Carleton’s Racism, Equity and Diversity committee organized a town hall on Feb 25. in support of eliminating racism in sports.
Speakers appeared at the townhall to talk about inequalities and barriers that BIPOC athletes face, as well as potential solutions to end systemic oppression in sports.
“If hiring practices are not a priority, it is not going to work. Diversity is key in sport,” said Nathaniel Behar, former Ottawa Redblacks wide receiver and Carleton Ravens alumnus, during the Ravens Racism, Equity and Diversity committee virtual town hall.
Behar was talking about barriers and discrimination in the sports world. In all levels of sport, athletes of colour and Indigenous athletes face challenges.
Growing up in London, Ontario—a predominantly white city—Behar said being called a racial slur and being one of the only Black players on the field were some of the challenges he faced.
“The first time I played with a teammate who was Black was not until I was 14 or 15 years old, which is pretty crazy to think about,” Behar said.
“When I was nine or 10 years old was the first time I got called the n-word on the field,” Behar said. “It is part of sports to chirp but there is another level of it when you take into account there is a word they can use as a weapon against you.”
Janelle Joseph, assistant professor of critical studies of race and Indigeneity at the University of Toronto, is the founder and director of U of T’s IDEAS (Indigeneity, Diaspora, Equity and Anti-racism in Sport) Research Lab.
Joseph said critical race theory, her area of specialization, is useful in understanding structural racism in Canada and the U.S.
“The reason for doing that is to make anti-racist change,” Joseph said. “We can’t accept [the] status quo. We need to push to make things different.”
Joseph said she believes there is a racial hierarchy in sports.
“There is an entire system and network that is created to establish a hierarchy, with whites on top and people of colour on the bottom, with different stratifications for people of colour,” Joseph said.
Racism appears in many forms in many sports, but it can present itself in different ways.
“Some sports, particularly at the professional level where there is a predominance of Black bodies . . . people might think that sport has progressed and is not racist. That is incorrect,” Joseph said.
Joseph said hierarchies also exist in language and culture in sports. People who don’t speak the most common language on a team may find it more difficult.
“On a baseball team, where some people speak English, others speak only Spanish, there are going to be hierarchies. Racism manifests differently in different spaces and sports,” she said.
The prevalence of racism in sports means there is a lot of work to do in educating coaches to eliminate these hierarchies and making assumptions about players.
Joseph added that this could be the difference between players making the team or not.
Behar said eradicating racism in sports starts with fixing the flawed systems in place. He said even people with genuine intentions that are in a flawed system can still lead to negative results in trying to effect change.
Behar said hiring practices can be biased because those in executive positions in sports—who often make the hiring decisions—tend not to be people of colour.
As pointed out by The Athletic in an article in 2020, the five major sports leagues in North America were made up of 150 teams. Only one majority owner across all the leagues is Black, Michael Jordan. There are only two other non-white majority team owners, Kim Pegula and Shahid Khan in the NFL.
“The first thing every human does is ask people around them, ‘Who do you think can best fill this role?’” Behar said.
Joseph said that when the pool of people you’re searching to fill roles from is predominantly white, this doesn’t leave much room for diversity in positions of power in sports.
Accessibility to executive positions also affects athletes of colour beyond their playing career. According to Joseph, diversity cannot happen without access to opportunities.
“The barriers to participate in sports at every level, whether that is as an athlete, a coach or an administrator … are stratified along class lines, along geographical lines, along gender lines,” Joseph said.
The issue of gender based discrimination also plays a major factor in sports institutions.
“Our dominant system within university sport[s] is a gendered system. We are inherently excluding non-binary athletes and more generally within sports systems.” Joseph said. “We know that women and girls face more barriers than others.”
In talking about access and barriers in sports, Joseph used the “glass door” metaphor: a door that allows you to see inside, but you don’t have a key to enter. She added that when you layer racial barriers with other inequalities, people of colour seem to have more limited opportunities for executive positions in sports.
“It might be the sport is really expensive to get into or the games and practices might be far from your home … If you haven’t been an athlete, it is unlikely you will become a coach or an administrator,” Joseph said.
In 2020, CBC Sports did some research and concluded that of the professional leagues in North America, 80 – 90 per cent of executive positions like presidents, general managers and coaches are held by white people. This is the case even though the majority of these leagues are predominantly made up of BIPOC athletes.
She added that one way to eliminate these barriers is by acknowledging they exist and listening to those who are affected so that change-makers don’t put all the burden of advocacy on racialized folks.
“We can look at what some organizations are doing, how might they diversify, what are the hiring practices [they] have in place? Are we just asking our friends, or do we have lists we can access so we can know who are the best Indigenous coaches in our country and make sure we give them equal opportunities?” Joseph said.
Behar said in having these conversations, people should try to move past individualism and start seeing themselves as members of communities.
“That is why we need spaces to talk about discrimination in sports,” Behar said.
