Nutmeg Radio

Black Entertainment Television (BET) used to be a decent channel back before there was a tried and tested formula for how to ruin television.  It had a show called Teen Summit focused on issues affecting African-American youth.  Donnie Simpson’s Video Soul covered, well, R&B and soul, of course.  Rap City hosted by Prince Dejour, rap.  You get the point.  BET had some decent programming.  Then BET became a bastion of nonsense.

The first black major cable network soon began consistently projecting a one-sided, commercialized view of African-American culture, relegating “black entertainment” to booty shaking and bling.  Now don’t get me wrong, gyrating and shiny objects have been enjoyed across cultures for years, but the elevation of shaky and shiny as worship-worthy cultural gods was the wrong decision at the wrong time for a relatively new voice for African-Americans.

BET, which was once a potential platform to offer a nuanced, more realistic view of a diversified African-American experience in the United States, quickly became a caricature of African-American life.  Bill Cosby must have been thinking, “All those years of the Huxtables for this?”

The result of BET’s turn to unimaginative stereotype had consequences far beyond Cosby’s sorrow. African-Americans who wanted substance again had to become dependent on mainstream outlets with a long history of marginalizing their issues outside of the obligatory coverage during Black History Month, the shortest month of the year.

BET deserves a significant amount of criticism for making people sit through some insufferable programming while marginalizing countless issues affecting the African-American community. But there’s plenty of blame to go around.  Other networks can credibly be blamed for simply not caring about these issues. You only need to look at the civil rights or women’s suffrage movements in the United States, or apartheid resistance in South Africa, to recognize that most struggles for change never truly gain momentum until outsiders decide that the cause in question is a subject worth covering.

Now here’s the soccer parallel. The soccer media in the United States is failing its audience much in the same way that BET failed in its portrayal of African-Americans. There are a multitude of voices and experiences in the U.S. soccer community that remain on the margins, namely issues influenced by race, gender, culture and socio-economics.  But the diversity on our fields is largely invisible everywhere else in our soccer coverage, which significantly contributes to the continued omission of these issues from our discussions. Even as the faces of U.S. soccer continue to evolve, our coverage remains stuck as an exercise in suburbia.

The lack of diversity jumps off the pages and screens, especially when you consider the incredible racial and socio-economic diversity in the U.S. Men’s National Team that competed in South Africa, which included Herculez Gomez, Clint Dempsey, Oguchi Onyewu, Jozy Altidore, Jose Torres and Edson Buddle, among others.  Taking a look at the U-20 roster that recently won the Milk Cup reveals that increased diversity isn’t a trend, but rather the reality of U.S. soccer.

Older generations may not be as diverse as our current crop of U.S. players, but diverse, knowledgeable voices are out there, capable of shifting how we frame what’s worth discussing in soccer. For as much horrible/mediocre that frequents our TV screens, you would think there would be greater African-American representation outside of Allen Hopkins and cameos on Fox Football Fone-In during Black History Month, gender participation outside of Julie Foudy and WPS matches, or a Latino/a presence capable of gracing my screen without having to switch over to ESPN Deportes or Fox Sports en Espanol.

But it’s not just the corporate soccer machine at fault. The collective already participating in soccer discussions also has a responsibility to make broader soccer issues, such as race, gender, culture and socio-economics, a more regular part of the conversation if we truly want to remove barriers to the game and lift the level of play. Unfortunately, we choose to inundate the soccerscape with breaking news, scores and game analysis, romanticizing tactical analysis from anyone with a British accent and fawning over European expertise as if there are no glaring issues at home worth addressing that tactics and European accents won’t address.

In the grand scheme of things, there’s nothing wrong tactics and foreigners. But when they become your gods at the expense of the game in your own country, or when important voices are repeatedly excluded in their favor, someone has to recheck priorities, because the real loser has been, and will continue to be, U.S. soccer. We can’t expect people adopted as commentating mercenaries to understand our systemic cultural problems, offer relevant, holistic analysis, or to tackle issues like urban access that are cloaked in years of American context.

Not all soccer is created equally, and a proper understanding of the U.S. soccer landscape requires a cultural understanding of our country.  Knowing the sport isn’t always enough.  Ask Ruud Gullit.

So does the soccersphere need a BET?  No.  But it does need a more diverse stable of writers and commentators, both in appearance and background, who mirror what our leagues look like.

BET isn’t necessarily cable’s solution, just as a similar model isn’t soccer’s solution.  Similarly, the emergence of an Allen Hopkins or Julie Foudy does not necessarily signify a new philosophy or approach to subject matter prioritization. Could these voices play a role in starting the conversation?  Sure. But they won’t always have the clearance to talk about these issues even if they desperately wanted to. The direction needs to come from the top.  It starts with recognition from hiring powers that diversity is just as important in our soccer conversations as playing pedigree. Investing in hiring and developing a diverse stable of commentators and writers will enhance our soccer conversations.   But again, it has to start at the top.  Sole dependence on BETs or Allen Hopkins or Julie Foudy is a sure fire path to continued issue marginalization.

But let me be clear. BET is a wonderful example of how we need to be careful of diversity for the sake of diversity because it can lead to horrific outcomes. But when approached appropriately and responsibly, the scope of our conversations expand when the pool of participants is more inclusive, which benefits all of us, viewers, readers, players, and fans.

If we are serious about accelerating our development on the soccer field and as well-rounded, well-versed members of the soccer community off the field, it’s time to start reassessing our priorities. As I said in Part I, these are not issues to be shifted over to the U.S. Soccer Foundation; they are our issues too.  It’s time to start paying more attention to what we deem worthy of conversation in U.S. soccer. We’ll know that we’re heading in the right direction once our voices begin reflecting the diversity of our players.

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