Are Sports Political?
I’m not a very political person. Scratch that. I know enough about politics to fill half a notebook page. Neither am I a very sporty person, despite doing about four of them, but I’m always a little bit upset when I read something that mixes the two up.
According to sources, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) dropped anti-racism messages after football’s world governing body decided against displaying messages challenging racism and discrimination at the Club World Cup in the U.S. Instead of displaying signs and messages that oppose racism and discrimination, FIFA decided to instead go with their much broader “Football Unites the World” campaign.
FIFA was criticized for this, and I have to agree on the side of the critics. Honestly, if you’re going to speak up against racism and discrimination, two already fundamentally wrong things, at least carry through with it. It’s like saying you’re going to do part of the work in the group project and then not following through with it.
Evan Whitfield, the chair of the Human Rights Soccer Alliance (HRSA), which is a U.S. grouping of former players, non-government organizations, lawyers and grassroots soccer organizations, voiced his disappointment over FIFA’s lack of messages: “Soccer exists in a space where the values of nondiscrimination and inclusion are clear, but they need to be consistently underlined to the world. A basic message of ‘football unites the world’ doesn’t achieve this clearly enough.”
Anyways, I feel like sports and politics shouldn’t be mixed up. To me, the two couldn’t be any more different. Whereas politics are stuffy suits, clicky pens, and tons of big, complicated words, sports are noisy music, loud cheering, and a lot of festivity and freedom. I honestly don’t know how you can mix two opposites up.
These days, it feels like everything is political. At least leave sports out of it for us non-political people. To answer the question of whether sports are political or not, I think the act of doing the sports themselves aren’t political, but the organizations that host tournaments and meets can be.
One day, I hope that sports and politics can be completely different.
