When interviewed on microaggressions in sports, many collegiate athletes, even after detailing the discrimination they experienced, felt pressure to insist that sports remain untouched by racism.
“They would start the interview, and they would really emphasize and end the interview by saying, ‘But no, no, no, there’s no racism in sports,’” said Saemi Lee, associate professor at California State University, Los Angeles while conducting interviews for a thesis on microaggressions in sports. “‘Sport is really great, and my team is really great.’”
The athletes felt a lot of pressure to dismiss microaggressions and downplay what they experienced because they held a popular belief that sports unify society and can really transcend and overcome racism, Lee said.
Microaggressions are everyday verbal or nonverbal insults that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative messages to marginalized groups.
“Microaggressions are essentially moments of slickness that most people can’t catch until they go back and they think about, ‘Wait, that comment, that comment really rubbed me the wrong way,’” said Ajhanai Keaton, assistant professor in the sport management department at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
People still see homophobia, sexism and racism as things that are explicit and should have shock value, but the reality is most microaggressions do not have shock value, which can be difficult for people to understand, Keaton said.
People like to say sports should be free of politics and social issues, but sports just actualize them, Keaton said.
“So if microaggressions are happening in our society, they’re for sure also going to happen in sport settings,” said Keaton. “Sport isn’t the sacred oasis from social ills that people wish it was.”
According to Lee, athletes try to get under their opponent’s skin through trash talk, resulting in players saying things that are normalized and even expected in sports but they would not say to friends or in general society.
“If we don’t really question the things that we’re saying and what we’re implying, and no one kind of challenges or disrupts or questions that, then it just continues to get repeated, microaggressions become very normalized, they become the culture and then they become common sense and truth of like, this is just how we talk,” Lee said.
According to Eri Lee, sport sociology graduate student at the University of Minnesota, experiencing microaggressions from such a young age contributed to some of the anxiety she has developed.
Eri Lee competed on the U.S. National synchronized skating team at the senior level as a college student.
“Experiencing those microaggressions, and particularly the racialized microaggressions in figure skating, really did contribute to a kind of perfectionist mindset, where today as an adult, I’m a little bit afraid of making mistakes and feeling like I need to show up to spaces in a certain way,” Eri Lee said.
According to Keaton, experiencing microaggressions can cause athletes to drop out of participating in a sport, feel disconnected from their teammates or coaches and can begin to impact their mental health.
One way athletes can respond to microaggressions is by talking to a trusted adult or peer about how they feel.
“Microaggressions are described as, instead of being stabbed to death, for example, it’s more like death by a thousand paper cuts,” said Saemi Lee. “So if you have one paper cut, it’s a little annoying, but not a big deal. That’s fine, but if it’s a million over time, it doesn’t matter how small, it’ll kill you.”