Is there space in the Olympic Movement to discuss racism? Well, there has to be.
Twenty years ago, during what was arguably one of his most iconic speeches, Nelson Mandela said that “sport has the power to change the world”. As he somewhat experienced this first hand in the 1995 Rugby World Cup (immortalized in the movie Invictus) after overcoming unfathomable ordeals, it is fair to assume that this statement was not, by any stretch of the imagination, made lightly. It is also fair to assume that he could not have foreseen that the future would bring so many opportunities for sport to be leveraged as a platform to convey messages from a number of very legitimate agendas. In the past couple of years, though, the perception around activism among athletes has been as divisive as the issues that motivate their activism in the first place.
With the eruption of protests worldwide following the many heartbreaking, bewildering, episodes of police brutality against people of color (particularly in the United States and in Brazil), aggravated by the manifold systemic fiascos made explicit by the covid-19 pandemic, a crescent wave of athletes has been taking to social media (and mass media) to manifest their solidarity, anger, and frustration. The abhorrence of the events that triggered those protests and the momentum they gained made it virtually impossible for sport institutions to remain silent. At last, institutions like the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the NFL have started to (albeit timidly) apologize and try to make amends to how they positioned themselves in the past. Systemic, structural, institutional racism is not new, activism to fight it is centuries old, and this shared outrage and de facto allyship is long, long due. Whether this allyship will be merely ephemeral and opportunistic, remains to be seen.
The latest major sport organization to review its approach to athlete activism is the IOC, who spearheads the Olympic Movement. Earlier this year, they published guidelines banning any form of political protest by athletes in Tokyo 2020, explicitly giving examples of actions commonly associated with athlete activism (kneeling and writing slogans on armbands, for instance). More recently, though, following the massive protests happening in many places all over the world, the IOC published a resolution that supports the initiative by the IOC Athletes’ Commission, pledging to explore ways in which athletes can “express their support for the principles enshrined in the Olympic Charter, including at the time of the Olympic Games”. But, even though the Olympic Games are the most visible face of the Olympic Movement, Olympism is not something that only exists once every four years.
By not realizing and acknowledging that Olympism goes beyond the Olympic Games, we miss out on the opportunity to open up spaces for actual (albeit gradual) change, as if allowing athletes to protest during the Games was the only possible outlet to harness the power of Olympism to advance legitimate agendas. This is not to belittle the importance of athletes publicly protesting, or a suggestion that there shouldn’t be space for politically charged manifestations in sport; it is actually the opposite. This is to say that if sports organizations want to claim they legitimize the causes behind which their athletes stand, but want them to compromise by not doing so during events, better additional alternatives must be offered and embraced for those causes to be addressed.
One example within Olympism that could be better explored to address systemic racism are the many initiatives of Olympic Education. The Olympic Charter is very generic in its approach, which is both good and bad: good because it enables its virtually universal application, and bad because it makes it a lot more difficult to tangibilize it. So, beyond endorsing the values and ideals present in the Olympic charter, why not take those instances of education to delve into the circumstances and specificities that prevent those ideals from coming to fruition? Sport brings people together, but the mere gathering of people won’t bring about change. Some conversations, particularly uncomfortable ones, don’t just naturally emerge; they need to be provoked, conscious and deliberately. And deconstructing systemic inequalities demands us to be candid, and specific, in questioning the many ways in which we are bystanders or enablers for those inequalities to persist. The International Olympic Academy master’s program in Olympic Education, for instance, is successful in ensuring it gathers a beautifully diverse group; but how often are discussions about the actual meaning and unfoldings of Olympic ideals held during the program to harness the potential of this diversity to create meaning beyond the words in the charter?
Another example is the many governance instances in which the IOC has power to effect change through the many stakeholders in the Olympic system. Local Organizing Committees, for one, could be more proactive and deliberate in avoiding unconscious biases to interfere in hiring processes and meeting dynamics; moreover, by educating the staff allocated in local organizing committees in matters related to racial discrimination, for instance, the ripple effect could be huge as those people move forward to other roles within the sports industry. It is interesting to observe how much progress has been achieved in terms of gender representation across the system, for example, once this matter was prioritized. There is of course still a long way to go, but the progress achieved in the past couple of years in that sense is undeniable. This is, of course, not limited to the IOC, but applies to any sport organization (national federations, national olympic committees, international federations, etc) that can, through its position in the sport landscape, influence other organizations and companies to do better, and go beyond manifesting their support on social media. The need for materiality in battling systemic racism must not be undermined.
These two examples are certainly not all there is in terms of opportunities to be leveraged to fight racism through the Olympic Movement, and are just a very brief exploration of ways to leverage its potential to take the discussion further than whether or not athletes should be allowed to protest during the Games. If Olympism is to remain relevant, and deliver on its promise of building a better world through sport, then it must also step up to those challenges beyond performative allyship. It is meaningful that the IOC is revisiting its approach to athletes activism, and willing to support the Athletes Commission to find ways in which athletes can express their support for the principles contained in the Olympic Charter; but there is more that can be done.
