RACISM IN THE STANDS
Faced with taunts that cross a line, Mesa high-schooler takes high road
Mesa High School senior Antonio Barraza heard the racist taunt early in the first quarter. “Go back home, border hopper.” It sounded, to Barraza, like a lone voice coming out of the stands at Mesa Mountain View during its game against Mesa on Jan. 13. Barraza didn’t look up into the crowd to see who was yelling. His face remained impassive, as if he hadn’t heard a thing.
“I didn’t want them to think I could hear them,” he said. “Because if I (showed) emotion, they’d think, ‘Well, he’s reacting to ‘border hopper,’ so let’s think of more and more things to get into his head.’ I just ignored them.”
Since then, two incidents of racial taunting at high-school basketball games have become public.
On Feb. 7, several Globe High School parents
said they were the subjects of racist taunts from Queen Creek American Leadership Academy fans. Three days later, a few students from Mesa Red Mountain made monkey sounds toward Glendale Mountain Ridge basketball player Saikou Gueye, who is black.
The incidents prompted the Arizona Interscholastic Association to release a statement that read, in part: “As our member school teams pursue victory with honor, it is important that everyone, including spectators, family and friends of players, demonstrate trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship from the stands. Fairness and respect are expected for all cultures represented by our diverse student and fan population.”
“Even one or two incidents like these are an uptick,” said AIA Executive Director Harold Slemmer. “We usually don’t hear about anything like this.”
Neither Slemmer nor school administrators interviewed for this article, however, believe there’s a growing trend of racial insults at high-school sporting events.
“This has existed before,” said former Phoenix South Mountain football coach Daryl Phillips. “It’s just more out in the open, I think.”
Mesa Public Schools Athletic Director Steve Hogen agreed, saying the advent of social media captures incidents that in the past might not have been public knowledge.
“There have been things going on at games forever,” Hogen said. “I look back on some of the stuff that happened 20 years ago, and in some ways, it’s far worse than it is now. It’s just that you hear about it now. You see the video minutes after it happens.”
Others believe the current political climate has contributed to the recent incidents.
“Sometimes it just feels like a green light has been given to that kind of behavior and treatment of other people,” said Mesa Mountain View basketball coach Gary Ernst. “I don’t condone that or like that at all.”
The culture — in terms of both social media and politics — has led to a heightened awareness among school officials. Upon hearing the insults directed at Gueye, Red Mountain Principal Jared Ryan immediately kicked the offending student out of the gymnasium. Later, after a review of a video of the incident and interviews of witnesses, three students were disciplined.
Ryan wrote a letter to Red Mountain’s parents in which he said, in part: “Blatant