Attempts to reduce racism often focus on punishment. Yet as Georgios Tsaples shows using evidence from European football, these strategies consistently fail because they overlook the systemic, self-reinforcing dynamic that fuels discrimination.
Racism and discrimination in Europe have not vanished, they have merely evolved. Prejudice remains visible in the systems that connect and entertain us, from workplaces and stadiums to social media.
Discrimination travels across all aspects of modern life but also changes forms. It includes hate crimes and frequent online abuse against groups such as women, minorities and people with disabilities, as well as police stop and search procedures that disproportionately affect non-white people.
The institutional response to the problem has been instinctive, with most attention focused on punishment rather than developing a holistic and coordinated approach. Laws have been passed, offenders have been punished, there has been public condemnation and yet, racism has persisted and the cycle has simply been repeated.
A key reason for this is that authorities consistently blame individuals for racism rather than considering the systemic failures that drive it. These are the distinctive structures and patterns that reward silence, discourage trust and allow discrimination to be sustained in the gaps between institutions. The focus on punishment makes little sense in this context as it is impossible to “punish” a system. Instead, systems need to be understood and nudged towards the state we need them to be.
Racism in European football
Football offers a microcosm of Europe’s struggles with racism and discrimination. Football magnifies identity, loyalty and emotion, the same forces that shape public and private life. Yet, every few weeks there are stories about referees stopping a game because of racist chants or slurs. Players are frequently subjected to racist insults and even more worryingly, racist incidents occur frequently in children’s games.
Such incidents are not new. They have been part of football for many decades. Efforts to combat racism in football are just as old. Institutional frameworks, anti-racism programmes and campaigns usually fall within one of five categories: programmes that use sports as a tool for community building, open forums for dialogue and an exchange of ideas, programmes to assist victims or vulnerable groups, initiatives based on education, and campaigns for raising awareness.
Because football is always under the spotlight, every programme to kick racism out captures public attention for a few days, yet the hostility emerges again in another place with another form.
The problem is not only the individual behaviour of fans and supporters. The larger issue at stake is that individual prejudice responds to signals and incentives surrounding it. Factors such as what clubs tolerate, how fans in the next seat react and how the governing bodies respond feed into the wider system and affect the form and evolution of racism.
From behaviour to structure
One way to map these relationships is to view racism through the lens of “systems thinking”. This means approaching a problem from all sides and considering “time, space and context in order to understand how elements interact within and between systems”.
Viewed from this perspective, racism should be seen not as a series of isolated incidents, but as a series of causal relations. Previous research that has taken this approach has uncovered that when football clubs invest in transparency and education, fans tend to be gradually more willing to report abuse.
It also shows that when football authorities act faster in responding to reports of racist behaviour and when this is made visible, behaviour changes faster and at a more intense rate. None of this happens through a single policy but instead happens over time.
The attempt to find solutions to racism must be driven by dialogue, where people with different perceptions can come together and investigate approaches that might or might not work. This dialogue-centred process is important because the systems that underpin racism are not objective structures and it is impossible to quantify them or establish comprehensive data on their impact.
The challenge is not the absence of data, but the absence of coherent narratives. A key part of this is making the story tangible. For instance, if people can see that large numbers of participants to a survey have experienced discrimination, but only a fraction of these people have asked for help, there is likely to be a better appreciation of the systemic failures that underpin the problem.
Building systemic literacy
If Europe is serious about reducing racism, it must move beyond punitive reflexes and invest in systemic literacy – the ability of policymakers and institutions to understand the systems that drive discrimination.
Elements of this shift already exist. It is visible in the EU Anti-Racism Action Plan and the growing use of behavioural and systems models in public policy. Interactive learning environments that reveal system dynamics can also help both policymakers and citizens recognise how racism reproduces itself.
What is missing is integration into a coherent policy strategy. Football shows that inclusion is a dynamic process built on continuous adjustment and shared understanding. Europe already has the tools for this transition, the next step is to connect them and embed systems thinking directly into anti-racism policy design, turning academic insights into structured and practical public reasoning.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.
Image credit: Matushchak Anton provided by Shutterstock.
Discussion about this post