Last weekend, the Quebec Soccer Federation reversed its decision to ban turban-wearing soccer players.
The QSF ban on turbans, as well as other religious head coverings worn by Sikh men and boys, was an unusually strict interpretation of a FIFA safety regulation, and it was only after direct intervention from the Federation Internationale de Football Association that the QSF removed the ban. In turn, the Canadian Soccer Association has lifted its suspension of the QSF. Now everybody’s happy and we can all play soccer again, yes?
Not quite. The QSF’s controversial headwear decision was solely a provincial issue (no other province saw fit to interpret FIFA regulations in such a way), but it was upsetting to soccer families across the country who saw their friends and partners in Quebec suddenly and arbitrarily banned. The ease with which that kind of discrimination was enacted is enough to make any person, British Columbian or Québécois, unhappy and uneasy, even as we applaud the ban’s reversal.
Nonplussed doctors and officials have been arguing for weeks that the decision to regard turbans as health risks is ridiculous. Issues such as kirpans in schools, or wearing turbans while biking to the exclusion of wearing a helmet, are the kind of religious-rights versus public-safety discussions that we’re familiar with. Taking issue with turbans on the pitch just seems silly. These head coverings are made of cloth, and soccer is a non-contact sport, and that should be the end of it.
In B.C., it’s easy to interpret this issue as yet another expression of Quebec’s occasional incomprehensible pig-headedness. “Why can’t they just behave?” we groan. “Why are they always so … Québécois about everything?”
But as CBC reporter Michelle Gagnon points out, Quebec is a broad-minded, friendly province and often takes a progressive stance on social issues. I’ve called Quebec home and I like it a whole heck of a lot. Unfortunately, at the level of provincial politics, Quebec has a fraught relationship with race and cultural tolerance.
As a unique culture within the hegemony of “The Canadian Identity,” Quebec often has to defend itself against cultural assimilation from the federal framework.
When it comes to cultural threats, however, it often happens that a small group of individuals is sacrificed for the greater good.
And it’s hard to tell what the greater good is when 100 to 200 soccer players are no longer welcome in their sport.
One defender of the QSF decision argues that “religion doesn’t have a place on sports fields … The soccer field must remain neutral,” but this invocation of neutrality is a smokescreen for a situation that’s anything but neutral. If Catholics wore turbans, all soccer players would be allowed to wear turbans, and this wouldn’t be an issue. Instead, boys of a minority cultural group are being negatively affected by a decision, while the white players remain unaffected. It’s not a random accident — it’s an inequality that’s built into the fundamental equation of this situation, and we might as well call it racist, because that’s what it is.
When the CSA took action against the QSF, Premier Pauline Marois sided with her province against her people. She said it was unacceptable for a national group to interfere in a Québécois matter.
I’m floored by this. It wouldn’t have been difficult for Marois to acknowledge that the QSF had made a racially problematic choice while still defending her province. She could have done both. Instead, she doubled down on a racist decision, and that says a lot about which rights she’s willing to defend.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the headwear ban’s suspension, Marois is vigorously resisting the fact that her decision was, well, racist. “Disgraceful” is the word she’s chosen to use: It was “disgraceful” that the QSF was called racist.
Sigh. Canadians are more afraid of being called racist than they are of being racist. I wish Marois had been honest: We don’t have a problem with turbans because they’re a health hazard; we have a problem with them because they’re different and that freaks us out.
The QSF’s handling of this issue — and Marois’s awkward defence of it — should remind all Canadians that even in 2013, racism is still a part of our lives, even if we don’t like calling it that. Let’s remember this the next time someone says it isn’t.
