Racism in Sports

One of the worldly recognized and participated events is games and sports. The concept behind sports has been competition and interaction in all cadres of the world's population. However, the event has not taken place fairly and unilaterally. A key challenge to sports is discrimination on matters of race. Racial discrimination is associated with favoritism of skin color (Saeed, et al 2017). The skin color that confrontation is either between white or back. Of the two, the black-skinned people have faced outrageous racial discrimination. The fans exposed racial discrimination with the sports fraternity on the pitch and social media, sports commentators, and sports management (Saeed, et al 2017). It is an evident dehumanizing act that has ruined many talents and cost the sports world, worth participants.

Sports discrimination is narrowed down to the characteristics of the skin. Skin orientation is associated with what the person, individual, or region can do. In most common cases the racism in sports is experienced in sports such as athletics, football, basketball, and rugby. The race orientation is channeled by fans, media personnel, or sports team management (Kilvington, & Price, (Eds.). The atonement that a person is perceived to be capable of a particular role because of specific skin color or vice versa. Common scenarios have been witnessed in football where racism has been explicitly exposed to be a reality. The critical perpetrator for this has been fans either on social media platforms. Luckily with the recent development, several sports activities, especially football, are always broadcasted as live matches, and the whole world has witnessed this (Kilvington, & Price, (Eds.). The case of the European league's national tournaments explicitly sharing the bits of racism is a reality. The euro tournament 2020 evidenced a rift between black and white skin when players such as Bukayo Saka were racially abused for missing a spot-kick. Despite some officials taking action against the perpetrators, the cases have not been evidenced to be finalized to sort justice to the players.

Notably, the negativity in sports is witnessed when a negative performance is expected, especially from the player's side. A player could be praised all along throughout the match, but a single mistake with the ball costing the team shall directly be met with harsh racial treatments (Mauro, 2017). The black race has suffered from racial discrimination in sports than any other race in existence. The unique part is that the bias does not care about your geographical location in most cases. For instance, several black Americas have been racially abused while playing the NBA in America. Similarly, countries such as France have several sportsmen who are black. Surprisingly, France's sportsmen are only appraised and recognized non discriminatively when the performance is good. In case of a bad performance, social media will be in a buzz exposing how the black race is dehumanized and associated with the apes (Doidge, 2016). Uniquely when France won the previous world cup tournament that was primarily worn by the black players, during the photo session, all the black players were in the background, unlike the white counterparts taking the front space.

Similarly, racism in sports has taken many dimensions to the extent that some sports or games are linked to a specific skin orientation (Hylton, 2020). As this takes place, the other skin orientation is denoted to be unfit for the sport or play. Such cases have been witnessed in games such as crickets. However, rugby is a physical game that has been linked to the blacks leaving South Africa, Kenya, and Wales to dominate. Apart from the fans and the social media, racism has been played into action by the sports officials with clear-cut evidence of biasness. In football, for incidence in the case of hard tackles between two players of different races, predominantly black and white, the black will automatically be punished even if the opponent made a mistake. It has led to the introduction of the virtual assistant referee to aid it in terminating such cases (Hylton, 2020). Apart from the game referees, there have been cases where players are forced to sit on the bench, making some quit because of their race. The fact that blacks are never appreciated as talented is that only a few players live to ensure racism does not pull them down. For instance, Boateng, a football player, has been associated with the ape for most cases while playing with Ac Millan forcing the player to a storm of the pitch for such incidences. In the same instances, several football commentators have given back players weird and uncouth names in case of any pitch incidences. It made the global outcry for the black people revolution that stretches from sports to other life issues, narrowing down to the Black Lives Matter movement (Hylton, 2020). Racism has ensured that black players do not excel in sports, and only a few blacks have managed to do so. The few include tiger woods in golf, Jackie Robinson in baseball, Didier Drogba, and Samuel Etoo in football.

Racial discrimination incidences are a reality. The aspect is cumulative that those who do not practice it publicly are busy doing it silently. It is agreeable that blacks appreciate the whites, but the whites perceive themselves as superior and cannot allow the blacks to prevail (Love, Deeb, & Waller, 2019). The issues are likely to increase due to the influx of black people in almost all sports. The discrimination is bottom-lined, making blacks not excel and have global recognition. The whites are collectively ganging up to dominate the sports (Love, Deeb, & Waller, 2019). A black sportsperson is likely to be dehumanized, demotivated, discouraged, and belittled until quitting is left as a good option.

References

Doidge, M. (2016). Racism and European football. In Routledge Handbook of Sport, Race, and Ethnicity (pp. 174-185). Routledge.

Farrington, N., Hall, L., Kilvington, D., Price, J., & Saeed, A. (2017). Sport, racism, and social media. Routledge.

Hylton, K. (2020). Black Lives Matter in Sport…?. Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: An International Journal.

Kilvington, D., & Price, J. (Eds.). (2017). Sport and discrimination.

Love, A., Deeb, A., & Waller, S. N. (2019). Social justice, sport, and racism: A position statement. Quest, 71(2), 227-238.

Mauro, M. (2017). Tackling racism and discrimination in grassroots sport: The case of football. In Sport and Contested Identities (pp. 228-244). Routledge.

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