England defender Tyrone Mings has said it is still important for the players in the squad to continue to take the knee before matches to fight racism in sport and in society as a whole and train those who continue to live against the anti-racism protest.
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It comes after Britain’s Home Secretary Priti Patel this week opposed taking the knee and controversially calling it a ‘gesture policy’. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had urged fans not to boo before England’s opening Euro 2020 match against Croatia, but only after an official spokesman had previously refused to condemn those cheering against the anti-racism protest.
Other leading Conservative MPs, including Patel, have refused to condemn the spread or in some cases even actively defended it. Jacob Rees-Mogg argued that proliferation is a response to “vigilance”.
We talked and [Priti Patel] invited me to a Zoom talk once, where she seemed so interested and engrossed in the players’ point of view and what we could do more to address this type of problem, ”says Mings on Sky Sports.
What do you mean by gesture politics, @pritipatel?
Do you mean to applaud NHS staff and then reduce their salaries? https://t.co/B10PpnrtMV pic.twitter.com/DUy22howJo
– Angela Rayner (@AngelaRayner) June 14, 2021
“But at the same time, everyone has the right to their own opinion. The Home Secretary is one of many, many who oppose us taking the knee or refusing to defend it.
“We have our own set of beliefs and what we think we can do to help or be players who can be influential and stand up for what we believe in, and understandably when you have such strong beliefs there will be resistance to it. .
“We’ve talked a lot about it,” he continued. “We have talked about trying to educate or try to inform the minority who refuse to acknowledge why we take the knee and want to boo it.
“But at the same time, at Wembley there was a huge positive reaction that we took the knee too and I do not think it should be overshadowed by a minority who refuse to accept the reasons or do not agree with them.”
England players continue to kneel before matches to protest racism / Catherine Ivill / Getty Images
Booing still remained as England players took the knee before the kick-off against Croatia on Sunday, but it largely drowned out applause and support.
A minority of singing fans have erroneously convinced that football players who kneel to protest racism are a politically motivated act that represents Marxist values due to certain claims about Black Lives Matter.
A statement issued on behalf of the England team last week appealed to the public to fully support the team, declaring that it is personally important for players to kneel as a “mechanism to peacefully protest against discrimination, injustice and inequality”.
The statement also sought to explain that the story of taking the knee as a way of protesting against racism and inequality can be traced to the 18th century, which is well before the 19th century political ideology that its opponents and critics now claim it is linked to. .
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