As a white person, I have never been on the receiving end of a racial insult. I don’t know what it feels like, but I can imagine it’s the kind of thing you don’t just casually shrug off. To be reminded that, centuries of progress notwithstanding, human stupidity and aggression not only persist but, in certain individuals, flourish: this alone must rankle.

I do, however, know what it’s like to play soccer. For someone like myself, who isn’t very good at it, playing soccer is quite hard. You have to concentrate intensely, run around non-stop, try to read the minds, or at least anticipate the actions, of your teammates as well as the players on the other team. You have to immerse yourself totally in the game to have even a chance of not making a fool of yourself.

Now, Kevin-Prince Boateng, the German-Ghanaian midfielder who plays for the mighty A.C. Milan, is probably a better footballer than me, but I expect that, when you factor in the quality of the opposition he faces and the high stakes involved, playing soccer is quite hard for him, too. He must have to put everything he has into everything he does, both on and off the pitch, in order to perform as he performs.

Boateng is black. This was something that the fans of the fourth-division Italian team Pro Patria decided to call attention to yesterday afternoon during A.C. Milan’s “friendly match” (the Italian league has a month off during the holiday season, and this game was for both sides to limber up before competitive league matches resume) against the Lombard minor-leaguers when they (the fans, or at least a small but vocal minority of them) began pummeling Boateng, and his black teammates, with racial abuse whenever they touched the ball. Boateng did his best to ignore the abuse for the first twenty-five minutes, but finally he reached his limit.

Boateng’s response was powerful. He stopped, picked up the ball, and hoofed it into the stand where the offending fans were concentrated. Then he turned, removed his shirt, and started to walk off the pitch. For a moment it seemed as though his teammates, as well as some of Pro Patria’s players, wanted to persuade him to continue. It didn’t work. Soon, the whole Milan team was following Boateng’s lead. They didn’t return, and the game was called off.

Commentators and fellow footballers alike have praised Boateng’s action, and rightly so. “It was brave of Kevin-Prince Boateng to do what he did and it was the right thing,” tweeted Patrick Vieira, a French midfielder of Senegalese descent who won the World Cup in 1998. “We need to stand up and stand together.” Vincent Kompany, a Belgian of Congolese descent and the captain of English champions Manchester City, tweeted, “How about becoming extremely intolerant to racist idiots? They need to be told.” Playing football is hard enough as it is, without being hounded by a chorus of bigots.

Racism continues to bring shame to the sport, and the authorities have proven inept at tackling it. During a recent under-twenty-ones match between England and Serbia, several black English players were subject to monkey chants from the Serbian fans. U.E.F.A., European soccer’s governing body, fined the Serbian team a mere sixty-five thousand pounds. (For reference, the Danish player Nicklas Bendtner was fined eighty thousand pounds for displaying an unauthorized advertisement for a betting firm on his underwear, which he flashed after scoring against Portugal in last summer’s European Championships.)

Some people have questioned the wisdom of Boateng’s response. His former teammate, Clarence Seedorf, who is also black, tweeted, “I don’t see it as such a positive thing because [it] empowers more of this behavior.” Others have asked whether Boateng would be willing to do the same thing in a match with higher stakes. But why not? Perhaps it would be harder for Boateng, or any player, to walk off the field during a competitive match, but think what would happen if high-profile games started to be cancelled on a regular basis? The already reviled minority of racist fans would come under increasing pressure from everyone else to stay home or shut up. What’s more, with revenues at stake, the game’s governing bodies might finally take meaningful action. So far, nothing else has got the message through.

Photograph by Emilio Andreoli/AP