How allies can support antiracist cultures in sport

A time to reflect

On the 22^nd April in 1993, at the age of 18, Stephen Lawrence was tragically murdered in a racially motivated attack by a gang of white youths. This year marks 30 years since his murder. Stephen Lawrence would have been 48 years old – a life full of promise, unlived.

Recently my colleague Ruth Eghan wrote a really powerful and poignant blog about the effect of Stephen’s murder on the Black community. Ruth also provides tips for Black colleagues/staff members and advice for allies on what you can do differently to support the Black community and other global majority groups. Reading it got me thinking about what else I could be doing.

Stephen Lawrence’s racially motivated murder was not an isolated case in the 90’s and the combination of grief and repeated racial injustice experienced by the Black community in the UK meant that Stephen Lawrence’s murder could not be ignored.

During their time of sorrow and grief, Stephen’s parents, the now Baroness Doreen and Neville Lawrence fought tirelessly against a corrupt and racist system for justice for their son.

The public enquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder, the momentous Macpherson Report, was published in 1999. It shed light on the multitude of police failings in the investigation of Stephen Lawrence’s murder which were ‘rooted in police incompetence, police corruption, and institutional racism’.

What has changed since the 1990s?

We’d all like to think that society has changed in the last 30 years, but has it? For example, when we look at sport, in the last year alone, we have seen numerous reports and investigations into very different sports, and the results have been staggeringly similar. There is a problem of bullying and racism.

News stories, quite rightly, highlight the accounts from individuals who’ve experienced racism during their time in sport, we’ve also witnessed leaders in sport making overtly racist remarks in public whilst trying to excuse the behaviour of their peers, clubs, and cultural environments.

But what is often detailed in these reports and investigations is the manifestation of deep-rooted structural racism. The type of racism where fingers can’t be pointed, where (mainly) white people can’t stand open-mouthed aghast at ‘how terrible those racist people over there are’, whilst never questioning their own part in this. 

Structural racism lives within us all; no one is immune; if we’ve been raised in the UK and have gone to schools that don’t acknowledge our colonial history, read the topical headlines of the day, watched the TV, and worked in environments where only 1.5% of Black people are in senior positions then we are part of that structural racism. Our perception of race and our bias needs to be unlearned, and the first step is recognising it.

When a culture is accepted and normalised by the majority, it’s hard to be the person to go against the tide and voice your concerns, it’s hard to bring that first follower on board, but this is the way to create a movement and to make change happen.

Having the data and surfacing the issues within an organisation is always a good thing; we do need to know to address it. We also then need to work together to address the problems that have been raised.

But ‘we/they’ also needs to become ‘I’. If we all stop blaming ‘them’, the faceless organisation and change the narrative to ‘what I can do’, we begin to see the change.

Suppose I take responsibility for what I can do. In that case, I must consider how I may blindly follow structurally racist norms, values, processes and procedures in my everyday role and life.

I need to keep learning and understanding what I can do differently. I have spent some time asking myself the following questions, but I know there will be thousands more questions that I haven’t thought of, and I have a long way to go on my journey to anti-racism.

The questions we need to ask

Am I following a business process that was probably implemented many years ago? Was this process developed by a homogenous group e.g. a group of white people? Am I seeing that the output of this process is continuing to benefit a homogenous group? What am I doing to question and raise this within my organisation?

This could relate to a multitude of policies, processes and experiences.

• How you identify which organisations to work with, support and promote.
• How you provide grants to clubs and organisations.
• How you select teams/athletes.
• How you recruit people to your organisation.
• How you referee or judge a competition.
• How you decide what schools to work in.
• How you treat your colleagues and teammates.
• How you conduct a meeting.
• How you pay people.
• How you develop people.
• How you create a culture of inclusion.

What can we all do differently? 

• Research – find organisations and people doing things differently from you/engage with new contacts/audiences. Research the area you are working in, look on social media, attend networking events, build trust. Share your findings with colleagues. Let’s celebrate those organisations, let’s get involved, volunteer, find out about them and their members.
• Gather insight – who are you working with? What is the demographic? Does it include/over-index people from Black and other global majority groups? If not, find out why not? As we need to redraw the balance.
• Is there bias in your selection process? Do you really know your players/athletes and what affects their performance?

Understanding for example, that the experiences of a Black athlete from London who has had to move across the country to an area with zero ethnic diversity, leave their family and friends and join a team where all of their peers, staff, coaches etc. are white, could massively affect their performance compared to their white peers.

Or that the same athlete could also be LGBTQ+ and not feel comfortable to be out in that environment, they could also be neurodiverse and not feel psychologically safe to tell you, etc.

• How could you make the environment inclusive and safe for people to voice their experiences? How could you make their transition to a new place better?
• Do you have biased rules around appearance related to hair/kit (consciously or unconsciously)? If you think something needs changing, raise it with colleagues and explain why it’s biased.
• Do you only engage with the schools you’ve always worked with? Have you made efforts to build relationships outside of your norm?
• Do you stereotype your colleagues’ skills? Do you ask team members who are Black women to do administrative tasks/book meetings/organise the food? Who in your team gets to work on the interesting projects which expose them to more senior leaders? If it is white colleagues, do something about it.
• Carry out ethnicity pay gap analysis and an equal pay audit. Find out where the issues are and develop a plan to make your pay structure more equitable and communicate this to staff. If you don’t have the power to do this, raise it with your network groups, at EDI meetings, in staff surveys etc.
• Is your staff development inclusive and supporting Black colleagues to advance in their careers? Are you engaging network groups in learning & development conversations? Are colleagues who are promoted internally, paid the same as those who apply externally?
• What do you do personally to ensure you can see your blind spots? How to you check yourself?
• How can you be better at being anti-racist and actively making a difference?

These are questions we need to ask ourselves so that we can play our own part in overturning systemic racism. If we leave it to ‘them’ and continue to blame institutions we are all a part of, then we may find ourselves here in another 30 years, and we cannot afford that to happen.

Learn more by attending our online panel discussion for Black Inclusion Week: Unspoken Truths of Allyship May 11, 2023, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm, or speak to your account manager about your anti-racism journey.

References

Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 298-322 (25 pages), Published By: Wiley