Born, brought up, and still in Liverpool, I'm the son of Indian parents who moved over in the 70s to the city. At the time, our parents' generation experienced some difficult times with prejudice, patronising behaviour but mainly amazing warmth, kindness and openness - some of the things that make the city great. While it was kind of 'easy' and 'obvious' to support Liverpool in the 70s and early 80s (don't ask me why) I somehow got caught up in the wrong group of friends and went blue! best decision of my life - well, character building anyway as I was too young to really enjoy the success of the 80s and at the time when I was enjoying football the most we had Walter Smith, Howard Kendall III, Mike Walker etc...
It's difficult to explain and I hope you understand this - going to football matches at that time was a scary experience, and ethnic minority families were afraid of having their children go to games, where there was a reputation for violence, racism and of course 'Everton are white' stereotypes. I still supported everton but was not allowed to go to matches. If you have ever been in this situation, or even if you can understand this - immigrant families worked harder to stay safe and protect jobs, build networks of friends and families and tried to create a community around them. Going to Goodison was out of the question because of stories, reputation, fear, especially when Liverpool had a reputation for crime and violence overseas. (They still moved here, but tried to stay in a comfort zone)
Even today, as an adult and dad myself, I find it challenging to go to matches, as I don't see many coloured faces around the ground. I know our people are not racist, but it's still intimidating. I know that if I'm wearing an Everton shirt, nobody cares about the colour of my skin But still, when I talk to friends and family who are not blues, and not from Liverpool, I get the feeling people still have a prejudice and stereotype view of Everton that we are a local, insular, 'white' club and don't have any space for international fans, ethnic minorities and immigrants.
As a friendly club, with a fantastic charity, great reputation as a 'people's club' and 'family club' we have to do something about this. How can we make the club more approachable, more accessible, totally disassociated with violence, aggression, intimidation, racism while still being a great powerful stadium and home ground that is intimidating for opposition teams? We can find a balance where we are totally behind our club, have amazing 'walls of blue', or great songs and chants that ring around the stadium, amazing noise like in the derby, but don't abuse and intimidate opposition players and fans. I know there have been no racist incidents, but hopefully you get where I'm coming from.
Whether we like it or not, the way of the EPL now is to be international, have a powerful brand and an attractive offer for new fans. We need to show ourselves to be different from the top clubs and not just buy our way to success, but build the club up from within, with strong roots. There's definitely a lot to be said in being the plucky outsider, the club punching above its weight, the honest, authentic club - all cliches that can help us to attract more fans, sponsorship, attention in the media and make us grow.
I hope that we can also start initiatives and embrace the anti racism movement, with some symbolic gestures, with some programmes for people of all backgrounds, and mostly, for being honest that we are treating everyone the same, whatever their skin colour, language accent, etc. I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure there are other people like me who would love to go to matches, but used to stay away.
I'm happy to argue this out, and be told I'm wrong, but because we are so good at so many things, we need to be good at one of the major problems of our time.
