Quotes from John Barnes

What I say about myself, black footballers or black pop stars is that we have been 'elevated out of blackness.' Because when people see us, they don't see us as being black. These are the issues that we should address.

If you are black then you have to be better than your white counterpart to be equal. That's life.

Very much like a disease, we have to tackle the cause of racism, not the symptoms.

We have to deconstruct the idea of racial superiority. We have had it for hundreds of years so it is not going to happen overnight but we have to tackle it in the right way.

We have to look at it holistically and as a whole and say let us tackle racism or discrimination in life. Then you can look to get rid of it in football.

There are lots of different ways of playing football. It depends on how tall you are, what position you're in.

For most footballers, they just have to give their all for 90 minutes two times a week, and apart from a few training sessions spend the rest of the time resting. They only train intensively for six weeks before the new season.

For a team like Brighton, just being in the Premier League is important. That is the name of the game.

My mother, Jeanne, was a TV and radio presenter in Jamaica. Bob Marley used to appear on her shows all the time and so she knew him quite well.

I'm desperate to work in football. I could make a lot more money doing other things but this is what I want to do.

I grew up in a middle-class family in Jamaica, I had no self-worth issues whatsoever.

History shows that black people have been second-class citizens, less than human. That's what had to happen with slavery. You had to dehumanise a person, to say, 'He is not like us. He is used to hard work in the sun. He can handle being whipped because he doesn't feel any pain. He doesn't need to be educated.'

I don't differentiate between racism in football to racism in life so, therefore, as a football manager I knew that I would get racist abuse.

As I've been saying for decades, as long as racism exists in society, it will exist in all facets of society. Until we eradicate it from society, football will be like any other industry.

Because I have experienced a prosperous, healthy and happy existence, I must have been a decent person in a past life.

I was a real fast food junkie - KFC, McDonald's - but all the training kept it off.

I'm a big believer in fate.

Race, for me, should be social and cultural, rather than the colour of your skin. Anton Ferdinand would have more in common with John Terry than he does with some West African from Nigeria. John Terry will have more in common with Anton Ferdinand than a Slav from Eastern Europe who happens to be white.

From the perspective of what happened with Celtic people might argue that I didn't have the experience for another big job but I don't think my experience with Celtic explains why I couldn't get a job in the fourth division.

In the 1970s you would have had lots of black goalkeepers and defensive midfield players but never made it professionally because the perception was, 'You don't think too much, you can't play in positions of responsibility so you play on the wing or up front.' Lots were lost to the game because of the perception.

Normally when you look at the Ballon d'Or winners, they're either attacking midfield players or centre-forwards. They are goalscorers and eye-catching players.

In the 1970s people were afraid to call me black because they thought it was an insult. They would say 'coloured.' Now it has gone full circle. It's not an issue. The intention is the most important thing.

I've been thinking," he said. "Which is not an easy thing for a teacher to admit to.

I looked at the people playing, walking, loafing, hurrying, or sauntering across the little park in front of us. How many terrible stories were there, just there in front of me, never to be spoken?