( CNN ) Video footage of Chelsea soccer fans apparently pushing a black man off a train in Paris on Tuesday have startled news followers around the world . It is n't hard to see why . Not only do the menacing fans , who were in the French capital to watch their team play Paris Saint-Germain , gruffly prevent the man from boarding the Metro ; they then start to chant : `` We 're racist , we 're racist , and that 's the way we like it ! '' To behave in a racist fashion is bad enough ; to boast of being racist takes things to a whole other level of wrongness . So it 's not surprising that everyone from the French press to FIFA -- the Federation Internationale de Football Association -- has condemned the men 's behavior , and that the video of the alarming episode is trending on Twitter , accompanied by outraged hashtags . Yet while it is right to find the conduct of these fans nauseating , it is wrong to hold this incident up as Exhibit A in a show trial of British soccer more broadly . Sadly , that is what is happening . Many observers are using this incident as hard evidence that British soccer remains an unreconstructed backwater , a sport stuck in a past , malign time , followed by prejudiced people . But actually , soccer is n't like that anymore . A columnist for the Daily Mail described the Chelsea men as a `` mob of filthy fans '' whose behavior was a `` throwback to the Eighties terrace culture '' -- that era when hooliganism was a genuine problem at English soccer games and racist attitudes were fairly widespread . He slams us all for `` foolishly believ ( ing ) this shameful behaviour was a thing of the past . '' The fans ' shoving and chanting spoke to the `` lingering nastiness '' in the so-called Beautiful Game , said one Guardian writer . Another suggested soccer is inherently racist , because it is `` all about feeling that you 're part of one group and are opposed to another group ... the mentality of the racist . '' So should we assume that soccer fans are more likely than others to harbor hateful thoughts for the Other ? These shrill responses to one ugly incident do a grave disservice to both soccer and the millions of good people -- men , women and children of all races -- who follow it . The truth is that racism and violence at British soccer games , which were big problems in the past , have thankfully become rarer and rarer . According to figures from the UK Home Office , the number of arrests for `` racist or indecent chanting '' at soccer matches has declined steadily over the past 15 years -- from 82 in the 2000/01 soccer season to 21 in 2013/14 . ( And not all these chants will have been racist ; the Home Office does n't distinguish between chants that are racist and chants that are foul in other ways , for example , containing sexually explicit words . ) The specter of the rough English hooligan is also disappearing . Home Office figures show that arrests in general at soccer , for all crimes , have declined over 15 years , from more than 4,000 in 2000/01 to 2,273 in 2013/14 . And bear in mind that last year there were 30 million attendances at soccer matches . That means a measly 0.0075 % of fans got into trouble with police , which is statistically insignificant . Today , more than 30 % of soccer players in Britain are black . This represents a huge increase in the space of a decade : In 2004 the Commission for Racial Equality found that 12.2 % of players were black . Can the media outlets deriding soccer for its alleged built-in racism show that 30 % of their employees are black ? As the number of black players increased , so the disgusting behavior of some fans of the past has declined . To be sure , some fans have behaved in a shockingly racist way over the decades . In the 1960s , when black players were a rarer sight , two black players for West Ham United , Clyde Best and Ade Coker , were the victims of monkey chants and banana throwing . As late as the 1980s , bananas were thrown at black players : In one infamous photo from 1987 , black Liverpool player John Barnes could be seen kicking off the field a banana that had been hurled at him . Yet it is rare indeed to read newspaper reports of such behavior today . We should not condemn an entire sport and its millions of followers on the basis of what a tiny number of men did and said on a train in Paris . In fact , to do so is to promote another kind of prejudice , a view of the largely white working-class fans of soccer as uncouth , stupid , unenlightened . One commentary piece used the word Neanderthal to describe fans . That 's the great irony of much of the outrage over the Chelsea fans ' terrible behavior : In seeking to expose the alleged prejudices of the soccer family , many observers end up exposing their own .
Brendan O'Neill : Video of fans pushing black man , shouting racist chants plays to stereotype . O'Neill : Conduct was horrible but is far from the norm today . Comment: