Province teams up with BC Lions in bid to tackle racism

Vancouver -

In an effort to combat racism in schools, the B.C. Ministry of Education will partner with the BC Lions to have coaches and players conduct classroom workshops, and some of the football stars will be speaking from personal experience.

Former running back Sean Millington lined up in the Lions backfield for 10 seasons, winning two Grey Cups, capturing a the league’s Most Outstanding Canadian Award twice, and eventually landing in the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame.

But while growing up in North Vancouver, long before he became a household name to Canadian football fans, a group of kids taunted him with a different name.

“I remember riding down the street on my bicycle one day, and going by these kids, and they looked over at me and said ‘Oh hey man! There goes Willis,'” Millington said, referring to a black character on the sitcom Different Strokes. “If it’s a black kid in North Vancouver, it must be Willis.”

Millington was on hand at BC Place Friday for the kickoff of the Lions partnership with the Ministry of Education, along with several other BC Lions alumni.

The $115,000 initiative will feature in-person and online components, including a reporting tool.

“Students can report acts of racism, acts of harassment, or any negative experiences that they may have had at school,” said Education Minister Jennifer Whiteside.

Initially, the workshops will take place in 20 schools, but province-wide students will have access to the Erase Racism website.

“It will talk about things like micro-aggressions, it will talk about systemic racism. It will talk about privilege and helping children to understand that,” said Jamie Taras, a former Lions lineman and the team’s current director of community development. “And then what can they do to take action? What are the types of things that they can do to help make things better, to help make a difference.”

Millington didn’t confront the kids who taunted him, but these days he doesn’t think twice about calling out racism when he sees it.

“As an adult, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down sometimes and have some frank discussions and express that there’s different ways to look at this,” he said. “And hopefully this is what this program is all about – helping people to have the tools necessary to address racism wherever it comes up. Hopefully, we can reduce the incidents and actually eliminate it.”