Challenge the Comments
Despite 2020 being one many of us would like to forget, Lewis Hamilton has had a very memorable year. Winning his 7th Formula 1 World Championship, breaking Micheal Schumacher’s record 91 wins, pioneering a long overdue equality movement in F1, being named in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2020 and winning BBC Sports Personality Of The Year to name a few. But with this great success comes great negativity.
Pic: @mercedesamgf1 on Instagram
It isn’t hard to see that all drivers experience negative comments on their posts, this is just something that comes with being in the public eye. However, when it comes to Lewis Hamilton there is an extremely high content of abusive comments left under many of his posts or articles about him. There is a difference between criticising someone for a poor performance (although many of us are definitely not in the position to be criticising a driver for something we cannot do ourselves), being in the wrong situation or being rude to constantly hurling hatred at someone who has consistently shown improvement and empowerment.
Pic: gettyimages
An example of the anger that seems to follow Lewis is recently after he had won BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Sports Personality of the Year is made to highlight the great successes of sportsmen and women of that year and is voted for by the public, showing that Lewis Hamilton has the support of the public behind him after one of his most successful years in his career yet. Somehow, on facebook posts especially, when the media announced that Lewis Hamilton had won the award there was an outpouring of abuse towards him in the comments. These comments casted a harsh shadow over the many positive ones which was upsetting to see. Here are just a few examples of the typical hurtful comments I found on a facebook post;
“Not deserved”
“Seriously why? Why would anyone vote for this idiot?”
“Glad I didn’t waste my time watching it”
“The wrong person has definitely won!”
These negative comments were ones that many people can ignore and that we see on many posts of people in the public eye. However, comments that mention race with negative connotations is not something we should ignore but is something we should address.
“The unfortunate thing about awards in the next year or two, is that if you aren’t white, was the award genuinely because of talent or tokenism?”
When a kind commenter stated: “Such a brilliant lad, why all the hatred?”
Another commenter simply replied: “Because he took the knee”
These commenters blatantly disregard any of the achievements that Lewis has fought for this year. What should be addressed is stigma around successful POC in sport and how for some unknown reason their race makes them unable to achieve such a prestigious award. This is a frequent problem for POC in sport, in some comments they are undermined because of their race when it comes to an achievement they receive?? Race does not make anyone any less competitive, determined and able to achieve highly. Many POC in sports face microaggresions daily and without action on calling out a few comments like these or anything you believe to be unacceptable, there will never be a change in attitudes from people who leave comments like this. Help to educate people on the connotations behind comments and microaggressions like these and take step in the right direction.
While hateful comments are hard to escape from and is something that comes as a sacrifice when stepping into a role in the limelight, hate comments about race towards anyone are completely unacceptable.
Happy New Year! We want to thank you for the support you have given us even in these challenging times we were able to create a project very close to our hearts and we are thankful for every single one of yous who take the time to read our blog! We hope 2021 will be a better and more exciting year for us all!
We hoped you enjoyed our post this week! We will see you soon!
Soph & Sach
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