LIT Tipperary Thurles campus recently welcomed Ken McCue co-founder of Sport against Racism in Ireland who gave a participative seminar on diversity issues facing sports in Ireland. SARI are currently encouraging all 64 organised sporting bodies to undertake equality assessments as a means to adopting an equality statement. Minister for Transport, Sport and Tourism Leo Varadkar is supportive of such a move and may link this as a requirement to obtain funding through the Irish Sports Council. Currently less than a handful of sporting organisations have equality standards.

Ken spoke about human rights and how traditional classifications of race such as Caucasians, Mongloids and Negroids add to the problems of dealing with racism. SARI adopt a single race theory believing we all belong to the human race. The importance of this can be seen when describing the child of an Irish national with a Zambian national as being of mixed-race. Under the single race theory this makes no sense, calling someone mixed-race or even asking the question what is your race is racist !

Students were encouraged to volunteer on SARI coaching programmes which run in Dublin and aimed at mainstreaming the participation of minority kids in sports such as football and GAA.

LIT Tipperary Thurles would like to thank Ken for taking the time to talk about Sport Against Racism Ireland’s philosophy and activities.