A few days ago, while sitting in a restaurant at the Copacabana beachfront in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where I’m on vacation, I saw something on television that caught my attention. Real Madrid forward, Vinicius Junior, who is also a winger for the Brazilian national team, was giving a press conference.

Although I couldn’t understand what was being said by the news reporter as they were speaking in Portuguese, the official language in Brazil, there was something deeply moving about the visuals on the screen that made me pay close attention.

At some point, the brilliant 23-year-old started crying. The image of those painful tears stuck with me until I returned to my hotel room, whereupon, I searched the press conference on English websites. I found it. It turns out that Vinicius was crying while giving an account of the racism that he and other black soccer players have had to endure in Spain over the years. He spoke about how racism was reducing his desire to continue playing football – a sport which he had always been passionate about.

Vinicius, who should be making headlines for his brilliance on the soccer field, has consistently made headlines for being a target of racial abuse. Just a few months ago, the Real Madrid v Valencia game was halted after Vinicius was subjected to horrific racist abuse by a significant section of the crowd at Mestalla Stadium.

Vinicius pointed out fans who were abusing him before he was involved in an altercation with Valencia players that led to him being sent off. While this incident led to global condemnation of racism in football, particularly in Spain, Vinicius has stated that he has experienced even more racism after the incident.

One cannot be a black South African and not be touched by this story. Like Vinicius, we know too well the devastation that comes with racism. This applies to South Africans born during apartheid and even those of us who were born and raised in the democratic dispensation. While apartheid may have been outlawed, the racism that was its foundation remains, and everyday, it rears its ugly head in our social and political lives.

The damage that apartheid, and by extension racism, has inflicted in our lives is often spoken about in the context of uneven development, particularly at an economic, socio-economic and spatial level. But the more insidious impact of racism is that which Vinicius explained: that it is not only dehumanising and decivilising, but also that it kills the dreams and aspirations of those who endure it.

There are many reasons why racism continues to thrive in SA. The most significant is that the economy remains racialised, thereby maintaining the economic structures from whence white society derives its power to subjugate. But another reason, one which Vinicius alluded to in the context of Spain, is that racists do not face any consequences.

Despite the anti-racism laws and institutions that exist in our country, racists are thriving. They’re given space to exist and thrive in the media, schools, the workplace and everywhere in society. This is despite the fact that their existence is a threat to the very lives of black people who, like Vinicius, must battle debilitating mental health problems as a result of the racism. And so, those who endure racism are also made to pay for it.

SA must start being serious about dealing with racism – structurally and otherwise. Addressing economic inequities that make racism thrive is not an option, it’s an absolute necessity. We are losing far too many brilliant black people to racism. When it’s not physically killing them, it kills the essence of their being – just as it’s doing to Vinicius.