John Barnes

As I've been saying for decades, as long as racism exists in society, it will exist in all facets of society. Until we eradicate it from society, football will be like any other industry.

When you talk about kicking racism out of football, people automatically assume you are talking about on the terraces and on the football field. But all racists have to do is keep their mouth shut for 90 minutes and they're fine.

What I say about myself, black footballers or black pop stars is that we have been 'elevated out of blackness.' Because when people see us, they don't see us as being black. These are the issues that we should address.

There wasn't a game in the Eighties when you didn't get racial abuse as a black player.

How many black people are there in the higher echelons of any industry? We can talk about journalism, we can talk about politics. So why should football be any different?

There are so many intelligent former black players, guys like Luther Blissett and Cyrille Regis, who never got a chance to become a top manager or a top coach because of the perception that surrounds people who look like them. They are black - which, for many, means they are good athletes but incapable of being anything above and beyond that.

The only fight worth fighting is to give all children equal opportunities regardless of race or gender, to judge individuals on their qualities and not their backgrounds. The victory won't come when nobody feels able to voice racist abuse, but when nobody thinks of doing so in the first place.