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Lucy Bronze: It's not enough to tweet about racial equality and BLM - you have to educate yourself

Lucy Bronze - Naomi Baker/FIFA via Getty Images
Lucy Bronze - Naomi Baker/FIFA via Getty Images

The England right back Lucy Bronze has warned that it is not enough to simply share support for the Black Lives Matter movement on social media when “you need to educate yourself”.

The 28 year old, capped 81 times for England, was the only female player to appear in Raheem Sterling’s #TimeForChange social media campaign alongside nine other players, including Jordan Henderson, Jadon Sancho and Kevin De Bruyne. In the powerful and the thought-provoking film, the players asked: “We are tired of saying what if it was me falling asleep like George Floyd?” Sterling finished: “I will never tire of being black”.

Speaking on The Beautiful Game Podcast, Bronze explained that white people have a huge role to play in eradicating racism, saying: “I think it’s got to be everyone. I know it’s not really the same comparison, but I feel like [it’s] the same with sexism: it can’t just be women fighting for women. We need men and women to fight for women. I think it’s the same thing.

“The more I looked into it and educated myself, I think that is the way forward. When there’s campaigns, I’m saying: ‘If someone wants to support a campaign, especially the Black Lives Matter movement, you need to educate yourself to be able to support that campaign. You can’t just put it on your Twitter, put it on your Instagram.’

“I took a few days to really go and look at everything, to make sure I understood what was going on, to make sure I was behind it so if someone asked me what it’s about, I’ve got all of that information to fight for it as well. You’ve got to educate people when they’re young. You look at the videos of little kids: kids don’t see differences at all, and I think that’s where it starts from. If you start it with the kids, and they grow up, see the world and everyone’s equal, they’re going to pass that down and pass that down.”

Bronze explained that Sterling contacted the England Women head coach Phil Neville and asked if the Lyon defender wanted to join his campaign.

“I said absolutely,” Bronze said. “It’s something that I think a lot of people - and I hold my hands up, I’m one of them - went and researched and educated themselves on. I really want to be part of something moving forward. I was absolutely buzzing because I wanted to do something anyway. For him to personally say: 'I want Lucy Bronze to be part of it with me and all the other boys,' I was like: ‘Yeah, definitely. Get me on that. I want to be part of it. I want to help make change.’

“His agent was saying: ‘We want it to be powerful. We want it to hit people.’ As soon as I saw it, I thought, it looks really good."