Battling Racism in Sports

chillibreeze writer — Prashanti Ganesh

Sport signifies sportsmanship and brings about a strong feeling of unity. How much of this translates to the players when they have to look at a team player or an opponent as someone beyond an associate? People may believe that racism in sport is more of a European thing that is likely to happen in a football game or Formula One Racing; however, racism has been rampant even in American sports like basketball, baseball and other sports like cricket, athletics and golf.

Dean Jones, the former Australia Test batsman turned TV commentator, was sacked in 2006 by his employers, Ten Sports, for calling South African cricketer Hashim Amla a 'terrorist' on live television. In a twist to the controversy, Jones said that his remark was not directed at Amla but to his South African teammate Nicky Boje.

It is astonishing to think that people think racism is permissible and that they can get away with it. Since as early as the 18th century when Americans were introduced to golf, the whites assumed power over the game, forcing the blacks to serve as caddies. Bill Wright was one of the first few black players to break this dominance. The Negro golfer was taken into the 1916 US Open winner Charles Evans’s team, but his partners refused to play with him.

Irrespective of their capabilities, athletes are subjected to racism. Jesse Owens, the American athlete, and other African American athletes of the 1930’s, a period when the country was fighting segregation problems, had to stay and eat in ‘black-only’ hotels when they travelled. The few ‘white-only’ hotels that let the African American athletes stay, made them use the back door instead of the stairs and the elevator.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People immediately charged that the Red Sox was following an anti-Negro policy when they sent Elijah ‘Pumpsie’ Green to a Minneapolis Triple-A farm club, saying that the first Negro to be a Red Sox needed more seasoning.

Racism is also seen as something that comes with the cultural background of the sportsperson. Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton was jeered by the crowds wearing blackface and chanting nasty comments at him in Spain, a country known for its racism and xenophobia.

In many sporting nations across the world, a sport is akin to a religion. People who can’t understand each other due to linguistic differences still share a love for the same sport. It is for this reason that the fight against racism must triumph, that the love for sport doesn’t diminish.

Tiger Woods is a living example of this situation. For someone who is a minority, he sure seems to have many white supporters who tell us that he has done the right things. Maybe, it has to do with the Obama reign.

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in August, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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Prashanti Ganesh is a media student who describes herself as, “a compulsive talker, hedonist, typical Gemini, who loves writing and communicating.”

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