Opinion: In Europe, improper conduct by fans faces stricter punishment by leagues

Throughout history, sports have led the way in establishing positive social change, benefiting our nation as a whole. Jackie Robinson integrated into Major League Baseball almost 20 years before desegregation laws passed through Congress. Muhammad Ali opposed the Vietnam war before public polling mirrored his position.

Now sports again have the opportunity to take the lead and confront racism among a small but vocal segment of society that displays its racial animus toward others. Some of these people use sports arenas and stadiums as a home for their bigotry,

On May 1, 2017, Red Sox fans subjected Baltimore Orioles center fielder Adam Jones to racist verbal abuse during his visit to Fenway Park in Boston.

“A disrespectful fan threw a bag of peanuts at me,” Jones said after the game. “I was called the N-word a handful of times tonight. It’s unfortunate that people need to resort to those types of epithets to degrade another
human being.”

More recently, Russell Westbrook, the NBA point guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder got into a shouting match with a Utah Jazz fan during a road game in Utah. The fan allegedly told Westbrook to “get down on (his) knees like he used to,” which he perceived as a racially insensitive remark. When media members found the fan’s Twitter account, which was deleted soon after the incident, they found racist and violent content.

In both of these cases, the teams banned the guilty fans for life. These punishments are well intentioned and put in place to try to deter other fans from engaging in the same actions. However, they have proved relatively ineffective across the board.

Banning fans for life is ineffective, due to the large amount of tickets available on the secondhand market through StubHub and Ticket Master and does not give fans any reason to police themselves and report inappropriate behavior.

The example set in Europe, where racism and violence among fans is more commonplace, should set the example for American teams and leagues striving to police fans and end racist abuse in stadiums.

Among fans in Europe, there have been several high-profile incidents of racist chants and abuse by fans. Supporters of the English soccer club Chelsea shoved a black man out of a metro train while chanting, “We’re racist, and that’s the way we like it,” in 2015, according to Deadspin. In Russia before the 2018 World Cup, several African-French members of the French national team recall hearing fans imitating monkey noises when they had the ball. The monkey chant was also directed toward minority English players during their match against Montenegro in March 2019.

In some instances, soccer teams will issue severe punishments by banning all fans from a match and forcing teams to play in an empty stadium. Most recently, in 2018, during Croatia’s match against England, no fans were allowed in the building due to “repeated instances of crowd trouble and racism,” as reported by Daily Mail.

In isolated cases with one or two fans acting up, this extreme solution may not be necessary. However, the issue remains as to what sports teams can do when there are larger crowds of intolerant, racially biased fans.

When Jones played in Fenway Park, more than 15 fans were ejected, and physical objects were thrown at Jones while on the field. A lifetime ban would prove ineffective for such a large crowd because it is impossible to know who all participated. However, the threat of closing the stadium completely might encourage fans to police each other, so they don’t risk being unable to attend a game.

While this extreme step has never been taken in America to deter racist fans, there has been one instance where a closed-door game was played. April 29, 2015, the Baltimore Orioles played the Chicago White Sox with no fans in the stadium, due to the rioting in Baltimore and the curfew that had been placed on the city.

Sports organizations need to be on the forefront, promoting the ideal that racist behavior is wrong and cannot be tolerated. Only then can sporting events return to the values that make them unique, that dozens of people, all with different experiences, can unite under a common goal and work together to achieve and accomplish it.

As recently retired New England Patriot Rob Gronkowski put it, “In sports, a team is surrounded with people with different backgrounds, with different races, and with different religions. In order to win, everybody comes together. I feel like that’s what the U.S.A. represents.”