Sporting Equals launched a new #EndBAME campaign at its ‘Race Equality: State of the Sector’ event last week.
Sporting Equals, a national partner of Sport England, exist to promote ethnic diversity across sport and physical activity. Last year it conducted a survey which saw it consult with members of over 200 organisations, which represent more than 4000 volunteers and 150,000 service users. The survey addressed “the growing concern and appetite for change when looking at terminology and language” highlighting that “systemic racism is incredibly complex and to tackle it effectively we need terminology and language which is more specific to the communities experiencing racism in order to improve inclusivity”. The term BAME, which stands for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic, is now being retired and as a sector, we are being urged to be more specific about who we are describing to “show an awareness of the need to develop actions to address specific inequality”.
As a result of the survey, Sporting Equals has produced a terminology resource to support organisations in the sector to recognise diversity and highlight outdated terms that are no longer used, as well as suggestions on what to use instead. Further education resources will follow in the coming months.
Later on today (Monday 29th March), this topic will be discussed further by British Fencing and Maslaha, alongside colleagues from the ECB, Sporting Communities and Portsmouth University as part of UK Coaching’s Research Conference at the “Engaging with Ethnically Diverse Communities Symposium”. For further information, follow #CoachingForAll
You can also subscribe to our new weekly summary email – The Fencing Digest – featuring the previous week’s latest news and announcements. Sign up here.
Sign up to receive regular highlights from the exciting world of fencing - celebrating the best of our unique and inspiring community
