The so-called ‘World Series’ is tainted by racism

Cleveland’s baseball team flaunts the most spectacularly racist logo in professional sports. Major League Baseball and the Cleveland Indians’ front office sent 27 lawyers to Toronto to defend it during the playoffs. The judge ruled in favour of Cleveland, but has yet to release his reasons| BRIAN WARD*

The Cleveland Indians logo emblazoned on Ryan Raburn’s jersey | AP Photo / Patrick Semansky

(October 26) – It’s that time of year: The leaves are changing and the World Series is on. This year, the Cleveland baseball team is playing for its first championship since 1948. It should be a time to celebrate the city, especially in the wake of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers winning a championship in June. Tainting the moment, however, Cleveland’s baseball team comes onto the national stage with the most spectacularly racist logo in professional sports: Chief Wahoo.

When Malcolm X met Fidel Castro: the photographs on Colin Kaepernick’s t-shirt.

The 1960 meeting in Harlem between Fidel Castro and Malcolm X | Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images

By REBECCA ONION*

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who has recently decided not to stand during the national anthem, wore a Malcolm X hat and a T-shirt featuring images of the leader meeting with Fidel Castro at a press conference where he explained his protest. The T-shirt has, perhaps predictably, drawn criticism from conservative quarters; the Weekly Standard called Kaepernick’s wardrobe choice a “startling display of ignorance,” pointing to what writer Mark Hemingway called Cuba’s human rights abuses and “legacy of racism.” Setting aside an assessment of Castro’s later record on race, and whether it strengthens or undermines Kaepernick’s stance, what’s the story behind those photos, taken a year after the Cuban leader came to power, and five years before Malcolm’s death? Why did the two men meet, and what did they discuss? 

Timeline. Colin Kaepernick’s US national anthem protest and the athletes who are joining him

Colin Kaepernick was alone in his early protests, but has now been joined by athletes from around the sports world | Mark Sandritter 

The football quarterback, the US president and a just stand

By TONY SEED (Originally posted on Facebook on September 4, 2016)

An American athlete, Colin Kaepernick, has taken a just stand.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Mr Kaepernick, a quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers, told NFL Media in an interview after Friday’s game during which he again rightly refused to stand at attention during the playing of the U.S. anthem accompanied by a military flypast. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.

“This is not something that I am going to run by anybody,” he said. “I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed. … If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”

‘Welcomed to death’ – The racism of the US NCAA: Historically Black schools pay the price for a football paycheck

The modern US plantation – The shameful state of college sports without integrity, dignity or sportsmanship and with student athletes exploited as cannon fodder: US Black schools paid to take a whipping. Small schools are unable to properly fund their athletic teams without sending their football and basketball teams out for a complete humiliation while risking injury.  | JOE NOCERA

South Carolina State players during a guarantee game at No. 5 Clemson on Saturday. With the Bulldogs down, 45-0, at the half, the teams’ coaches agreed to shorten the quarters in the second half by three minutes each. The final score was 59-0, and South Carolina State received a $300,000 payout | Melissa Golden for The New York Times

CLEMSON, S.C. (Sept. 18) — Clemson played South Carolina State in college football on Saturday. Both universities field Division I teams, and that is pretty much where the similarities end in terms of athletics.

The No. 5 Tigers have an $83.5 million athletic budget, which includes six strength and conditioning coaches, and chartered jets for some road games. South Carolina State, a historically black school, has an athletic budget of a little more than $9 million and just one strength coach. It travels to games on a bus.

FIFA must ban Israeli settlement teams, if it wants a level playing field

There is a rising tide of pressure, including UN intervention, calling for exclusion. Any other decision would go against football’s core principle of impartiality | BEN JAMAL in the Guardian

‘Six Israeli clubs are playing in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. | Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

(October 13) – As a follower of football, I am passionate and partisan when supporting my team. But, like all fans, I am infuriated when I sense that a referee is not applying the rules impartially. At the heart of the beautiful game is that simple principle of fairness: that we are all playing on a level playing field.

Holding true to that fundamental has enabled sport to play a leading role in addressing wider societal inequalities – as, for example, when the sporting boycott of South Africa played such a key role in addressing apartheid. There’s no reason it shouldn’t do likewise in Palestine.

UN letter to FIFA over Israeli soccer clubs

FIFA’s ubiquitous banner. Article 3 of the FIFA Statutes states: “Discrimination of any kind against a Country, private person or group of people on account of race, skin colour, ethnic, national or social origin, gender, language, religion, political opinion or any other opinion, wealth, birth or any other status, sexual orientation or any other reason is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”

By Peter Beaumont

Jerusalem (October 11) – A senior United Nations official has written to Fifa to reiterate that the UN regards Israeli settlements – and by extension Israeli football teams that play in them – to be “without validity” and “illegal under international law”.