Richard Lapchick has been working on diversity and inclusion in sports for 50 years, but since the death of George Floyd in May, he has never been busier with requests from sports entities seeking his counsel on D&I.
“I have been approached by, I would say, 50 different athletic departments, teams, leagues, conferences, individual sports to get my advice on how to structure an ongoing program or committee within the organization,” said Lapchick, director of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. TIDES is best known for giving sports leagues grades for racial and gender hiring, but also provides bias training and counsel on both diversity and inclusion.
The requests, Lapchick said, have kept him busy seven days a week and every hour he isn’t sleeping. It is unlike anything he has encountered in the five decades he has been doing this work, he added. “I might get approached once or twice a year, throughout my lifetime,” he said. “This is different.”
The requests are coming in, even though all sports are dealing with tough economics due to the pandemic. “A lot of the organizations I am talking to have lost tens and hundreds of millions of dollars this year, but they are still putting money into the issue of race in their company,” Lapchick said.
Most of the organizations are putting in place a diversity committee, if not hiring a diversity officer. “They realize they were far behind in a lot of ways in hiring practices, cultural competencies, and they are trying to make up for the deficiencies of the past,” he said. “Now, there are some organizations that did pretty well that are even ramping up what they are doing. It’s not that all were not doing well, most weren’t, and that is what the whole racial reckoning is about.”
Lapchick said it is not surprising that agencies that represent athletes are redoubling their efforts. “I think they know the athletes they represent want to be involved. I think they know if there’s a way to make their athletes happy they are going to find ways to do it.”
