I thought this week about 19-year-old Lauren James and the national newspaper column she wrote days after she first experienced racist abuse on social media. I thought about the broader context and how few interviews she had given in her career before. None in her first two years as a professional, given how protective her former club Manchester United was of her prodigious but young talent – James was still of school age when she signed for them –. I thought about how James, who scored Manchester United Women’s first goals in the Championship, FA Cup, Women’s Super League (WSL) and Old Trafford, kept such a low profile in his early days compared to the sporting prodigies of previous generations. I remember little to no ad campaigns or magazine shoots.
SO his first public statement was in response to racist abuse. “I did not plan to speak out against racism at this early stage of my career,” she wrote.[…] but when it happens to you, it’s different. Honestly, at first I didn’t know how to deal with it.
This article was published in 2021. James’ World Cup debut two years later was marred by further abuse after his imprint on Nigeria’s Michelle Alozie led to his expulsion and two-match ban. In December that year, James’ club Chelsea released a statement condemning the racist abuse directed at James after she appeared to trample Arsenal’s Lia Walti during a WSL match. His manager at Chelsea, Emma Hayes, described James as “not in the right place”. Both Alozie and Walti begged their social media followers to stop.
Too late, already, to put an end to the racism which darkened James’ early career. No other female player of this generation has had to endure such a constant and vicious level of abuse. So much to carry at 22, but James wrote in this Telegraph article that by 19 she had long learned that black women had things differently in all areas of life.
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This point was proven again when, on Sunday, Millie Turner posted a photo of James after United’s 2-1 FA Cup win over Chelsea, the image showing the pair battling for the ball which depicted James holding Turner in what could be perceived as a standoff. As Turner held the ball, both players were subsequently booked. What followed in the comments, in the context of James’ young career, was unfortunately predictable.
KAMMMMOOONNNNNN pic.twitter.com/C3f8LHRJAs
-Millie Turner (@MillieTurner_) April 14, 2024
During the last Women’s World Cup, the intersection between football, society and inequality was on display from the protests on the eve of the tournament to the kiss at the final. Invariably, James, intentionally or not, in a divided England, in a team whose senior women’s teams have had few black players in recent years, as the country’s most exciting female footballer for generations, will remain at the forefront of this conversation, its treatment a marker of how far there is to go. This entails an enormous personal cost, which becomes more and more burdensome with each position.
(Top photo: Chelsea FC via Getty Images)