Recently, the David Douglas Scots football team has been experiencing severe racism during their games at other schools during away games. Starting from late September with games at Nelson to the behaviors still happening in recent games, even at Barlow, assistant coach Marcell Frazier has been at these games helping the David Douglas students deal with this problem. He especially has been active on social media to fight this problem, with him posting about the away games on his Instagram on September 27th, “Every single game monkey sounds have been chanted at us, n-words used against us, players have been called King Kong, and tonight at Nelson we had a cake thrown in the stands at player’s parents as well as monkey sounds being chanted at a coach,” then going on to predict this would happen with Barlow and Sandy as well in their upcoming games. It has gone so far as to make Frazier cite House Bill 3409 which limits schools’ ability to join the OSAA unless said schools address certain behaviors.
Unfortunately, Frazier’s prediction about Barlow came to fruition during the game. On October 3rd, one of our varsity players called one of the David Douglas players the n-word, causing the game to be paused during the 4th quarter, and coaches pulled their teams aside to talk to them. Varsity coach Andreen told our team to focus on playing the game and nothing else. The player who said the word cooperated with the school and was reportedly understanding of the disciplinary action.
The fact that it was predicted that Barlow would also participate in this racist behavior illuminates a narrative that Barlow has a culture of racism. While it can be easily said that our school itself and the administration don’t have a culture of racism given the zero-tolerance policy and the lengths they went to prevent this from happening, with the administration holding preemptive meetings to prepare coaches to make sure their teams don’t participate in this type of behavior, it cannot be as easily said for the students of Barlow whether or not there is a culture of racism. There are factors such as how words such as the n-word are regularly used in school, who is using those words, and the context in which they are used. While we may have been unable to prevent this incident, we have some saving grace. Although it was the first home game with reported racism, according to Frazier, it was also the first case of accountability he’s seen, saying, “I’m not too hopeful yet, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
Our school is also trying to be accountable after the incident. Currently, disciplinary action is taking place, and our schools are cooperating together. The player who said the word is taking a two-game suspension. They reportedly wrote a letter of apology to the person to whom they said the word, and according to our athletics director, the student is receiving disciplinary action at home as well. The cooperation of our schools has included our coaches contacting their coaches, our athletic director calling their athletic director, and our principal calling their principal. Hopefully, these repercussions, as well as our school’s cooperation, will make sure that incidents like this don’t happen again.
