Scott Radley: Former Ticat slams McMaster’s racism response

A former Hamilton Tiger-Cat who's become a respected voice on minority issues - and has worked for McMaster's Indigenous Student Services department - has written an open letter saying he tried to get the university to deal with problems around racism on the football team but was largely ignored.

John Williams says he brought forward concerns to high-ranking officials in the athletics department and university over the span of a couple years and tried to effect change, but little was done.

If we are to move forward, people and institutions must first take accountability for what they've done or not done in the past," he says.

His lengthy and detailed letter follows a series of Tweets by former football player Fabion Foote, who said he and other Black members of the Marauders faced racism in their time at the school. In the wake of those posts, a number of other former student-athletes chimed in with stories of their own. Foote says 15 others are prepared to submit reports on incidents they faced in their time on campus.

Former director of athletics Glen Grunwald acknowledges that while, in retrospect, more should have been done, the issue was far from ignored. He wrote that he disciplined a player who used racist language, met with several Black players about their concerns, directed then-head football coach Greg Knox to stop any discrimination or harassment within the program and bring more diversity to his staff, and added a diversity presentation as part of the coaches' pre-season meetings.

Either way, the issue isn't going away any time soon.

On Monday, the university announced it was launching an investigation into the experience Black athletes have had on campus. Completing it is not going to be a simple task.

Parts of the story seem clear, to be sure. Egregious things like the use of the N-word (or some version of it) and reports of Foote being called a monkey" should be easy to sort out. There's no place for that and nobody would argue there is.

But what about White Boys' Wednesday?" This was mentioned in Williams' letter. It sounds awful. But, you can go online and see LeBron James laughing and joking about White Boys' Wednesday in the NBA when white artists are played on the locker-room stereo. A former white Mac player says it was exactly the same here. One day a week, the usual hip hop was replaced with stuff chosen by white players who tried to choose the most horrendous banjo or Nickelback tunes as a joke.

This is where this story gets exceptionally complicated and fraught with incredibly challenging and nuanced issues.

Some will say incidents like this one run the risk of being taken out of context since there was no negative intent. Others will say, no, they're racist. If the latter is true, how much of this is malicious and how much of this is simply a lack of awareness? And does it matter?

I think it's probably a little bit of both," Williams told The Spectator. I think some people are completely unaware of how it affects different individuals."

Either way, he believes it shows a problem.

I think their definition of traditional racism is something a lot more in your face," says Williams, who's the godson of football legend, trailblazer and former Mac head coach Bernie Custis. When you talk about white privilege, I think people don't completely understand what that definition is."

Williams writes in his letter that to try to fix this he had several meetings with senior McMaster officials and tried to get programs in place that would address equity issues between 2017 and 2018, but his ideas never seemed to get traction.

Once Foote spoke out, he decided to do the same to show his support.

I can't stay silent any longer and listen to institutions like McMaster pretend they had no knowledge of these issues but instead had ample opportunities to help, yet decided to ignore and deflect the problems," Williams writes.

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com