Andy Murray: ‘We need to listen to what people say’

Andy Murray: 'We need to listen to what people say'

US tennis star feels some people don’t want Black players to succeed

It’s been an interesting week in the world of Black athletes, but one figure who’s emerged as a champion in the race is the men’s tennis star Andy Murray.

Last week he called out a man from the USWNT during a press conference and suggested the woman doesn’t have his best interests at heart. She responded by telling him she does.

He continued, telling the reporter ‘I will not stop doing what I am doing, what my family are doing, what my friends are doing…to make sure we give black players the success they deserve.’

And as you can see from the comments on the comments to the BBC article below, he has received a fair amount of criticism.

Murray’s response to the woman who asked him to stop talking:

When I ask [the reporter] if she likes black or white players or if her family are black, she is very frank and honest about what she likes or does not like.

In relation to this story, the UK’s Daily Mail ran an article called ‘The trouble with race’, reporting on a group of anti-racism activists led by the Reverend Sharan Burrowes.

The article states the activists believe that racism is not just about acts of malice against a person, but that it is rooted in ‘a deeper system of oppression that extends well beyond the overt prejudice’.

A week on and it seems some people still don’t get it.

The Mail article explains:

The Rev Dr Mark Goldie, a Christian minister and president of the Intergroup Working Group of the Inter-Religious Council on Race and Human Rights, said: ‘Just because we can laugh about it, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

‘But people who are trying to address it need to listen to what people say, and we need to challenge the myths and get people to try to understand it.

‘There’s lots of theories as to why the attitudes to people of different race are not exactly comparable in our society – how it comes about, why it persists and what we can do about it.’

Goldie was involved in the creation of the Intergroup in 1986 – which is the first of its kind in the world.

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