Are you surprised?
This happened in Utah, and we know their reputation for being a racist state, and we have heard about their racist fans before.
According to the player’s godmother, a female Duke volleyball player was repeatedly called a racial slur during her match against BYU on Friday night.
“My Goddaughter is the only black starter for Dukes volleyball team,” Lesa Pamplin tweeted on Saturday. “While playing yesterday, she was called a [racial slur] every time she served. She was threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus. A police officer had to be put by their bench.”
The player who was verbally assaulted was sophomore Rachel Richardson, who is an outside hitter for Duke. Pamplin confirmed this in two tweets where she said “Rachel is a wreck. Parents were up till 3 this morning trying to console her.”
Pamplin continued to describe the scene of the night on Twitter, where she wrote an adult male with floor seats and two children called Richardson the slur, a police officer stood near the bench to monitor the student section and players told match officials about the slurs.
Though it’s unclear exactly when anything happened, there’s a video of Richardson serving in front of BYU’s student section where her teammates look over concerningly.
Journalist Roland Martin tweeted that he spoke with Marvin Richardson, Rachel’s father, who said Rachel was supposed to meet with the BYU athletic director and head volleyball coach Heather Olmstead, but Olmstead didn’t show up for the meeting.
The BYU athletic department issued a statement after the story went viral, apologizing for the incident. The department said it already banned the person who said the slur and added that they weren’t a BYU student.
So a grown man with kids was doing this.
Then you ask yourself how someone becomes a racist it is taught in the household.
This is disgusting but not surprising in the United States of America.
Flip the page for BYU’s weak statement and video of Richardson’s teammates looking concerned and pointing out the racism.