Racism: Will it Ever Get Kicked Out?

QPR's Jay Bothroyd became the latest player to 'tweet' his views on racism. It has always been an unfortunate part of the beautiful game and it has been heavily involved in recent weeks. We've had the Suarez Evra allegations that the FA seemingly took forever to find a conclusion, which didn't help matters. Then it was John Terry's seemingly racist remark to Anton Ferdinand that brought even more people into the debate. This was before Sepp Blatter did his best to bring everybody else into this debate with his 'shake hands and move on' comment.

Even though great lengths have been made to kick racism out of football and the equality amongst players has increased, a question still remains as to whether racism will ever be able to be kicked out of the sport. It should be easier in the bigger leagues like the Premiership as it is one of the most ethnically diverse leagues in the world, especially as the likes of Terry and Suarez both have ethnic players within their squads.

But unfortunately there are leagues that aren't so ethnically diverse and this is where the problem is at its work. Places like Russia and Italy, amongst many others, have strong partisan following with little diversity. This led to the shocking banana throwing incident aimed at Roberto Carlos for Anzhi. With these soul destroying antics still going on in certain parts of the world, is it possible for racism to be wholly kicked out?

The 'Kick it Out' campaign has done a fantastic job on making us aware and improving behaviour. But they don't get as much advertising as they should and when the President of the sport's governing body makes completely naive claims, it does nothing to help the good work that has preceded it.

For Sepp Blatter to shrug a racist incident off by claiming that players should just shake hands at the end of the match and move is ludicrous. Racist comments can't just be forgotten after a match has been completed, a school kid doesn't forget being bullied at the end of a school day, so why should this be any different. What is needed is racist investigations like the Suarez and Terry ones to be concluded quicker so it doesn't drag on. The conclusions then need to be told to the public and if it comes out that a player is guilty of racism then he should be seriously reprimanded. This will show others that behaviour like that won't be tolerated from any race and would help campaigns like 'Kick it Out' to continue to gain plaudits.