Former Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger believes society can learn lessons from football in dealing with racism and discrimination.
The Premier League says it will support players who "take a knee" before or during a game to protest against racial injustice.
The top flight have also agreed to replace players' names with the phrase "Black Lives Matter" on their shirts for the first 12 games of the restarted campaign.
A Black Lives Matter logo will also feature on the shirts for the remainder of the season
"I would say football is by essence anti-racist," Wenger told BeIN Sports this evening.
"Why? Because you know that no matter if you're the son of the King of England or if you're black or white or red - if you're good you play.
"And I would even say that football is an example of how the whole of society should work, because it's only based on merit and quality. If you're good enough, you play.
"Inside the game, there's no racism. Around football and in the stands it happens and we've seen it again in England with the national team away games."
Wenger added that he believes it's important that jobs in football are decided purely on the merit of candidates:
"In France we created the concept of positive discrimination but that means you give positions to people because they're not given enough chances - but this is also discrimination because people who are better may not get the job," he said.
"So you want people to give the same chances to everybody, no matter where you're from or how you look, but as well, not to create another discrimination because of artificial solutions."
