Friday night, a racist BYU fan harassed a Black women’s volleyball player playing for Duke. Among other things, he threatened her and called her a racial slur that is arguably the most offensive word in the contemporary English language. And nobody—not the students surrounding the racist, not the game officials, not BYU’s athletic director, nobody—took actions to stop it.[fn1] (And it’s not like BYU officials didn’t know—Rachel Richardson, the Duke player at whom the racist invective was aimed, said that BYU’s coaching staff was told what was happening. And I’ve been to volleyball games at the Smith Fieldhouse—you can definitely hear what people shout.)
Utah’s governor expressed his “disgust” and sadness at the story, and rightly pointed out that we need to fix society so that “racist a**holes like this never feel comfortable attacking others.” And Sunday night, BYU’s women’s volleyball coach issued an apology and a promise to do better.
But the thing is, this wasn’t an isolated incident. And it’s going to happen again.
Why do I say that? In part because over the last several years, racism has been emboldened and mainstreamed. Partly I say that because this is a repeated theme in Utah athletics. (See fans at Jazz games, high school sports, more high school sports, yet more high school sports, even more high school sports.)
This type of racism is, among other things, a deep moral failure. And it’s a deep moral failure by the church. I’m sure not every person in Utah yelling racial slurs at Black athletes is Mormon. But I’m also sure that some not-insignificant portion are. And, given our dicey history of institutional racism, it’s not a problem we can ignore. It’s not a problem we can deny. It’s a problem we need to confront, and one we need to confront as quickly as we can; it is a hand or foot that we need to cut off and cast away, an eye they we need to pluck out and cast it from us.
Part of the necessary reckoning is learning our history. We like to point out that Joseph Smith was opposed to slavery, and that we ended our racial priesthood restriction in 1978. But did you know that at least a handful of members who moved to Nauvoo, IL, brought their enslaved persons with them, kept in slavery? (Illinois was a free state, but that was a contested position.) Did you know the Utah legislature legalized Black and Native American slavery in 1852, with the support of Brigham Young and Orson Spencer? The 1978 revelation didn’t undo that history. And we need to learn that history, both so that we don’t repeat it and so that we can right the wrongs we committed as an institution and a people.
But part of it is learning how to shut down racism in our midst. There has been a lot of criticism not only of the BYU athletic administration, but of the students sitting near the racist individual, who heard what he yelled and didn’t stop him.
And that criticism is right. His neighbors’ inaction represents a significant moral failing. But it’s a moral failing that can be prevented in the future.
Because responding to racism (or misogyny or other types of abuse and discrimination) isn’t natural and it isn’t intuitive. In fact, their inaction has a name: the “bystander effect.” And a sporting event is the perfect storm for the bystander effect—as counterintuitive as it sounds, the more people present, the less likely it is that any individual will intervene. (That’s not an excuse, of course—the bystander effect isn’t an impenetrable wall.)
How do you counter the bystander effect? Awareness and explicit training. And that bystander awareness training has become increasingly common, among other places, as part of DEI initiatives at colleges and universities.
Would DEI training have prevented the harasser from his racist attacks? I don’t know; he wasn’t a BYU student, so implementing anti-racist training at BYU wouldn’t have dissuaded him. But training the students seated around him in how to respond to racism would have empowered them and given them the skills to respond productively and effectively.
Is that training going to happen? I certainly hope so. But it’s worth noting that Elder Clark Gilbert, the current commissioner of CES, has expressed skepticism over DEI initiatives, conceding that BYU has work to do in being racially inclusive, but that
The DEI programs in the world are not the way BYU should do it. We should find a gospel-centered approach. We should be better than we are now, and we should be a light to the world but not replicating the world.
Here’s the thing: I don’t think anybody in the DEI space would argue that there is a perfect DEI program. And it may be the we can develop a gospel-centered approach that is more effective for church members.
But we don’t have that LDS-specific program yet. We haven’t taught BYU students, Utahns, or, I suspect, members worldwide how to effectively intervene against racism. Too many of us haven’t internalized the evil that racism represents. So yes, let’s keep pushing toward better and better anti-racism training and teaching.
But in the meantime, let’s use the tools that already exist in the world. Let’s ensure that next time someone at BYU yells racial slurs at a Black athlete, the students around them understand the bystander effect, understand how to overcome it, understand the importance of overcoming it, and act to stop that racism. (Also, let’s put that training into our Sunday meetings; let’s teach not only BYU students, but all members of the church, how to be anti-racist.)
It’s not going to magically happen by itself. If anti-racism were easy and intuitive, the BYU students, the BYU coaches, the security at the game, would have stopped the harassment. Let’s not try nothing and be all out of ideas—let’s give ourselves the tools to choose (and do) the right.
Because, as Kristine pointed out yesterday, the status quo is wrong.
[fn1] The next day, BYU announced that it had banned the racist individual from entering BYU sporting venues.