Some Thoughts On Mercy

Kyle King

Composition 101

Lora Strey

Hockey can be a brutal sport that for sure just go to YouTube and search "NHL big hits" and you'll see what I mean. Hockey can be brutal in other ways other then physically as well, mentally, emotionally, but the one that is really bad would be how brutal it is to be a non-white person who doesn’t speak English in hockey.

In the article Some Thoughts On Mercy Ross Gay says "And not only black people laugh at such jokes. Everyone does, because everyone knows."(Some Thoughts On Mercy) He talking about a skit done by Key and Peele were President Obama has a little run in with the police. The same way non-white people are sometimes discriminated against by the police, they are also victims of discrimination in hockey.

The caption of this picture just shows how much discrimination is still in hockey. (Berkshire)

Another example of discrimination and blatant racism came in 2012 when a white player asked P.K. Subban, a black player, "if he had slipped on a banana peel." (arcticicehockey) You can try to defend it whatever way you want, but that is just a racist comment plain and simple. 

What about if you are of a different nationality? Would you be discriminated against for speaking a different language? Thanks to an article by counterpunch.org we know that in fact they are discriminated against as well. In a study done by an American Sociologist, David Marple, he took players the U.S., Russia, Sweden, and Canada he broke apart into Quebec verses the rest of Canada. The findings showed "French-speaking players were more productive yet played fewer games."(counterpunch) This makes very little sense to me, wouldn’t you want the most productive players on the ice? The only explanation for it would be that people don’t want “F***in’ Frogs”(counterpunch) to play on their team.

If you thought that discrimination in hockey didn’t happen before you read this you must have lived under a rock. Hockey has come a long way since its beginning but it still has a long way to go if it doesn’t want to be the “white person” sport. One more thing, wouldn’t it be more profitable if hockey were a sport with more diversity? That’s just my opinion I guess.

Works Cited

"Evander Kane, P.K. Subban and the Abundance of Racism in the NHL." Arctic Ice Hockey. 6 Dec. 2013. Web.

"The Untold Story of Discrimination in Professional Hockey Against French-Speaking Players."  CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names. Ed. Jeffrey St. Clair. 13 Dec. 2010. Web.

Berkshire, Andrew. "Vancouver Sun Calls Jordan Subban "Dark Guy in the Middle"" Vancouver Sun Calls Jordan Subban "Dark Guy in the Middle" 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.