Assessing and Addressing Racial Diversity in Australian Quidditch
/Ajantha Abey, Australian quidditch player, photographer, and QA Media Director, reflects on his experience of race and ethnicity in quidditch since joining the sport in 2014. This essay dives into the Australian population data to examine the lack of diversity in Australian quidditch (part 1), interrogates the systemic parts of our culture and sport that oppress and exclude indigenous Australians and other minority ethnicities (part 2), and examines a number of ways that individuals, clubs, community leaders, and Quidditch Australia can begin addressing these systemic issues (part 3). Ajantha also reflects on his own experiences and perspectives on being a player and leader in the sport with Sri Lankan migrant parents.
Introduction:
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA, and the spreading of this movement to other countries where mass protests in solidarity against systemic racism have managed to overtake a global pandemic as the lead news story of the day, people in the quidditch community are rightfully asking what we can and should be doing in the sport.
Around the global quidditch community, many organisations, including clubs, NGBs, and international organisations including the IQA, have shared resources, promoted BIPOC voices, donated money, and released statements in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against police violence and systemic racism. This is good and important, but following listening, sharing, and affirming, must come real and meaningful action. Without this, the former is merely performative.
The time seems right (indeed, well overdue) to ask the hard questions about our sport and community: Does racism manifest itself in quidditch? Where does our diversity problem stem from? How is racial discrimination experienced in quidditch? Is there something inherent in the sport and/or the community that excludes BIPOC people? (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour)
This is my attempt to examine those questions - and begin to provide suggested solutions. As much as I hope to thoroughly analyse the situation here in Australia, my experience is limited to that which I have seen and heard myself, and my ideas largely come from my own ruminations and experiments in community leadership. I thus hope that this also serves to stimulate a conversation that I have been wanting to have for a long time, where we can work together as a community to expose these issues and find solutions.
When it comes to systemic oppression, quidditch has understandably been more concerned with gender issues - these issues are written into the very rules of our sport and affect every single one of us in salient ways that are only highlighted in the context of a competitive sport that dares defy global norms around gender segregation.
Nevertheless, as an Australian born person with two Sri Lankan parents, racial and ethnic diversity in quidditch has long been something on my mind. One of the conditions of being a racial minority, at least in my experience, is that you're always keenly aware of how many other people of colour are in the 'room' with you - whether that's being the only brown kid in your class at school, or being the one brown person on the quidditch team. You always know when you're the #TokenMinority.
So when I became President/Coach of The University of Sydney (USyd) Quidditch Club at the end of 2016, and moved from there to the Quidditch Australia Board of Directors at the end of 2018, I hoped to be able to try and understand why there weren't more racial and ethnic minorities in quidditch, and quietly do what I could to turn the dial. This essay is my attempt to distil what I have observed over the years, pass on what I have learned, and provide some initial suggestions to Quidditch Australia and the broader community to pave a way forwards.
I should point out that I am by no means any kind of expert on this area, beyond my own lived experiences, privileged as even they are - until last week I only had a vague idea of what the difference between race and ethnicity even was (turns out it's complicated and I'm still hazy). I've learned a lot in the process of writing this - I hope you will too.
I should also mention to any international readers that I will be writing this largely focused on Australia and from an Australian perspective. It is, and as such, will be focusing largely on issues pertaining to Aboriginal Australians and people of various Asian backgrounds, which are the most relevant to our population, our history, and to my own experience. (I should also warn you that in true Aj fashion, this has just been the introduction).
Part 1: The Diversity Problem
The first thing we have to establish is that there is a problem in the first place. Racism certainly exists in Australian sport generally - one only has to look as far as the example of Adam Goodes (go watch the documentary "The Final Quarter" if you haven't already). Quidditch doesn't feel like a racist sport, though. It doesn't feel like there is obvious racial discrimination in the quidditch community in the same way that there is much more blatant gender-based discrimination. Players aren't being relegated to receiver roles, not being passed to, or designated as the defensive/bludgerless beater based on the colour of their skin, and unlike gender, there doesn't seem to be a deep set cultural belief that ethnicity determines how good you can be at sport. I am often asked by people whether I, in my experience, have felt discriminated against or picked on or otherwise negatively affected by my own race in quidditch.
The honest answer is no - I haven't. At least not by anyone but myself. I don't feel like I have ever been maligned as a player for the colour of my skin, nor do I feel like anyone in the teams I have coached/captained has ever doubted my leadership based on race (thought it may have once been a fear of mine). This is an encouraging start to our exploration, though admittedly, just because I haven't been aware of it personally, doesn't mean that there isn't any, and it probably means I'm privileged enough in other ways to negate any. I have always been aware, however, especially when I joined the sport in 2014, and even when I played in the UK in 2015-16, that I was one of very few people of colour, in an overwhelmingly white sport. The systemic oppression that I believe is the predominant cause of our lack of diversity in quidditch runs much deeper than casual, obvious racism which we can easily call out.
That quidditch has a 'diversity problem' seems to be largely accepted. While we have never really had an open discussion on this topic in Australia, the notion that quidditch is an overwhelmingly white middle class sport has come up on a couple of discussion threads in UK Quidditch and various US-centric forums in the past, and at one stage, an "Ethnicity in Quidditch!" group was even created to try and address this (in response to discussion on an episode of the UK-based talk show, "The Salt Mine" (which unfortunately doesn't seem to be available anymore) - thought it never got very far.
To understand our diversity problem, however, we first need to look at what the population demographics are. (Grounding ourselves in data is always important. Yay science).
Diving Into the Data:
It is interesting to note that while the story we like to tell ourselves about Australia is that it is a wonderful cultural melting pot and a multicultural utopia, it's actually very white. In the 2016 census, according to this article from The Conversation, 56% of people identified their ancestry as being English, Irish, or Scottish alone. This is not including the further 12.5% identifying with other European ancestries, and the 33.5% of people who merely identified as having an "Australian" ancestry. Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders) made up 2.8% of the population. This is admittedly less surprising when we consider that not even 50 years have yet passed since the "White Australia Policy" was formally fully renounced.
To better understand the statistics, I tried downloading the raw census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics myself, to see what I could figure out. It turns out that ancestry reporting is complicated - people can report one or two ancestries (unranked), but popular reporting of racial demographics in Australia routinely misunderstands how this data was collected and should be used - which is why a lot of sources seem to have conflicting numbers. From the raw numbers, 15% of Australians reported at least one Asian ancestry, 4% reported at least one African or Middle Eastern ancestry, 72% reported European ancestry, and 34% reported "Oceanian" (including Australian, Aboriginal Australians, Torres Strait Islanders, New Zealanders, Maori, and various other Polynesian and Pacific Island ethnicities).
(N.b. these numbers do not add up to 100% because people report up to two ancestries and 66% of Australians only reported one ancestry. Thus, these numbers are from me calculating the number of Australians who report at least one of their ancestries as that category, and taking it as a percentage of the total responses (n=23,408,891).
Let's use a generous 25% as an approximate proportion of the population that might be considered "Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour" - which would include people of mixed race backgrounds.
So if that's Australia, what about Australian quidditch?
Well, here we run into our first problem: we have no data. Quidditch Australia has historically been bad at collecting demographic data on our players - beyond zip code and date of birth, before this year, we didn't even collect information about gender identity, and we still don't collect information about Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander background, let alone any other ethnicity data. This is a problem - and it means that any analysis from here on in this essay can only be based on visual perception of race, where I don't personally know the individual - which is obviously problematic and I want to avoid as much as possible. It's too easy to misidentify someone's race on appearance alone, but nevertheless, it's all we have at the moment so let's attempt this. I obviously can't assess the whole quidditch population, so we'll look at small, relevant subsets.
First, how does our leadership look?
Currently on the Quidditch Australia board, we are 2/7 (nearly 30%) people of colour. Nice! Except that taking into account the full history of the board of directors, the proportion of people of colour is probably around half this. Moreover, the directors of the state governing bodies are also almost exclusively white. I will not attempt to analyse the leadership of individual clubs here, but I suspect that the broad picture when it comes to leadership is that we need to be doing a much better job as a country.
What about volunteers more broadly?
On the one hand, the QUAFL and State Shield committees last year, together, were made up of approximately 50% people of colour. On the other hand, looking broadly at the current QA Staff, it sits around 10%.
When it comes to the elite level of our sport, there are no people of colour (as far as I am aware, apologies if not true) on the Dropbears leadership/management/selection team, and very few people of colour on the Dropbears squad as it currently stands (again, around 10%). Looking at the 2018 Dropbears, we find a similar result.
Which takes me, finally, to State Shield teams.
This is where it gets really interesting.
Admittedly, I am less familiar with Victorian players and even less so with Queenslanders, so we have a certain margin of error, but even accounting for a large margin of error, the 2019 and 2018 Leadbeaters and Thunderbirds both feature overwhelmingly white rosters, with likely less than 5% BIPOC. It is interesting to note that the Honeyeaters, the Vic B team, have around 20-25%, depending on whether you include reserves or not. This is much closer to the more consistent representation seen in the NSW teams (both A and B teams feature ~20-25% POC in 2019). While the Blue Tongues in 2018 saw a somewhat lower representation of minorities (just over 12%), interestingly (wildly??), the Bluebottles featured nearly 50% people of colour (which only drops down to just under 40% when you don't include reserves).
So what do we take from this?
Anecdotally - it's clear we have a problem with lack of minority race and ethnicity representation in Australian quidditch. Once we ground ourselves in the data - this still largely bears out. If we take approximately 20-25% Black, Indigenous, and other People of Colour from the 2016 ABS census data as being representative of the wider population, then it is clear that on most of the above counts, we are failing. While the NSW state teams seem to provide some hope that there is a tried and proven way forward, we should nevertheless be concerned that approximately half of all the POC from ALL FIVE 2019 state representative teams originate from just ONE club (Usyd), and two thirds of all the POC from all four 2018 state shield teams originate from just two (Usyd and UNSW).
[By originate, I essentially mean recruited by, i.e. their first club, irrespective of whom they play for now. Although now that I think about it, almost all the Usyd players were current Usyd at the time as well, and almost all the USNW players were UNSW-Serpents].
So - why do we have this diversity problem? And what can we learn from the teams do are doing better than others in how to solve this?
Part 2: Where do racism and discrimination manifest itself in quidditch, and what structures in our sport privilege white people?
What I want to try and do in this section is to try and understand where the established diversity problem comes from - does active racial discrimination occur in the quidditch community? What aspects of the community and/or the sport either systematically exclude or are unappealing to BIPOC?
Firstly, let's address explicit racism. The in-your-face, slurring, actively excluding kind, even where it might not be intentional. From reading the experiences of especially African American players in the USA (see recent posts in American Quidditch Discussion 1 2 3, as well as a public post from MLQ), this exists in the quidditch community - from the language used to describe black play-styles (seen or talked about as being more aggressive/scary/illegal) to the way they are refereed (cards being more freely given to black people for contact that would "never be called" for a white person), and occasionally explicit slurs. It is also insidious too - of the first 80 players to be drafted in the recently running "All Timer Fantasy", (running on The Eighth Man) only two players were allegedly black (this is not something I have checked for myself - just something I observed being called out on a discussion thread).
Whether these same occurrences exist in Australia is less clear. It's not something we've ever really had a discussion about as a community, and I have never experienced or seen, and only extremely rarely heard of such things happening here myself. (Which is not to say that it doesn't happen to other people or in other clubs of course, and if people have seen or experienced this, it is something that needs to urgently be brought up and addressed - we should have no tolerance of that in our community).
Of course, the racial biases, stereotypes, modes of discrimination, and long histories of oppression are very different in different countries and for different minority groups, and it is unclear how these examples of US discrimination against African American players maps onto Australia and discrimination against Australian Indigenous, Asian, Middle Eastern, African, or other minority groups.
There are certainly people in the quidditch community who hold racist views - though they are exceedingly rare, in my experience, and usually keep their opinions out of quidditch, and are regularly called out wherever it crops up. I don't think these people are reflective of the nature of the quidditch community we have in Australia, however, and I believe that more of our problems lie in the optics, accessibility, and culture of the sport.
Let's work through these issues.
1 - Quidditch doesn't look diverse
Optics are important - and I don’t just say this as someone who's been running quidditch social media for 5 years. How things look to the outside observer is important, and quidditch is a sport that looks white. Where people of colour exist, they stand out like a sore thumb among the majority white, and indeed, white middle-class community. Anecdotally, at least in the US, several people of colour, including friends or siblings of those already in the sport who even gave it a try, have been put off by the community feeling overwhelmingly white and "not for us".
We understand that representation is critically important in all fields - from politics, to media, from entertainment to sport - for facilitating recruitment. People are more likely to join in or engage in an activity or try something new (for which there is an especially high barrier with quidditch) if they can relate to someone already doing the thing. This is as true of race as it is of gender - seeing is believing -, and when someone from a minority background looks at quidditch, either the general community, or our leadership, or our elite teams, they are unlikely to find much they can relate to, and may even perceive it as a relatively culturally exclusive sport.
2 - Harry Potter is too white
Many people in conversations to date have also suggested that because the sport and the community is so deeply and inextricably linked to Harry Potter - a broadly white cultural phenomenon that is more popular in white countries - the sport is therefore also mostly white. I personally don't buy this argument, or at least I don't think it has as great an affect as people think it might. I do agree that the weird nature of the sport is itself a disproportionate barrier to minority ethnicities - as I'll discuss below. However, I don't think it's easy to claim that the Harry Potter phenomenon has not spread through non-white cultures. My own anecdotal experience with the fandom has suggested a huge base in India, large parts of South East Asia, and Latin America. The books have been translated into over 80 languages and are clearly popular enough at least in Asia to warrant a theme park in Japan. Moreover, Facebook data scientists examining people responding to a viral status asking "What books have stayed with you in some way" found that Harry Potter topped the list among 130,000 respondents. More interestingly, looking at the six countries with over 20,000 datapoints, Harry Potter topped the list in Italy, The Philippines, Brazil, India, and France (coming 3rd in Mexico). You can pick plenty of problems with this kind of data, but it does suggest that, as much as the books themselves may lack representation, passion for them is indeed a global phenomenon, even in non-white cultures. I cannot speak for uptake of the books in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, however.
3 - The "College Educated" Requirement.
One of the other observations that has come up consistently in the US and UK is that being "college/university educated" is essentially a requirement for quidditch - given that almost all of our recruitment comes from universities, but racial minorities are commonly underrepresented in higher education.
There are some reasons that I don't believe this entirely applies in Australia. First is that in Melbourne at least, the sport is made of, for the most part, community teams. Yet as far as examining the Leadbeaters would suggest, this has not improved the diversity of the sport in Melbourne, especially in comparison to the university team heavy NSW. Indeed, a large proportion of the people of colour in the Victorian state teams seem to come from either Melbourne or Monash University (though I'm not super familiar with who plays/played for which team in Vic so correct me if I'm wrong). Similarly, however, looking at the NSW teams, almost all people of colour come from either Usyd or UNSW.
Given that the predominant racially diverse group in Australia is Asians, it makes sense that, actually, universities are our main source of diversity. The university system is set up in Australia to be, frankly, ridiculously international. (Most of the following stats I got by looking up annual reports for Usyd, UNSW, Monash, and Melbourne, as well as here). Almost all universities with a quidditch team in Australia have international student populations of over 25%. While this doesn't necessarily tell us anything about ethnicity of those overseas students (and ignores locally born racially diverse students), we also find high levels of students who come from non-English speaking backgrounds - 35.6% among Usyd students, and 27% among UNSW staff (couldn't find a student value). Most universities I checked don't go into detailed information on ethnic diversity, but most of the ones that provide some kind of snapshot list, also almost exclusively list Asian countries (China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore for Melbourne Uni, for example) as their main sources of international students.
So at least as far as Asian minorities are concerned, higher education is unlikely to be a major limiting factor to joining the quidditch community - if anything, those university teams should have easier access to those groups of players.
Here again, however, the 'higher education' requirement does come into play in the recruitment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. As discussed above, Indigenous Australians make up 2.8% of the wider population. However, they typically make up <1% of university students at major quidditch universities (interestingly, this information can be remarkably hard to find on university websites/reports). Broadly, according to ABS 2016 Census data (also here), only 3.9% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons attended university, compared with 24.3% of the broader population having completed a bachelor's degree or higher. In this regard then, Aboriginal Australians are likely to find it harder to access the community given that in most parts of the country, most grass roots teams are based in universities.
4 - College Educated Culture and the Cultural Divide
Another aspect of the quidditch community that may make it more inaccessible to racial minorities is the general culture shock of quidditch. Not only is it an absurdly complicated sport with a dense set of rules but there is also a huge amount of quidditch specific jargon (not to mention related sports terminology) to go along with it even if you have read the Harry Potter books (fun times for anyone for whom English is a second language). Helping players understand what is going on requires time and patience and often one on one explanations which the people running trainings rarely have. For anyone coming from a relatively conservative culture (as a lot of Asian cultures typically are), the highly progressive politics that dominate in quidditch can also contribute to a certain level of culture shock, where both sides need a lot of patience and perseverance through a steep learning curve on feminism and gender politics.
Cultural norms around sport are also important here too. Quidditch, especially in Australia, is a pretty full on, contact, team sport. While white cultures might be more accustomed to sports like rugby, AFL, etc., the most popular sports in Asia are mostly non-contact, often individual sports, and nothing like quidditch - such as football (soccer), cricket, baseball, badminton, table tennis, etc.
Moreover, going beyond the technical nature of the sport, quidditch itself is pretty out there. Most of the people who are willing to try quidditch are either die hard Harry Potter fans (who are probably ignorant of the contact aspect or not going to stay around long enough to find out about it), or people who are more open to being independent, adventurous, and trying new things - and have the self-confidence and assuredness to do so. This is already hard enough if you're from a minority background, and are already aware of things that make you stick out in society. It's harder still if you're from a relatively conservative family, who might be less understanding or familiar, or even more judgemental on engaging in such a strange activity. There are certainly several people in the quidditch community from Asian families whose parents have no idea they play quidditch. (Also: "Bend it like Beckham", anyone?)
5 - Subject Choice and Cultural Pressures
Cultural differences in subject/degree choice, I would guess, also feature in the under-representation especially of Asian minorities in quidditch. Stereotypically, Asian students, many of whom may be under more parental pressure, are more likely to be studying highly time intensive / high contact hour degrees, including law, science, engineering, medicine, etc., than arts and humanities degrees, where white people form a much higher proportion of the student body, and consequently, have a lot more free time. Anyone who has been to enough graduation ceremonies can see this clearly, and while hard data is hard to find, the numbers, where I can find them, do bear this out. As a University of Sydney staff member, I have access to demographics data for any unit of study in recent years. A popular first year arts unit (Greek and Roman Myth) has 67% Australian students, compared with 10% Chinese students, the next largest backgrounds being the USA and England. Compare this with a typical first year maths unit, where in 2019 there were more Chinese students (41%) than Australian students (37%), with the next most common backgrounds being Indian and South Korean. Admittedly this is data from one particularly international university, but I suspect the trend of having a higher proportion of Asian students in time intensive degrees is a stable one.
Outside of the classroom/lecture hall/lab, as discussed above, Asian students are also more likely to be under pressure from parents and families to spend their time on 'worthwhile' pursuits, (i.e. studying and academically performance generally, getting a good job, etc.) and may need to spend more time on these things if there is a language barrier). Minority students are often among the first in their families to go to university, and especially students of migrant parents who came to Australia to provide a better life for their child(ren), may feel additional pressure to live up to this expectation and investment in their education, prioritising study over quidditch, and feeling the importance of academic performance more keenly than the average white student. Migrants parents, asylum seekers, and even well off people from developing countries are all acutely aware of the upward mobilising force that education has, and the importance of academic performance to having a good life is often impressed on their children as much as possible. Even in a relatively progressive "you can be anything and we'll still be proud of you" family, that encouraged me to be independent and do what I want, this is a pressure I constantly feel, and goodness knows I was questioned on the wisdom of taking on presidency and coaching of Usyd in 2017 ("When will you have the time to study??"). The fact that, unlike in the US and UK, Australian students are much more likely to be living at home while studying at university, only makes the force of parental pressure all the more present.
6 - Socioeconomic Disparity
Outside of the dynamics of higher education itself, education level factors significantly into social class/socioeconomic status. Being socioeconomically disadvantaged is a factor that may preclude someone from quidditch, which can be hard to untangle from race. While quidditch is probably not an expensive sport, in Australia, it is mostly played in areas of high socioeconomic advantage - big cities, and especially towards the centre of big cities. If you live far away from central training grounds, or anywhere other than major population centres/university hubs, where housing and living may be cheaper, this is likely to be a barrier from being able to play as regularly, or from being able to participate as much in the club's sporting and social activities. Players from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may also be helping to support families (or even just themselves) economically, through working different jobs etc., further taking time away from being able to participate in the sport.
Interactions between socioeconomic status and race in Australia is very complicated, however. If we once again consult our good friend, the ABS, which splits socioeconomic advantage/disadvantage into quintiles based on areas where people live, we find a relatively even distribution of Australian born people across each bracket. Compared to this, people born in China and Malaysia are found disproportionately in the upper quintiles, and people from India are also more advantaged, though not to the same extent. However, people from Vietnam or the Philippines are typically more socioeconomically disadvantaged. These trends hold broadly true looking at what languages are predominantly spoken at home, though this further reveals that Arabic speaking households are also largely in the more disadvantaged quintiles.
Finally, as one might unfortunately expect, almost half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged quintile (48%). Only 1/3 of the 2.8% of Australians that are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders live in capital cities, with a remarkably disproportionately low population in Victoria in particular (0.8%). For a sport that is (probably - we don't really actually have data on this, but given that almost everyone in the community is university educated, it's a reasonable assumption) mostly middle class, largely based in areas of advantage/big cities, and largely university centric, these plausibly go some way to explaining the seemingly low participation rate of Indigenous Australians in quidditch.
It should, however, tell us that we should have an even higher level of participation from Indian, Chinese, and some other Asian backgrounds, especially given that most migrants live in areas of high socioeconomic advantage - i.e. where quidditch is, so perhaps the above mentioned cultural barriers are more at play here.
7 - Where data is lacking
A lot of what I have talked about in this section is focused on Asian minorities - partially because I fall into this category myself, can speak to experience and anecdote more easily, and partially because Asians make up the largest ethnic minority group in Australia and especially in Australian universities and Australian quidditch teams. As the largest group, data is more readily available in Census summary reports, university reports, etc., which tend to only list top 5s or top 10s with it comes to languages spoken at home, ancestry, place of birth, etc. I also try and usually am able to discuss data around Indigenous Australians as here, data is usually explicitly collected and reported by the ABS and universities etc., and the oppression of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is directly and centrally relevant to any discussion of race and racism in Australia. Where data is thus hard to come by, is on people of African, Middle Eastern, and South/Middle American descent. While looking at the raw census population data suggests that these groups make up barely 5% of the total population, it would seem that Australian quidditch is even more exclusive of these backgrounds. I have not delved into the raw ABS Census data on SES status (the one indication summary reports gave was that Arabic speaking households were typically socioeconomically disadvantaged), nor are university or census reports particularly forthcoming about education or enrolment rates, but it is clear that in these cases, many of the same forces of systemic discrimination are also at play, and we should not ignore this either.
I should also finally state that, of course, this is a non-exhaustive exploration on the roots of racial discrimination in quidditch. This is merely my summary of explanations I have seen put forward by others, along with some of my own ideas and my own takes. I'm sure, for example, religion (which is entangled closely with ethnicity) may play a big role in the dynamics of oppression and barriers into the sport - but this is an area I'm less familiar with and have decided to elide in the interest of an already extremely long essay. I'm sure the sociologists and the like among us can come up with myriad other reasons, and other people of colour in the community can come forward with their own experiences, which may or may not match my own. We should continue to examine the full extent of the potential reasons behind our diversity problem, if we are to be able to work towards dismantling them and solving it.
Part 3. Solving the Diversity Problem
1 - Acquiring Data (Official Channels)
Clearly, one of the first things that we need is better data on our own quidditch population, in order to understand exactly where and what the issues are, in order to effectively address them. Lots of the analysis above has been based on guesswork - useful only up to a point, and not good enough/fairly problematic.
In addition to gender information, Quidditch Australia needs to begin collecting more demographic information about ethnic diversity (or at the very least, whether someone has Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander heritage) at the level of membership sign ups. Some kind of regular census of the Australian quidditch population requesting more detailed information about various aspects of diversity and community opinion would also be useful, especially for strategic planning purposes, setting goals/targets for inclusivity, and tracking progress.
This is already something that we are discussing/I am working on personally with regards to volunteering so expect some kind of community wide census in July.
2 - Acquiring Data (Unofficial Channels)
Beyond grounding ourselves in the raw data, we also need to acquire more data in a relatively underutilised format in Australia - talking to one another. It is hard to know what the experience of race and discrimination in Australian quidditch is without ever having really talked about it before, as a community. We must engage in open dialogues where people are able to voice their experiences - good and bad - to better understand how to move forward. This is partly what this essay is attempting to do - ground us in data, and provide a stimulus for people to come forward with their own stories and discuss. Quidceania hasn't seen the big conversations that it's international equivalents have in the recent weeks (and historically, at least over the last 4-5 years, has rarely had the same big threads that the likes of American Quidditch Discussion and UK Quidditch regularly have on gender, rules, recruitment, tournaments, the future of the sport, and experiences generally).
This doesn't just have to be at the national level on public forums, however. I remember, back when I was playing with Bristol, a major comment thread in UK Quidditch back in the day with lots of people calling out sexism in quidditch and speaking to experiences of discrimination. This prompted, in a more casual and informal setting, the Bristol captains and coaches to sit down with everyone in the pub after training and open up conversation about it - asking our female players what their experiences were, asking for feedback, working out where we as a team needed to improve, and involving the whole team in the discussion so everyone was on the same page as to what the issues were and what needed to happen.
At the club level, listening to your players and giving them a space to have their voices heard and where they feel comfortable to speak up is critically important, for more issues than just gender or ethnicity, and will go a long way towards improving retention, improving cohesion, building trust, and building mutual respect and understanding. (Note that this might be in a group setting, an individual setting, or an anonymous one). At the national level, providing a community group (analogous to the Women in Quidditch group) might be useful as well, where people of colour can share experiences and advice in a safe space. This is a form of action that has already happened in the US.
3 - Funding and Donations
Having solid numerical data on diversity in the sport also gives us an avenue to access different funding sources from local councils, state governments, and national sporting programs that may already exist to help support inclusion in sport. This becomes especially relevant when we are able to become recognised as a National Sporting Organisation and are eligible for many more of these grants, and underscores the importance of that initiative.
As part of this, we need to have a clear sense of what our strategic goals are in this regard. Do we want to set targets for participation of underrepresented groups in the sport? What targets should we set? How will we track them? Data collection is clearly important here, but equally important is having a sense of what we want to prioritise as a sport as we move forward. To what extent do we want quidditch to be a regular sport, and to what extent do we want it to be a platform for social change? These are big questions that are well beyond the scope of this analysis here - but these are the sorts of questions we should be considering (and you should contribute input on!) in our 2020 Strategic Planning process.
On a related point, another thing that several organisations around the quidditch world have been doing is donating directly to causes and organisations related to Black Lives Matter, in response to the recent protests, often offering matching funds. Should Quidditch Australia (or other Australian quidditch organisations such as states and clubs) be looking into local or international organisations supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and/or local indigenous Australian causes? Personally, I am all for encouraging community donations, but I am unsure whether, as an NFP with membership fees coming in expected to support quidditch in Australia, spending money on other things that are 'beyond our mandate' is appropriate. Then again, the community may be all for it. Is promoting diversity and inclusivity beyond quidditch one of the goals of Quidditch Australia? It certainly could be. Understanding the spending priorities of the community would be a useful aspect of a census. (And understanding the strategic priorities of the community is what the Strategic Planning forums and process is all about. Seriously. Please get involved and contribute your opinions).
There may also, of course, be more direct ways to use money in relation to minority participation in quidditch here in Australia. As an example, the US has recently seen the instigation of the Black Athlete Recruitment Program, essentially a scholarship style program where a community fund has been set up to fund trial and potentially full memberships for black athletes trying quidditch next season. QA memberships in Australia are slightly cheaper than they are in the USA, with a trial membership costing $10 AUD here (US Trials are 14.40 AUD), but this is an easily viable option if we think that price is a barrier for, for example, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Investments might also be made directly into community outreach programs working with minority groups and partnering with different organisations to run quidditch events aimed at engaging ethnic minorities directly.
4 - Improving Representation in Advertising and Media
This is a big one, one that is proven to work, and one that I'm glad to say we already do as Quidditch Australia, but must be made more widespread.
I've already spoken to the experience of joining Usyd Quidditch in 2014 and being one of the only non-white people on the team - an experience that did marginally improve but mostly persisted into 2016. Revamping our social media presence as President in 2017, despite having only two people of colour among our 14 exec members, I made sure to regularly include people of colour in our social media posts. I made sure to try and ensure there was at least one person of colour rostered onto our O-week stall at any given time. It probably helped as well that as President and one of the Head Coaches, I was a very visible person of colour in the society.
The results are clear, and the best part is that they are largely self-sustaining. The club had a major influx in 2017 of people from a whole range of different minority backgrounds. The number of teams we could field tripled, the number of POC in the club at least quadrupled over the year. As anyone who was there may recall, I was absurdly excited when, not even by design but entirely by chance, the Unforgivables starting line-up against the Muggles at QUAFL 2017 featured a majority of brown people.
Having people of colour visible in your advertising and promotion is critical. Seeing is believing, and we know representation is important. When it comes to leadership, the last five years has seen a person of colour as either the President or Vice President (or both) of Usyd Quidditch. It's interesting to note that, as far as I've seen, the make-up of the club has also shifted from being overwhelmingly arts student dominated, to a much wider mix of different degree types, including high contact hour STEM degrees - demonstrating that while various cultural factors affecting players of colour may affect their participating in quidditch, it is not impossible to overcome these, and all the more easier when you can physically demonstrate through the diversity of your club, that it is possible.
While maintaining representation in social media and such is still important, it is no longer 'effortful'. Diversity begets more diversity - once you have a diverse array of people in your club, the average photo will include a diverse array of people by default. Looking at the Usyd quidditch exec profiles in 2019, without any kind of affirmative action, the leadership is naturally filled with a whole variety of racial backgrounds. Today in 2020, the 16+ person exec is more than 50% people of colour.
Diversity takes work to get there, but once you have it, it becomes relatively self-sustaining.
This doesn't mean you can be lazy in your photo choice though. Especially in the broader quidditch community and on most teams, we are still a majority white community. Recruitment campaigns need to be aspirational in their presentation of diversity. Look at the #ASportForEveryone campaign, for example, and you will notice that I intentionally have an array of different genders, backgrounds, positions, etc. (It’s all laid out on the website nice and clearly here). The level of diversity in that series is not reflective of the actual diversity in the community, but it does tell the story that we want to tell about ourselves. Similarly, the Dropbears may have few people of colour, but you should be sure to expect to see those few in the majority of promotional material we end up producing.
Importantly, while it is important to explicitly celebrate inclusion and diversity in the sport, minorities cannot be defined within your social media as the example of the sport being inclusive. Minorities are not defined by their minority status. Don't just include racially diverse people in your post about being an accepting community. Don't just include non-binary people in your post about being open to all genders. Don't just include women on your post about International Women's Day and empowerment of women. This is the path that leads to tokenism. It's just as important to include under-represented people in posts that are not about their being a minority. Your post about how inclusive the sport is should have people of visibly different backgrounds in it, but so should your post about how fun the community is, how people can learn new skills and meet new people, etc. Intersectionality is also important. Include people of colour in your Pride posts. Make sure that women are included in your posts about including racial minorities. (This is why I am against banners etc. that only include 1-2 people, with no room for diversity, that demand a 'typical quidditch player', as if there is or should be one. Go on the QA page’s photos and scroll back to State Shield 2019 promotional material for examples of me trying to get around this issue).
Lots of thought and planning and photo searching goes into things like the #ASportForEveryone campaign, and has gone into QA's social media posts since I took over, and it's taken a lot more work over the years trying to make sure that we have the photos and photographers to enable this. It is vital that this happens at the club level as well and continues to happen across all levels. If you run social media for your club or state body, please take note of this - diversity inclusion is a huge and vital part of your job.
5 - Improving Representation in Leadership
As alluded to earlier, having a person of colour in highly visible leadership positions (both in terms of social media presence but also on the recruitment stall, coaching at trainings, etc.) definitely helped Usyd's recruitment of POC in 2017, and continues to do so to this day. But beyond just getting more people of colour in quidditch, how do we also help them rise into leadership positions? Here again, seeing is believing and we are already on the way with more people of colour on the QA board, but we need to consider the full spectrum of leadership positions from club execs to state governing bodies and state/national team leadership and selector positions.
While I personally think some kind of affirmative action may be a step too far, I think introducing a nomination system (as opposed to a purely application system) would be a strong step in the right direction - for both ethnic and gender representation in higher levels of quidditch. Most of us are aware of the discrepancies in confidence and feeling qualified enough for certain positions that exist between privileged and oppressed groups, and quidditch has had many discussions on how this pertains to gender. The same principle pertains to ethnicity too, especially where you feel like you are in a minority, and you don't necessarily feel as a part of something as someone who 'looks the part' might. This is the kind of impostor syndrome that can plague you and make you constantly question and doubt yourself, regardless of whether you actually have the qualifications for a position.
I spent a lot of 2017 in perpetual self-doubt and anxiety over whether any of the new players in the club, especially the number of tall, white, 'real athletes' would bother paying me any attention, take me seriously as a coach/leader, or be put off an already weird sport by it being represented by an even weirder brown kid. It took the fact that I myself was brought up with male privilege, had the privilege of three years of experience in the sport and the affirming prestige of having played on the state team, plus the privilege of a lifetime being raised to be independently minded, (and still yet, some identity sacrifice - trying to appear 'more normal') to overcome this - along with the fact that I knew it wasn't just me who thought I would do a good job in these positions. I had been pushed towards them, encouraged, and formally nominated by previous leaders - the likes of Luke, Nat, Paul, Caccs, Alex, etc., - whom I had a lot of respect for myself.
(It also probably helped (/was lucky?) that the likes of Max Brenner and co. ended up being really nice and respectful people, and whenever they had opinions (frequently), they were able to express them in polite, constructive, non-combative ways - honestly, a rare but critical skill).
How many people who are qualified for a position haven't run or applied because they don't think they'll be good enough, or because they don't think they fit the mould/don't think they look the part? How much more diverse could our selectors and leaders be if people on the outside who can see or may have experienced the expertise in others better than they might be able to - could nominate them for positions? Not only does it at least throw their names into the mix, but even if they don't get the position in the end, the nomination is at least highly affirming. Even now after so many years, I'm not sure I would be expressing interest in being the Bluebottles coach without a number of players having pursued me about it last year.
As a relevant example, Major League Quidditch in the USA, earlier this year, has introduced the "Coleman Clause", a gender equivalent of the "Rooney Rule" from NFL, whereby each franchise (i.e. team) within the league must at the very least have one applicant for coaching positions from a minority gender, if not taking on or already having someone from a minority gender in a coaching position. (The Rooney Rule states that NFL teams must interview ethnic-minorities for coaching and other senior jobs, without mandating a hiring quota). Something like this for both underrepresented genders and ethnicities might be useful and appropriate for various quidditch organisations to implement, and this combined with a nomination procedure (to be discussed/defined/developed) might also help drive volunteer recruitment generally.
6 - Creating a culture of inclusivity and cultural sensitivity
Beyond opening conversations and changing structural things in the set-up of the sport to help minority inclusion, we also have to work at promoting cultures of inclusion explicitly for people of foreign and culturally diverse backgrounds at the individual and club level too. When your team is running meet and greet or come and try session, are you more likely to go and chat to the more outgoing, chatty, white recruits (whom perhaps you can relate to more easily), or the newcomer who comes from a different background, stands out, and might be feeling a bit uncomfortable and alone? Approaching, talking to, taking an interesting in, and caring about people who seem to be having a hard time fitting in makes a world of difference for not a lot of effort. It might be sitting next to someone at the pub after training and chatting to them, it might be taking an extra 30 seconds to explain a rule to someone during training.
I was extraordinarily shy, introverted, and un-talkative when I went to my first training session with Usyd, but I'll always remember Cameron Caccamo coming up to me in a drinks break and asking me how I was finding it, what I thought of quidditch, and making sure I was having a good time. (I'm pretty sure I said like 4 words total in response, but hey, I did end up going to the Flodge after training with everyone, and then…*gestures* this happened. So clearly it was at least a nice and useful gesture, and really, not very hard). The Cameron Caccamos of the world (which is to say, student politicians), however, are used to putting themselves out there, talking to strangers, and reaching out to other people. The average quidditch player? Probably not.
If you are a coach or in leadership generally, seeking out diversity and inclusion training resources could be highly valuable and moving towards making this more accessible and even mandatory in the future would be important from a Quidditch Australia perspective. At the individual level, being aware of implicit bias (regarding both race and gender) and learning to identify it can also be helpful, and should be encouraged - the Harvard test is a popular one, and it might be especially important for referees, selectors, or other similar roles.
All this is sure to pile up along with gender inclusion training, mental health awareness training, first aid responsibilities, etc., onto already overburdened coaches and other volunteers. Nevertheless, (as discussed at the most recent strategic forum on coaching) as we become a more professionalised sport, as we have higher expectations of what we want quidditch to be, and indeed, if we want quidditch to have the culture of inclusion that we so value, these are going to become necessary.
I would also encourage individuals and clubs/club leaderships to look through this essay, follow any of the conversations that arise from it, and look at what else your club, state, or organisation can do to help. If you're a university club and able to take players from the general community, work hard to actively promote that you don't have to be studying to play quidditch. If you're a community team, look beyond the circles of friends and try to partner and work with other local community organisations that may be better at engaging ethnic minorities. If you're a part of a big university, or even just nearby enough for it to be convenient, run joint events with university societies geared towards indigenous, international, or other ethnic minority students. The structures that keep minorities out of quidditch are deeply embedded in our culture and society, and it will require active effort at all levels if we want quidditch to champion diversity.
I know I riffed on Australia being mostly white earlier - but in fairness, Australia is also an incredibly international country, and it is important to be aware of this. Again, looking at the 2016 Census data from the ABS, 1 in 3 people living in Australia were born overseas - many from Western Europe or New Zealand, but also many from China, India, and other parts of Asia especially, making us one of the most migrant dominant populations in the world. Over 10% of Australians report Indian or Chinese ancestry alone (around half of whom were born there), and more than 1 in 5 Australians speak a language other than English at home. Quidditch is not an accessible sport in Australia if you don't have strong English skills, and/or speak with a strong accent.
It's also important to recognise that while 'being racist to white people' is a controversial topic, people from white minority ethnicities (such as Greeks and Italians, which make up some of the largest migrant populations after Western Europe and Asia) can and do face discrimination and ridicule in Australia and in our community, and it is important not to lose or belittle this form of oppression.
Not to sound too much like a university buzzword bingo, but increasing broader cultural competency, awareness, and sensitivity across the community is vital if we want our sport's cultural and ethnic diversity to reflect our country's.
7 - A Minority Engagement Committee? Inclusivity Officers?
From the above - there's a lot of work to be done, at all levels. Without throwing all the burden onto one group and taking responsibility away from everyone (because ultimately, racial inclusion is everyone's responsibility), a specific QA committee, tasked with assessing and addressing these issues, could be an effective move going forward. USQ and MLQ have jointly agreed to an independent committee addressing the lack of diversity in US quidditch, and many leagues and NGBs have Inclusivity officers/committees, etc., analogous to our own Gender Engagement Committee.
As well as performing "Inclusivity audits", to examine the practises and ethnic make-up of Quidditch Australia, states, leagues, clubs, etc., and hold groups accountable, the committee could also work on providing resources, facilitating discussion, and organising outreach and engagement opportunities with other community organisations and groups involved in minority inclusion in sport. Researching for and partnering with more Indigenous owned and run organisations (such as we currently do with Deadly Sports Plus) for events etc. would be a productive move at all levels. We (Quidditch Australia) are currently undergoing an internal reform and restructuring of our volunteering systems, but once this is in place, as long as we have the volunteers willing to put the time in, it seems like this would be a worthy and important use of resources.
Part 4. Concluding thoughts.
A little over a week ago, I was wondering what an ethnic minority inclusion committee would even do in a sport like quidditch, where as white as it is, it doesn't actually feel racist or discriminatory, and a simple bit of diversity representation goes a long way to ameliorating the situation. Couple this with the relative lack of ethnic minorities in quidditch to call out any systemic issues, and the much more salient problem of gender disparities (salient partially from the more blatant acts of discrimination against women in particular on pitch, and partially from having more people to speak out against it), and it's understandable why racial diversity and inclusion has (too) long been on the back burner. Even being acutely aware of my own minority status for my seven years in the sport and following the conversations that occasionally crop up in the US and UK, it's only in the last fortnight that I've really begun to interrogate the diversity problem in quidditch in a serious way, and consider what barriers I've faced in my journey in the sport.
At least when it comes to our racial and indigenous relations in Australia, it is clear that while quidditch offers opportunities to anyone, there are deeply entrenched cultural, socioeconomic, geographic, and linguistic barriers that make it harder for people from diverse backgrounds and cultures to participate in the sport. Even where the chance to play is relatively accessible, the multitude of factors that may limit the time someone can commit to the sport and community means that anyone who cannot fully participate may easily be left behind from what is undeniably a highly social, close knit, 'cliquey' community, with a lot of in-jokes, a steep learning curve, and sometimes, a lack of patience or curtness for anyone who doesn't yet share or understand progressive cultural norms. How, and even why, would anyone remain in a community they already feel left out of - a feeling all too easy when you already feel like you stand out.
The deeper rooted societal issues won't change overnight, but I hope this essay can provide a level of understanding that there are actions that can be taken by individual players, by coaches and captains, club leadership and execs, state bodies, and Quidditch Australia, that can help solve our diversity problem. Whether it's making an extra effort to be more sensitive to and inclusive of other cultures, making time to talk to and take interest in the new player, ensuring that your social media features a diverse array of players, talking to, listening to, supporting, and encouraging indigenous players and other players of colour in your team, actively reacting out to minority communities, or just being aware of your own biases, and working to act against them, whether you are a player, coach, referee, or community leader. These are all things we can and should be doing now to make quidditch more accessible to everyone, and to not just be a tolerant, but a welcoming and accepting community.
In the first instance, however, as our most urgent priority, I hope people take this opportunity to talk - either in Quidceania, through the Community Stories project, or just among your own team mates and clubs and friend groups. If you have experienced racial discrimination in quidditch, I hope you take this as an opportunity to be able to talk about it, call it out, and help us expel it from the community. I hope in our conversations following this, people listen to minorities, actively seek advice from them, call out any racism that does occur, and work to be a part of creating the diverse community we want quidditch to be.
Ajantha Abey is the Media and Communications Director for Quidditch Australia. If you are interested in writing an article of your own, please get in touch at media@quidditchaustralia.org, or if you would like to submit a short story pertaining to your own experiences, you are strongly encouraged to take part in the Community Stories Project (you can find a submission link at the top of the page).