of embarrassing his family and his employers finding out what he gets up to in his spare time.
Being sorry is about taking accountability and showing remorse.
A coward who abused another human being while hiding behind his keyboard says sorry while once again hiding his face. That shows he hasn’t learnt anything so therefore can’t be sorry.
We have to educate the next generation that racism is unacceptable.
We can do that by having discussions and showing zero tolerance.
It’s not okay to send a teenager a monkey emoji, face zero consequences, stay anonymous and just say sorry.
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Dan