At Wembley in May, when Chelsea took the lead against Liverpool in the first half of the FA Cup final, someone tweeted the grim, pithy little joke: Racists 1 Racists 0.

Not in the best possible taste, perhaps, but not much in the past 12 months of racial squabbling, posturing and positioning has been edifying or elevating. Not fair either to say that Liverpool were all racists because they stupidly donned T-shirts at Wigan Athletic to express support for a colleague who had been accused of a racial offence, or that Chelsea were all racists because, instead of distancing themselves from John Terry's abuse of Anton Ferdinand – a reaction he would later apologise for and accept it was unfitting of a player in his position, but only after it had cost him his place in the England team – they stood behind their captain and attempted to persuade the world not to believe the evidence of its own eyes.

The words of the terrace chant may suggest the world now knows what Terry is, but the FA and its independent commission kept stressing they did not consider Terry a racist until they were blue in the face. This made you wonder what sort of behaviour, short of wearing a pointy hat, would strike them as racist. Terry's outburst at Queens Park Rangers not only appalled English football but divided it, with prominent black players so incensed at Chelsea's defence of their player and the FA's feeble response that they kicked out against the essentially blameless Kick It Out campaign and are now talking about forming a breakaway union of their own, or at least debating the merits of a radical suggestion that came through Peter Herbert of the Society of Black Lawyers.

All this is Terry's fault, both for what he said in the first place and the subsequent 12 months of justifying it. The judgments might have been handed out, the fines and bans imposed, but Terry is still at the centre of the storm. So what does he do? As soon as he is available to play a match, the FA's suspension not applying to Champions League games, he appears at the Donbass Arena in Donetsk wearing a captain's armband bearing the proud message: Unite Against Racism.

As sick jokes go, that is surely more offensive than the one in the opening paragraph. This was a Uefa initiative, nothing to do with Terry, who could hardly have been expected to refuse to wear the armband any more than he might have deemed it wise to wait until the pitch was clear of children wearing T-shirts bearing the same anti-racist slogan before joining his team-mates on the field.

It is the futile gesture politics that are so annoying. Dozens of kids sending the Unite Against Racism message around the world might make football feel better about itself, but the same three words on Terry's biceps just make everyone feel worse. Terry should not have been put in that position, just as Glen Johnson in particular, but perhaps the whole of the Liverpool squad, should not have been asked to prejudge the Luis Suárez issue at Wigan last season. One can fully understand the reluctance of Jason Roberts and Rio Ferdinand to make a public statement via a T-shirt that everything is all right within the game if they believe everything is not all right, even if their actions managed to make the Kick It Out campaign look like the bad guys when in reality they are working towards worthwhile goals.

The trouble with T-shirts, as worn by a whole team just before kick-off, is that they make a blanket statement. They say that everyone is of the same opinion, when common sense would tell you that that is unlikely. If the gesture is in support of a local charity or a good cause within the club there is no harm in it, but as we have been seeing, if the issue is something as sensitive as race relations or an allegation of racial abuse it is easily possible to do as much harm as good.

For the sake of its own credibility, the game needs to stop using players and managers as message boards. Few would wish to argue with the good intentions of the Kick It Out campaign or Uefa's Unite Against Racism drive, and no one would deny that the issue is better out in the open or that promotions on the pitch before big games help raise awareness. But there have now been too many players wearing slogans, just as there were too many managers with lapel badges on Match of the Day on Saturday night.

They become invisible in the end, like the decals on Formula One cars, and as Robbie Savage was explaining the other day on the radio, most players just do as they are told and wear the T-shirt without even asking what it is about or whether they support the cause. That sort of uncritical acceptance is not to be desired, and in fact the events of this week, with the game actually debating the merits of various players' arguments and allowing individuals to come to their own conclusions is much healthier, as even Sir Alex Ferguson must now realise.

What cannot be considered healthy, intelligent or coherent is Terry being pictured for publicity purposes in a United Against Racism armband at the very time he is serving a domestic ban for racial abuse. Time to think again. Leave the sloganising to the children, the politicians and the players who actually have a point of view to promote. Otherwise you just end up patronising people and insulting the audience's intelligence.