Analysis by Nour Chanouha, Contributor

June 24th, 2020

“The “serlankiyye” came to class” was how 10 year old Aziza was greeted on her first day of school when she fled war in Liberia to settle in her second home country, Lebanon. Having been raised in the setting of an international school in Liberia, with classmates from diverse races and nationalities, young Aziza innocently corrected her Lebanese classmates: “I am not from Sri Lanka. I am Lebanese and Liberian”.

Little did she know at this younger age that this racial slur was just the beginning of what she would endure and continues to, for being a woman of color in Lebanon. However, rather than letting her skin color define who she is, Aziza lets the records she broke on track speak for themselves. Aziza Sbaity, who holds the 100 meters national record of 11.73 seconds and the national title over that distance for the past six years, stands proudly as the fastest woman in Lebanese history. In a conversation with The Phoenix Daily, she shares her experience of what was it like to shatter the glass ceiling and come up victorious not just on track, but from an arduous fight against racial discrimination in Lebanon. 

Worrying about how she had to braid her hair in order to avoid being called various discriminating and demeaning appellations or being asked to stand in a different lane for “non-Lebanese” at the airport paint the picture of what, in a nutshell, Aziza faces daily. Even in international championships, many of her competitors have often assumed that she was granted the Lebanese passport for the achievements she could bring for Lebanon on the international scene as naturalization in sports continues to grow. A few years back, she recalls the day when with no prior training, she showed up at her school’s track and field tryouts and beat everyone, boys and girls. That day, she felt that being black helped her distinguish herself positively from others.

To those who would claim that being black gave her the advantage of speed, Aziza responds that “Michael Phelps is not who he is because he is white, just like I am not fast because I am black. It is all about training”. Just like swimming, track and field is a sport where it is the time you clock that gets you a place on the podium, nothing else. With that, sports became a source of confidence for Aziza who is now training to represent the colors of her country at the Tokyo 202(1) Olympics.  

Fortunately, Aziza earned the respect of everyone on the track and is very well supported by her family, friends, and teammates. However, she claims that having been able to prove herself in sports and to reach the point where she is Aziza the elite sprinter rather than Aziza the black athlete does not mean that she turns her blind eye on racism in Lebanon that she qualifies as being “systematic and systemic”. When she is not on the track, Aziza still gets stopped on the street and asked how much she takes an hour, a reference to the hourly rate domestic workers are paid in exchange of their cleaning service. In fact, Aziza considers the Kafala system as being an example of modern-day slavery that has blacklisted Lebanon among other nations which international activists like Naomi Campbell condemn for the micro-aggressions they harbor against minorities of color.  

 Yet, beyond governmental laws that preserve the Kafala system and that requires urgent reformation, Aziza stresses the importance of reshaping the mentality of youth. Racism is so engrained in the Lebanese culture that she believes that change must start in schools and homes. Although they are rooted in different historical backgrounds, George Floyd’s “I can’t breathe” is no different than Faustina Tay’s “I’m scared; they might kill me”. According to statistics from Lebanon’s General Security Intelligence Agency, Tay is among two workers that commit suicide every week in Lebanon for being victims of a system that strips workers of basic human rights and traps them in a vicious cycle of abuse. 

With stars like Usain Bolt, Allyson Felix and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce all being black, track and field has been more or less shielded from the grip of racism. Beyond track and field, there is no doubt that the attention the Black Lives Matter movement is currently gathering worldwide has shaken the sports community. As African American national soccer player Crystal Dunn put it: “The way people view us in sports directly translates to how they view us on the streets, walking down the block”.

As a result, Serena Williams and Ibtihaj Muhammad are among numerous Olympians who are being vocal about the racial discrimination they faced during their careers. Some other athletes, like former CrossFit games winner Katrin Davidsdottir, went even further to announce their disaffiliation from the brand following the now-resigned CEO Greg Glassman’s racial statements. Coming back to Lebanon, Aziza Sbaity’s journey has definitely changed the narrative and started the conversation on normalizing racial diversity and inclusivity in sports: “I hope that one day, everyone will be able to see beyond my skin color and look at me as the fastest woman in Lebanese history, period. Not the fastest black woman in Lebanese history.”