Panelists ranging from current athletes to team’s legal counsel members discussed the ongoing fight against racism in sports during a Washington College of Law event co-hosted by the School of International Service and Football for Peace on Nov. 19.
The panel, moderated by WCL professor and Director of the Sport & Society Initiative Jeremi Duru, discussed the current climate Black athletes deal with on a daily basis regarding hostile chants and digital bigotry. The speakers featured Allen Hopkins Jr, Andrew V. Morris III, Jessica Wright and D.C. United forward Dominique Badji.
“I’ve personally experienced some form of racism every year of my career,” Badji said. “I started playing at 20, I’m 32 now.”
Last year, the Senegalese forward revealed on social media racial abuse directed at him after a 3-0 win over Red Bull New York. Badji posted screenshots on X of an Instagram user commenting a series of racist monkey and banana emojis on multiple of his posts. His club at the time, FC Cincinnati, showed support and vowed to work with Major League Soccer to protect Badji and other players from racial abuse.
“When I posted to social media, it really opened my eyes to how much support is available to us players,” Badji said. “What we’re experiencing cannot fall on deaf ears.”
The MLS created Black Players for Change in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd as a safe space for Black players and coaches. Black players make up about 24 percent of all MLS athletes.
The panel talked about how the rise of social media has led to an increase in hate due to the platform’s promise of anonymity for its users. In the last year, Real Madrid star Vinicius Junior notably broke down in tears at a press conference over the abuse he had been receiving online. Wright, a member of the legal counsel for D.C. United said the rise of sports betting is another factor as to why these incidents keep happening.
When Duru asked if the issue of racial discrimination in sports was moving backwards or forwards, Wright said a seat at the table for Black women in the general counsel did not exist until she took the job.
The panel all agreed the issue was of high importance to solve but there was not a universal fix. Badji said that MLS does comprehensive training with players from different cultures to explain what terminology isn’t appropriate in the United States.
However, the translation process between certain languages and teaching a player about what is appropriate here does not work overnight. Wright added that for a language like Turkish, it is borderline impossible to explain what certain racial slurs mean.
The panel also discussed the severity of the punishments for offenders. In Spain, a fan attending a Mallorca game faced prison time for comments he made towards Junior. In D.C., fans caught hurling abuse at players or staff receive lifetime bans from all MLS stadiums and future Audi Field events. A pregame safety video at Audi Field makes it clear what behavior is and isn’t allowed inside the stadium.
When it came to the discussion of player-on-player incidents, the panel seemed to lack solutions on how MLS should deal with those incidents. MLS Commissioner Don Garber can hand a team a points deduction over these incidents, but it has never happened.
Most incidents are handled privately, according to Wright. If necessary, players are given sensitivity training. Badji noted how often he’d seen players make a PR statement and then move on like nothing happened.
“We can’t just take action when these things happen,” Morris said. “We have to prevent these incidents from happening.”
In terms of dealing with the issue of racism in sports, the panel came to an agreement that every sports league had to do more to confront the issue head on instead of letting it swelter.
“We can always do better,” Badji said. “We have to continue to educate people on this as long as it’s still a problem.”
Correction: A previous version of this article said the event was hosted by just the Washington College of Law. It has been updated to correctly reflect that it was co-hosted by the School of International Service and Football for Peace.
This article was edited by Penelope Jennings, Delaney Hoke and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Emma Brown and Sabine Kanter-Huchting.
