The colors of Ultimate (eng)

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Ultimate Frisbee is not only a sport, it’s a community that strongly claims an open-minded Spirit with socially progressive ideas like gender equity, conflict resolution with communication, mixed genders and ethnicity. This is one on the reasons why I love this sport so much and why I embrace its Spirit in my everyday life. Recently I’ve been asked to give my views on an observation about the sport : “it’s more of an educated white people sport than what we want it to be” and shortly after, I read the article Devaluation of Champions from ULTIMATEQUITY, having the same observation. This is an interesting debate that I wish to have here with you. Maybe being a colored French player helps/affects my views on the subject but I think it’s a good thing to talk about it, and thanks to the media, internet and art, we have some content to build this case.

Ultimate in the world

The best way to learn about the sport and its community is definitely to travel. You don’t know about Frisbee until you get out of your backyard to join the local club. You don’t really know about the sport of Ultimate until you go to a competition. You can get a better sense of the community when you attend your first tournament. But I think what’s paramount to better understand the community, the competitiveness, the sport itself and its issues, is living a major event such as a world championship or a big tournament like Windmill.

On my second year of Ultimate, I’ve been to both Windmill and WUGC2016, and I think it has changed my life. Not only have I seen my country’s national team competing at the highest level but I also met people from all over the world and spectated incredible games such as China vs Israel. My vision of the sport grew and I realized its potential : it’s not just a game. The next year, I was proud to be part of the media crew behind the WCBU event in France. Like most of the people there, I had never seen a beach event that big and well organized. There were 17 fields on something like 2Km of sand with water taps and WIFI all over it. But most importantly, there were about 1700 players coming from 39 different countries. If there is a total of 7 million players on the planet and about 5000 in France, those world events make it clearer what Ultimate is in the world, what it means to others and how it develops in the society and different cultures.

One observation we can make about this, related to our question, is that less developed countries are less represented in those events, because the sport is less developed in those countries and the journey is not a cheap one, from money to visa issues. But it’s slowly growing everywhere, a lot of people are working on it, not only to grow the sport but also to help people in need through such activities. Colombia, India and Israel are just examples of how much potential the sport and the players have everywhere in the world.

https://youtu.be/iy088gyClIc

The story of Nima, an India female player at worlds.

A white problem?

You all know the saying “Life is not always black and white”, well it’s true. The fisherman can blame himself, or its tools, for not catching any fish all day long ; but the next day, a fish may also jump into his boat. What can he do ? Here, the fisherman is the (white) Ultimate community and the fish is a colored person whether interested in the sport or not. The problem with this analogy is that the relation between the two is based on force, superiority and hunter/hunted history. To picture it differently we could say : the best way to respectfully swim with dolphins is to get in the water, wait, swim around and see ; not catch or kill them, having them in a tank to fulfill our selfish dream. The only thing is that, if you want it to happen, you should go somewhere where dolphins actually live - because I’ve been swimming in beautiful lakes around here but I haven’t seen no dolphin yet.

There is a lot to say about that and most of those phenomenon can be found in our society unconsciously. We all love our sport and we want it to be opened to everyone, it’s great. But does it mean everyone should play this sport ? Is it a problem if black people don’t want to play Ultimate ? Is there anything to blame ? In the smart and disturbing movie Get Out, we follow a black photographer (no similarity intended) going for the first time at his white girlfriend’s family. No spoiler to say that we see a few awkwrd scenes on this issue and a character let uncomfortable by everyone trying to include him. The Youtube channel Wisecrack makes a great job analyzing The Philosophy of Get Out [watch the movie first !] and comes out with a term quite accurate : Negrophilia.

Screenshot from the movie Get Out

“Negrophilia isn't about truly understanding black people and their culture it's about using them to satisfy your own desires. This is not understanding humans, it's collecting them.” (3:15) One of the characters even says : “Black is in fashion”. Which illustrate perfectly the term.

Of course, no one wants to be like that, but this behavior can occur without anyone thinking about it. It comes with good intentions, like a compliment, but easily makes it a distinction between two races where you just want to have two people. A similar situation often happens to me with gender differentiation: I used to say “gender across” when on D-line to suggest women to go on person-defense on other women. I stopped. Unless they are beginners, I figured that players should know what they’re doing and I should not judge their choices. Moreover, I love this sport because men and women can play together and make plays on one another, I certainly don’t want to diminish those opportunities.

The South Park PC culture : Best explained by Wisecrack, again, The Philosophy of South Park (season 19) have some interesting points that suit this text. As many people today, PCs form a community defending every existing minorities, a good thing. But even if they seem dedicated to this cause, the fact that they are all straight white “bros” partying and seemingly using this fashion to “crush pussy” have us questioning how righteous those people really are.

A black problem ?

What if the problem is not on the white side ? What if we’re all swimming in the Pacific Ocean but the dolphins never come ? Have you heard a lot of minority complaining about not being represented in Ultimate ?

There sure is a lot of History between blacks and whites, awful things and still, sadly, a lot of hate, but today in France there are safe opportunities for everyone. I don’t want to make us, black people, the victims on this field when we can be the stars.

The best way to describe this feeling is brought by the sociologist W.E.B. Dubois, quoted in The Philosophy of Get Out (9:00) and an even more awesome and relevant movie : Blackkklansman.

“Double consciousness. The two-ness. Being an American and a negro. Two warring ideas inside of one dark body.”

Screenshot from the movie Blackkklansman

It’s quite the same as being black and French, and a similar trait to all minorities : the attempt to suppress this difference, to hide it, in order to fit in. The main problem is that you can’t hide being black and it comes with a cultural weight that is uneasy and certainly unfair to let behind. I feel this duality, even worse, not being fully black nor fully white prevents me from fully identifying myself to one group or the other, making me constantly different. You might have noticed that in this text I’ve been saying “we” and “us” as much for white and black people. That’s the double consciousness. It makes you think twice. For some people out there, it’s a bigger struggle since the sense of community is important for all human beings. Before joining the Ultimate community, you have to sign in the local club and no matter how welcoming those people are, it can still be frightening to be the minority there.

So, is it better to try to step up and how hard is it ? Or is it better to blend in ?

Well, one thing I can say is that Ultimate really worked on me. I wanted to become someone and be part of something, a community and a cause. I became John Kofi, that fearless player on the field and hardworking photographer on the sideline, when I’m actually a shy guy without any specific photography training. But as I said, I don’t consider myself as black as others would, because I’ve been raised so French that it’s for me an effort to show my African cultural background. So, I didn’t suffer much difficulty to enter the team, the sport and the community.

The solutions

The best motivation in life is often to set ourselves goals to achieve, whether it’s a diet, an education, a job, a creation. Sometimes we want to be the first, but most of the time we have some heroic figures to mimic, follow and drain our inspiration from. Mimicking people is built within our human nature, this is how we learn things as a baby and how we unconsciously react when in a social group (words, expressions, clothing). This is to say that I have my own heroes in Ultimate since day one and they continue to inspire me today. Somehow, they show me that I’m not alone, but more importantly, they set the expectations on myself higher than I would have imagined. In a way I’m thinking “if they do it, I can try too”.

Nasser Mbae Vogel

Kalif El-Salaam

Octavia “Opi” Payne

Picture from USA Ultimate

That’s the importance of media in order to develop our sport : creating stars. Inspiration for all genders and ethnicity. I only watch a game when there are people I know on the field, that’s why I’ve been following Montreal Royal in the AUDL, thanks to the French folks playing there. The Callahan videos introduced me to Dylan Freechild and Kalif El-salaam, the reasons why I started following the Dallas Roughnecks and Seattle Mixtape. The All-Star Ultimate Tour Documentary taught me a lot about the women players and teams in the US, from Qxhna Titcomb to Jesse Shofner and Carolyn Normile. Thanks to some great live streams, I never lose an occasion to watch Salaspils Women, from Latvia, since I met Santa, a key player and an incredible person. Such as the Colombian Cardenas sisters, we can only hope to find new stars in the world throughout the development of the sport.

There is still a lot of work to do, especially in Europe, to promote Ultimate and our athletes, it’s essential for the future. We have to keep the good opened Spirit and accept everyone while debating on what’s wrong in the community, without blaming ourselves for what we don’t have yet instead of embracing what we already have and what we do.

Look at the French soccer team. We are not there yet because the sport is not there yet, and because it doesn’t have to be like that. When supposedly less than 15% of the French population is black, having one or two black players in the team is much more representative of the true ratio than this picture.

I want the best image for our sport and the best athletes for the show, no doubt that black people - as much as other minorities - have this potential. We just have to get Ultimate big enough to attract more people, from everywhere, we have to show it and create opportunities in all social groups, cities and countries.

As long as we #LiveUltimate, embrace #GenderEquity and fight for what’s fair, we should be going in the right direction.