The incident at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games, when two black athletes Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised their black gloved fists as a symbol of “Black Power,” marked a turning point in existence of racial discrimination in sport. Although the International Olympic Committee banned those two runners from Olympics after this incident, they stood up against racism and took a first step toward the equality in sport.
After watching the documentary called “Solute,” we questioned each other in our discussion session about the existence of racial discrimination in present days. By looking at the professional sports leagues, we might think that there isn’t any discrimination in modern sports because Black athletes are everywhere in NBA &NFL and there are also large proportions of Hispanic players in MLB. However, I think that there is still some discrimination existing in sports.
Many Korean soccer players are currently playing in European soccer leagues, which some of them are having a hard time for racial discrimination. Ki Sung-Yong, a young Korean soccer player who plays as a central midfielder for Scottish Premier League club Celtic, has recently suffered from opposing team fans’ jeers and booing during the match, just because he was the only Asian player in the field. English soccer fans also try to humiliate Korean players by calling them a dog eater, expressing a cultural bias. Therefore, I think the racial discrimination still remains in sports although we can’t clearly recognize them like in the 1960s.
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