BFR - I AIN'T NO RACIST

Last updated : 10 November 2004 By editor

The Mirror reports that BFR is making a BBC documentary about racist attitudes in States.

'Eight months ago he was on top of the world as one of Britain's best-known TV commentators. Now Ron Atkinson remains out in the cold for branding ex-Chelsea star Marcel Desailly a "lazy n****r" in an appalling on-air outburst back in April.

Atkinson has spent his enforced absence working on a searching documentary for the BBC, in which he has toured America examining his own attitudes towards black culture. The film, 'Big Ron - Am I A Racist?' should be on our screens in two months and Atkinson explained to Mirror Sport exactly what led him to make it.

"The biggest majority have accepted that what I did was out of order, out of character - and out of ignorance. And they were right," he said.

"People have even asked me: 'Where did it come from?' I don't know. I still don't. I attended anti-racism meetings as recently as a couple of months before it happened." And when the BBC approached me about going to America and looking at certain aspects of the racism there, I said yes - even though some people couldn't understand why."

Over a six-week period Atkinson went on a voyage of self-discovery to Chicago, Alabama and New York.

"Going to America was enlightening. In Chicago we went to the famous Jim Crow Museum. In Alabama we looked around the Martin Luther King Museum and I did get a lot out of it. It helped me to look again at my experience of black people. I was in Alabama talking to these black guys and I explained what I had done back in April."

"I never went to school with a black person - not because of any negative reason - just because there were no black people where I lived. I probably played with one black person when I was a player. I first realised about culture when I brought a few black players to West Brom. I thought they were great players and I was really impressed with the way that they conducted themselves. They were ambassadors."

"Viv Anderson, Brendon Batson and Laurie Cunningham, they were all great men. And when people ask me about what my first impression of black culture was back in the 60s, yes, I would have said 'Great sportsmen - people like Sugar Ray Robinson - and great entertainers'.

"There was such a resentment towards black players then. I can even remember in the 90s when I was at Aston Villa and we would have eight black players and the opposition wouldn't have one."

He added: "I will now be extremely careful who I am sharing banter with and what kind of language I use. Of course I will always be polite and I will always call things as I see them - because that's me. But things are very different now."