How the football codes in liberal democracies confronted racism

In Australia, after the NRL player Latrell Mitchell reported he had experienced online racial abuse, two New South Wales men were arrested and charged for using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence.

With Indigenous football players receiving the most abuse during the Indigenous rounds of the major Australian AFL and NRL codes, with a massive increase in online abuse during the last few years, the long-awaited federal Online Safety Act is intended to expand the powers of the eSafety Office to gather information, penalise anonymous accounts and create a process to remove toxic cyber abuse "when online platforms fail to do so".

To conclude, while we still live in a world where racism does exist, the experience of the football codes shows that race and ethnicity no longer prevent black players from participating or express concern and even call out racism, rights that are also supported by a clear majority of Australians, British and Americans.

Hence, I, for one, reject any argument that little has changed with regard to racism in recent decades, especially with regard to sport as discussed here by recent developments in the football codes in the US, England and Australia.