The Elephant in CrossFit’s Living Room.

I’ve had an issue with the lack of BIPOC in CrossFit stewing in my head for a while. Not a few days or months, but quite literally a few years. One of those things that silently affects you but you pretend it doesn’t exist to your own detriment, like high blood pressure. This past summer, the proverbial aneurysm occurred.

CrossFit leadership’s elephant in the room was finally caught at the junction of the Black Lives Movement, the most profound social and racial justice issue of the decade, and fumbled publicly. They not only chose to ignore the social climate but went further making light of the death of George Floyd, which proved all too much for the now “fired” CEO and his archaic, racist, and sexist train of thought. It seemed as if CrossFit would be part of the larger change in sports like Nascar or the NFL.

Here we are the final days of 2020 with a changed guard at the CrossFit HQ, and I still field the same questions I did back in 2011 when I first started calling myself a “CrossFitter” and later when in 2014, I became one of the few Black CrossFit Box Owners. Questions which I believe most shareholders and stakeholders are struggling to grasp.

“Why does CrossFit lack diversity?”

“Why so few Minorities/Black athletes at The CrossFit Games?”

To answer the question we have to look into the meaning of the word diversity to truly grasp the answer to the first question. Oxford Languages defines diversity as

“ The practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations.”

The action words that jump out at us from the definition are “including or involving”. Without Inclusion, there is no diversity. One is a product of the other. So, the question we should be asking is not how to make CrossFit more diverse, which is the goal many corporations set, but rather

How does one create an “inclusive” brand or company?

It begins from the top with an equitable hiring process of Directors, Board Members, and Senior Managers. These upper-tier shareholders I refer to as gatekeepers. If these shareholders are of a substantial or fully representative range of ethnicities, backgrounds, genders et al, then it should naturally flow that junior staff, the day-to-day processes, products, and services offered by the company will be naturally inclusive and diverse. It will be effortless and natural.

What tends to happen though is that the gatekeepers tend to be overwhelmingly white and male and they consciously or unconsciously hire more of the same. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, it’s been the norm and it perpetuates exclusion.

This leads to tone-deaf decision making caused by the herd effect of common experiences, backgrounds, genders shared by the singular majority holding the decision making powers. An unsustainable model for conducting business with a diverse clientele.

Moving from the top down to the consumer or customer-facing side of the brand

How does one create an “inclusive” brick and mortar facility?

I listened to an episode of Molonza Hayes III youtube station this past weekend. A Black CrossFitter who I respect to the highest degree in and out of the gym. He voiced his experience on starting at a CrossFit gym a few years ago and it mirrored mine. He posed an interesting question.

“What is CrossFit going to do to make the brand more comfortable for Minorities?”

An interesting question but I believe it should be posed in the inverse. The tone of the question conveys that minorities want or need “handouts”. This tone only serves to continue to reinforce implicit biases and negative racial stereotypes. I ask instead:

“What is CrossFit going to do to make the brand less uncomfortable for Minorities?”.

Doing this work would mean:

• More Inclusive HQ staff
• More inclusive marketing
• More communication and touchpoints on socially responsible causes.
• A brand code of ethics with an explicit zero tolerance for all the isms, sexism, racism, homophobia etc.

What does this look like at the most basic consumer level, the neighborhood Box?

• Boxes creating a safe space for all
• Boxes taking part in community programs and local social causes.
• Boxes shutting down toxic incidents amongst it’s client base with clear and open communication and directives gleaned from the Brand code of ethics.

This does work! I have done it for the past 6 years.

Dean CrossFit is the current iteration of my business. The prior brand CrossFit Prospect Heights existed for 6 years. Over those years staff, owners, and members took part collectively in initiatives seeded by my leadership. Brooklyn Pride Weekend Parade participation, canned food drives for hurricane-damaged communities in the Caribbean, speaking at local High Schools just to name a few.

The second most asked question I have received over the years:

“Why are there so few Black athletes at the CrossFit Games?”

I cringe when I hear the most popular answer to this question. “CrossFit is too expensive for Minorities”. This is almost as insulting a lie as the statement made by Wells Fargo CEO, Charlie Scharf who blamed his corporation’s lack of diversity on the falsehood, lack of Black talent.

The answer is a blend of issues that I will dissect from major to minor.

1. There is no money in CrossFit. Unless you are that sole Champion at the top, Crossfit does not offer the financial/economic reward and freedom for minority talent that traditional sports like Football, Basketball, or Track and Field offer. This is the greatest reason we don’t see a significant number of racial and ethnic minorities at The CrossFit Games. The socio-economic history of the United States as it pertains to race and the resulting disparity in generational wealth and education makes the decision a no brainer for the everyday top tier black High School Athlete. Why should he or she explore their talents in the direction of CrossFit? A sport that offers no College scholarships, no big league contracts after College, no Olympic Team dreams and it’s ensuing monetary potential gain. We can’t afford to roll the dice on that one a few generations shy of outright slavery and Jim Crow era “stressors”. So till then, CrossFit will simply be a training vehicle for the hundreds of naturally gifted black athletes coming out of the nation’s High Schools and not their dedicated sport. This is the major reason why there lacks Black talent at the CrossFit Games.
2. The second reason build’s on my discussion on “diversity” and which Molonza Hayes touched on in his Youtube episode. The basic atomic unit of the brand is the community CrossFit Box. Until these places are made less uncomfortable for minorities, until the marketing face of the brand is more inclusive, until the people in charge are reflective of a more diverse demographic, then the CrossFit box, for the most part, will not be conducive to the grooming of those few Black and Brown athletes that choose to really give the sport a fair shot. Minorities experience every form of subtle racism and passive-aggressive insults daily at work and school, why should we now turn around and pay to be a part of a community that isn’t welcoming. That treats us differently. I have experienced it many times in my years here in NYC prior to opening my own facility. I have experienced it visiting boxes in certain parts of the US. I even experienced it at the CrossFit Games as a Country Coach for Trinidad and Tobago. It was the same palpable vibe I felt at national sales conferences when I worked in the Pharmaceutical industry, walking into a ballroom with hundreds of executives and being one of only three black or brown faces present. People read the room. It takes a special type of person to work through that consistently day after day. It is emotionally laborious and taxing work for Black and Brown people to exist in white spaces that give us spoken and unspoken discomfort.

So as we open 2021 post aneurysm, with this Fitness brand I have remained both critical but loyal to, I hope they use their newly minted resources and a new vision to ask the right questions. That means asking the right questions to the right people, the minority stakeholders who have experienced the good and the bad that the brand has offered over the years. And follow other sports to be leaders in this country in doing the right thing in rebuilding a more equitable and more diverse machine from the top down. It’s the least we deserve.