Glob­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions are bar­ri­ers to change.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC), the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion (CGF), FI­FA and oth­er Eu­ro­pean-dom­i­nat­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions love to claim that the speci­fici­ty of sport is le­git­i­mate grounds to af­firm au­ton­o­my and self-reg­u­la­tion while de­pen­dent on the pub­lic purse to fund their events.

In the face of com­pelling ev­i­dence of chron­ic and acute sys­tem, process break­downs, and a deep and en­dur­ing racist, elit­ist and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry cul­ture, glob­al sport has lost the right to the sta­tus of spe­cial gov­er­nance case. Au­ton­o­my is no longer ab­solute. Au­ton­o­my has to be earned.

T&T and Caribbean so­ci­eties are non­cha­lant about racism, clas­sism and elit­ism. To pro­tect your­self from the neg­a­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al im­pact you can ei­ther go in­to fight or flight mode. Let me share a per­son­al ex­am­ple of a fight to stay in the game—To be bet­ter, not bit­ter; to go high when oth­ers go low; to rise and not fall.

A new vi­sion and ideas pro­posed dur­ing my time as T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), T&T Com­mon­wealth Games (TTC­GA) and T&T Sand and Beach Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTS­B­GA) pres­i­dents were well re­ceived: bid to host the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games 2021, Pan on de Podi­um, Fu­ture is Fe­male, Re­place Guns With Medals, Medal bonus­es, 10 Golds24, TTOC mar­ket de­part­ment, propos­ing a pub­lic hous­ing pol­i­cy for TEAM TTO ath­letes, the TTOC Gold Foun­da­tion, three non-prof­it TeamT­TO com­pa­nies, a TTS­B­GA, TTOC Gov­er­nance Com­mis­sion, TTOC Youth Com­mis­sion, TTOC ath­lete wel­fare and pro­grammes de­part­ment and Sport In­dus­try TT.

How­ev­er, in 2013, I ran for the TTOC pres­i­den­cy and was made to feel in­fe­ri­or, in­com­pe­tent, in­ca­pable and un­sup­port­ed. I was told I wasn’t at the lev­el to head an in­sti­tu­tion such as the TTOC. It re­quired a high­er cal­i­bre of in­di­vid­ual with ac­cess and a net­work that was be­yond my reach and in­flu­ence. I was urged to stay as sec­re­tary gen­er­al.

In 2014, I was con­sid­ered for the pres­i­den­cy of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC). In­flu­en­tial Trin­bag­on­ian col­leagues cam­paigned and lob­bied against my can­di­da­cy.

In re­cent years, I have been told to cut my afro, take out my braids, called a “saga boy” be­cause of my sar­to­r­i­al pro­cliv­i­ty and hung out to dry in the court of pub­lic and me­dia opin­ion. I am un­apolo­getic and un­afraid of “or else.”

In 2016, in­ter­nal de­ci­sions were made with­in TTOC, as the leader at the time, I stood in the gap notwith­stand­ing my views and vote.

The right thing to do was re­spect democ­ra­cy. Oth­ers are not held to the same stan­dard of ac­count­abil­i­ty and car­ry no detri­men­tal long-term con­se­quences. They con­tin­ue to be held out as paragons of virtue and role mod­els who rep­re­sent the best of T&T. That’s life in the ‘House built by Colo­nial­ism, slav­ery and the Transat­lantic Slave Trade’.

De­pend­ing on who—those ad­vo­cat­ing for equal­i­ty and so­cial jus­tice are brand­ed con­fronta­tion­al, abra­sive, con­tentious and an­gry while oth­ers are called com­mit­ted, ded­i­cat­ed, pas­sion­ate and self­less.

Glob­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions can­not re­tain their au­ton­o­my and self-reg­u­lat­ed sta­tus if they don’t em­brace the re­shaped fu­ture.

A broad­er view and role of sport and the use of his­to­ry to change the fu­ture, is up­on us. The bi­na­ry hege­mo­ny of glob­al sport must rein­vent and be­come di­verse for the mind­set and at­ti­tude to change.

Earned au­ton­o­my and good gov­er­nance aren’t pos­si­ble where anachro­nis­tic at­ti­tudes and cul­tures that re­flect so­ci­etal prej­u­dices and as­sump­tions about who pos­sess­es the skills and qual­i­ties to run things con­tin­ue to os­tracise those who chal­lenge un­con­scious bias and prej­u­dices be­cause they look and act a cer­tain way.