Friday, March 29, 2024

Diversity not a hockey isue

Thank you so very much for informing me I am a bigot because I enjoy hockey. I never realized that black people are not welcome in the sport. I am writing in response to R.B. Haley’s letter (“Basketball is more accessible,” SN 4/4), in which he essentially claims hockey players and fans are bigots.

Such a claim that black hockey players are unwelcome is beyond ludicrous. During the past few years there has been an infusion of diversity in the NHL. Take, for example, Donald Brashear,who plays for the Canucks, or Grant Fuhr, in Calgary. In fact, most players in the NHL are not WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) at all. By far, most of them are Eastern European or Russian.

What I fail to understand here is how has our hockey team, of all things, become a racial issue? Race is not an issue here. It does the team a great disservice to insinuate such a preposterous thing, and distract from its accomplishments.

The real kicker here is Haley’s seeming benevolent nature about the whole thing. He finishes the article by saying, “But

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