LOS ANGELES: USC Trojans fans cheer in football game at the Los Angeles Coliseum in Los Angeles, ... [+]
Intoxicated people sometimes make racist, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise deplorable statements at sporting events. There’s a chance they wouldn’t say such things if they were sober — maybe in private, but probably not in a public venue surrounded by thousands of strangers.
Unfortunately, their friends and nearby fans sometimes laugh or otherwise affirm the inappropriateness. Some others do nothing because they respect the drunk person’s freedom of speech, even if they personally find the jokes, statements, or chants offensive.
The “let’s ignore him, he’s just sloppy drunk” response is also common in sports arenas, bars, and other public spaces. In too many instances, nearby people hear something they know is wrong, but they really just want to avoid confrontation and enjoy the event. Many who reach the point of disgust simply don’t know what to say or do.
At this year’s college football matchup between rivals USC and Notre Dame, fans for one reason or another didn’t know what to say to a drunk guy in their section who repeatedly yelled terribleness. I arrived to their section after halftime and immediately found myself in an uncomfortable position that required me to transition from USC Trojan fanboy to disruptive consciousness-raiser. Like everyone else around me (including the obnoxious drunk dude), I really just wanted to have a good time. My friend and I were there for a thrilling, enjoyable sporting experience; Professor Harper was supposed to have the night off.
For context, Notre Dame is a Catholic university. Our drunk neighbor repeatedly chanted, “pound those altar boys’ asses.” It was a shocking reference to the sexual assault of children in the Catholic church. I convinced myself that there was no way I heard what I thought I heard the first time he said it. But then he said it again, and again.
After hearing it three times, I turned around to ask drunk dude if he was calling Notre Dame’s football team altar boys because they are Catholic. He said yes. I then asked if the pounding he was calling for was a reference to forceable anal sex. He said yes. I then told him that joking about Catholic boys being raped was absolutely terrible. I insisted he stop.
He didn’t stop. Instead, he doubled down with another despicable statement about the Trojans (my university’s mascot) behaving like priests and bringing “those altar boys to their knees.” He continued by maintaining, “At a certain point when your ass is being pounded, you might as well just relax and enjoy it.” I kept pushing him to understand that he was being an advocate for rape and pedophilia. I finally somehow broke through to him. Thankfully, he discontinued the horrific altar boy comments.
After some time, drunk dude became annoyingly apologetic and surprisingly reflective. “I’m not that guy,” he repeatedly attempted to convince me. He shared a personal story about a family member whom he believes is gay because he was sexually assaulted as a young boy. Yikes, I really just wanted to enjoy the game. I honestly didn’t have it in me to educate him on his problematic causation thesis — the presumption that his family member is gay only because of sexual abuse suffered earlier in life.
The friend who accompanied me to the game is a heterosexual man. I don’t know if the intoxicated fan seated behind us sensed that I’m gay. Oddly, he began touching my friend and me excessively. Perhaps he was trying to prove he’s not homophobic. My friend and I kept removing his hands from our shoulders. At one point, he was so close that he accidentally spat in my face and in my wine. He tried to fix it by going to buy me a new glass — but, sigh, the stadium stopped selling alcoholic beverages at the beginning of the fourth quarter. I just wanted to enjoy the game, and I did. Others around me did, too. The two women next to me said he’d been saying offensive things all night. They seemed grateful that someone finally got it to stop.
The point of this story isn’t to embarrass the intoxicated man who made me work during a really amazing football game. Self-righteousness also isn’t my aim here. I’m not congratulating myself for doing in my personal time what I call for in my everyday DEI work with business professionals and educators. Once I confirmed what I thought I heard, it instantly occurred to me that my students would expect of me the same that I expect of them.
This is my 19th year as a professor. For many years, I required graduate students I’ve taught at USC and the University of Pennsylvania to do an assignment in which they find three disruptive opportunities throughout the semester to raise consciousness among friends, family members, significant others, co-workers, and strangers about sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, Islamophobic, and other problematic things those persons said. They had to do this in real time, not later. In their journals, my students described the situation, what they did to disrupt it, how it made them feel, how the other person(s) reacted, and what they would’ve done differently in hindsight. Almost always, students describe being terrified in the first journal entry. But by the third disruption, they’re noticeably more confident and comfortable. Encounters like the one I had with the man seated behind me at the football game require not only courage, but also practice, which is the intended outcome of the assignment I give my students.
Sometimes, we just want to have a good time, even if someone is saying or doing offensive things; but doing nothing makes us complicit in the continuation or exacerbation of terribleness, injustice, and violence. On the one hand, it’s important to recognize people’s free speech rights. But on the other, it’s critical to exercise one’s own first amendment rights by seriously attempting to raise a drunk or sober person’s consciousness about inexcusable words and actions. Failing to do so makes us bystanders.
“She was drunk,” is often used to explain away a colleague’s racist statement at a happy hour with co-workers. “He’s really not that guy,” is also used to minimize the severity of a friend’s or colleague’s jokes about sexual assault. Disrupting these actions doesn’t necessarily require making a big scene or getting into a physical altercation with someone. At no point did I want to fight drunk dude — even when his spit disgustingly landed in my right eye.
As professionals work on becoming more comfortable with uncomfortable topics and situations in their places of employment, we must also do so in situations that demand constructive confrontation outside of workplaces. It takes consciousness, courage, rehearsal, and intentionality, including in social settings where we just want to have a good time.
