‘We told you so’: For Black athletes racism from college fans is a familiar story

“I just remember that there was like a consistent chant of ‘stand up, N-words’ during the anthem and right after. And when brought to the attention of the BYU coaching staff there was no real response or sense of, like, alarm.”

That’s what a women’s soccer player told us she and her teammates experienced in 2021 at Brigham Young University when they knelt for the national anthem to protest racist police brutality before a game. Four other teammates independently confirmed that they heard the comments in a story published in the Guardian last week. After complaints from the players, an announcement was made reminding fans to respect the athletes, but no further action was taken until BYU said this week that it was investigating the incident following the Guardian’s reporting.

The allegations came less than a month after a Duke volleyball player, Rachel Richardson, said she had been subjected to racist chants from the crowd during a game at BYU in August. Other players on the Duke team told the Guardian that while they did not hear any racist comments during the game, they received threats, such as fans yelling that they should “watch [their] back,” that came from “many small clusters of people, not one specific person.”

The university subsequently banned a fan from all its athletic events. However, that ban was later rescinded after BYU reviewed video and audio recordings of the match and spoke to people who had attended the game. One of Richardson’s teammates told the Guardian that she was not surprised other people could not specifically speak to hearing the same comments as Richardson, noting that “most of the people on the court were blocking everything out, or were just hearing player names being called, the rest was