Being anti-racist in today’s sport’s world
Being anti-racist is not a controversial stance, but you wouldn’t know it to look at the Thoroughbred racing industry.
The sports world was rocked on Wednesday night when the NBA playoffs came to a dead stop because players from the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court in protest of the death of Jacob Blake, shot seven times in the back by police in Kenosha, WI, a city 40 miles from the Bucks’ home, on Sunday, Aug. 23.
MLB’s Milwaukee Brewers followed suit, electing not to play their game against the Cincinnati Reds. Similar decisions by other teams led to two other MLB games being shelved.
The NBA cancelled all three playoff games scheduled for Thursday. The WNBA cancelled its schedule that night.
And through this long, terrible summer of racial injustice, the racing industry has, as is its wont, remained largely silent, even as its biggest race is being dragged against its will into the protests.
Louisville has been at the heart of protests since the death of Breonna Taylor on March 13. Taylor was shot to death by Louisville police after they bashed their way into her home on a “no-knock” warrant and her boyfriend fired his gun.
The officers involved in Taylor’s death have not been arrested or charged, and protesters in Louisville have targeted the Kentucky Derby, which will be held on Saturday, Sept. 5, in order to bring national attention to their demands for justice. Some groups are calling for a boycott of the race.
Through it all, Churchill Downs has been silent, much like pretty much every other track in the country. There
were some corporate, performative statements when protests began in the spring, but even those, which constitute the bare minimum of a response, came from only a few racing entities, with some of its biggest, most powerful voices choosing to remain silent.
Most major sports organizations have acknowledged the unrest in our country, the cries for justice, the deaths of too many people at the hands of too many police officers. Players in those sports have decided that those statements are not enough, and that they need to use their power to withhold their labor, their valued labor, to enact change that is long overdue.
When Belmont Park reopened in early June, the New York Racing Association planned to hold a moment of silence for the those affected by COVID-19. The jockeys took that one further, informing track officials that they would take a knee in the paddock before the first race in memory of those killed by police brutality. Their act was not acknowledged by the track’s social media until hours later.
Racetrack management and other entities in the industry have too often studiously tried to ignore the unpleasant, whether the issue is equine injury, track surfaces, unethical/illegal behavior by participants… the list goes on. It is, sadly, no real surprise that we have heard so little on perhaps the most important issue facing the country, with the exception of the pandemic.
Hours before the cancellation of Thursday night’s games, Canadian Women and Sport, an organization whose mission is “powering better sport through gender equity,” hosted a panel called “We Are Sport: Diversity and Leadership,” featuring six racially and ethnically diverse women leaders in sport. One of their messages was clear.
“Listening and learning at this point is not enough,” said Renee Hess, founder of Black Girl Hockey Club, a nonprofit that focuses on making hockey more inclusive for Black women and their allies. “You have to do more. It’s time to put up or shut up.”
Said Meghan McPeak, the play-by-play announcer for the Washington Mystics, “If you want to be an ally, you have to be willing to stand for something. What are you willing to lose to make a change? If you’re not willing to lose anything, move aside.”
Based on social media reactions to the players’ strikes this week, sports entities need to be willing to lose some customers if they take an anti-racist stand. Those customers say that taking a knee during the National Anthem wasn’t the right way to protest. They say that peaceful protests aren’t the right way to protest. They say that players’ strikes aren’t the right way to protest. Call me crazy, but I’m going to guess that no form of protest is the “right way” for them, and in the face of league support for anti-racist activist, they will loudly declare, as so many did this week, that they will “never watch an [NBA, NHL, MLB, etc.] game again.”
So instead of focusing on those customers, why not concentrate on the customers that you will lose by not taking a stand? On the potential customers you might gain by coming out against racism?
“We are a predominately white sport,” said Kim Davis, executive vice president of social impact, growth initiatives, and legislative affairs for the NHL, a comment that applies to Thoroughbred racing. “How many ticket holders are we willing to lose because we stand for something that is different than we articulated in the past? We have to be willing to lose some fans to gain some new ones.”