In order to end racism or to at least help it stop at UNE we need promote some good things that the university is doing to help it. As of right now UNE is ranked 2,242 in diversity in the country which is pretty bad for trying to get diversity into the University. Also it was also brought to my attention that combining portland campus and Biddeford campus the whole university is 12% African American which is very low, but also based on the history of the University almost all the African American students that come to the school end up transferring or dropping out. The school also isn’t helping itself out based on looking around and being around campus we have no African American professors as far as I know at least. One way that I think that could help is finding a way to be able to make the school more welcoming to that type of crowd, but most people assume that because the school is in Maine that it has a lot of rednecks or racist people due to how country Maine can be sometimes. This could include recruiting people in order to change some of the diversity. Another way that could help is the sports teams. With the sports teams the only teams with diversity in them are the football team, and the basketball teams. People have noticed that the women’s teams have no diversity at all which isn’t exactly helping out. The part of coaching that needs to be fixed is that they need to not go based upon what they think is best for the team or the stereotype that African American athletes are the most athletic ones and that the white athletes are the more intelligent ones. Most coaches look into recruiting character or can help the family and sometimes it can make them shy away from the kids who can come from tough places because they’re used to relying on no one but themselves or they could have behavioural issues which personally I find the issue with young coaches or some coaches who have came from places without kids like that. In order to help the other teams is to branch out and take some risks or try to help some of them get out of there situation. Bring together the team as a whole without the coaches and have some guys go up and talk about some racist stuff that has happened to them during a sporting event in order to get a reaction from the teammates. So the team can come together and eventually want to do something about in order to help our brothers. Doing this could make people start to talk. With the strong ties aspect would be with his teammates and the ability to say something as a whole team or family and not just an individual is a lot more powerful. Then the strong ties could tell there other strong ties such as their parents. Ultimately causing a chain reaction the parents could tell other parents or even come to together and say something to the school which makes them act upon the issue. The sense of having that chain reaction in the weak ties to make something bigger than it actually is huge when your trying to get rid of problem as big as racism. In Kyle Kovers piece when he talks about what happened to Thabo he then immediately goes to the Jazz front office and asks if the whole team can sit down and talk about these issues in Utah so that they can resolve them. For instance with Russell Westbrook the fan who proceeded to yell racist stuff to him got kicked out of the game and band from the arena for life. The Jazz have a history of having a very racist atmosphere in which players are racially profiled a lot. Kyle and teammate Donovan Mitchell decided to speak about it as a team and a organization so that the players wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. Kover also says that if you buy his jersey or come to see a game or anything like that just know what comes along with having my jersey or coming to a Jazz game.
