The Daily Faceoff Show: Racism continues to be a problem in hockey
It’s been an ugly few weeks in hockey.
First, San Jose Barracuda winger Krystof Hrabik made racist gestures towards Tucson Roadrunners winger Boko Imama, who is Black, on Jan. 12. The AHL subsequently announced a 30-game suspension for Imama.
Then on Saturday, in an ECHL game, Jacksonville Icemen defenseman Jacob Panetta made a racist gesture toward South Carolina Stingrays defenseman Jordan Subban, who is Black.
After Panetta was subsequently suspended indefinitely by the ECHL and release by the Icemen, he posted a person statement on Twitter later in the day.
While these two particular incidents are new, the problem of racism in hockey isn’t new.
On Monday’s episode of The Daily Faceoff Show, Frank Seravalli and Ryan Clark discussed everything that’s happened over the past couple of weeks, as well as the way hockey has responded.
Seravalli: “Let’s start with a disappointing story that we need to talk about because it continues to happen. And that’s the incident that occurred in the ECHL over the weekend. The Jacksonville Icemen and the South Carolina Stingrays. Jacob Panetta, a defenseman from Jacksonville, making a racist gesture towards South Carolina Stingrays defenseman Jordan Subban. The Icemen then subsequently released Panetta from his contract on Sunday.
“This is a story that continues to evolve and continue to evolve on Sunday in the form of Panetta posting his own statement in the form of a video on his Twitter feed.
“More importantly, Ryan. You wrote a column in The Athletic. And it just really hits home, I’ll just read everyone your tweet: ‘This sh** is getting old and it’s been this way for some time. So please stop being shocked that racism continues to exist in hockey.’”
Clark: “As it relates to what we’ve seen this weekend, whether it be in the ECHL or with the AHL suspension for 30 games, with what happened with Boko Imama. It comes back to this: It still keeps happening. And we acknowledge it keeps happening. But as to what can be done about it going forward, those are the sets of questions where there are different answers and nobody’s agreed upon one.
“When you look at what happened with the Stingrays and the Icemen game. The incident itself happens. And then you look at how it’s handled after the fact. You look at the Icemen’s apology, apologizing ‘to anyone who was offended.’ That statement right there is what makes people so frustrated with this conversation. It wasn’t about ‘anyone who was offended,’ it was about Jordan Subban.
“Because this is the thing about racism, that unless you’ve experienced it, you don’t think about it this way. But really, you can apply this to almost any trauma. Because that’s what racism is at the end of the day – it is trauma.
“Jordan Subban went through a really public incident. When you’ve gone through racism, most cases, it is private, where there’s not a lot of people. The entire world got to see what happened. The entire world got to see his reaction. And yet now we have people who’ve never been in his shoes trying to say: ‘well it was this, it was that.’ You’ve got people who have been in his shoes saying: ‘no, I understand it, you don’t understand it.’
“It’s one of those things, no matter what, it’s a complicated conversation.”
You can watch the full segment and the rest of The Daily Faceoff Show here…