Study: How structural racism is misunderstood in sport

“Is that correct?” These are the words a referee reacts to when a 14-year-old boy tells him about a racist insult. “I found it very inappropriate and a bit frightening to assume that I had invented something like that with the first question,” says the young player. His description comes from a research project at the University of Wuppertal, which interviewed eleven athletes of African descent about their experiences with racism. Their reports reveal that racism is omnipresent in German sports clubs.

In addition to origin, skin color, name and religion, racism in sport often also refers to the body. Athletes of African descent are often assigned physical attributes such as speed and strength, whereas they are denied discipline, tactical understanding and reliability. “What we see is a continuation of the colonial-racist fantasy that there are different races of people,” says Tina Nobis, the head of the research project. “In the discourse about racism, it is often said that this biological racism no longer exists. But when we deal with sport, we certainly find it.”

She was also concerned with the question of how racism is perceived by people who are not affected by it. The research team surveyed a total of 3,129 sports club members. The results show how different the perceptions of the two groups are. Although openly racist incidents are generally recognized, more subtle forms of racism are generally not noticed. 80 percent of those surveyed judge throwing bananas at a black player as “definitely racist”. However, only 25 percent consider the repeated question about the origin of a Muslim player to be “definitely racist”.

This shows “that it is assumed that the person cannot actually come from Germany,” says Alessa Heimburger, one of the authors of the study. This means that membership has to be proven again and again. As another example, Tina Nobis cites the fact that “as a rule, only critical comments are made when players of color do not sing the German national anthem at major sporting events, but it is not discussed when white players without migration experience do not sing along.”

The interviews with the athletes also reveal the demand for more diversity in leadership positions

Why are subtle and structural forms of racism not noticed? Nobis gives two reasons for this. First, “structural racism is often more difficult to grasp and explain.” Secondly, racism not only manifests itself in disadvantages for those affected, but also in privileges for people who correspond to the “white norm”. This makes it easier to overlook racist structures.

“The insight that racism is also part of everyday culture and does not just occur as an isolated incident on the right-wing fringes of society has not yet reached sports clubs across the board,” emphasizes Heimburger. In order to critically address the issue, it is also important to recognize “that no person is free from racism, that people act and think racist, even if they don’t want to.” There is often a lack of willingness to self-reflect in sports clubs. This result also emerges from a partial survey of 635 volunteer sports club members. 48 percent said that “no discussion is necessary” to ensure equal rights, reduce discrimination and work in an anti-racist manner.

Elena Lamby, head of the social policy department of the German Sports Youth (dsj), wants to remove taboos from the topic. Together with the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), their association launched the “(Anti-)Racism in Organized Sport” project in 2023, which includes the study. However, the current social and political situation in Germany makes it difficult to “reach people to raise awareness about racism”.

Nine of the eleven athletes report that they lack independent complaint bodies. “Local contact points are needed to make racist incidents visible and to support those affected,” says Lamby. Here, too, there is a dissonance: 40 percent of sports club members say that there are complaints offices in the club. According to the scientists, it is conceivable, among other things, that these exist but are not well known and are rarely used. We know from protection against sexual violence in sport, for example, that “a lot of trust, communication and transparency is needed on site so that contact points are used and function reliably,” says Lamby.

One result: in order to anchor measures critical of racism, a long-term and labor-intensive process is necessary

The interviews with the athletes also reveal the demand for more diversity in leadership positions. According to Heimburger, a more diverse cast is important because there is a different form of awareness of racism, “which is reflected in a deeper discussion.”

Individuals are often blamed for the lack of diversity in leadership positions. When people don’t participate, it is presented as an individual failure. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explains how the problem is shifted from the social to the individual level. The American sociologist is one of the most important representatives of “Critical Race Theory”, on which the Wuppertal study is also based. In his book “Racism without Racists” he writes that ideals such as equal opportunities, individual achievement and competition are often presented as reality – and emphasizes that this idea does not correspond to reality because it completely ignores structural racism. Unequal conditions are therefore not recognized as such.

According to Nobis, this argument of alleged equal opportunities is also reflected in a central myth about sport, namely “that sport is inclusive, open to everyone, always united and united and is always the solution and never the problem.” How strongly the myth is anchored is shown in the survey of 3,129 sports club members. 75 percent agreed with the statement that racism exists in sport. However, 88 percent also said that sports clubs were open to everyone regardless of origin or appearance. The researcher attributes her assessments, for example, to field experiments that show that the probability of being invited to a trial training session is “significantly lower if you ask for a trial session with a non-German or non-German-sounding name”.

According to Elena Lamby, a long-term and labor-intensive process is necessary to anchor measures critical of racism. In addition, volunteers already face a variety of challenges in order to make sports possible at all: “But it’s worth making sure that everyone is safe and involved, because that way we can make the sport fit for the future and have people who will grow into their commitment.”