'Only Gotten Worse': Stephens Opens Up About Racial Abuse

Tuesday, 30 May 2023 at 02:00

byKadir Macar

Racial abuse in sports is unfortunately very common and tennis is not the exception with players like Sloane Stephens experiencing it.

Sports fandom is like any other fandom, it's filled with both good and bad things. It's good that a sport and athletes can touch so many people but it's also bad because some people carry a heavy load most of the time.

Abuse comes in many forms with most tennis players experiencing a lot of social media abuse. It's easy to hide behind an avatar and insult somebody with the problem encountered by many tennis players. Roland Garros enrolled a new system this year to protect players from the hate online with the move welcomed by many including WTA number one Iga Swiatek.

Stephens knows full well what it's like to suffer abuse especially due to her background. Stephens is African-American and because of it subjected to racial abuse. She talked about it at Roland Garros recently admitting it's only gotten worse over the years.

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[Racial abuse] has obviously been a problem my entire career. It has never stopped. If anything, it's only gotten worse. I did hear about the software. I have not used it. I have a lot of obviously key words banned on Instagram and all of these things. But that doesn't stop someone from just typing in an asterisk or typing it in a different way, which obviously software most of the time doesn't catch. So, yeah, it hasn't stopped and I haven't used the software yet.

She generally doesn't allow it to affect her too much but some of the things written require investigations which indicates how serious the matter is. Any kind of threat has to be checked upon and should not be easily dismissed.

I mean, obviously, when there is FBI investigations going on with what people are saying to you online, it's very serious. Obviously, it's been something that I have dealt with my whole career. But, yeah, it's something I have had to deal with my whole career and something I will continue to deal with,I'm sure. That's that.