SSFC Podcast, Episode 12: Racism in America and soccer

The soccer news of the day is put on the back burner for a week. On an emotional and raw episode, I summon the strength to take you through my experiences on being black in the United States after the events of the past couple weeks. The pain in my voice is evident, the energy gone, but the message is present within the words.

The focus then shifts to racism in soccer and the fact that teams, players, and the community at large needs to do more to truly get racism out of the game and combat it when it rears its ugly head. Please take the time and listen and really hear the pain and the words and ask yourself, what can we do to make the beautiful game live up to its description?

It was extremely hard to put this together, but I felt it was important. These conversations need to continue long after the hashtags stop trending. We need to use this time to have the uncomfortable talks with our supporters groups, our teams, our leagues, our confederations, and FIFA themselves to stomp this ugliness out of our game once and for all. I’ll hopefully have the strength to get back at it next week, but I hope you take the time to listen and hear these uncomfortable words as I attempt to put the events of the past couple weeks into some perspective.

If you’re so inclined, I took pen to paper on my personal account to write down some of the thoughts and experiences and pain I’ve been experiencing. I encourage you to read and share.