U.S. Soccer's racism problem was on full display and they're trying to make you look away
Seth Jahn's racism is his own, but U.S. Soccer cultivated it, enabled it and platformed it.
This Substack was supposed to have weekly posts, but then life happened and I got really busy, so it took until now for my first one. But, if you like this, subscribe and you can get stuff like this or, more often, lighthearted and other musings on sports and food. Or don’t. It’s 2021 and there are no rules.
Seth Jahn used his platform at Saturday’s U.S. Soccer’s Annual General Meeting to go on a nearly seven-minute racist monologue, full of lies and fiction paraded as fact that had nothing to do with the topic at hand - the reinstatement of a ban on players’ right to kneel during the National Anthem prior to National Team matches.
The reaction to his bigoted screed came in waves, first on social media by those who listened and then by those who had seen on those platforms what he said, almost all of which were rightful outrage. After the event, U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow-Cone pleaded ignorance and said there had to be room for differing views, while the Federation’s CEO Will Wilson also said he did not hear the comments. Hours later, the Athletes’ Council, which Jahn is a member of, condemned what he said and various members added their own rejection of those views, before the Council expelled him on Sunday night.
The focus was on Jahn and his racism. But everyone else responsible? They largely got a pass.
It’s easy to say the racist guy and his racist comments are bad. It’s so easy that, when stated as such, it’s downright comical. Doing so requires no effort, no conviction and no work. It’s also a good way to claim action and hope that nobody notices anything or anyone else involved in that racism or the entire incident. If they’re focused on Jahn, they won’t look at me, my peers, the Federation or history, the thinking goes, whether consciously or not.
But the problem, even in just the context of what happened on Saturday, is much larger than Jahn. It lies with U.S. Soccer as an organization and in many individuals involved. And it requires a true examination of a federation that cultivates, enables and platforms people like Jahn at the exclusion of Black and non-white people, dating back decades.
To begin with, it requires recognition Jahn’s views were hardly revealed on Saturday. He has been open about his racism and his conspiracy theories for years on social media and in regular everyday interactions. It takes the simplest of perusals to find it all and it was not a secret to many who were aware of him.
Despite that, the full body of U.S. Soccer players voted for him to represent them on the Athletes’ Council. The Federation itself charged him with leadership on security at the 2019 World Cup, not to mention using him in promotional spaces for years prior. This man, with his views, was voted for to have authority and was separately given responsibility and status by the Athletes’ Council and U.S. Soccer.
When the topic of the reinstating the ban on players kneeling came up and Jahn was called on to speak, few could reasonably claim they were unaware which side he would express. They couldn’t say it was surprising how far he would take it either.
They listened fully and patiently to Jahn’s racism.
Early in his rant, he said “if we’re so bent on politicizing sport, then we need to talk about politics,” the first clear sign of where he was taking this. At that point, he could have been cut off and reminded that his comments were supposed to be about the matter at hand - the right of players to kneel. But he wasn’t. Instead, he was allowed to continue on uninterrupted.
As he dove deeper and deeper into his bigoted, conspiratorial and entirely irrelevant rantings, he was actually interrupted once - to remind him that he had speaking for quite a while. The Chief Legal Officer, who had interrupted people regularly all day for being out of order or not strictly following guidelines was only concerned with how long he was talking, not what he was saying because, apparently, racist and irrelevant screeds are not out of order, so he was allowed to continue on and finish nearly seven minutes later.
So while Jahn was subjecting the entire audience, including many Black and other non-white people, to his invalidation of truth, history and lived experience, U.S. Soccer just let him go. From the leadership all the way up to the top to the Chief Legal Officer controlling the proceedings, they all contributed to this. At best, they were shockingly unprepared for the predictable and, at worst, they thought it right that these views have a platform - U.S. Soccer’s platform. Because while they cannot control Jahn’s thoughts, they had control of the (virtual) mic and decided, through incompetence or active decision, that those thoughts would be granted their full spotlight
After the end of the meeting, Parlow-Cone spoke to the media and was, to be overly generous, wholly unprepared. Her comments can be explained in any number of ways. Maybe she truly did not hear what Jahn said, in which case why was she unprepared and not paying attention. It wasn’t a secret that Jahn’s speaking could go the way it did and yet she didn’t make a point to hear what was said. But even if she did not, how could she plead ignorance?
It had been more than an hour since Jahn made his comments, so did nobody around her alert her to what was said? Nobody she surrounds herself by heard them and sounded the alarm?
And if you had not heard what was said and nobody had alerted you, were you truly unprepared for any instances of racism in a discussion that has racism at its very core? Because that is the most charitable explanation of her statement that “we have to hear all sides,” and if the most charitable and generous reading of her statement is to have never considered the possibility of racism, prepared for it, thought to listen to it, have anyone around her to alert her to it and trot out an “all opinions matter” talking point then we have hit at the heart of the problem.
The other players on the Athletes’ Council offered the first unified response to Jahn’s comments - a clear condemnation. It was an important start, and some players specifically said that they are working to make the Federation a place for everyone, which is not insignificant because, as is on clear display here, the problem is U.S. Soccer.
But the Athletes’ Council, and no member that I saw, acknowledged, let alone reckoned with, the fact that they were elected by the same people who elected Jahn. His place and platform came from the players. They were complicit.
Thankfully, the Athletes’ Council acted on Sunday, removing Jahn.
The statement there is clear and loud. It was the right move to make and the clarity with which they spoke in naming him, the language and harms he committed, and why those actions are a threat to their membership is crucial. But it still does not reckon with the fact that their constituency voted for him in the first place and that his place on the Council was unchallenged until this weekend despite, as they noted in removing him, “similar statements he has made in the past.”
The coup de grace came late Saturday night when U.S. Soccer finally released their inadequate and truly laughable statement.
“There is never a place for racist comments,” except at their own Annual General Meeting, apparently. Excuse me, let me restate - there is never a place for racist comments except at their own “successful” Annual General Meeting.
The statement including the word successful in there is an attempt to obfuscate and direct attention away from them. It notably also does not name Jahn, nor does it take any responsibility. And the latter is truly the problem.
U.S. Soccer has cultivated a racist and exclusionary culture for decades, something they have hinted at over the last year as they give pretty words to the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion. They even opened the Annual General Meeting with a video about it. But they are just words because when the racism and broken culture they claim to want to rectify smacked them in the face later that day, they failed. And not only did they fail, but they refused to take accountability for those failures as an organization and at nearly every prominent individual level.
“Doing the work” is not putting out videos, having a forum that you can throw a sponsor’s name on or finding journalists who will write stories about you barely hinting at your broken culture, but about ridding the sources of that culture from our organization. That would mean knowing what Jahn was going to say, being prepared to confront it and then follow up with clear condemnation and action after the fact. It would mean the Athletes’ Council taking responsibility for their constituency’s election of him and both U.S. Soccer and the Council being clear about not just the systems that have allowed such views and people prominence in their organizations, but dismantling them.
Focusing on Jahn is easy, but this, in particular, isn’t a Seth Jahn problem. He (and the racist ideology many in this country espouse) is a problem, but one that U.S. Soccer cannot fix. But what they can fix is themselves - the platforms they gave him, the many times they failed to confront him and his views, and their complete inability to react adequately to the expression of his hateful rhetoric so their space and culture is equitable and just. To begin the process of ridding themselves of other members like Jahn, because there are others who have gone just as undisturbed as Jahn had gone before Saturday. They did none of that and in the aftermath have actively tried to make sure you wouldn’t notice that. They have pointed at him, hoping nobody looks at them. That is the problem.
U.S. Soccer is a federation by white people, of white people and for white people. It always has been. Being ignorant to who Jahn is or believing his views should be heard is a luxury for white people, and an attack on Black and non-white people. Providing those views a platform is an act of racism, and thinking the issue is the racist or the racist comments, and not the endemic racism, is perpetuating white supremacy. Dodging accountability and a refusal to be honest about what happened is sewing bigotry deeper into the fabric of who you are. It is just the latest example of a U.S. Soccer Federation, and its culture, that operates as a racist, exclusionary and harmful one at its core. This is who they are, as they told us on Saturday.