Duke volleyball player speaks with ESPN after being called racial slur at BYU game

by Victoria Hill, KUTVTuesday, August 30th 2022

A BYU fan was banned from all sports facilities after allegedly calling a Black student athlete a racist slur multiple times during a volleyball game Aug. 26, 2022. The athlete was reportedly threatened, prompting officials to change the venue of a game the next day. (KUTV)

PROVO, Utah (KUTV) — Duke volleyball player Rachel Richardson is continuing to speak out after she was allegedly threatened by a BYU fan using racial slurs.

She spoke with ESPN's Holly Rowe about the incident and said she hopes it ultimately creates awareness and encourages change.

"I believe that meeting anger with anger, it just starts a cycle of more anger," Richardson said in the interview. "As a young Black woman in America, I know I don't have the privilege of reacting all the time, or else it paints that face of, 'oh, you're just another angry Black woman.'"

The fan who made the comments at the game at George Albert Smith Fieldhouse in Provo on Aug. 26 has since been banned from all university athletic facilities. BYU officials said the fan was not a student at the school.

Richardson responded on social media after the incident and said she and her fellow Black teammates were "targeted and racially heckled throughout the entirety of the match," which made her feel unsafe.

She added that she and her teammates did not "want to receive pity or be looked at as helpless" and "are proud to stand up against racism."

"I felt as though responding to it in the way that I did would help the greater purpose, and that's creating awareness, and that's allowing everyone from both sides to better see the fact that we should all be working towards a common goal — we shouldn't be trying to create two sides."

Officials from both Duke and BYU responded to the incident and emphasized the importance of safety for their athletes, along with zero tolerance for racist behavior.

"I don't want to group BYU all together in a negative light," Richardson said in her interview with ESPN. "I just see it as an opportunity to raise awareness for the fact that racist incidents such as these, they still are happening. It is 2022 and it should be unacceptable, but it still happens, and that is due to a lack of education on situations such as these, a lack of education on how to deal with people who might still be ignorant, who might be racist."

She said next steps she would like to see from universities include putting more effort into educating students.

"What I want the most out of this, one, is to raise awareness, and two, to hopefully encourage institutions, such as BYU and others, to start really putting in those efforts and the funds to educate the general student body," Richardson told Rowe.

She also stressed the importance of treating everyone with kindness.

"You have to learn how to look at someone as a person, and only that," she said, "because that's what helps you meet someone with compassion."