Tag: sports

Football Eye Black Isn’t Blackface

When La Jolla High School played Morse High School under the Friday night lights on October 13, students from the surrounding San Diego area filled the stadium to cheer on their prospective teams. Making posters, dawning face and body paint, yelling chants, and sporting jerseys were all part of the electric football game atmosphere.

J.A., a middle-schooler from Muirlands Middle School, attended the game with another student and that student’s mother. To show support for his team, J.A. let his friend put eye black paint on his face. A security guard even complimented the design. The game was largely uneventful with La Jolla winning handedly (56–6). But almost a week later, J.A. was called into a disciplinary meeting with his parents at Muirlands. 

In that meeting, J.A. was told he would be suspended from school for two days and was no longer allowed to attend future athletic events because he wore “blackface” to the football game. The suspension notice only specified that he was being suspended because he “painted his face black at a football game,” and the alleged offense was marked as “Offensive comment, intent to harm.” J.A.’s father told the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment nonprofit, that no one complained or said anything negative about his son’s eye black while at the game. The school’s principal also failed to specify how they found out about the incident.

As Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at FIRE, notes in a November 8 letter to Muirlands Middle School, “J.A.’s non–disruptive, objectively inoffensive” face paint is absolutely constitutionally protected expression.

In the letter, FIRE reminds school officials that “public school students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.” It argues that “the First Amendment protects J.A.’s non-disruptive expression of team spirit via a style commonly used by athletes and fans.”

Eye black applied under the eyes and even on the cheeks is not blackface, and to suggest as such is a gross mischaracterization. Blackface is dark makeup applied all over the face to mimic, exaggerate, and mock black people. J.A. was simply cheering on his local football team with friends—and there is no reason to punish him for that.

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Death on the ice: Was the skate blade that fatally slashed the throat of a Nottingham ice hockey star really just a freak accident?

The clock has just struck 8.15pm and inside Sheffield’s Utilita Arena a showdown between the two biggest rivals in British ice hockey is simmering towards what promises to be a gripping climax.

Moments ago, a burly Canadian named Patrick Watling smashed the puck into the top corner of the visiting side’s goal, putting the orange-clad home team, the Steelers, 2-1 ahead in a closely contested cup game.

Most of the 8,000-strong crowd, which includes many families decked out in Halloween-themed fancy dress, are now hoping this slender lead will hold until the second of the game’s three time periods.

Yet, with five minutes to go, Adam Johnson, who plays for the visiting Nottingham Panthers, makes a dangerous break up the left-hand side of the rink, snaking his way into the attacking zone.

The awful sequence of events that unfolds in the next few seconds of Saturday night’s encounter will be seen, and talked about, around the world.

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Biological Men Take Gold AND Silver At Chicago Women’s Cycle Races

Two transgender individuals who were born as men came first and second in a women’s cycling event in Chicago last week, prompting calls for stricter rules on such events to be implemented.

The Daily Mail reports that Tessa Johnson, 25, won first place in the Women’s SingleSpeed and Cat Half categories of the Chicago CrossCup, while Evelyn Williamson, 30, placed second in the SingleSpeed at the October 7 contest.

The pair, who are clearly biologically male, continue to dominate at women’s cycling events, with Williamson winning 18 titles in the women’s category in the past six years, and Johnson also winning several after previously competing, and failing to succeed, in men’s categories.

Rubbing it in the faces of female athletes even further, the pair compete under the team name ‘TS-ESTRODOLLS’, referring to the female hormone estrogen.

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China Censors Athlete Hug Photo for Inadvertently Showing Tiananmen Anniversary Date

A photo of two women track and field athletes embracing after a particularly contentious Asian Games event prompted widespread online censorship in China this week as a result of their assigned numbers – six and four, which together form the date of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, June 4.

Runners Lin Yuwei, the gold medalist in the event, and Wu Yanni, who was disqualified from a silver medal over a false start, hugged each other in their national regalia and draped in the Chinese flag, creating an image of apparent unity and solidarity on China’s “National Day,” the anniversary of mass murderer Mao Zedong imposing communism on the country. The state television network CCTV shared the image in its coverage of the race on Weibo, China’s largest legal social media outlet.

By Tuesday, the photo had disappeared from state media, prompting widespread confusion among Chinese social media users over why it was censored, as China has for decades censored any mention of the Tiananmen massacre and many Chinese citizens do not know it happened.

The Chinese Communist Party never explains its censorship to the public, but regularly deletes content from social media that in any way could be interpreted as a reference to the 1989 killings, including overt references such as “Tiananmen Square” and the date of the beginning of the massacre – June 4, 1989 – but also a vast array of potentially related items such as candle emojis (used in online candlelight vigils for the dead); the numbers six, four, and 1989; and even the word “today” if typed into a Chinese government social media search engine on the anniversary. The word “tank,” potentially a reference to an iconic photo of a protester staring down a Chinese military tank holding only what appears to be a grocery bag, also faces censorship online in China, particularly as the anniversary of the event approaches.

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Transgender World Cup swimming races scrapped after no one enters

World Cup swimming races designed to accommodate transgender competitors have been abandoned because no one entered.

Open category events – made up of 50 and 100-metre races across all strokes – were due to be part of the competition starting in Berlin on Friday.

But no entries were received for the events, World Aquatics (WA) said.

“Even if there is no current demand at the elite level, the working group is planning to look at the possibility of including open category races at Masters events in the future,” it said.

“The World Aquatics Open Category Working Group will continue its work and engagement with the aquatics community on Open Category events.”

In response, former British Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies – a vocal critic of transgender women competing in women’s sport – posted on social media: “If trans women aren’t going to get the physical benefit of racing females instead of others males, they’re not interested!”

Swimming’s governing body, formerly known as FINA, voted last year to only allow people who had completed their transition by the age of 12 to take part in elite women’s competitions – a deadline criticised as unworkable, given age restrictions in many countries.

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Neil Degrasse Tyson Explodes During Debate About Trans Women Competing in Women Sports

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was confronted on his support for gender ideology concepts, including that biological males who identify as transgender should be able to compete in women’s sports in some circumstances.

Tyson discussed transgenderism on “TRIGGERnometry”, a free speech YouTube show run by British satirist Konstantin Kisin. Kisin pressed Tyson on criticism posed by the idea of biological males competing on women’s teams. At one point, Tyson spoke in an elevated tone, appearing to state that the entire sports infrastructure should be reconsidered to ensure inclusion and fairness for all.

“One of your functions over time has been to communicate scientific knowledge to the public,” Kisin said. Kisin then asked Tyson about his belief that gender exists “on a spectrum.”

During the show, Tyson said the biological differences between males and females in sports are a “solvable problem” for transgender inclusion. He said excluding biological males from women’s teams carte blanche was an “older view of the world.”

“What the trans conversation is foisting upon us is the need to find ways to slice the athletic universe such that we still have interesting, fair matches,” he said. “And is it a combination of did you go through puberty as a male and then transition? Did you have puberty blockers? What is your hormone level now… if you want to compete?”

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‘Hard Knocks’ finale recap: Rodgers’ UFO story and more

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, the star of this summer’s series, gave viewers a UFO story. Yes, right in the middle of the usual end-of-training-camp storylines — roster cuts, welcome-to-the-team moments, fiery speeches, etc. — was his story about the time he saw “an incredibly large object” flying over New Jersey.

An old college teammate from Cal, Steve Levy, visited training camp one day, prompting Rodgers — in a sitdown interview — to talk about the time they witnessed what he believes was a UFO.

“It was definitely unidentified, it was definitely flying and it was definitely a large object,” Rodgers said.

It happened in 2005, when he was in New York for the NFL Draft. He stayed at Levy’s house in New Jersey and, in the middle of the night, he heard an alarm in the distance and walked outside with Levy and his brother to check it out.

“Up in the clouds we heard this sound and we saw this tremendously large object moving through the sky,” Rodgers said. “It was like a scene out of ‘Independence Day,’ when the ships are coming into the atmosphere, creating this kind of like explosion-type fire in the sky.”

Rodgers said they froze.

“About 30 seconds later, we heard the real recognizable sound of fighter jets going zoom, zoom, zoom. They seemed to be chasing this object. … We just stood there in disbelief for another few minutes. Nobody said a word. Then we all looked at each other like, ‘Did we just see what we thought we just saw?'”

According to Rodgers, an alarm from a nearby nuclear power plant went off that night. “And if you know anything about UFOs, there are a lot of sightings around nuclear energy, around volcanoes, around power plants,” he said, citing research he says he did.

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NASCAR Blasted for ‘Blatantly Illegal’ Diversity Internship Program that Excludes Whites

NASCAR is under fire for an internship program that excludes white people from applying.

The car racing organization’s “Diversity Internship Program” directly lists specific racial requirements for the applicants eligible to join the program, according to the criteria on the website.

Under “requirements,” the website tells applicants that they must be a U.S. citizen or be eligible to work in the U.S. and must have “at least” reached their sophomore year in college.

But those requirements are secondary as the list also lays out racial requirements as its first bullet point.

Applicants must “Be a member of one or more of the following races/ethnic minority classifications: Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Latino or Hispanic, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander,” the web page says.

Not listed is “Caucasian,” or “white,” or even “European.”

The racial requirements seem to be a “blatantly illegal” violation of Title VII and the 1866 Civil Rights Act, according to David Bernstein, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law.

“Having a 100% quota for minorities for a position is illegal even under a very generous view of what is allowed,” Bernstein told the Daily Wire.

This “diversity internship” is not the only program that NASCAR seems to be excluding white applicants from being eligible to join.

The racing organization has similar racial stipulations for its Pit Crew Development Program, Driver Development Program, and Supplier Diversity Program, all connected to its Drive For Diversity program.

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World Anti-Doping Agency Experts Say Marijuana Use Violates The ‘Spirit Of Sport’ And Makes Athletes Unfit Role Models

Members of a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) panel say that marijuana use by athletes violates the “spirit of sport,” making them unfit role models whose potential impairment could put others at risk.

In an editorial published in the journal Addiction, several members of WADA’s Prohibited List Expert Advisory Group summarized the reasons that the body decided to continue prohibiting cannabis use by athletes in competitions last year amid growing calls to end the policy.

Perspectives were “mixed” over whether marijuana “enhances or has the potential to enhance sport performance,” they wrote. And the group also acknowledged that athletes have reported that cannabis benefits them by “facilitating recovery and reducing pain.”

But in the end, they said that the use of marijuana in competitions violates ethical standards, justifying the ban.

Specifically, the editorial says that cannabis consumption runs counter to the “spirit of sport,” which “encompasses a number of universal values of sport, and four aspects that were particularly relevant to the discussion on cannabis remaining in the list.”

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‘Native American Guardians Association’ Petition To Restore Washington Redskins Name Goes Viral

A Change.org petition in support of changing the Washington football team’s name BACK to the Redskins has gone viral and is racking up tens of thousands of signatures in real time.

At the time of publication, the petition was nearing its goal of 75,000 people.

The petition was launched by an organization called the Native American Guardians Association whose stated goal is to end the “cancel culture” of Native Americans. 

NAGA spox Healy Baumgardner joined Newsmax’s Carl Higbie to discuss the groups efforts, quipping that the Washington Commanders must be getting advised by Megan Rapinoe.

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