By Christian Barnes
MLQ DEI Director

MLQ has always provided me a place and platform to voice my concerns and happiness as they intersect with my racial identity. I’ve had the honor and privilege of spending time with so many players across this sport in generally great interactions. I commonly refer to the players I don’t know as “friends I just haven’t met yet”, and that takes up about 75 percent of how I feel about our sport. 

I’ve tried to convince myself that the other 25 percent is paranoia or fear, but it is something I’ve continuously heard shared in other Black players’ experiences as well. I’ve seen it implied in the community’s social media and have dealt with it in many facets of my life outside of quidditch. I hope that if you’ve read this far, you’ll suspend disbelief and understand that many of your Black friends–if you have them–have a complicated relationship with non-Black allyship. 

To start, quidditch is generally understood to be more inclusive than any other sport. With our range of ages, national- and international-spanning membership and acceptance of gender and queer identities, I understand how we’ve “earned” this accolade. Many members of this community have had minority experience and face both subversive and direct discrimination, and because of that, try to create a sport where others don’t experience that type of victimization. While I generally  feel safer in and around quidditch people more than I do most of the time walking around New York, I still question the championed status of “inclusiveness” this sport maintains. 

To gain background on what I mean by this, please read through this Twitter thread by  Absurdistwords.

As much as I love and enjoy the many people I’ve befriended in this sport as a referee, volunteer, snitch and player, the number of allies I feel I have is monumentally lower. 

I constantly feel like I’m seen as an acceptable Black man because I’m nice despite being Black, or someone will say “wow, you’re such a good speaker/writer”…but why would you think I’m not. 

While I sometimes worry that I betray other Black members by setting a new bar for “acceptable black man”, I also know this as an  opportunity for others to see representation in decision makers in quidditch. The ability to meet  other Black players and show them that they aren’t alone helps me achieve a mantra I live by: “Be the person you needed growing up.” Or, in simpler words, “Help a younger you”. 

I’ve worked within the IQA, MLQ and USQ. Having my opinion listened to has helped me find more of my voice to challenge the way things are and question the way things are “supposed” to be. Now, a year after the sport’s emergence from pandemic hibernation, I hope to use my voice again to revive the conversation that only seems important when it litters the papers: racial inclusivity in a sport that highlights itself as inclusive. Specifically, the silencing and lack of inclusiveness of Black people and our place in the sport. 

There is still a long way to go to reach real inclusiveness in the sport. That is an unarguable fact. Organizations cannot simply claim to be a place for everyone f without doing the work to make sure that the community is a place where all people are included. Teams within organizations cannot simply blame their league when they also create micro communities in which their players don’t feel supported. Quidditch won’t ever fix racism, but the treatment of Black people still matters. 

The treatment of Black people matters in the assumption of malicious intent in how we play and the way we’re described as players by the community.

The treatment of Black people matters when our players lack highlights and our commemorative days (and month) are ignored. 

The treatment of Black people matters as we discuss teams existing all over the world, but the African denomination of quidditch struggles extensively to gain any foothold as a national governing body. 

The treatment of Black people matters when event locations are decided upon, that we will have to travel to and at which we’ll have to exist, but our perspective isn’t even part of the conversation. 

The treatment of Black people matters when our “friends” in the community post about mental health when a shooter commits a hate crime specifically targeting Black people. 

The treatment of Black people matters when the term “anti-black” and “inclusiveness” are adjectives and ideals but not goals and actions. 

This Juneteenth is themed in the unity of Black family, as it also falls on Father’s Day. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to write a post that celebrates another year in quidditch and my Black identity as it intersects in this sport. But the truth is that it only sometimes intersects—in my acts as MLQ DEI Director and in spaces where I’m involved with other players of color. Even writing this, I lost so many spoons on so many days trying to put the words together, and almost didn’t. But not saying anything would feel even worse–it would ignore these issues and further silence Black perspectives, and that would feel even worse.

And that would be a shame. It has been a shame for the past nine years that I’ve been in this sport. If you’ve gotten this far, I hope that you do think about it for the other players, who don’t have the same social standing and don’t know if they can say the same things. I hope you think about the members of this community who don’t feel included but hope that eventually they’ll see this inclusive community they keep hearing about. Most of all, I hope that the sport reaches the ideal that it claims and puts more resources toward reaching inclusiveness for all.