The war on all professions/vocations/avocations that are deemed “too white” is nothing more than racism by any other name.
At this point, the war on whiteness is nothing more than an admission by the elites manufacturing public opinion that they want less white people for your sons or daughters to admire?
The NFL doesn’t have a diversity, though it is only 29 percent white; the NBA doesn’t have a diversity problem, though it is 19 percent white.
In this graph, whiteness is indicated by the purple bars.
But the NHL does have a diversity problem, because the individual players comprising a collective representing 95 percent of the league are white.
Thus, a national emergency is declared.
The NHL Says ‘Hockey Is For Everyone.’ Black Players Aren’t So Sure: Organizations of players and fans are trying to change the makeup and attitude of the overwhelmingly white league., FiveThirtyEight.com, October 19, 2020
As Washington Capitals forward Devante Smith-Pelly sat in the penalty box during a game at Chicago’s United Center in February 2018, he listened as a group of white fans chanted “basketball, basketball, basketball” in his direction. The Blackhawks fans taunting Smith-Pelly, who is Black, were making their position clear: Hockey isn’t for everyone, and it’s especially not for Black people.
Willie O’Ree, who became the NHL’s first Black player in 1958 when he took the ice for the Bruins in a game against the Montreal Canadiens, faced racist abuse throughout his career. When Toronto Maple Leafs forward Wayne Simmonds was on the Flyers in 2011, he had a banana hurled at him by a fan during an exhibition game in London, Ontario. After Washington Capitals forward Joel Ward knocked the Bruins out of the 2012 playoffs with a Game 7 overtime winner, he faced a barrage of racist abuse by Boston fans on social media. When New York Rangers prospect K’Andre Miller, who is Black, participated in what he must have believed would be an ordinary question-and-answer session with fans on Zoom earlier this year, he was repeatedly abused with racist taunts. In a candid Players’ Tribune essay,1 former Calgary Flames forward Akim Aliu, who is Nigerian, detailed instances of racist abuse that he suffered during his playing career — from teammates and from his own coach.
The hockey world was forced again to confront its own reaction to racism this summer. When players on the Milwaukee Bucks decided not to take the court for an NBA playoff game on Aug. 26 in protest of the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, they inspired other players across sports to do the same. In doing so, they made it clear to league officials, team owners and a nation confronting police violence against Black people that they believe Black lives matter. But as basketballs, baseballs, soccer balls and tennis balls were put away in protest, hockey pucks conspicuously were not.
Hours after the Bucks refused to play, and after players in other leagues joined that protest — the intention of their collective action unequivocal — skaters from the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning gathered at center ice at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto for the beginning of Game 3 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series as if nothing were happening outside of the NHL’s two playoff bubbles.2
While play stopped in other leagues that day, the NHL didn’t move its slate of games, instead choosing to acknowledge what Kenosha police did to Blake with a 27-second “moment of reflection” before the Bruins and Lightning game while the jumbotron lit up with the words “End Racism.” Even that short display was more than the league spared for a game between the Colorado Avalanche and the Dallas Stars later that evening, which proceeded without any acknowledgement at all.
But the reality is that the league’s fans are overwhelmingly white, skew conservative and are more wealthy than fans of other professional sports leagues. As support for the Black Lives Matter movement had waned among white Americans, it’s fair to assume it was waning among the NHL’s largely white audience, too. And minority representation in the league remains minuscule: Less than 5 percent of the league’s players are Black or people of color, and it has hired only one Black head coach — out of 377 total coaches— in its 102-year existence.
Anything deemed “too white” must be immediately crushed under the burden of our “purported” greatest strength—diversity. Quite a paradox, isn’t it? Vocations keeping our nation safe or our pets alive are “too white,” and thus must be undone, regardless of the consequences.
The NBA being almost 81% non-white and the NFL being roughly 71% non-white isn’t a problem worth addressing, because diversity has been reached and cultural enrichment has been achieved.
But white children and white fans shouldn’t have white athletes to cheer for and admire, thus the need for the NHL to be enriched at any means necessary.
