The University of Pacific volleyball team has elected to forfeit its match against BYU after a fan was accused of making racist comments toward a Duke volleyball player in August.
“The volleyball team has decided to not play the November 10 game at BYU,” the school’s senior communications director Mike Klocke said in a statement Monday night. “The team expressed concerns following reports of racist and hostile comments during an August 26 match. Pacific stands with our student-athletes.”
Since the alleged incident, BYU conducted an investigation and found no evidence to “corroborate the allegation that fans engaged in racial heckling or uttered racial slurs at the event.”
BYU released the following statement:
“The University of the Pacific’s decision to forfeit this week’s women’s volleyball match is unwarranted and deeply disappointing. Following the Aug. 26 allegation, BYU conducted an extensive review and found no evidence to corroborate this allegation. As we have stated previously, BYU will not tolerate any conduct that would make a student-athlete feel unsafe in our athletic environments. It is unfortunate that Pacific would make a decision that perpetuates the very challenge we are working to heal in our polarized society.”
The August incident has led to more damning accusations, including Southern California women’s soccer players stating BYU fans directed racial slurs at them after players kneeled during the national anthem in August 2021.
The latest volleyball cancellation comes weeks after Dawn Staley, South Carolina women’s basketball coach also canceled a series with BYU.
“As a head coach, my job is to do what’s best for my players and staff,” Staley said in a statement released by South Carolina. “The incident at BYU has led me to reevaluate our home-and-home, and I don’t feel that this is the right time for us to engage in this series.”
BYU has asked people who were at the Aug. 26 game for help finding the person who yelled slurs at a Black player for Duke University.
Brigham Young University said Tuesday that it was still investigating who was responsible for the racist slurs and threats that a Black player for Duke University’s women’s volleyball team said were directed at her at a match on Aug. 26.
After the match, B.Y.U. banned a person who had been sitting in its fan section from all university sporting events.
But last week the school told The Salt Lake Tribune and other local media that it had not found evidence that the unidentified spectator was responsible for the shouted slurs.
“The investigation is ongoing,” the university’s associate athletic director, Jon McBride, said Tuesday in an email.
“We are investigating fan behavior as well as the BYU. response to the behavior, reviewing video and audio as well as taking firsthand accounts from individuals who were present.”
McBride said that the person who was banned had been pointed out by Duke University, but that B.Y.U. had been “unable to find any evidence of that person using slurs in the match.”
The university has not identified the person, but said it was not a student. McBride did not respond to a question asking if the ban had been lifted.
More than 5,500 people were in the stands. The school asked people who were at the game to share videos to help with the investigation, The Tribune reported.
The Duke player’s father, Marvin Richardson, told The New York Times after the game that a slur was repeatedly yelled from the stands as his daughter, Rachel Richardson, was serving and that she feared the “raucous” crowd.
In a text message on Tuesday, he said the family was declining to comment on the investigation.
Rachel Richardson, a Duke volleyball player, provided further information regarding what transpired during the Blue Devils’ match against BYU on Friday, when she was the target of threats and racial epithets from spectators in the student section.
The event was further discussed by Richardson, a sophomore outside hitter from Ellicott City, Maryland, who is 19 years old.
Richardson said that as the match’s second set came to a close, she was about to serve when she heard the slur for the first time. In the fourth set, when the teams exchanged sides, Duke was close to the student section and heard the slur once more.
Richardson reported, “I heard a really powerful, terrible racial insult.” “I therefore served the ball and completed the play. When I returned to serve the following time, I heard it quite clearly once more, but the game was over at that point.”
The Duke volleyball coaches then went to the authorities to inform them of the predicament. Richardson said that at the time, there was no consideration given to ending the match, but nothing was done.
Richardson said that she was contacted by the BYU women’s volleyball team and that she spoke out to raise awareness.
The issue was discussed with Richardson and Duke volleyball coach Jolene Nagel, according to BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe, who also addressed the audience prior to the Cougars’ game on Saturday. Holmoe said that the university’s efforts to prevent supporters from yelling racist epithets at rival players fell short.
In a statement, Richardson also criticised BYU for taking too long to address the fans’ actions.
As organizations tackle topics related to race and equity in an unprecedented way, there’s a tacit tension constraining and constricting many of these very necessary, overdue conversations. Racist
Indeed, many White colleagues (in particular) are deathly afraid of being labeled “racist,” so instead of engaging, questioning, learning and contributing, they largely sit on the sidelines nervously itching for a topic change.
Much of that discomfort is the result of an anachronistic, fundamentally skewed concept of what racism actually looks like and what the term “racist” really means in 2022.
As Equal Justice Initiative Founder Bryan Stevenson reflects on the “emancipation” of African Americans post-Civil War, he insists, “Slavery doesn’t end. It just evolves.”
Similarly, racism didn’t end. It too evolved. With the acknowledgement of this tragic “evolution,” it’s important to recognize that what is considered and meant by the term “racist” today is very different from what was considered “racist” in decades or centuries past—and the conflation of the two oftentimes becomes a stumbling block for productive exchange and real progress.
Indeed, if we’re to effectively navigate “racism 3.0” (the post-Civil Rights Movement era), we must use more evolved, nuanced language about race, and immediately labeling someone a “racist” because they said or did something racially offensive can oftentimes create more problems than it solves as a result of this fundamental misunderstanding.
Given the country’s brutal history of white supremacy and racial violence, the term “racist” typically conjures up the worst mental images—Bull Conner ordering children to be hosed, KKK members torching homes and churches, white supremacists lynching men, women and children and leaving their bodies hanging to terrorize the Black community, etc.
As a result, for many (particularly within the White community), they consider those people the racists. Indeed, that stunted mental paradigm creates a “good/bad binary” as Robin DiAngelo explains in her New York Times bestseller White Fragility.
Black and Asian women are being harmed by racial discrimination in maternity care, according to an inquiry.
The year-long investigation into “racial injustice” was conducted by the charity Birthrights.
Women reported feeling unsafe, being denied pain relief, facing racial stereotyping about their pain tolerance, and microaggressions.
The government has set up a taskforce to tackle racial disparities in maternity care.
Hiral Varsani says she was traumatised by her treatment during the birth of her first child.
The 31-year-old from north London developed sepsis – a potentially life-threatening reaction to an infection – after her labour was induced, which she says was only spotted after a long delay.
“It was almost 24 hours later before a doctor took my bloods for the first time and realised I was seriously ill.”
Hiral had an emergency C-section and her daughter was taken into intensive care after also contracting sepsis.
She believes her race played a role in her care: “I experienced microaggressions and was stereotyped because of the colour of my skin.
“The staff would say ‘hello princess’, and while I was having contractions in a corridor a midwife walked past and said, ‘Oh, you’re definitely going to need an epidural’. I had never even met her before.
“I was repeatedly ignored, they just thought I was a weak little Indian girl, who was unable to take pain.”
‘Bleed to death’
While death in pregnancy or childbirth is very rare in the UK, there are stark racial disparities in maternal mortality rates.
Black women are more than four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women in the UK, while women from Asian backgrounds face almost twice the risk.
Tinu Alikor was terrified she would become one of those statistics when she gave birth to her daughter 14 months ago.
As we consider the potential implications of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, one open question is how states will enforce the abortion bans that are expected in at least twenty-six states. History suggests that the prospective anti-abortion laws will ensue a war on abortion drugs and are likely to echo the “War on Drugs;” they will not eliminate the behavior that is outlawed, but will, through biased, targeted enforcement, disproportionately harm poor people and people of color.
That abortion bans would resemble the War on Drugs is not merely metaphorical; more than half of abortions today are carried out using a two-pill treatment that terminates pregnancies up to ten weeks. Early in the Biden Administration, regulations requiring abortion pills to be taken in a clinic or doctor’s office were lifted. A number of states allow the pills to be delivered by mail after a consultation with a healthcare professional, which in many cases can be done through tele-health. Abortion opponents are already moving to make the medication inaccessible in anti-abortion states.
As the decades-long War on Drugs makes obvious, law enforcement does not render drugs unavailable. Rather, the drug war made it easy for the criminal justice system to target certain communities—particularly the poor and people of color. And disparities in the way in which drug policies are enforced infect every stage of the system—the decision to arrest, the decision whether to charge and which charges to bring, the trial process, and sentencing. Wealthy and white individuals rarely face serious drug charges—if any drug charges—for the same behaviors that would be charged to a poor individual, a person of color, or someone who falls into both categories.
There is every reason to expect similar systematic bias in the enforcement of abortion bans. We know this because although rare, states have actually prosecuted women for experiencing a miscarriage or stillbirth. Those cases reveal a clear pattern of racial and class bias. One study found that 59% of defendants were women of color, and 71% could not afford a lawyer. Though some of the most egregious instances of criminalizing pregnancy have sparked national outrage, the practice is widespread and becoming more common. Prosecutions have occurred in at least 44 states; of 1,600 recorded cases, three fourths occurred in the last 15 years.
A South Carolina college is investigating after students reportedly shouted hateful and racist remarks at the Howard University women’s lacrosse team before a game last week.
In a statement posted to Facebook from Howard University Athletics, the slurs were yelled at players before a game against Presbyterian College.
“Howard does not condone such disgraceful behavior in any form, and the use of harmful language such as this runs counter to the values of this institution, which celebrates respect, diversity and inclusion on its campus,” said Howard University Athletics in the Facebook post.
Presbyterian College officials also posted a statement on Facebook apologizing for the incident, which they said was “completely unacceptable.”
“We apologize to the Howard University women’s lacrosse coach and her players, we deeply regret the experience they had on our campus,” said the college.
The South Carolina college said the administration is looking into what happened and reaching out to those directly impacted.
“A student conduction investigation has begun, and any student found responsible for this reprehensible behavior during the event on Friday will face consequences,” the school said. “Such behavior does not stand at PC.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has expressed solidarity with the women’s lacrosse team saying what happened before the game cannot be tolerated at any educational institution.
“We stand in solidarity with Howard University students and urge all colleges and universities to ensure racism and bigotry have no place on their campuses,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper.
Nearly half of LGBTQ Americans believe their employer discriminates against people of their sexual orientation, according to a new survey published by IBM’s Institute for Business Value.
The survey, which polled more than 6,000 U.S.-based professionals, found nearly half of White LGBTQ respondents saying they have experienced some workplace discrimination based on their sexual orientation, although only 4% said they were discriminated against to a very great extent. For LGBTQ people of color, the figure was closer to 20%
The survey also found LGBTQ Americans were underrepresented on executive teams, with only 7% of senior executives surveyed identifying as being part of that demographic.
Furthermore, more than two in three LGBTQ respondents reported they did not feel equipped to overcome professional challenges, and nearly two in three respondents said they have had to work harder to succeed because of aspects of their identity.
In addition, 43% of LGBTQ respondents said they struggled balancing working from home with taking care of other family members during the Covid-19 pandemic, compared with 34% of non-LGBTQ respondents.
Respondents’ experiences of discrimination based on sexual orientation also crossed into racial and gender concerns. The study found 74% of Black lesbian, gay and bisexual women surveyed believe their identity group is less successful than the general population. By contrast, among White men surveyed who did not identify as gay or bisexual, that figure was only 4%.
Source: WestFairOnline
The survey, which polled more than 6,000 U.S.-based professionals, found nearly half of White LGBTQ respondents saying they have experienced some workplace discrimination based on their sexual orientation, although only 4% said they were discriminated against to a very great extent. For LGBTQ people of color, the figure was closer to 20% The survey also found LGBTQ Americans were underrepresented on executive teams, with only 7% of senior executives surveyed identifying as being part of that demographic.
The Chicago Fire Department needs to put in place stronger policies to deal with the sexual harassment and racial discrimination that have long dogged the agency, the city’s watchdog found in a report released Wednesday.
Inspector General Joseph Ferguson’s audit notes the overwhelmingly male and white department’s history of mistreatment of minorities and women.
While the Fire Department’s anti-discrimination policies “comply with baseline federal, state, and local laws, the policies themselves, as well as the complaint process and training used to enforce and promote them, are insufficient to meet the environmental challenges posed by a command and control emergency service operation like CFD,” Ferguson’s audit reads in part.
Of 45 female employees of the department who responded to a workplace survey Ferguson’s office conducted, 26 reported experiencing sexual harassment.
“Women are treated like garbage. Period,” one respondent said in the survey. “I see it every single day at work. And this survey is going to get buried and nothing will be done, but the City can feel good because they ‘did something.’”
Of 285 overall respondents, 132 reported experiencing racial discrimination. Twenty-eight out of 32 Black respondents reported racial discrimination.
One respondent said that numerous times they had heard and been called racial slurs. A lieutenant also called the respondent early in their career a “Crybaby Minority” and “On other occasions I was called the ‘Affirmative Action’ employee.”
For the most part, the Fire Department agreed to make changes recommended by Ferguson’s office, according to the report.
The department will create written guidelines for referring discrimination and sexual harassment complaints to be addressed, and will train its investigators on how to interview employees who’ve experienced workplace trauma, according to the report.
Read the complete article at: Chicago Tribune
Also Read: Racism is a problem in firefighting, too. Sacramento can’t keep ignoring it
New data has revealed over the past year, the number of anti-Asian hate incidents — which can include shunning, slurs and physical attacks — is greater than previously reported. And a disproportionate number of attacks have been directed at women.
The research released by reporting forum Stop AAPI Hate on Tuesday revealed nearly 3,800 incidents were reported over the course of roughly a year during the pandemic. It’s a significantly higher number than last year’s count of about 2,800 hate incidents nationwide over the span of five months. Women made up a far higher share of the reports, at 68 percent, compared to men, who made up 29 percent of respondents. The nonprofit does not report incidents to police.
Russell Jeung, professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and the forum’s founder, told NBC Asian America that the coalescence of racism and sexism, including the stereotype that Asian women are meek and subservient, likely factors into this disparity.
Read the complete article at: NBC News