According to Charlotte Harpur at the Athletic, children cannot have role models in sports unless they see players with the exact same skin color as them. This toxic idea is constantly pushed in sports media, and yet it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Harpur complains that England’s national women’s soccer team is too white. Out of 23 players, 20 of them are white. Having a team that is 87% white is a major problem because it supposedly is not representative of England, a country that is roughly 85% white. For the team to be more “representative,” it would have to be like the men’s team, which is 60% white.
Go figure. That sure looks like fuzzy math.
Aside from Harpur apparently not understanding the actual demographics of the country about which she is writing, or the absurdity of the implicit suggestion that racial quotas should be implemented, Harpur is promoting the idea that children should be obsessed with race. When a black or Asian girl watches the women’s team, “she may not see anyone relatable.”
“If you were a young girl from an Asian, black or mixed heritage background and went through the England women’s Instagram page, would you relate to the players that you saw?” Harpur asks.
The answer is probably yes, at least in the United States. White and Hispanic children who enjoy basketball and football do it all the time. You would never see a piece like Harpur’s about the NBA or the NFL, which are disproportionately black. No major sports outlet would ever complain that Team USA basketball is too black and not a reflection of the country it represents. (In fact, if you tune in to ESPN, you’re more likely to hear that if the team has one white player, it is too white).
Any children who think they need to see athletes of their skin color on television to have role models only think that way because of the toxic racial ideas being pushed on them by adults like Harpur. For children growing up in California, everyone on the playground wanted to play basketball like Kobe Bryant, no matter their race. That was assuredly true across the country and has been for other prominent athletes who also happen to be black, including LeBron James and Cam Newton. Race has never been a barrier to sports fandom for most children.
This toxic obsession with race has no place anywhere in society, and yet it continues to be spread by adults who should know better to children in the most benign areas of life, including sports. Harpur’s piece is a contribution to that, urging children to see race and only race and discouraging them from identifying with athletes who aren’t of their race. This worldview is promoting racial balkanization to children, not diversity. It will only make racism worse.
