In 2011, when Luis Suarez was charged by the Football Association of England for racially abusing Patrice Evra, Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA at the time, tried to wave the matter away. ”There is no racism [on the field], but maybe there is a word or gesture that is not correct,” Blatter said in a CNN interview. “The one affected by this should say this is a game and shake hands.” The FA eventually fined and suspended Suarez, but Blatter’s statement — from the highest-ranking soccer official in the world at the time — was perhaps a better representation of the barriers to addressing racism in the sport. Punishments for racial abuse are often meager and largely inconsequential. In Suarez’s case, he returned from suspension unrepentant and insulated by his fans. Meanwhile, power-brokers like Blatter continue to debate or deny the existence of racism itself, or suggest that it can be solved by doing very little active work. In a presentation at the inaugural Soccer Conference at Yale University in February, Ben Carrington, a professor of sociology and journalism at the University of Southern California, used the Suarez incident to discuss the soccer community’s inability to grapple with the…