Football

Football

A report about the emergence of Black footballers and their treatment in the game's culture.

Over recent years, Black footballers have robustly challenged racism in British society. Before games, the symbolic gesture of kneeling in anti-racist solidarity is now customary. They have challenged online abuse through social media, proactively speaking about and initiating boycotts of social media sites. Players like Raheem Sterling now continuously and vociferously challenge racism in the media.

But earlier Black players faced racism in breaking through to the game's elite level. In this edition of the multicultural weekly series Skin, the legacy and experience of a generation of Black men are chronicled.

Skin provides an overview of the shifting demography of inner-city schools and the conditions that gave rise to the emergence of young black professional footballers. The episode documents the 'white flight' in London in the 1960s, tracing how this coincided with the growth of the Black community's involvement with the football system. This phenomenon intersected with the infiltration of the terraces by the far-right and the normalisation of racist behaviour, reflecting the high levels of racist beliefs and the extent to which racist political discourse had emerged from the British mainstream.

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Multicultural TV

This collection covers programming that emerged from specialist multicultural and Black broadcasting units.

A multicultural Britain was forebodingly cast as an oncoming social issue. Only at the behest of campaigning by the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (established in 1965) did the programming introduced begin to frame Asian and later Black Britons as part of British society and cater directly to their needs. The earliest examples were programmes broadcast by the BBC Apna Hi Ghar Samajhiye (1965) and Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan (New Life), which helped improve the English skills of recent Asian migrants. Targeted programming initially emerged regionally, and franchise holders in the midlands who feared the impending reallocation of franchises reacted quickly, leading to multicultural programming such as Here Today, Here Tomorrow (ATV, 1978), Here and Now (Central TV, 1978). In London, London Weekend Television produced Babylon (LWT, 1979), and the London Minorities Unit produced Skin (1980), an extensive focus of our collection. During the emergence of Channel 4, Black programming was in-built into the new channel. Black commissioners, researchers, and presenters emerged, leading to Black and Asian-led series like Black on Black (1982), Eastern Eye (1982), Bandung File (1985), and Black Bag (1985). These programmes catered not only with increasing specificity to their respective audiences but also took on an increasingly globally connective approach centred around acknowledging the intricacy of diasporic relations.

25 videos in this collection

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Bob Marley

  • 1981
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Black Actors

  • 1981
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Attacks on Asians and West Indians

  • 1980
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Immigration Laws Part 1

  • 1980
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Bengalis and the Rag Trade

  • 1980
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Here and Now

  • 1985
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After the Deptford Fire: A Watershed in British Relations

  • Deptford
  • 1981
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Here and Now

  • Birmingham
  • 1984
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Multi-cultural Education

  • 1981
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Divided Families

  • 1981
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Football

  • 1981
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Blues Parties

  • 1980
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Here and Now

  • Stoke-on-Trent
  • 1984
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Asian Doctors

  • 1980
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Here and Now

  • Wolverhampton
  • 1984
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25 Years of Black British Part 4

  • 1980
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Education in Haringey

  • 1980
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Benjamin Zephaniah, James Berry and Buchi Emecheta at Words to Life (Here and Now)

  • Cannon Hill Park
  • 1984
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The Deptford Fire

  • Deptford
  • 1981
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Police - Black Relations Part Two

  • 1980
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Black Churches

  • 1981
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Immigration Laws Part 2

  • 1980
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Villain Boroughs

  • 1980
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Housing in Southall

  • 1980
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Here and Now

  • West Bromwich
  • 1984
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