Haverford College Crew Diversity Initiative Session II - 2020 July 11

Check-In

- Your current location and time - One word to describe your feeling right now.

Begin with a silent written reflection, reflecting on these two questions. 1. What are your identities aside from being a rower/coxswain? Do you wish your teammates would see these identities? 2. (When) do you feel like you belong at Haverford? If so, what makes you feel this way? If not, why not?

Discussion Guidelines Voice 4 Episode Timestamp: 1:11 Transcript: “So being Black in America means trying to find a way to survive educationally, medically, financially in a system that wasn’t created for us. I have to work twice as hard to become the athlete that I am today, and hopefully I have the chance to represent my country in the front stage. But it is difficult to 100% want to represent a country that doesn’t respect me because of my skin; a country that has systematically (systemically) set up Black people to fail in so many ways. Every day I have to watch my culture be glorified but the very people who glorify it refuse to have a voice in the same side of the table as me. So many Black athletes speak on these injustices and are sometimes told to be silent because we are only seen as like entertainment purposes. So many Black athletes across America play sports for collegiate teams and worry if they can peacefully protest without risking being banned from future competitions. It is super concerning to me that I haven’t seen many universities utilize their platforms to shed a light onto the social injustices currently occurring in America.

Pause: Written Reflection 1. At regattas, how do you feel about competing for Haverford College?

Personally, if I was a junior at high school at this moment, I will base which college I decide to go on, based on if the colleges are speaking up and showing solidarity. I personally would like all colleges and athletic administrations to know that if you can recruit us, then you can speak up for us. If you want us, we want you to defend us and accept us for who we are and not just use us for profit or statistics. And a quote that I love by James Baldwin is ‘ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.’ ”

Reflection & Discussion Prompts: 1. Do you consider yourself an ally to POC (particularly black folks)? Have you shared anti-racism resources on social media? Have you used them yourself? When did you decide you were an ally to POC? When did you decide you’re anti-racist? Why did you choose to be an ally or choose to be anti-racist? Is your “Allyship” based on convenience or performativity? 2. Do you feel like any of your opinions could damage relationships with certain people? Do you refrain from sharing these opinions? Are you refraining from sharing your opinion because you think it might interfere with any relationships you have? 3. Reflect on White Fragility. a. * White Fragility: discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice) b. When confronted with information that is difficult to hear, how can you be a good listener and teammate? When should you center yourself (if ever)? How can you refrain from centering yourself?

Voice 5 Episode Timestamp: 19:00 Transcript: Pt1: “I have found a lot of love and joy being a coxswain, but it’s also made me realize the staggering difference in which the opportunities that white athletes are provided in the sport compared to athletes of color. You know I can easily say that in the almost 9 years that I have been a coxing, I have never once coxed a black athlete. I have oftentimes been the only person of color on my team. And you know in college, there were always these little things that came up and I have I guess the advantage of being white passing in this sport so a lot of the times it would be people meeting my parents or I would answer a call in Spanish or something like that and they’d be like “oh you’re pretty much white right?” or “you look white.” No, “pretty much white” is not a compliment - believe it or not. You know, it was always those little things that growing up I just never really saw anything wrong with that and then as I continued into adulthood and continued to see those sort of things perpetuated not only to me but to other athletes I was around, it really made me sit back and realize this is a sport that really favors the wealthy white athlete. Discussion Prompts: 1. Do we act color-blind on this team? Do we “white-wash” our BIPOC athletes on this team? What’s the problem with either of these? What can we do about it? How can we continue as a team to promote inclusivity without a) “white-washing” BIPOC athletes? b) pretending to be color-blind? a. * White-washing: implicitly or explicitly forcing BIPOC to abandon the values from their communities and imposing BIPOC to align with the values preached by the dominant white community in their thoughts and actions ) b. *Colorblindness: When white folks ignore the societal consequences and implications of skin color for BIPOC. It is impossible to be truly colorblind because people always have implicit racial biases. Further, it invalidates the experiences of BIPOC.) 2. How can we create an inclusive team environment while upholding minority identities?

Pt2 ： I think a lot of that, and a lot of this inequality can be traced back to the shortcomings of our national governing body of the sport - USRowing. I think that now especially more than ever USRowing needs to be stepping up. They should've stepped up years ago. They should’ve come into the game stepped up. This is their game to step up to. People keep saying you know “Oh, well, there is no barrier whatever. People can join the sport if they want. No one is stopping them. There are no signs saying no people of color in the sport.” But, it’s not a matter of just saying, “there’s an open door - walk through it.” We really need to be finding ways to boost people up in this sport and bring people into the light, instead of saying, “the lights there - just go up if you want to.” There are so many talented athletes and strong people of color out there who would be awesome rowers but they look at the sport and they see nobody else looks like them. They see a governing body that hasn’t taken the time to tell them that they are important to the sport. As a former US rowing employee I can say first hand that the organization cares about looking diverse. They love that little diversity buzzword. “We’re diverse. We’re inclusive.” I took photos, I took videos for two years working there and there was a lot of “Hey, that college team boat, you know, stroke seat’s Black, can you go get some pictures? Let's make sure we get pictures of that.” You know, or, putting together brochures, and advertisements, posters and being told let's make sure it looks more diverse when it was impossible to make sure it looked more diverse because I had maybe a small handful of athletes of Color to choose from photos and I always just felt this immense guilt, like I’m just using these athletes as our poster child as we continue to give money and give funding and give the light and give the praise and the love to a bunch of upper-class White athletes, but we plug in a photo and we pat ourselves on the back and say “There we go! We’re diverse! This is fine!” but I think that there definitely needs to be more action taken by USRowing. I would love to see USRowing step up and create a task force, diversity and inclusion task force, of people who are really dedicated to making this sport more diverse because as much as we like to put the responsibility on sport clubs, nothings gonna change unless USRowing strongly backs this. They are the voice of the sport. They have a huge audience, and I would really love to see them making productive changes to including and supporting athletes of Color.” Reflection & Discussion Prompts: 1. What does it feel like to be a posterchild/ used for your identity? How does Haverford facilitate this? How do we ensure we are not using our rowers for their identities?

c. * White Fragility: discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice)

Voice 3 Silent Reflection: Episode Timestamp: 18:08 Transcript: “Ok, well I think the biggest takeaway from this situation for me and hopefully for whoever listens is that within the rowing community teammates are teammates regardless of color, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation. And, what I mean by that is, you should judge and trust your teammate based on how they act as a teammate not as who they are outside of you know your team or outside of your organization, but you know simply on what they bring to your life as a teammate and hopefully it’s positivity and willingness to just get better not only as an individual but as a collective.” Reflection & Discussion Prompts: 1. What is this speaker driving at? What does everyone think is the core message of this speaker’s part? Who feels similarly to this speaker? Who disagrees with the speaker? 2. As a predominately white team in white dominated sport, how can each of us make our team genuinely inclusive? What specific actions can we take? a. Set one specific intention for yourself that you will hold yourself accountable to doing. Write it down.