Mural for Rashford, Sancho and Saka vandalised with racist graffiti

"Overnight a cowardly racist has decided to spread hate"

Racist graffiti was printed across a mural honouring Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, and Jadon Sancho. "We do not stand with the 3 Black Lions" was scrawled across the wall of the Arthur Wharton Foundation in Darlington, a building dedicated to the first Black professional footballer. https://twitter.com/AWisNumber1/status/1415247526878384128 After the Euro 2020 final last week, an enormous amount of racist abuse was directed towards Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, and Jadon Sancho. The Arthur Wharton Foundation, which was set up in 2010, unveiled the tribute to the three England players on Wednesday. A simple white backdrop with the shirt numbers of the three players was printed on the wall. The mural was then used to project images of the players alongside their numbers. https://twitter.com/SUTR_NE/status/1416353761568698368 "Overnight a cowardly racist has decided to spread hate,” the group tweeted. “We condemn this racism, and we stand in solidarity with the Arthur Wharton Foundation. We are the majority and cowardly racists are not welcome.” Further graffiti was printed alongside the England badge; it read: "If the current rate of non-white immigration continues, white Brits will be a minority by 2060." It read alongside a "wake up" hashtag. https://twitter.com/SmnLlyd5/status/1416705835401728004?s=20 The racist vandalism is just the latest incident in the last week, in which monuments honouring the three footballers have been desecrated. Earlier this week, a mural honouring the work carried out by Marcus Rashford in forcing the government to feed England's hungry children was vandalised. What followed was an outpouring of love from people, with the mural becoming a vigil of sorts, and in front of which a large group took the knee to show solidarity with Rashford, his teammates and the Black community.

Anyone with any information is asked to contact police on 101, quoting incident reference 129 of 17 July.