After England’s football team loses the final of the European Championships, the football players Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford was subjected to racist abuse online after their penalty shots were saved by the Italian goal keeper. Within minutes racists flooded Saka’s Instagram account with monkey emojis.

“There is a long history of Black people being referred to as monkeys or apes by white people”, explained Jeremy Burge on Emojipedias blog. ”This is rooted in white supremacy. It’s dehumanizing and it’s racist. It’s impossible to separate the monkey emojis from this long-standing racist trope when they’re used to disparage, insult, and abuse Black people.”

Some calls went out for the banning of the monkey emoji to prevent racists from abusing it, but as Jeremy Burge continued:

“The monkey emoji isn’t racist in isolation, but it can be in many contexts. Banning the monkey emoji isn’t the answer. Banning racists from social media platforms is.”