Racism in Sports: Fact or Fiction?

In a worldly society, where the ethics and moral stature of its inhabitants appears to be improving at a rapid pace, it seems that in sports, it may have begun to lag behind.

With America looking to replace their stereotypical white, over 50, heterosexual president with a black leader, is it overly optimistic to expect certain sports to follow suit?

With the exception of athletics, golf and rugby, the sports I see as having respected and adored black idols within their composition, there appears to be specific areas of sports where there is some way to go until we can confidently say there is racial equality within.

What surprises me most about the issue of race within a sport is that you immediately recognize the basis of the inequality within that sport. It appears not to be the team, governing body, or anyone involved directly within the sport that is inherently racist, but instead the lifeline that provides sports with its reason for existence, its spectacle, the reason for it to carry on—the fans!

Ask anyone what the most popular sport is in the UK, and they will all tell you, providing they are not insane or hermit crabs, football!

However, it is the sport of football that receives a lot of bad, and in most cases justified, press when concerned with their fans and racial discrimination. I even had the misfortune of being in Manchester City Centre during the mayhem that was the 2008 UEFA Cup Final!

Football fans can be nasty, disgusting, undignified, and downright abusive fans. The reason: their team has lost, they drank 10 pints in one hour, or they are just simply angry people who use football as a release to vent their anger.

These fans can be seen at every game, even, as I have found out, Welsh Premier League games, and contribute to the reason why many people prefer to watch the action from the comfort of their own home, where the insults are kept to a minimal and you don’t get sprayed with beer and hotdogs consumed by the aforementioned fans throughout.

Sadly, as has become customary in the UK, this has transferred into crowd led chants, abusive screams, and gang-like discrimination towards minority groups, with race coming top of the list.

What is abundantly clear from racial incidents portrayed in the media is that it is shocking how the magnitude of someone’s anger can, and has, progressed to a level where it therefore becomes discriminatory against the professional sport's men and women who strive to produce quality action for those who watch avidly.           

Sol Campbell, Emile Heskey, and sadly the late Justin Fashunu, have been subjected to this expansion of hostility in recent years, and thus it has put a dampener on their professional careers, as they end up making the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Sure it’s okay for a fan to want to blame someone for their team being walloped and embarrassed in a league, cup, or European fixture, but has this transgressed to allowing for a minority of dense and animalistic-natured fans to base this blame on racial reasons?

Of course some people in the media have proclaimed that the racial abuse seen on the pitch is greatly exaggerated, and that any abuse given to players is given in jest at their quality rather than the color of their skin.

But how can this be when the words uttered and screamed toward the player include derogatory words aimed at causing offence, and usually with reference to color? They would, I guess, have a case for an argument if the abuse was subtle enough to go unnoticed, but the lack of subtlety within aggressive fans gives reason to think otherwise.

Another sport hitting headlines recently for racial discrimination is one that arguably has never suffered from such accusations before, Formula One.

You’d be right in thinking that up until now there has never been any concern within this sport, as it has been evidently devoid of racial discrimination. However, the reason for this is that Formula One has never had a black sportsman consistently proving to be an incredible talent behind the wheel.

Drivers in the past have received bad reputations for either their dangerous style of driving (in recent years, Massa and Sato), or because they are talented to the point of domination, thus removing a great level of competitive nature within the sport—Michael Schumacher if you were wondering!

The emergence of Lewis Hamilton, which some saw as sudden, bit ardent fans who could see this coming from a decade ago, and has hit the sport with the sort of excitement and passion that has eluded the sport in recent years.

Arguably lucky, but consistent, within his first season, he stamped his authority on his McLaren team, causing tension between himself and supposed lead-driver Fernando Alonso, who joined the team as reigning double world-champion and as a result, expected preferential treatment.

Alonso’s somewhat arrogant and spoiled nature led to infighting, both on and off the track, resulting in intensified conflict and the departure of himself back to Renault.

And so, the only logical step for the relationship to take was for Alonso to switch back to his championship-winning team, and leave Hamilton to spearhead his team’s title chances, and flourish without the issue of a weak team-ethos to detract from the racing. So it would seem that the problem had been diverted.

That was until pre-season testing at Barcelona, where issues of racial discrimination and jealousy for Hamilton’s first-season success saw Spain threatened with losing its place on the F1 calendar because it couldn’t control its fans.

Obviously, people were quick to defend the fans and say that the issue with Hamilton had nothing to do with race, but rather because they were just being patriotic fans standing by their celebrated sportsman, who just so happened to be Hamilton’s biggest rival. However, the sight of a group of fans blacking up and wearing t-shirts proclaiming to be Hamilton’s, family suggests the exact opposite.

The nerve and downright despicable behavior of such fans is the reason why I can confidently say that racism is still abundant within the world of sport, with narrow-minded and pathetic losers seeing racial hatred as a way of expressing their views.

What gives me hope that such hatred can be abolished, albeit with a steady decline, is that governing bodies within sports give fans the ultimatum that will hopefully scare them into forcing themselves to look in the mirror and observe their backwards views. The idea of changing your ways or you lose the sport appears to be a very dramatic, but successful, way of stamping out racism within sport.

Maybe one day both F1 and football will reach the heights in equality evidently seen in athletics where black and white sports-people participate in almost perfect harmony when competing to be the world's best.

Such an equal stance within this sport allows the rest of us to observe and be proud to be a fan of a sport that allows events for both men and women, white or black, even straight or gay. It gives other sports something to take note of and strive to achieve.

Instead of using racial hatred as an escape route for dealing with shattered dreams for your team or sport’s failures, wouldn’t it be better to accept it, move on, and give your team the support needed to will them on to the success you crave the next year?

Everyone knows that in football, the fans provide a 12th player to elevate the other 11 players, encouraging them to strive for a greater quality in their careers.

The question to end on is thus: How can we improve our stance on race within sports to make this 12th player the best it can possibly be?