Video of the event in March 2022 shows a judge handing out medals for participation to a line of young gymnasts, but ignoring the only black girl. A photographer, coach and other officials fail to intervene. A mediation settlement reached with the family involved the judge taking anti-racism training.
I find myself feeling really bad for both the kid and the person handing out the medal.
In a room full of one skin colour and one or two outliers, I can imagine myself being socially clumsy enough to not see them at first and then feel too embarrassed or scared to admit why I overlooked them. I bet it’s even happened to me.
The organisation made an entire mess of this and made the life’s of all concerned more painful.
It seems you kind of understood systemic racism. The person who looks different than the 20 people next to them will experience this on the regular. Which, considering it objectively, is shitty for them to happen to and shitty to be done by the rest.
Yes, I assume if this happens once then it happens more regularly. It sounds absolutely draining.
I think people don’t realise that racism doesn’t just mean intentional and pre-meditated behaviour, but also inherent biases. Biases that we should really be educated on to make the lives of our fellow humans better.
Exactly it’s important to acknowledge the different ways of how racism can show.
It’s quite possible the person didn’t have a malicious or racist intent at that moment. It’s still racist and people need awareness to tackle that subconscious racism. That’s why talking about it and bringing it to the news is so important.
Not saying you wanted to stop the discussion, btw. Just wanted to add to it.
Yes, this is the key. I don’t think she was making a point and even at the end it seems another girl also didn’t get a medal because the judge ran out, so probably not intentional. BUT, the effect is so much more damaging because these kinds of things ARE sometimes meant as signals and so it should have been dealt with directly. If she had immediately acknowledged that it could be felt that way and said “racism has no place in gymnastics”, you still wouldn’t know if she was lying but at least racists could not take comfort from the organization’s tacit acceptance of how racist it looked.
It’s one of those points where a simple question would have solved a huge issue either way. Just people afraid to cause any commotion. I’m not asking to berate or assume the worst, just ask "why did you skip that girl. Even if you are a pansy shit, you don’t have to confront until they are blunt about it.