I personally think it's unacceptable that the race card is being played here. Especially from anyone connected to West Ham, like Michael Antonio.
People react with anger whenever a famous person is caught doing something bad like this - whether that's a white or black sports star, politician, police, etc.
Trying to belittle / undermine the criticism whenever it's a black person guilty of it by quickly dragging the issue back to race isn't fair. It's got nothing to do with race. It's about a person abusing a small, defenceless animal.
This is about animal rights. There's room, or damn well should be, for outrage and sympathy for other kind of rights without dragging everything back to racism or sexism. And if some can't do that, then it says more about their self obsessed / serving attitudes, and lack of empathy to any other group, than it does about those appalled by the act and rightly condemning the person responsible for it.