America's Racial and Ethnic Tensions Reflected at School Sporting Events
Upon looking at my headline, some of you may have thought, you know, you could have ended that with that last prepositional phrase. But given youth sports is my domain, and it seems like there is a never-ending supply of racist incidents at school and youth sporting events, I’ll focus on what possibly can be done about it.
Racism at school sporting events long predated the current times, but it seems to have made a roaring, much more open comeback since Donald Trump announced his run for president. Even now, “Trump” is used as a threatening chant and symbol by fans of overwhelmingly white high schools when they play schools that, well, aren’t, a by-product of a political movement in which, as The Atlantic noted, “the cruelty is the point.”
I’ve written about the issue many times, but I’ll note USA Today’s recent roundup for racist incidents at high school football games, including a marching band rearranging its spelling of “Broncos” to use only the letters needed to show a racial slur.
In the USA Today article, black high school football players report being shocked when they hear racial slurs from opponents. And it is shocking to know this happens. But then again, if you’ve been paying attention to the last two years, ever Googled the phrase school sports racist, or lived in a country whose Constitution codified the ownership of black human beings for the sake of “unity,” it is not surprising.
A late 2017 Pew Research poll of 1,503 adults found that over the last four years, there has been a general feeling that race relations are getting worse. (The decline started not with Trump, but with the police shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent unrest in Ferguson, Mo.) However, white’s feelings that race relations were doing just fine has remained steady during that time, at about 40 percent, coincidentally the usual floor of Trump’s approval rating. Also, in a separate poll, self-identified Republicans and conservatives were far more likely — 44 percent and 52 percent, respectively, to view immigrants as a threat to America’s identity. The overall total who felt that way was 26 percent.
Meanwhile, as the nation’s youth population is becoming more diverse, segregation in school appears to be growing stronger. According to the U.S. Census Bureau: “Of the 73.5 million children under 18 years old in 2014, 51 percent were White, non-Hispanic, 24 percent were Hispanic, 15 percent were Black, and 5 percent were Asian.” (This tracks pretty closely with my son’s high school and my daughter’s junior high, except the white population technically includes kids who are Arab Muslims.) As this is happening, schools in many cities are becoming more segregated. From Chalkbeat:
The analysis finds that, between 1990 and 2015, 72 percent of U.S. cities saw their neighborhoods grow less racially segregated, by one measure. Sixty-two percent saw their schools grow more segregated over that same period.
“There is this incredibly striking trend,” said Ryan Coughlan, a professor at Guttman Community College, CUNY, who conducted the research. “It raises all kinds of alarm bells and questions as to what that’s about.”
The culprits, according to researchers, are the end of desegregation orders in many cities, and the establishment of charter schools, private-school vouchers and school-choice programs that have made it easier for families to take their kids out of local public schools. (And, as an aside, have wreaked havoc on the high school sports class system.) The result is that you get more opportunities to have schools where everybody sees nobody but white people now facing schools that, well, don’t.
So in this environment, it’s not surprising, even if it is shocking, to see incidents like a racially motivated brawl among parents at an elementary school basketball game, as noted in a recent Albuquerque Journal editorial.
I would love to give some easy solutions on how to solve this, figuring that imploring “don’t be racist” is probably not going to do a lot of good. However, what will help is school administrators, communities and parents sending a strong signal that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, that you can cheer against the other team without demeaning their humanity, and that there will be apologies and consequences if something does happen.
I get that in some cases schools can’t do everything. The superintendent of schools in Baraboo, Wisc., is correct in that she can’t really punish students who went viral for an off-campus photo in which they appeared to be engaged in a Hitler-style salute. But everybody — and I’m looking at you, white people with white kids in overwhelmingly white kids — has to do more than wring your hands and say “this isn’t who we are,” or resent “outsiders” trying to smear your “good kids” by trying to make them all “politically correct.” Another way to look at politically correct is that also starts with the same letters at this word: polite.
Source: forbes.com
Racism at school sporting events long predated the current times, but it seems to have made a roaring, much more open comeback since Donald Trump announced his run for president. Even now, “Trump” is used as a threatening chant and symbol by fans of overwhelmingly white high schools when they play schools that, well, aren’t, a by-product of a political movement in which, as The Atlantic noted, “the cruelty is the point.”
I’ve written about the issue many times, but I’ll note USA Today’s recent roundup for racist incidents at high school football games, including a marching band rearranging its spelling of “Broncos” to use only the letters needed to show a racial slur.
In the USA Today article, black high school football players report being shocked when they hear racial slurs from opponents. And it is shocking to know this happens. But then again, if you’ve been paying attention to the last two years, ever Googled the phrase school sports racist, or lived in a country whose Constitution codified the ownership of black human beings for the sake of “unity,” it is not surprising.
A late 2017 Pew Research poll of 1,503 adults found that over the last four years, there has been a general feeling that race relations are getting worse. (The decline started not with Trump, but with the police shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent unrest in Ferguson, Mo.) However, white’s feelings that race relations were doing just fine has remained steady during that time, at about 40 percent, coincidentally the usual floor of Trump’s approval rating. Also, in a separate poll, self-identified Republicans and conservatives were far more likely — 44 percent and 52 percent, respectively, to view immigrants as a threat to America’s identity. The overall total who felt that way was 26 percent.
Meanwhile, as the nation’s youth population is becoming more diverse, segregation in school appears to be growing stronger. According to the U.S. Census Bureau: “Of the 73.5 million children under 18 years old in 2014, 51 percent were White, non-Hispanic, 24 percent were Hispanic, 15 percent were Black, and 5 percent were Asian.” (This tracks pretty closely with my son’s high school and my daughter’s junior high, except the white population technically includes kids who are Arab Muslims.) As this is happening, schools in many cities are becoming more segregated. From Chalkbeat:
The analysis finds that, between 1990 and 2015, 72 percent of U.S. cities saw their neighborhoods grow less racially segregated, by one measure. Sixty-two percent saw their schools grow more segregated over that same period.
“There is this incredibly striking trend,” said Ryan Coughlan, a professor at Guttman Community College, CUNY, who conducted the research. “It raises all kinds of alarm bells and questions as to what that’s about.”
The culprits, according to researchers, are the end of desegregation orders in many cities, and the establishment of charter schools, private-school vouchers and school-choice programs that have made it easier for families to take their kids out of local public schools. (And, as an aside, have wreaked havoc on the high school sports class system.) The result is that you get more opportunities to have schools where everybody sees nobody but white people now facing schools that, well, don’t.
So in this environment, it’s not surprising, even if it is shocking, to see incidents like a racially motivated brawl among parents at an elementary school basketball game, as noted in a recent Albuquerque Journal editorial.
I would love to give some easy solutions on how to solve this, figuring that imploring “don’t be racist” is probably not going to do a lot of good. However, what will help is school administrators, communities and parents sending a strong signal that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, that you can cheer against the other team without demeaning their humanity, and that there will be apologies and consequences if something does happen.
I get that in some cases schools can’t do everything. The superintendent of schools in Baraboo, Wisc., is correct in that she can’t really punish students who went viral for an off-campus photo in which they appeared to be engaged in a Hitler-style salute. But everybody — and I’m looking at you, white people with white kids in overwhelmingly white kids — has to do more than wring your hands and say “this isn’t who we are,” or resent “outsiders” trying to smear your “good kids” by trying to make them all “politically correct.” Another way to look at politically correct is that also starts with the same letters at this word: polite.
Source: forbes.com
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