Students Found Athletes for Racial Justice

By: Anvi Bhate, David Chen

Athletes for Racial Justice (ARJ), a new affinity space for athletes of color, held its first meeting on Saturday, April 10th. ARJ will meet Tuesday night on Week 2, before the no-class day Wednesday.

The ARJ team includes uppers Ifeoma Ajufo, Mohamed Kane, Manan Mendiratta and Akili Tulloch. ARJ adviser and Physical Education Instructor Toyin Augustus shared the affinity space’s goals. “ARJ aims to support and empower BIPOC athletes in creating more inclusive and equitable spaces on their athletic teams, while also building collective effort around issues of racial justice in society as a whole,” Augustus said.

According to Augustus, ARJ members will “connect and share experiences, discuss discrimination, bias, and oppression within athletics, and seek to positively influence team culture and greater societal issues around justice.”

“We are excited to gather in affinity around this shared identity knowing that our individual experiences will vary and bring nuance to many situations,” Augustus said.

Tulloch reflected on the importance of an affinity space like ARJ. “We want this space to be used as an outlet for athletes of color to talk about the discrimination and oppression they face within athletics—especially given a lot of Exeter's teams are predominantly white,” Tulloch said.

Kane shared similar thoughts. “We aim to foster an environment where these athletes feel celebrated and recognized, and to create a space to discuss what it means to be an athlete of color here, at Phillips Exeter Academy, and around the world,” he said.

Kane helped direct the affinity space’s first meeting, which included a game where attendees learned about the experiences of various athletes of color. “We had an interactive activity where we were split into teams and had to match the racist experience to the professional athlete through a relay race,” Kane said. “The activity quickly became competitive. The group openly interacted with one another and had serious conversations relating to these stories but also had fun while they bearcrawled on the wrestling mat to complete the relay!”

Augustus emphasized the value of engaging affinity space meetings. “ARJ is building community and connections through fun activities that also bring awareness and insight. We will ‘work hard - play hard’ in the sense that there will be both serious knowledge and serious fun happening at each meeting,” Augustus said.

The idea for ARJ first started with Mendiratta, who participated in the Envoys course called Athletes and Activism during fall break. Mendiratta later contacted Augustus about activism on campus, after which Augustus recommended first building a team with other students. Subsequently, the other team members soon became involved. “He [Mendiratta] reached out to me about wanting to make this type of space, and I was intrigued,” Tulloch said. “Both of us thought this was a necessary space.”

Augustus believed ARJ will serve an important role in the Exeter community. “Issues of injustice permeate all spaces of society. Within athletics, there is room for more awareness and action to support and empower BIPOC. Sports that have very few BIPOC athletes run the risk of perpetuating invisibility and dominant culture norms that are marginalizing,” Augustus said. 

Upper Kelsey Austin, who attended ARJ’s first meeting, appreciated the space’s focus on athletes. “We have [regular] affinity spaces, but not really [any for] the athletes,” Austin said. “There’s a whole bunch of stereotypes that come with Black athletes and people of color who do sports. I think it will have a good effect. It’s just somewhere we can open up. It wasn’t really taken too seriously. We were just having fun and talking.”

Prep Lyvia Zhou also underscored the benefits of the space. “It will build a sense of belonging and a shared experience between the BIPOC athletes. There’s also a shared culture just from being Asian or Asian-American and how sports plays a role in our lives compared to other cultures.”

ARJ also provides an affirming space for attendees’ experiences as athletes of color. “[You can] find validation in your experiences [at ARJ],” upper Catherine Uwakwe said. “Personally, being on the track team—it's a really big [and more diverse] team—so I don't have the same issues that someone in like the volleyball team, tennis team, or golf team would experience… But when it comes to my experience with track, I feel like it’s expected of me to be fast...I felt like that pressure was there, especially with me being actually really new to athletics [when I joined] and having to relearn a running form and all these techniques.”

“There was good food, good people, spoken word—it was immaculate,” Uwakwe continued. “I think everything is already set for this to be a space that I could see myself regularly attending.”

Upper Marina Williams believed ARJ provides an opportunity for BIPOC athletes to reflect on moments that are generally not discussed. “[ARJ] gives us a space to actually pay attention to the things that we look over when being an athlete of color,” Williams said.

Williams also described her experience as a Black dancer in Exeter’s Dance Company. “I’m a minority… in Dance Company, there’s not that many Black girls or Black people in general who do dance,” Williams said. “Of course, there are always small comments about certain things. But for the majority of it, [Dance Company] is pretty good,” 

“Compared to my old school, dance [here] tries really hard to incorporate and acknowledge different backgrounds,” Williams continued. “Being able to find a leotard that fits my skin color is really nice, and they made that an option here when, at my old school, that wasn’t really an option. Small things like that are important, but there still needs to be space for conversation. [We need to realize] more about the parts that dance plays in social injustice… Instead of calling ourselves [an anti-racist school], we should do more to define to ourselves what anti-racist work looks like,” she said.

Augustus encouraged those who identify as BIPOC athletes to consider attending future meetings. “Find a friend and have them come with you! You will smile and laugh and talk and meet other athletes who get it. You’ll probably learn something new about yourself in the process. Might be a game changer for you!”