WE’RE brought up to believe that our actions in life will always speak louder than words.
It’s a proverb screwed up into a ball and volleyed over the main stand every week in Scottish football.
Because, no matter what actions we take to fight back against bigotry, they’re being drowned out like a whisper in a hurricane.
Sure, we wear the anti-racism T-shirts, we slap the stickers on our shirts, we wave the placards and we take the knee.
But what’s the point if when the whistle blows all bets are off on what we’re allowed to shout?
There’s no point, absolutely none. All those gestures, the campaigns — no matter how well-meaning — come to nothing if we then close our ears to the levels of sheer malice that way too many believe is their right to spew because they’ve paid for a ticket.
Truth is, we’re kidding ourselves if we believe racism is even close to being our game’s most serious attitude problem.
That line about a ticket giving some the right to dole out abuse came from Dundee frontman Jason Cummings on Saturday, after his equaliser against Hearts at Tynecastle had sparked a barrage of verbal and physical missiles.
But even his treatment was nothing compared to the merciless, brainless, tasteless treatment his team-mate Leigh Griffiths had suffered from the minute he trotted out to warm up.
The worst of it came from a section of the home support at the front of the main stand, who chanted over and over.
But even the majority who didn’t join in with their level of nastiness hit the guy with every insult imaginable.
It was all as brutal as it was needless — and when Cummings shook his head and sighed that what his mate had endured was “disgusting”, he was bang on.
I write this as someone who never shies away from criticising Griffiths on the many occasions when his conduct on and off the pitch lets him down.
But the thought of spending 90 minutes screaming hatred at anyone else just for being ALIVE . . . well, it simply doesn’t compute.
Yet that’s what we hear at almost every ground, almost every week, even if not often to the dark levels Griffiths has to endure on a regular basis.
That, as Cummings put it, is what comes as standard with the ticket.
It’s almost impossible to be more than a yard away from someone who crosses the line between raw passion and naked anger, between banter and bile.
You can’t watch a telly game without microphones picking up the kind of abuse some of my fellow St Mirren supporters hurled at pretty much everyone during our defeat to Rangers yesterday.
Shout the same stuff in the street within earshot of a cop and you’d be lifted in two seconds flat.
So why it’s acceptable in a crowd at a sporting event, no matter how upset we might be at losing, is way beyond me.
Then, of course, we have the Old Firm themselves, quite rightly getting bent out of shape when racism rears its hideous head — as it did recently when Glen Kamara was on the receiving end — yet looking at their shoes and whistling when it comes to the weekly sectarian karaoke sessions their own supporters subject the rest of us to.
I’ll keep repeating it until something gets done — replace “orange” and “19th Century Terrorist” with “black” in their songs and there would be questions asked in parliament before you could say bandwagon.
Holyrood would be demanding stadiums were shut as punishment, the SFA would be appointing a former player from each club as Anti-Sectarianism Czars.
We’ve seen that with racism, ever since the first players took a knee when the English Premier League came out of lockdown last summer.
There’s been a huge — and hugely impressive — push to drive the white-is-right brigade out of the game.
The knee’s become as much a part of matchday as the coin-toss, every suggestion of someone being harangued for the colour of their skin becomes a national issue, and quite right too.
Give people it tight about their religion, though? Ach, it’s just wur culture.
It’s society’s problem, not football’s. It’s been going on forever, we’ll never change them.
Then, most dispiriting of all, is the one I’ve heard for 30-odd years now: If you didn’t write about it, they wouldn’t do it.
The fact that this is the exact opposite of how we’re tackling the race issue is seemingly lost on sectarianism’s apologists.
It’s not just religious intolerance we allow to run free, though. It’s sexism, homophobia, it’s the kind of deeply personal insults players, bosses, directors and match officials are routinely told they need to suck up as “part of football”.
What went on at Tynecastle was a particularly unpleasant example of this, but what’s worse is that it was equally predictable.
What’s properly depressing is that it’ll more than likely happen again, at some other ground, tomorrow and the next day and at the weekend.
And what’s truly shameful is that stewards, police and fellow fans will more than likely do absolutely nothing about it.
Bill reaching new levels of nonsense. Seems to is wrong to boo and shout at a convicted racist and wannabee paedo.
