A volleyball team’s best setter: FIGHTING RACISM

BROOKLYN, NY, October 6—What does winning mean for antiracists in competitive sports within a racist society? That’s the big question in a struggle involving coaches, players, teachers, and parents, including members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), in the newly integrated John Jay and Millennium High School sports program.
Under capitalism, a system that feeds on inequality and applauds individualism, winning games against rival teams is the be-all and end-all of sports. But communists see winning in a different way. Our victories are defined by antiracism and collectivity. We win by developing people to value the long-term needs of the group over individual achievements.  
At John Jay-Millennium, the girls’ volleyball players and coaches have a special responsibility to help lead and integrate the school as it transitions from two teams—one with mainly Black and Latin players, the other with mostly white and Asian players—to one. This program has a proud history of fighting racist treatment of Black and Latin players by out-of-control school cops. It has also called out the racist funding inequities in the Department of Education’s varsity athletics.
What does antiracist struggle look like on a sports team?
Tryouts for the volleyball team began in August, shortly before the start of the school year. Most of the young women trying out were from Millennium Manhattan school, which in previous years had shared a sports program with the Brooklyn Millennium school at John Jay. When it became clear that John Jay’s Black and Latin students would be left with few spots on the varsity team, antiracism needed to be put front and center.
Though tryouts were extended into the first weeks of school to give more opportunities to students from other John Jay schools, coaches conducted the tryouts as they had in years past.
Less experienced players were sent to a second gym within the building, with the intention of providing targeted support to improve their chances of making the team. But in this case, the result was that most of the Black and Latin athletes went to the second gym, while the head coach remained in the first gym with most of the white and Asian athletes. Many of these students had gained an advantage by playing volleyball on private club teams during the previous year, when public school teams were shut down because of the pandemic. Club volleyball costs serious money, as much as $10,000 per player plus travel expenses—which means that most working class Black and Latin youth don’t have access.
In short, there needed to be a vigorous struggle to discuss and act on the importance of uniting the two programs to create an antiracist, integrated team. Some bold Black players came forward to point out how racist inequities were exposed by the tryouts, and a sharp struggle ensued. What does it mean to have a winning team? Should the most experienced players get all of the meaningful playing time to give the team the best chance to come out on top? Or should the team on the court consistently play more and less experienced players together to advance integration, unity, and the entire squad’s development?  
Make antiracist integration primary over winning
We are up against a segregated and inherently unequal society and public school system. This system is no accident. Capitalism needs racism to survive. It needs to divide white from Black and Latin students and workers so that all can be oppressed and exploited for profit.
Building an antiracist, integrated team on and off the court is one way we can begin to crack the racist divisions the Department of Education
(DOE)trains us all to accept as normal. Since the Black players initiated this struggle, the volleyball team has held multiple discussions about putting antiracism front and center and building team unity. These meetings will continue through the remaining weeks of the season. They are at the core of what we will be most proud of when looking back on this season, whether John Jay Campus wins a championship or not.  
For the first time, players are being asked to evaluate how the team is doing politically as well as athletically. They’re being encouraged to suggest specific strategies for making the team more equitable. The leadership of Black youth—the ones most brutally targeted by this racist systems–is key to this process. A truly integrated team, with more and less experienced players sharing the court together, is happening more consistently. Although fewer Black players than usual tried out for the team due to vaccination requirements and the vaccine hesitancy of many Black families, the team now has as many Black and Latin players as white and Asian players. As they practice volleyball, they’re also practicing antiracist, multiracial unity.    
History of segregated sports teams
The John Jay Campus, a historically Black and Latin school in the heart of a wealthy white neighborhood in Brooklyn, is a model of racist capitalist inequality. It houses three schools that enroll predominantly Black and Latin students from low-income families outside the neighborhood and a fourth school, Millennium Brooklyn, a selective, significantly white high school that has received more funding and resources per student than the other three.
Racist inequalities in sports access were a stunningly obvious feature of the segregated package deal forced by Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio. The John Jay Campus sports program served 1,859 students, more than 90 percent of them Black or Latin, and was given only nine teams. But the Millennium sports program got 17 teams for only 1,261 students—about half of them from  Millennium High School in Manhattan, which uses John Jay’s gym facilities and is only 25 percent Black and Latin.  
As part of a long-running struggle to integrate the programs and get Black and Latin students their fair share of resources, PLP parents joined with others in designing a sharp antiracist leaflet that rocked the racist status quo. After the killing of George Floyd and the mass protests that followed, the DOE’s blatant racism was too much of an embarrassment even for the shameless school bosses. The two sports teams were integrated–a huge reform victory. But the real work of building antiracist integration is just beginning.
For athletes, coaches, teachers, and parents, the real victory comes every time we stand up to the racist ruling class. Racism isn’t going anywhere as long as we have capitalism. Only under communism, a society where the whole working class will work together for the benefit of all, will racism ever be smashed. In the meantime, all students and workers need to be ready to take action over and over again. If we can make antiracist sports integration the main goal for students, parents, and staff, we will be one step closer to building working-class consciousness and one step closer to smashing capitalism. Stay tuned for more!