Incidents of race and racial equality issues have undoubtedly become particularly prevalent more recently. Several celebrities and people of power are letting their voices be heard as advocates for racial equality. However, one area where racism occurs but isn’t publicized by the media, is in sports. In 2014, one highly-publicized sports related case was that of Donald Sterling and his racist remarks, which were on an audio recording. Donald Sterling was the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, but has since been banned by the NBA for the remarks. Still, even throughout 2015, racism is fairly evident in sports. In the US, there were a few instances that occurred on a high school level, including one in California, where a Pakistani basketball player was called racial slurs while a crowd chanted “USA.” An instance regarding sports announcers occurred when Colin Cowherd, radio show host, was fired from ESPN for making racist remarks about the Dominican Republic, and how they are uneducated and don’t possess “world-class academic abilities.”

Due to the number of racial issues in sports, several athletes are attempting to make a statement. In 2015, the football players at the University of Missouri participated in getting their school’s chancellor and president removed from office due to his apparent lack of concern for racism on school grounds. Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross created the “Ross Initiative for Sports for Equality,” or “RISE.” This is a nonprofit organization with the intention to “advance race relations and drive social progress” by using the power of sports. Several athletes, such as Tom Brady and Larry Fitzgerald, have already joined this potential movement. Furthermore, throughout 2014, many professional athletes took a stand against social issues which, while not directly involved with sports, were made public and were noticed by the media.

Despite a fair amount of racial issues in sports taking place in these past years, some people are still not as informed about sports-related race issues in particular, in comparison to other race issues in America (such as the incident in Ferguson). Carlin Beskrone ’19, says, “I don’t think racism is really in sports as much as the general media.” He also thinks that most of what athletes were standing up for were more about social and political issues, rather than issues relating to sports. In 2014, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, and several others wore the “I Can’t Breathe” shirt, relating to the death of Eric Garner. Jenks Whittenburg, head of the Upper School Computer Science Department, says, “I think there’s still a lot of racism in this society, and sports is one way in which racism is manifested.” He also says that comments made by players have to do more with other racial issues. “I feel like the main stories I hear from football organizations involve violence and sexism. The NBA case is a good example of racism in sports, but again, I feel like corruption in sports comes from domestic violence.” Daniel Adebi, ’18, comments, “I actually have not seen much about racism in sports, but if [athletes] believe in a topic, they can totally stand up for anything.” Despite not knowing many sports-based cases, every person interviewed had previously known about issues involving police brutality and racism cases such as Freddie Gray or Eric Garner.
Furthermore, this can show that despite having such a high popularity in America, the media isn’t giving sports-related racial incidents as much attention as they should receive. For the most part, it is a topic which certainly deserves more attention from the general media, and is one which should be more widely recognized.