What is a modern-day hero? I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird recently – now that it has been adapted for theatre and will soon arrive in London’s West End – and realised how much my perspective on the book has changed. Yes, lawyer Atticus Finch chooses to defend an innocent black man in the highly racist environment of the Jim Crow US south. But he also tells his children to remain neutral in the face of bigotry, making sure they empathise with racists by trying to “crawl around in someone else’s skin”.

Sports clubs claim to be about neutrality but the issue at stake is quite transparently one of profit

If you see the play you will find that the scriptwriter, Aaron Sorkin, has zoned in on how problematic an assertion that was. There is a more mainstream understanding now – though oppressed minorities have always known it – that attempting to remain “neutral” in the face of abuses is rarely a neutral act.

The world of sport, it seems, has not got the memo. Arsenal are the latest football club to fall foul of a reality in which globalisation means access to lucrative new markets, but also access to new problems such as international human rights.

Earlier this week, the Arsenal midfielder Mesut Özil echoed highly legitimate claims from multiple groups at the United Nations on the treatment of Uighur Muslims in China. A group of 23 nations, including the US, Canada, Japan and the UK, cited as credible reports of mass detention and numbers of other human rights violations and abuses in the region. The Human Rights Council and Committee on the Elimination of Racism agreed.

In other words, allegations about the treatment of Uighur Muslims are hard to dismiss – as China as attempted to do – as “fake news”.

In 2017 Fifa and its members – including the Football Association – publicly stated its adherence to global human rights standards. So you might think that individual players would find themselves on relatively safe territory here. But no. Arsenal quickly hung their player out to dry for his tweet, attempting a dodgy claim at neutrality. “The content published is Özil’s personal opinion,” the club said in a statement. “As a football club, Arsenal has always adhered to the principle of not involving itself in politics.”

Never mind that, by issuing a statement claiming not to comment on human rights abuses, Arsenal are quite obviously involving themselves in politics – the wrong side of politics.

It’s easy to see why. The broadcast rights for the Premier League in China alone are worth £560m a year. Opportunities from Chinese investors are enormous – as Manchester City, Manchester United, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth have already discovered. And the entire Premier League is reportedly anxious about the Chinese state broadcaster scrapping coverage of the Arsenal match last weekend after Özil’s comments.

Özil will have known that he would take a personal hit to his 4 million Chinese social media fans too, some of whom are reportedly burning his shirts. But he spoke out anyway.

The greatest sports icons always take a stand when they see an injustice. Born in the 1980s, I know about the 1968 Mexico City Olympics not because of the performances per se, but because medallists Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a black power salute. When I think of Muhammad Ali as “the greatest”, it’s because of his defiance, refusing conscription to Vietnam in a move that was devastating for his career but in hindsight quite clearly on the right side of history. When I talked to Sorkin about why he had felt the need to update the character of Finch, he cited the NFL star Colin Kaepernick, who refused to stand during the US national anthem in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Özil may not be in their league. His affection for Turkey’s authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – who was best man at Özil’s recent wedding – is inconvenient to say the least. But you can be critical of his stance on Turkey at the same time as lauding his courage in speaking out over China.

The real hypocrisy here is that of sports clubs who claim to be about neutrality – or, as we are sometimes patronised with hearing, “peace” – when in fact the issue at stake is quite transparently one of profit. Why else would Arsenal be relaxed about one of its players violating its “no politics” policy in the UK – as its fallback Héctor Bellerín did with a #FuckBoris tweet to his 1.8 million followers on election day – while panicking over a far less subjective missive from Özil?

And we only know clubs actually have the capacity to act quickly in the face of racism because of their lightning responses when anti-Chinese slurs are in evidence. Compare, for example, Chelsea’s swift response when its winger, Robert Kenedy, used racist language in China. He was sent home from a pre-season tour. In contrast, when Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva posted a racist tweet against a fellow teammate, the club’s manager, Pep Guardiola, defended the player.

The ensuing double standards are more damaging to football’s world image than some inconvenient truths uttered by a controversial player. If football clubs were capable of genuine strategic long-term thinking, and had a sprinkling of integrity, they would realise it might actually pay to back these players. Because the truth is, we all have skin in this game.

• Afua Hirsch is a Guardian columnist