Sport Must Speak Up Too
For as long as sport has been around in global society, there has been a perception that while it is a social institution, its participants must resist any temptation to speak up on matters impacting society. That such a perception still exists today is unfortunate and has perhaps emboldened those who benefit most from sport, the members of the upper class in our respective societies. This is consistent with the ways in which the members of the aforementioned class dominate just about everything that society becomes.
While we have been taught to believe that all members of a society should possess the right to speak on issues impacting them, the reality reveals that this is really something of a mirage and a grand fallacy perpetuated throughout history.
Close examination of society reveals that in every historical epoch, the upper class somehow managed to always be sufficiently manipulative that they always bounce back to exercise control over what the society eventually becomes. Admittedly, they may be disrupted for some time by upheavals in society but they have always been able to retake control if only because fundamentally, mankind has proven incapable of resisting the power of wealth to determine the fortunes of the societies they create. It may also be a reflection of man’s almost insatiable greed for both wealth and the power so often associated with its acquisition.
There has also been a debate on the item in the beatitudes, ‘The poor shall inherit the earth’. Clearly this must be at the spiritual level. In most societies around the world, the economically poor have little or no hope of inheriting anything other than the continuation of their impoverished existence.
The reality is that those in power appear committed to maintaining the status quo in every respect and rally their forces against anything that even suggests protest against their established order.
Human Rights
The constitutions of many countries around the world have enshrined the rights of the members of their citizens. The United Nations has, from inception, consistently advocated respect for human rights around the world.
One of the most important human rights is freedom of speech and that includes the right to speak out against injustices of all sorts.
History reveals an embarrassing contradiction. In far too many countries, people have been treated most inhumanely, subjected to the most debased sorts of treatment and the rest of the world maintains a despicable silence that leaves them almost complicit.
Despite all the claims of human advancement, we watch in horror as man’s inhumanity to man increases beyond belief, and the complicit silence of others who enjoy a better life leaves many incredibly distraught.
It is not surprising that the world today has become almost immune to the tragedies spawned by the lack of care and due diligence in the midst of the new expansionism taking place before our very eyes.
Where once we thought that economic development had created wholesome societies we find, instead, a rejection of human rights and significantly increased human selfishness in an ever-increasing number of countries. Accompanying this explosion of greed is a betrayal of all that was once considered noble, just and good in the foundation of the United Nations and the promotion of human advancement.
Just when we thought that the Sustainable Development Goals were attainable, global developments today have engendered fear of a cataclysmic destruction of humanity itself.
Increasingly, it is an almost criminal act to call out injustice wherever it dares to raise its ugly, deceptive and despicable head.
Politics, power and protest
Politics is about decision making. It is about who gets what and the dynamics of how the benefits of any nation is shared or not shared in a society and on what basis.
It is unfortunate that throughout human history, politics has come to be associated with politicians, the political parties they form and the influence of the wealthy who are capable of using their wealth to broker power in their respective societies.
In poor countries, as in rich ones, the horse-trading that is national politics is really about the influence of the wealthy on the politicians and their respective parties, based on their own reading on who will be most beneficial to the advance of their thirst for greater wealth and power. It is never about the well-being of the electorate, even when the politicians appear to have the best intentions in the world.
It is commonplace to think the people have the power of the vote. However, more often than not, it is the financiers of political parties and their politicians that determine the capacity of the political party to win the support of the electorate through their contributions to the political party of their choice.
The power of the people can only be truly realised when a majority of the population is convinced that there is a just cause to which they must commit their energies, enough to thwart the power of the dollar. This is how protests have become important to the people, everywhere.
Protests are sometimes the only means by which changes can occur. When protests garner majority support and the latter wrest the balance of power from the hands of those in control of the nation’s wealth and their influence, things change. It is the inevitable changes that protests bring that allow a shifting of the wealthy to the will of the people at a given point in time.
Protests can begin with any individual and/or sector of a society. It more often the case that protests start small and then snow-ball when the message resonates across the society to generate a majority.
In Haiti, for example, the revolution initially began with the privileged mulattoes. This faltered and was replaced with leadership from the slaves themselves supported by religious leaders.
In the USA we have witnessed protests from different groupings in society at different times through the nation’s history – indigenous peoples, slaves, religions, civil rights movement, musicians, sportsmen and sportswomen. In every instance the protests engendered incremental changes, many of which have since been rolled back even as the society claimed significant economic advancement
Sport and human rights
Sport has had a turbulent history. The fact that it has always been controlled by the upper class saw one sport organisation after another insist upon the ‘positive’ values they claimed for themselves as ideal for mankind. This was the case even when the same upper class did not adhere to the very values they imposed on their own societies.
It was the philanthropists’ use of their access to wealth that often allowed them to insist on the values of sport. The emphasis on amateurism in global sport emerged from this type of thinking and behaviour that the wealthy used to exercise greater control of the social institution.
Once it became clear that sport could generate at once, increased wealth, class status and power in society, amateurism was readily abandoned in favour of professional sport. What did not change was the insistence that effective control of the athletes meant writing into the respective constitutions of major sport organisations mechanisms of control over protest. The best examples are to be found in the Olympic Movement, throughout its history. Several international sports federations have attempted to follow suit amidst growing concerns raised by athletes in their individual and collective interests.
There has always been protests in sport led by the athletes. The responses of the leaders of sport have not always been kind to the athletes.
Even where sport leaders failed to adhere to their own ‘lofty’ principles of behaviour, they nonetheless insisted on their application to the athletes who make the sport what it has become. They fail to understand the inherent contradiction, leaving athletes at their mercies over time.
Buzzfeed (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/times-athletes-stood-up-for-what-they-believed-in) identified some of the sportspeople who have engaged in speaking out and engaging in other forms of protest. Some identified are as follows
‘On Aug. 25, 1960, the Olympic team from Formosa, now Taiwan, marched in protest during the opening ceremony after they were forced by the International Olympic Committee to change their country’s name…1967 — Muhammad Ali refused the military draft in protest of the war in Vietnam…1968 — Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise a Black Power salute at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Australia’s Peter Norman, was ostracised in his country’s sport programme for his support of Smith and Carlos in Mexico.
‘1969 — The University of Wyoming’s “Black 14” are dismissed for protesting racial discrimination by the church…1970 — The “Syracuse 8” quit the team in protest over racial injustice…2010 — Greek Paralympic medalists protest the loss of funding for sports involving people with special needs…2010 — Phoenix Suns wear “Los Suns” jerseys in protest of Arizona’s immigration laws…2013 — AC Milan’s Kevin-Prince Boateng takes on racism.’
Yvonne Goolagong suffered for just being an aboriginee in Australia despite her tennis prowess. Billie Jean King had to fight for sheer recognition as a woman and the cause of women, in tennis. Martina Navratilova and the Williams sisters fought for equality of women in tennis, inclusive of equal prize money. Today, questions about gender equity and fairness in sports are being raised about the prospect that women in the 100m in LA2028 may be treated differently from their male counterparts.
Pele’s attainment of global hero status in football did little to change the matter of continued racism in the sport that even today, remains a real thorn for young black players.
Whenever the Olympic Games come around, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) raises the matter of the Olympic Truce and hastens to have nations around the world sign on to it. This stands in start contradiction to the deafening silence of the same institution during the years of global turbulence in and between nations.
The IOC often appears to make a mockery of its own attempts at marketing Olympism as an important feature of sport in society.
Those who are quick to define the parameters of athletes’ protest are not so eager to expose the truth of their own behaviours as sport leaders. They make laws to suit their own interests as well as those of their financiers or at least their perception of what their financiers would want in order to retain positions of global dominance in international economics and finance.
Sportsmen and sportswomen do not live and compete in a vacuum. The world is their stage. They have as much right as any other segment of humanity to speak out loudly against injustices as they apply to them and to others they wish to support.
Athletes have been spurned and envied, in many cases, because of the wealth they have acquired in the plying of their sporting trade. Few take note of the revenue they generate for the owners of teams and of the competitions in which they compete.
Athletes have voices too. They also have rights and possess the right to support causes impacting society.
Sport must speak up too!
