Racial incidents in high school football spark discussions and programs

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Superintendent Torie Gibson felt she had no choice but to make the unpopular decision. When she learned that the Amador High football team was having a group chat titled “Kill the Negroes,” filled with derogatory language and racial slurs, she ended the school’s varsity season. Northern California.

This meant that the 100th anniversary match between rivals Amador and Argonaut was called off.

“We canceled football season, and we did it for all the right reasons because the behavior is not acceptable,” said Gibson, who oversees the Amador County Unified School District. “However, football is an extracurricular activity. It is not given. It is not a right. It’s strictly extra. »

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Discipline was quick and abrupt. Moments before Amador played at Rosemont, a predominantly black and Latino school near Sacramento, the game was called off.

There were more fallouts. The football coach, sporting director and director of Amador have been put on leave.

In Gibson’s mind, discipline was the easy part. The hard part will be setting the stage for real change, and the key will be presentation. The school is based in a predominantly white rural area an hour’s drive east of Sacramento. Amador has only four black students out of about 750.

“I think if we roll it out properly and provide the support and don’t shame people for who they are and try to celebrate everybody, but really, really, let’s look at our angles dead and our differences, I think that will make a big difference,” said Gibson, who is white.

The Amador incident was one of many alarming examples of anti-black racism that occurred this fall in high school football across the country. In the past, athletes could keep racism and other issues off the field, but today, even sports circles aren’t immune to real-world issues.

In some cases, administrators have used these incidents to start conversations about race they had previously struggled to bring up and roll out programs they hope will have a lasting impact.

A TikTok video created by gamers at River Valley High School in Yuba City, California, featured a slave auction simulation. A social media post has circulated showing five white men from West Laurens High School, a central Georgia school just over two hours southeast of Atlanta, at a football game wearing shirts spelling out a racial slur targeting black people. And at Guilderland High School in New York City, about a half-hour drive west of Albany, several classmates showed up to a football game dressed in black, prompting around 100 students to leave class a few days later.

Richard Lapchick, founder of the Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, uses social media to draw attention to weekly instances of racism in sports and beyond. He said the institute, also known as TIDES, found 58 articles in its first week of searching, and it highlighted 11 on its Twitter feed.

“Acts of white supremacy have been unleashed across the country in the current political climate,” Lapchick said. “I don’t think the general public knows how important that is.”

Gibson, the superintendent of Northern California, says she needs to start working on implicit biases in her district. She said she was encouraged that the school already has strong transgender and gay and lesbian advocacy groups.

“I think we’re going to have a great opportunity to really make some changes and do some good work,” she said.

The fake slave auction at River Valley was staged as a prank, but there was nothing funny about the repercussions. The college football team lost the remainder of its season after suspensions left it with too few players to continue.

The Greater Sacramento NAACP Chapter hosted a meeting calling for systemic change and the players apologized for their involvement. During the meeting, a black player said he didn’t want to participate in the mock slave auction, but he was the only black player left in the locker room and everyone focused on him. He said he tried to leave, but couldn’t. He was told the video would not be posted, but it was.

River Valley manager Lee McPeak said the district is working with a professional to implement programs to learn from the incident.

“There are vital messages about race, discrimination and the systemic changes that are needed to help us make important shifts towards equity, respect and compassion, essential for our schools today,” said he declared.

At Guilderland High in New York, some students were outraged when some of their classmates showed up to a game in blackface. Administrators met with students in small group roundtables. The school said it was a “highlighting moment” for students who had experienced issues of discrimination and injustice.

In the wake of all these incidents, the work of learning and changing has only just begun.

“It’s going to take us some time,” Gibson said. “It will take years of work. There is no magic button to fix it.

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