Racism in high school sports is nothing new, but a Black athlete being punished as a victim of racism definitely is.
And that’s exactly what happened at a Utah high school football game earlier this season.
Elias West, a Black athlete for Layton High School in Utah, was on the bottom of the pile after being tackled. As the pile untangled, a white opposing player stood over him and said “Stay down, you ni**er.”
It was loud enough for West to hear but quiet enough that others couldn’t.
“Don’t f***ing call me a ni**er,” shouted West as he bounded up in self-defense.
And that’s when it all went wrong.
The whistle blew and to his surprise, West was ejected from the game.
“I was the one that got punished,” West told The Salt Lake Tribune about the incident.
It was a stunning reaction to a situation that took many wrong turns and ultimately punished the victim.
When the parents came down to find out what was happening, they were told by the referees that they heard only West use the slur and not the opposing player. And unfortunately for him, the Utah High School Activities Association has a zero tolerance policy in these situations.
That’s generally good. But in this case, the rule backfired and penalized the victim it was meant to protect.
After the game, West, a high school senior, was suspended for two games, which meant he’d miss the last regular-season game.
His mother, Lissa West, was furious about the incident and the outcome.
“So a white boy said the N-word, a Black boy defending himself said the same N-word, and yet only one was punished,” said Lissa West, who is white. The other player went home “while my son went home in tears wondering why he decided to stand up against racism.”
In their story, the Tribune reported that the UHSAA affirmed its decision to punish West and that the local school district, Davis, investigated the incident but took no action.
This is significant as it followed on the heels of a report by the U.S. Department of Justice that found district administrators in Davis intentionally ignored “serious and widespread” racial harassment in its district schools for years. According to CNN.com, despite over 200 reports from Black students stating they were victims of racial harassment, including being called the N-word and slaves, the district did nothing.
Teachers and administrators did nothing to deter the behavior and, CNN noted, at least one teacher was involved in the harassment.
Ironically, the assistant director of UHSAA, Jeff Cluff, noted that they have seen an increase in reports of racist taunts being used against students of color in games across Utah this year.
Obviously, the steps they’ve taken to deal with this problem haven’t worked, even after agreeing to a settlement with the DOJ.
And in West’s case, it’s an embarrassing failure they refused to change.
“I feel bad for the young man. I don’t doubt that something was said to him that made him react the way he reacted. But it still doesn’t justify the reaction. And we still have to respond to that.”
The rise in racist incidents in Utah mirrors others across the country.
There were incidents in Massachusetts involving both racism and Anti-Semitism. In Oklahoma, a high school basketball announcer was caught using the N-word on-air and Black girls on a basketball team were targeted with monkey chants in Washington state.
And that’s just a few from this year alone.
While some actions were taken in these cases, the situation in Utah is much more alarming as it comes in the shadow of the Justice Department’s report. And it’s even more shocking as, in West’s case, the victim was punished for defending himself.
Unfortunately, some in the state, including Lissa West, don’t feel like this is going to change anytime soon.
“I feel like five years later, here we are again,” said West, referring to an incident she reported where, during a lesson on the Civil War, her son was asked to lift his shirt up so students could see the scars on his back, likening the then-seventh grader to a slave. In that case, like in her son’s recent case, nothing was done.
Based upon what we’ve seen this year alone across the nation in high school sports, it’s hard not to echo her sentiments.
