Episode 231: The Best, Worst and Lackluster of DEI Initiatives in Sport
In this episode, Lindsay Gibbs, Shireen Ahmed and Brenda Elsey discuss the latest in DEI initiatives in sports. But first, they talk about what is getting them through the end of 2021. Then they discuss FIFPRO's latest equality report, MLS's new diversity policy, the ways DEI data in sport is flawed and what leagues are doing well and not so well. They also dive into the glaring lack of racial diversity in coaching across all sports as well as sports media.
Following this discussion, you'll hear a preview of Jessica's interview with Summer-Solstice Thomas about preventing abuse in the NCAA. Next, the team burns all that needs to be burned in sport this week on The Burn Pile. Then, they lift up those making sports better, including Torchbearers of the Week, the Florida State University women's soccer team who beat Brigham Young University 4-3 in PKs to become NCAA DI champs. They wrap up the show with what's good in their lives and what they are watching in sports this week.
Links
FIFPRO report: What Equal Playing Field? https://fifpro.org/media/v4dn1554/what-equal-playing-field-2-0.pdf
Fare report on representation of Women, Black and Latinx individuals in US Soccer: https://www.farenet.org/news/us-soccer-organisations-marginalise-women-black-and-latinx-individuals-from-leadership-structures-says-new-report-from-fare
The Status of Women in U.S. Media 2019: https://womensmediacenter.com/reports/the-status-of-women-in-u-s-media-2019/
Major League Soccer amends its Rooney Rule in overhaul of diversity policy: https://www.espn.com/soccer/major-league-soccer/story/4541458/major-league-soccer-amends-rooney-rule-in-overhaul-of-diversity-policy/
WNBA earns highest marks for racial and gender hiring practices: https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/32763010/wnba-earns-highest-marks-racial-gender-hiring-practices
Transcript
Lindsay: Hello, hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I am Lindsay, your captain for the day, and joining me is Brenda and Shireen. Hello, hello!
Shireen: Good morning.
Brenda: Hey.
Lindsay: I am trying to fake a little excitement because the end of the year is running me ragged. But goodness, am I excited to be here with you all. So this week in our episode, we're gonna dive into some updates on some diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in sports – kind of, I would say, the end of the 2021 end of year update on how those are going. And of course, we've got a simmering burn pile, we've got our torchbearers to lift up, and we'll end with what's good and what to watch.
So, always want to thank our patrons, a quick shout out to our patrons; patreon.com/burnitalldown. We've got a segment on King Richard coming up soon. Myself and Amira and Jessica dove deep into our thoughts about King Richard – mostly good, some complicated, because we're adults and we can hold multiple things in our brains [laughs] and in our hearts at once. So, I wanted to start, as I mentioned, I'm running a little bit ragged here with end of the year deadlines and everything, and I kind of wanted to see what is kind of getting you through the end of the year madness. Is there anything in particular that you are holding on to? Shireen?
Shireen: So, as Dr. Brenda Elsey coined this term, I'm in a very intense quest for sponsorship – for anything, and not just for BIAD, which I have very adequately placed product right now, my Burn It All Down mug. I am interested in getting a call from Nespresso in particular. So coffee, as you all know, I love dearly. And I've just decided to take the advent calendar dispatches, my daily advent calendar reveal, to a different level. So, that is something I look forward to every day.
Lindsay: What do you mean? So you're trying to get Nespresso to sponsor you?
Shireen: I don’t know. To sponsor me to do what? But I just want free shit from Nespresso. [Lindsay laughs] I want them to be like, “We think you're funny.” My kids think I'm ridiculous, but that's fine. That's the status quo. And I'm like, people are enjoying my daily videos. And you know what? Two times a week, bitches, they gave me decaf. I'm like, you know what? The first time it was fine. The second time, I'm like, don't play with me. I need caffeine in the morning. Seriously. I think that's a fair stance. Like, label it like a content warning.
Lindsay: So why do you want them to sponsor you if they're screwing you over?
Shireen: See, this is the thing. These are the deep dive investigative reporter Lindsay questions happening now.
Lindsay: I’m very confused by this. [laughs]
Shireen: Essentially, I think I'm doing like public scholarship and sharing my knowledge on coffee, and also protecting the coffee community from decaf is important. So I feel like I'm doing like anti-oppression work, because honestly giving me decaf is like violence.
Lindsay: Well, we have to make everything anti-oppression work. So that's good. I love it. Wait, Shireen, where do people see these videos?
Shireen: Go to my, my handle is @footybedsheets. So I post them every day and have like a little highlight reel of them too.
Lindsay: Okay. Brenda, are you on a quest for sponsorship? Or what is getting you through?
Brenda: I don't think that, in a really contradictory way, I'm going to say I don't think sponsorship really fits with my brand. [Shireen laughs] I don't think I could really accept one and get the Marxist cred that I'm aiming for. But I support Shireen, because capitalism's a total system and you got to get yours. Also those videos are cute, and her desperation is darling. [laughter] Okay. What’s keeping me through? So, if anyone has a sensory…Any child with a sensory issue, you will know that getting them ready in the morning and putting on clothes and getting their hair brushed is a total nightmare. Some people think it should be an Olympic sport. I would fail.
The end of the year brings a lot of pajama days, where every teacher is like, hey, if you're quiet in the hall, you get pajama day. And so my kid’s class, my youngest's class has been really good so they keep getting these pajama days. And I'm so excited because she just wakes up and I'm just like, you're ready to go. [laughs] I don't even have to fight with you this morning. This is awesome. I love pajama days. We're just so chill and she just walks around in these striped pajamas all day, which is adorable anyway. And then we just change at night into new pajamas. That's been like four days. So basically that's amazing for me. I keep jogging and I keep drinking beer. That's always helpful for me. I can't wait until the day start getting longer basically, too. I always think like, okay, just get to December 20th, and then it's all brighter from there, you know? So we're close.
Shireen: Do you drink beer while running?
Brenda: You know, I don’t. I don't even really…I’ve tried, just to bring my two passions together. Also, I love a hot shower, so I try to drink in there sometimes and it doesn't work. Even when people, you know, when they finish like runs and then they get a beer and they look so happy and stuff, all I want are like lime popsicles. I just have to separate those parts of my day.
Lindsay: That's okay. You get to spread the joy out a little bit more that way. So that's good.
Brenda: Yeah, exactly. When the runner's high is gone, then the IPA desire kicks in? Something like that.
Lindsay: Yeah, for me, it's Christmas decorations. I love lights. And so my living room is very decked out in decor. Another thing is candles, because – I know it's not great for the environment, I know, everybody, I know. But one thing I've always done is had a real Christmas tree. In apartments, it doesn't matter. My roommate and I in DC, we'd get a big Christmas tree every year. Love the smell. It's just something that I look forward to all year. Well, my condo sent around this note saying no live holiday trees anymore, so I have a fake tree, but that means I need my candles that have the smell of pine, because that smell of pine is very important to me. So thank goodness for candles.
And also I've been honestly a little bit too quickly going through the wine that I bought in Napa Valley. So I've been drinking like really fancy bottles of wine. [Shireen laughs] Like, I told myself, oh, I'm going to save all this for special occasions. No, I am not doing that. But it's been lovely.
All right. So, over the past couple of weeks, we have had a couple of new updates in the DEI space. First of all, FIFPRO, which is…Well, Brenda will explain what that is in a minute. They came up with a new report called What Equal Playing Field? that kind of dives into discrimination on the football pitch, and then Major League Soccer also unveiled a new diversity policy/Rooney Rule update. So we wanted to have a discussion around the latest DEI initiatives in sports – what’s working, what's failing, and whether or not the kind of Black Lives Matter commodification that started amongst leagues last summer, you know, has that gotten us anywhere in sports? We’re gonna start talking about really what the impact of racial abuse, homophobic abuse is on players. And this is kind of the goal of the FIFPRO report. Brenda, can you kind of give us a little intro to this report?
Brenda: Yeah. So, for people who don't know, FIFPRO, it approximates a labor union for international football, men's and women’s. The tricky thing for women is if you're not fully professional, it’s difficult to really, truly unionize yourself in most countries with most labor laws. So, FIFPRO operates everywhere. It gets a lot of its revenue from the video game FIFA, actually. So instead of going and taking part of your salary, it's the image likeness and the revenue that comes from FIFA, which is kind of interesting if you think about gaming as being a labor solidarity exercise. But there are a lot of problems with it, and there's a lot of good things. A lot of times they're out there fighting for working conditions and players' rights with some pretty atrocious individuals in global football.
So they put out this report, and it basically is like – no pun intended – state of the field, right? What is going on in women's football? It's pretty intersectional. It features mostly…I mean, the way that they approached it, and we can talk about this, was a lot of individual stories that people came forward and talked about their experience. For me, honestly, there wasn't anything new that was there – though maybe there doesn't have to be, maybe it's just like reiterating, featuring, you know, building sympathy and stuff like that. I didn't really see anything that we didn't put in the US Soccer report, though it’s more global. Or that FIFPRO hasn't been reporting for many years. It's a lot more narrative.
And then for me, there's some very weird benchmarks, things like, “Megan Rapinoe tweeted an anti-homophobic message and it got 40,000 retweets.” And that's just very strange to me as a benchmark in that report. It's like, okay, you know? Or this Argentinian goalkeeper in Mexico dyed his hair rainbow color, you know? Some of it just feels very surface-y. There isn't really any teeth about where we should go from here. So that's my kind of reaction to it. I don't know about you, how you two felt?
Lindsay: Yeah, I kind of agreed when I was…You know, I'm very ADHD, so whenever I sit down to really go through a report, I have to really psych myself up, you know, copy and paste everything to make sure I'm paying attention, write everything out in my own words. And I kind of kept waiting for the kind of bombshell or really new information, and honestly this didn't have that. And so that was a little bit frustrating and confusing. Though it's always good to have these stories in the same place, you know, certain people will pay attention more to reports than they will to just kind of your every day work. And I'm wanting more stats, I'm wanting more progress.
But one of the points of this report is just that, like, the reason we don't have stats is because they're not really kept for this, right? So I think one of the problems the report had was how do you quantify this, do you know what I mean? Because it's hard to…We all want these kinds of concrete numbers. But one concrete number it did have, and this was actually a report from a different organization called Kick It Out. For the 2019-2020 season, it reported that discrimination across the professional game increased by 42% in the 2019-2020 season from the previous, even with it being on hold for several moments, because the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reports of racial abuse increased by 53%, and reports of abuse based on sexual orientation also significantly increased, and is up by 95%. I'm not sure where those numbers come from or like what it is, but I think if anything it shows that things are not getting better as far as the discrimination and racial abuse that players are receiving from fans and on social media – whether or not we know exactly their methods and how they got to those numbers. It's hard to see that there's a turn in the right direction. Shireen?
Shireen: One of the first things that really struck me about this particular FIFPRO report was the centering of the voices. And I think one of the things is that, you know, although as we discussed and will discuss further, it doesn't sort of seem like there's a strategy that came a lot with this. It's sort of just saying there's a further deep dive into the issues faced. And what really struck me about this, it included so many players from across the world, but then it was different layers of oppression that they were facing in different elements. Like for example, Quinn was there, the non-binary trans player from Canada. You had Khalida Popal, who's actually been on the show. She was on episode 43, and led the team from Afghanistan, the women's national team rather, to come forward and disclose the abuse that they had faced by the former head of the federation.
So, you really have a lot. I mean, there's Anita Asante in there, and I think one of the things was, for me, it struck that they are still attempting to humanize these players and their experiences. And I'm cautious of that because I don't like the idea of people having to humanize their traumas. But also, this idea of racism and these types of traumas, societal traumas, are really…People don't understand – those in power, and those particular fans in power, have always acted with impunity. So, Lindsay, when you talked about the Kick It Out report and how there was an increase of discrimination faced, whether it's fan based or whatnot, traditionally football fans have been able to do this with impunity.
And the point of this, I sort of feel like connecting the dots here to say that the more that people begin to truly understand the emotional and psychosocial effects of this type of harm, maybe it'll make a difference and it'll push clubs and federations to be more consistent with, you know, the repercussions and accountability here. So, I'm hoping that this particular document, which people poured themselves into, and very personal accounts, is held with respect the way it ought to be.
Lindsay: Oh, absolutely. Bren?
Brenda: Yeah, they are talking to the right people. Except for like Chiellini, right? [laughs]
Shireen: I know! I was like, what the fuck is he doing in this?!
Brenda: Like, it was really weird.
Lindsay: Explain that, quickly. [laughs]
Brenda: Okay. So, he's a Juventus player who's just a white Italian guy who's kinda like, “I’m not racist. And so I'm in here.”
Shireen: He was also bitten by Luis Suárez in the men's World Cup. That’s–
Lindsay: Oh, I know who it is now. Okay. [Shireen laughs] Thank you.
Brenda: But in a non-racialized incident. [laughs]
Shireen: Totally!
Brenda: Like, it's just very strange to me. Maybe…And this is where the teeth should come in, right? Is like, if they were to say, look, we're interviewing this guy because basically Juventus is one of the most notoriously racist clubs in human history. That would've made sense. But since they don't say it, it just feels like, “I'm the captain of Juventus and I don't hate gay people, by the way.” And so, I mean, it will be translated, I'm sure, his words will be picked up hopefully by the Italian media. It was just kind of strange. I will just say, are we still using the word flex? Is that a thing that people still…Are we okay with that?
Lindsay: I think so.
Brenda: BIAD had a huge flex in this report. [Shireen laughs] Basically everybody cool has been on our show. I felt really proud of us – and them, of course, we're just featuring the right people. But I was like, hey! They've been on our show! They've been on our show! Friends of the show! And so I felt really proud that we were in any way associated with these folks.
Gaby Garton on FIFA and ideas about women in football
Crystal Dunn, organizer of Black Women's Player Collective
Anita Asante on the impact of Black Lives Matter on global football
Khalida Popal, supporter and advocate for women in Afghanistan
Shireen: And years ago, some of these people have been on our show in year one.
Brenda: And they've been doing work that long too. So, I mean, I do think they featured the right people. I was really impressed. And they're all very intelligent, you know? Nothing against Chiellini, but I mean kind of minus his just, “hey, I'm here.” It's worth reading. I guess that's the thing. It really is worth reading these people. Maybe for us it's nothing new, you know? Maybe we're sort of used to this, and someone else reading would actually be much more floored.
Lindsay: And on that note, I kind of wanted to highlight what to me was the most powerful part of it, primarily because most of the soccer work I do is focused on the NWSL. So that's probably why this part spoke to me the most. But it was the Black Women’s Player Collective kind of giving a statement from all of them. It wasn't cited to any individual player, but to the entire BWPC. And we had Crystal Dunn on our show talking with Brenda about how the BWPC was started. So we're going to play a clip right now from that interview.
Crystal Dunn: So we started out as basically being a support group, you know, just being able to come together, create a space for all the Black women in NWSL to vent and just, you know, speak on things that they've experienced and just create a safe space for them. Because our issue on the women's side compared to the men's side is definitely different. You know, the men have the representation, they have multiple players on each team to really feel like their voice can be heard. Whereas a lot of our NWSL teams, there's only maybe one Black player on a team, and that can be extremely overwhelming given all the events that have occurred this year, you know? How do they feel like they can speak to their teammates? You know, it was challenging.
So I think creating this group came at a really good time because we knew events were happening and occurring and, you know, we just wanted that space to be laid out for players. We also know that we're in a very unique time now where we as Black women feel like we should not be asking permission for some things. We should feel like this is how we feel, this is our voice, and therefore you're kind of either really with us or you're just, you know, you're off to the side. And I think the NWSL is realizing that we can no longer really sit back and let them kind of take the wheel. It's actually our time now to be in the forefront and really drive these conversations.
I think they responded really well, and they understand that we don't want just anyone speaking for us. If there is a matter that is a racial matter, we would love to be in the conversation. If there's a message that they're going to put out there, we would love to know what the message is, because there's been some misunderstanding and miscommunication, I think, whenever a message is being put out it. It sometimes it doesn't represent how we all feel.
Lindsay: I just kind of want to read a couple of the sentences that stuck out to me from their section. It was, “Last year, George Floyd's murder meant that we were once again forced to raise our voices and shout that our lives matter. The anguish and the anger runs deep. It is not just a hashtag that we put on social media. It reawakens generations of trauma and suffering of exploitation and brutality. But our white coaches, teammates and managers did not get that. They didn't live through what our families lived through. And our coaches made it clear that whatever this moment should or could mean for Black people, our focus should be on the field. We were left in no doubt that our performance should be business as usual.”
It goes on to say that, “We felt a strong sense of responsibility to educate well-intentioned teammates and colleagues, many who we consider friends. But, like many Black people going into mostly white spaces, it was so exhausting. We were having to relive trauma while holding space for others, in spaces that were often ironically unsafe for us. And we witnessed discussions being watered down so non-Black players felt more comfortable. Worse still, we were being asked to tone down our language and modify our action to accommodate the white fragility of teammates and other stakeholders.”
And, you know, we all saw this playing out during the NWSL Challenge Cup last year. But I think to read it from their perspective really stuck out to me. And I'm so glad that this is in the report and that hopefully it will get people to read it and listen to it, and for white people to really think about what their fragility, even if it's well-meaning, does to the racialized people going through trauma. All right. We also had a MLS overhaul of its diversity policy, Rooney Rule hiring. Brenda, I know you're an expert – literally cited as an expert in ESPN’s write-up of this. Can you tell us what's going on with MLS right now?
Brenda: Well, because of a lot of the activity from the players and from former players with organizations like Score, there have been moves to try to buttress the Rooney Rule in MLS. Many of MLS leadership comes from the NFL, so it's not surprising that they take cues from them. And this is about diversity in hiring specifically. You know, it's really hard. Look, I mean, what's a good thing about it? One good thing is that they've got a DEI officer, Sola Winley, right now, and that's good that they even created a position. It's good that the Rooney Rule 2.0 or whatever specifically cites the need to include Black/African-American candidates. And that's really, really important, because we know that they've been the most marginalized from the process and that it has skewed the representation on the pitch and the representation in the back offices, the front offices, whatever, and the players.
So that's really good, you know, just going out there and naming the problem. And then they also name the other minorities that they're looking to include. And that's all very good stuff. I mean, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, except there's a few main problems with that. And the first comes from the fact that the MLS is a Ponzi scheme that doesn't have any independence. And that means who is going to enforce this? It basically says, you know, a club will get fined $50,000 or $100,000, you know, by whom? And the answer is themselves. And that usually, if you think about it, doesn't work that well. I wish it did. It's kinda like when teachers give elementary school students the opportunity to grade themselves. That's great. But when it comes to professional sports that are run by people coming out of the NFL, it's usually not great.
And we don't have independence in soccer. We don't have an independent federation. So, it's still kind of concerning. You know, you read the report we just talked about; they're talking about real heavy issues, sexual assault, you know, sexual harassment, racial abuse. And where do you go with this policy? It's got something to do with hiring, but it still doesn't really set up any independent body that anyone could go to with a problem. You know, again, it's just like, if we violate our rules, we will pay $50,000 – and it's like, to what? To yourself?
So anyway, that for me is the first problem. And the second of course is the ongoing problem with trying to replace real minority hiring with foreign internationals that are not minorities. And I know that this gets really confusing for people and it's one of those things that I explain until I'm blue in the face and it’s...It just is complicated, so I'll just try my best. The problem is that when they want to hire what they call “Hispanic” coaches, they hire people who have grown up as non-racialized – so, as white men – in their countries of origin, usually Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia, right? With wonderful coaching skills. And they call those “minorities” and they call them “minority hires.”
So they use a report called the TIDES report, which I've been in very public disagreement with. And they say, look, we've got 36% representation of “Hispanics.” And they know that that's a term that doesn't get used in football anymore. Hispanic refers to some origin in Spain. And we got rid of it, and use Latin American because we know about the slave trade and the Americas. We know that there's Afro-Latin Americans. We know that there's Asian Latin Americans. We don't use Hispanic anymore. And sure, you're going to find some yahoo on the internet that gets mad that he's not called – and it's always he – a “Hispanic” anymore. But basically you can't call a Brazilian a Hispanic. How are you going to call Pelé or any of those…You know? Do you see the problem with that term?
So they use it, they slap it on, they say it's 30 something percent. If you were to erase that and look at the head coaches that really grew up in the US with the racial obstacles that the Spanish speaking or Portuguese speaking or otherwise Latin Americans experienced, it goes down to 6%. So, you have a majority of Black/African-American and Latinx players in the MLS, and you have a sum total of less than 15% of them in head coaching positions. So, sorry for that long explanation. But it's really important to how they fudge this data.
Lindsay: Yeah. I think that's super important, especially because the TIDES report, you know, is something that I know I cite a lot for my work in other leagues, because there’s…A little bit as we were talking about earlier, right? There's so little data out there, that I think as journalists, when you're trying to get the problem across quickly, you kind of cling to whatever exists. I've learned so much from you, Brenda, though, because of how the MLS has used the way the TIDES report presents this as an excuse to say, look, we don't have a problem, because we're doing right according to the TIDES report, you know? That’s really, really problematic.
One of the things I'm always looking at, the WNBA, and it always earns really top marks where, if you’re paying attention to the WNBA really closely, you know that it hasn't always been the best, right? Often less than half of the coaches are women, and maybe one or two are Black women, right? And yet that will somehow get an A according to the hiring report – probably because they're grading, you know…There’s a curve, I'm sure, [laughs] based on, you know, how bad other leagues are, right? So, it's very interesting to think more critically about the numbers we're getting and about the reports we're getting. Shireen?
Shireen: Yeah. I'm just going to jump in here because we had some good discussion in pre-production with Brenda about the TIDES reporting, and just sort of to echo what Lindsay said, and not just only specifically as one of the very few racialized sports journalists in my country, but TIDES offers sort of a platform to understand and break down numbers. And while it's flawed, inherently, as Brenda's explained – and thank you for doing that, Brenda, because I think one of the things that we need to focus on importantly is language and how in media, sports media is one of the last places where language gets updated. Like, when I joined TSN, I don't know when the last time they had updated their style guide. Like, it was a long time ago.
And I think this is extremely relevant, particularly because the discussion about race has to be dynamic and ongoing. It's constant. It doesn't end when we decide one thing, because sociologists and critical race theorists and academics and people and advocates and activists are always changing. And I mean, in the sense of in learning and unlearning. But I just wanted to add in here about the Women's Media Center which, for a lot of people who don't know, can also be used as a really important tool. And they actually have a gendered lens into what it looks like in a report card. They do it every two years. The last one was actually 2019, because of course COVID. But they're pretty deep dives into it.
They have a section on sports desks, and I'm citing from the 2019 status of women in US media, but they also do include Canada. And in the United States, predominantly it says, sport desks were at 75% of nation's newspapers and online news sites, and earned a B+ for racial diversity and a D+ for gender and racial diversity combined, and a sixth consecutive F for lack of gender equity, according to the racial and gender report card commissioned by the Associated Press sports editors. So I think that's really interesting. And when I first logged into Women's Media Center – and full transparency here, I'm listed as an expert on their website for sports media – they had broken it up so you can be racialized, and then there was a gender category.
So I'm like, where are the racialized women in the category? You could be one, but you couldn't be both, because there were so few racialized women in sports desk roles that they couldn't even cite a percentage. And that's the reason, because I asked them. This is also very telling of what the industry looks like. People in decision-making roles, there are not enough racialized women in those spaces. And the information and the data that we get…And as researchers, we know that the way that you do the research, if it’s flawed, I mean, your results are going to be the same way.
Brenda: Can I just mention too, that even though the team ownership is often the same, just going to the women's sports and coverage on that, there's zero reporting on NWSL in the TIDES report. Zero. Even though we have many teams that are co-owned, that are co-managed, and I'm not sure they should really be considered separate. So, just to come back on who would you even report on? [laughs] And who's even…In the women's soccer, it’s even worse. Zero percent people of color in head coaching positions in NWSL in the past. I think now we have featured a couple assistants, and there was one head coach interim for a while, but they're mostly British white dudes. And that's who they're expecting to be asked questions by, too.
Lindsay: On that note, I think it's hard to create policies to end this stuff, right? I don't want to say it's easy to create policies to undo these systemic issues. But a policy that I have seen have a real impact is in the WNBA, they created a rule that if a team hired a former player as an assistant coach, they could have three assistant coaches on staff, as opposed to two. So it's kind of a way to have a bigger team, and in the WNBA, because it's like 80% Black, that has led to having a lot more Black women on staffs and moving up the ranks. And I'd love to see the NWSL do something like that, but of course they would need to do more to focus on hiring racialized people, because the NWSL is so white.
Brenda: It’s bad.
Lindsay: For more on this subject of diversity in coaching, go check out Amira's roundtable last week with Dr. Nef Walker and Dr. Scott Brooks discussing how race and gender impacts coaching and women's college basketball. They talk about how, since Title IX, by the numbers, white women have gained the most jobs, and by percentage, white men have benefited the most. And of course, as Shireen talked about, sports media, the people writing and talking about this stuff, is white. It's all white. There was a picture going around from Anne M. Peterson about the MLS championship, and the reporters there, it was all white men. And it's just a reminder of, not that we need one, but it can sometimes feel like we're making progress, but there's still so far to go.
Shireen, I know you've been teaching kind of the next generation of journalists now, and I wanted to kind of hear your thoughts as now a teacher and seeing the next generation coming up.
Shireen: Yeah. One of the things I do want to highlight for Annie's tweet, which I think was really relevant, it comes from a different lens. It was that she tweeted that the actual comment to go along with the photo was that, “Media at the MLS Cup press conference. We really, really need more women covering this league.” But at the same time, the criticism I got on my tail when I shared that was that there was no mention of racialized folks. So I'm not interested in a gender division that's white women to equal up the white men. It absolutely doesn't interest me, and I don't care. That was shedding light, like from a critical way, in an important way, where are the white women talking about that racial inclusion as well? Because the burden happens to fall on Black, Indigenous and racialized women, women of color, rather, to have to do that, to always have to advocate. And I see that.
Bringing this back to teaching, I've seen in the last 18 months more voices of racialized sports media contributors, more so than I can recall in the last 10 years. There was a time where it was Howard Bryant, you know, Jemele Hill, Bomani Jones, Cabbie Richards; there was Stephen A. Smith art, arguably. But like, that was it. There was less than a dozen, like, in the last 10 years, I'm saying. And now there's so many. There's people in different spaces. We still see in particular MLS media is very specifically white. So was hockey media, specifically white. There is an increase of white women, but that's the increase. And this is something that I shared with my students. I didn't have a lot of racialized young women as students. I didn’t. I had one young Black woman in my class, and even her work was so outstandingly different, in a wonderful way, and her lens was so different.
And this matters as a point of amplification, because the lens with which the stories are shared does really matter. Who is reporting on this? Who is opining on this? Who are the columnists on this? You still cannot have diversity being run by white women. That's not progress. That's actually not. And so many racialized woman…I'll just point everybody to this book that I'm obsessed with, which is called White Tears/Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad. I'm obsessed with it because it's really important. It's cathartic. I suggested to my students to read it. I had a lot of white young men. They're formidable and they're going to be excellent in the industry, and they're open-minded to concepts that I was talking about, namely, anti-oppression, namely stopping and thinking about what's happening.
We actually had a session in one of my classes that came up really organically where Tara Slone went on Hometown Hockey and she shared her feelings about what happened with Kyle Beach, and that went viral. And so we had a moment where the young women in the class shared their experiences and the guys just sat there listening. They sat there listening because they had never heard women in the class, young women, talk about what it felt like for them and how they're in second year, most of them, and they still feel like they're shut out in so many places. So, that is something we have to break down as well. And it made me really sad at the same time, because I'm like, no, you have the world at your feet. You're 20. You should not feel like this as young women! And then in my head I'm like, wow, if white young women with that privilege feel that way, how the hell is everyone else supposed to feel?
So, there were moments of reckoning and sort of understanding for me, and inflection, and how do I encourage these young folks to get up? And the best way to do it is encourage those with that privilege to make space for others, to pass over the mic, to understand, to delegate, to outsource, to include in a way. And I know you know the word inclusion bothers me, because I think it’s been…It's like, I couldn't say “terrific” because Trump said it so much, and I actually really liked that word. So, I've started excluding things from my vocabulary, and “diversity and inclusion” are two of the words that really bother me, because they're cliche now. But no, to really make space and to collaborate and to co-conspire for anti-racism work. And that if you're looking from a gendered lens, if you exclude race, if you exclude class, if you exclude gender identity, then you're not doing the work in a holistic way.
And that's what I taught them. It's a lot. We also did like sports reporting and how to communicate properly with PR, we did all those things, basic journalistic stuff. But it was a deep class. And I mean, most of them really loved it, and it was one of the most fulfilling experiences for me, because what I did actually take away was what do I need to tell them? What do I need to tell them to prepare them for what's coming? And what supports can I offer racialized, aspiring sports journalists? Because they're going to need it.
Lindsay: This week for our interview, Jessica talks to Summer-Solstice Thomas about Thomas's advocacy to get the NCAA to care about gendered violence, specifically in terms of harmful coaches who sexually abused their athletes. They talk about Thomas's time as a college athlete, how she came to care about this issue, and what she hopes changes in the future.
Summer-Solstice Thomas: The NCAA, as an institution dedicated to the wellbeing of student athletes – that's literally in their mission statement! – it seems crazy that they don't want to be responsible for that. Like, sexual abuse? That seems quite obvious it's going to be a very negative factor for your wellbeing. So, it just seems like a bare minimum that the NCAA should be responsible and should take very proactive and advanced measures to preventing that abuse.
Lindsay: It is time for the burn pile. I'm going to get us kicked off this week. I want to talk about what's been going on in the US women's national team for the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. The beginning of this week, they announced they had rehired Trooper Johnson as head coach of that team. This is despite the fact that, in 2018, players on the team had come forward with accusations of verbal and emotional abuse against Trooper Johnson. There was a very paltry investigation at the time. It was scooted over. He remained the coach through the Olympic cycle, after which the players came forward and started a SafeSport report against him. And despite all that, they still rehired him.
Players on the team spoke up this week against both that hiring and generations of sexism and discrimination within the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. Apparently multiple qualified women had been in consideration and officially and formally applied for this job, and they were all overlooked for a man who the players had said were abusing them. Trooper Johnson is an icon in the Wheelchair Basketball Association. He's very good friends with the president of the Association. And I heard he is actually the logo. Like, that's how big of a deal he is. For the players to come out against someone with this much power took a lot of strength.
By the end of the week, he did resign with a very ridiculous statement that accepted no wrongdoing. So, the players got the first thing they were looking for, which is great, but I want to burn the NWBA for not listening to its athletes, not protecting its athletes, you know, especially the para athletes have to deal with so much discrimination and marginalization already, that the fact that they have to then fight their own organization is just absolutely appalling. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: This past week and the women's Champs League, there was a pitch invasion during the Chelsea-Juventus match in Emirates Stadium. A lot of people saw it because a video went viral. Player Sam Kerr sort of checked the pitch invader who had lingered way too long. It was hilarious in one sense, because she just levels him. It's really disconcerting. It's a real safety issue for players that are out there. And she just sort of Aussie rules football him, [Shireen laughs] and she is amazing. And people were like, yay! But at the same time, Chelsea manager Emma Hayes points out this is way too long that he had to be out there taking selfies and meandering around the pitch. This is a real player safety issue. And if this was a men's match, it really felt like there's no way they would've made it this far and this long. And so it was really frustrating.
Some other people got upset because Sam Kerr did receive a yellow, and I’d just like to say, I actually felt – and I know this is like a twisty burn, but I was heartened by the fact that she got a yellow. I think she should frame that and put it in her doorway, because men get yellows for that. In fact, historically that's all the time. And I liked the fact that they weren't just like, oh, that wasn't a devastating blow to that fan. No, it was. And he totally deserved it. [laughter] And I was really happy that she administered it. But I am upset and want to burn the fact that she had to do that to just protect her space, her workplace. So, I want to burn Emirates Stadium for not giving the same security and resources to a women's Champs League match that they would have otherwise. So, burn.
All: Burn.
Lindsay: Shireen?
Shireen: So, this week there was some busy-ness in the NWSL and there were some trades and then people were put on the save list and, you know, I think there's all that movement happening. But at the same time, the integrity and the protection of your players matters. And this was reported on Twitter, not only by Jorian Baucom, former Racing Louisville player. Jorian went on Twitter to say, when she was released with a thank you from the team...She’s a Black player, and in the montage, the photo that they put up to thank her, they actually used a photo of a different player, Ebony Salmon. And this is a huge problem.
If your PR team and your comms team doesn't know which Black players are which, your club needs to literally cancel itself. Like, this is a huge problem. There are not more than 20 women on that roster. And guess what, people? Black women do not look the same. This is embarrassing. It's a terrible way to send off a player, who you, at the same time, you're thanking for being a part of the team. As also reported by Molly on this, she quote-tweeted Jorian's tweet. She said, “She's the second former Louisville player to allude to broader problems at the club recently.” And I think that's important.
And what Jorian says, and I do want to center her in this, is that it’s “upsetting to see the club make their final regards with another Black teammate’s picture instead of mine. I’ve been quiet about most this season, but this is something that needs to be addressed.” And at the time that she did this, at 9:13pm on December 8th, on December 9th in the morning is when Racing Louisville issued an apology. And they said, “We are truly sorry for using the wrong photograph in our thank you graphic yesterday. It was an unintentional mistake, but that doesn't negate the harm caused. All year, you have represented the organization with respect and you deserve that in turn from us.” They said they're working better to develop approval processes.
And, you know, fine. Good. But really, the fact that this happened at all means that it's not about approval processes, it’s that you don't care, and you didn't try to put in the effort. This is terrible. And first of all, Jorian, for doing this publicly, thank you for that. Thank you for calling it out, particularly when you didn't have to. And you said you'd been quite before, which makes me wonder about the culture of that actual club, where you're not in a place to be able to say what you want to. Thank you for doing this and I'm so sorry this happened to you. I want to take that and the lack of concern and consideration for racialized players, I want to take that and I want to burn it all down.
All: Burn.
Lindsay: After all that burning, it's time for some torchbearers. Our honorable mentions, Brenda, who is the coach of the week?
Brenda: Coach of the week is Cheryl Reeve, who was named the new head coach of the US women's national basketball team.
Lindsay: Shireen, who's that new boss of the week?
Shireen: New boss of the week is Amélie Mauresmo, who was appointed as the tournament director of the French Open, becoming the first woman to hold that title.
Lindsay: Our whistleblower of the week – get it? – is Dre Barone, who is the first out gay official in the AHL. [laughter] I'm very proud of that one. [laughs]
Shireen: That's so good, Lindsay.
Brenda: Well done.
Lindsay: Brenda, who’s our cup holder of the week?
Brenda: Chelsea, who won the FA women's cup, by beating Arsenal three-nil.
Lindsay: Shireen, who are our handballers of the week?
Shireen: Congratulations to team Norway, who won the international handball federation’s women's world championship 2021. They beat Iran 41-9, and as such, I will say that Fatemeh Khalili, the goalkeeper for Iran, was selected for best player of that match.
Lindsay: Amazing. And can I get a drumroll, please?
[drumroll]
Torchbearers of the week is the players on the Florida State University women's soccer team, which edged BYU 4-3 in penalty kicks – oh my gosh – last week, to win its third women's national soccer championship in program history, and its second in the past four years. All right, what’s good? What's good, Shireen?
Shireen: Okay. I'm very excited about this. All y'all know it’s my Nespresso calendar, but look what I got. I got myself a little treat. I got the Billie Jean King Barbie! My aunt and uncle in Calgary – I love you both very much – sent me a gift card for my graduation, and I was like, I want to do something with it. So, Billie Jean King, I've got…She’s on my desk. She's beside my Barbie that I got last year, who was actually a present for Dr. Barbara Ravel. So, she joined…Look at my Barbie collection. I have a Black hockey player Barbie and Billie Jean King the tennis player. So, I'm very excited.
My son made the mistake of trying to suggest I take it out of the box, and he was grounded and sent to bed. So I'm really excited about that. I kept that secret for four days. I didn't tell either of you, because I wanted it to be a surprise. Surprise! And I'm really excited. It's snowed a little bit. I love it. I love the snow. I love the winter time, and I'm very excited about wrapping up. And I have some really fun upcoming news in the next little bit, and I'm excited to share it with everybody when it's time.
Lindsay: Okay! Cannot wait. Love having good news to look forward to. I gotta say, look, do I believe in prison and our current justice system? No, no. [Shireen laughs] But– [laughs]
Shireen: I love the disclaimer already.
Lindsay: I just–! I’m sorry. It was good to see Josh Duggar actually face consequences and be found guilty and sentenced to prison. If you don't know about the Duggar family, I don't time for all that, but you can look it up. But anyways, I lurked in a Reddit thread or subreddit about the Duggars all week as people were following the trial, and it was really cool because it turned into a lot of a community of people who have been a part of their faith, their really conservative sector of Christianity that they're a part of, which is very, very, very conservative and limiting. And it was so many people in that subreddit were just talking about how they got out of that world and out of that culture and seeing the light and finding other people to chat with. And, I don't know, that gave me some hope this week. So, that's what was good. Also, you know, Christmas parties. Oh! I saw Dear Evan Hansen this week. Actually they restarted their national tour the first time since COVID in Greensboro, and I got to go to that and it was wonderful. Bren?
Brenda: Oh, that's great. So, this past week I presented this new chapter I'm working on, which is Afro-Cuban baseball, and it centers around a guy named Martín Dihigo. And I presented it at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort. And so for people who don't do this kind of academic writing, presenting something like this, it will be the first of dozens, you know, before it actually sees the light of day. So, the first time is a big deal. And just for helping, there's so many...There’s like 125 footnotes. Like, I just need other people to read it. So, I'm so grateful that they invited me and that people came and gave suggestions. And that was really wonderful. Yeah. So, it was the first time kind of shopping that around in English; I had done it once in Spanish. And thanks to Matt Taylor and Alan McDougall, two wonderful scholars who had great questions.
So, I don't know. I love that process. It's a really generous process, when people just listen to you for free and they're not getting graded. You know what I mean? Like, it's a hard paper to listen to. It's not like…I’m not being snappy. There's no real good jokes in there, nothing, you know? It's pretty clunky language still. So anyway, you know, it's a very isolating process, writing a historical monograph, and it's always nice when you get to start to put it out there. And people are so generous.
Lindsay: This week we are watching…The big thing is the women's NCAA volleyball championship. The semifinals will be Thursday, December 16th, and then it looks like Saturday, December 18th for the championship. Those games are always so much fun to watch. So, we’re excited for that. I don't know who put this note in the what to watch, but somebody put “watching Detroit Lions with ambivalence to see how they hurt Motown.” I'm sure that was Shireen [laughter] who put that in there, so… [laughs]
Shireen: Brenda, your Michigan is showing.
Lindsay: But you know, we've got the NFL, NBA, NHL are all going on. So I'll get through the rest of this year. We're almost there, friends. That is it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media guru. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Listen, subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and TuneIn.
If you don't have any extra money – which, same – right now and you want to get us a little gift, Burn It All Down a little gift, a review, a five star review is the perfect size for all of us. So, [laughs] for our show links and transcripts, our website is burnitalldownpod.com. And you'll also find a link – speaking of holiday shopping – to our merch at our Bonfire store. Our patrons, once again, we have to thank you. Your support means the world. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, patreon.com/burnitalldown. Brenda, take us home.
Brenda: Burn on, and not out.