France’s second-largest sport, basketball, is taking on racism. Using the slogan #NoRacism, the initiative is being driven by one of the nation’s leading clubs, CSP Limoges, which kicked off its campaign on the UN’s day against racial discrimination, March 21, the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre in apartheid South Africa when 69 peaceful Black protesters were shot dead.
“Racism is the virus. We are the antidote,” declare the club’s T-shirts, all part of a new strip backed by a publicity clip created in Limoges by InsideCity, one of France’s upcoming image-making studios whose slogan “Something always happens” might well be shared by the millions of France’s minorities who experience racism.
Basketball is second behind football in terms of participants and is probably more mixed in terms of diversity, whether it is the male or female game. It is one of the facts about diversity or its opposite, discrimination, that one cannot confirm, as the collection of ethnic origin statistics remains illegal in France.
