For Tolani Ibikunle it made sense. He tries not to think of it often, but sometimes when you’re black it’s not always ignorable.

The Major League Soccer 2014 third-round pick for the Colorado Rapids has spoken to his friends in the league about this before. There’s an implicit bias in refereeing in the MLS and other pro leagues nationwide.

“It’s an interesting medium,” Ibikunle told SB Nation this week. “I’m not going to say there isn’t an implicit bias because, as hard as it is, I’m not the first person to pull that card. It is there and in every environment. It’s the reality of the way the world is. Let’s be honest.”

The bias in judgement can result in subconscious attitudes or behaviors. The unconscious stereotyping acts in response to a person’s motives and are usually directed at commonly oppressed groups. In this case: black and brown athletes.

This rhetoric caught the MLS and PRO Referees Organization off guard recently after a Paste Magazine article dissected 2016 MLS regular season disciplinary data in an independent, but flawed, study. The data showed that black players are 14 percent more likely to be called for cautions than their non-black counterparts. Black players are also more than twice as likely to receive red card ejections, per the study. This puts black players at a competitive disadvantage as soon as they step on the pitch.

The big flaw is leaving out Hispanic players and other international players since the MLS boasts players from 61 other countries. It appears that black Hispanic players were counted as black for this study. Kendall Waston, the league leader in red cards, is Hispanic and black. Diego Chara, the league leader in fouls, is as well.

Another flaw is the study uses only one year of data. It’s likely to be heavily influenced by a smaller set of players. This year, the top nine players in fouls are Hispanic or non-white. Six of those players are black. The other three are non-black Hispanic.

The Professional Referee Organization (PRO) said in a statement to SB Nation that the article’s methodology is imperfect and their approach has obvious limitations. PRO claimed that the organization is “100 percent confident” there is no racial bias in refereeing.

“The Professional Referee Organization’s referees are focused on many aspects of the game, but the color of a player’s skin is never taken into consideration when an official makes a decision during a match,” PRO general manager Peter Walton said. “PRO has a strong commitment to diversity, and we are 100 percent confident that there is no racial bias in officiating in MLS, NASL, USL, and NWSL. We have no tolerance for discrimination and prejudice of any kind, and our referees adhere to our standards of respect and dignity for all. A non-discrimination clause is included in our collective bargaining agreement with the Professional Soccer Referees Association.”

An MLS spokesperson declined to comment on the matter, saying that PRO is more appropriate to respond “since MLS is one of many leagues PRO referees officiate.” But assuming an official is immune to racial bias, explicit or implicit, is absolutist and can’t possibly be true.

Results like these have to eventually stop coming as a surprise, according to Roger Kittleson, a history professor at Williams College who studies soccer’s history in Latin America.

“(The findings) shouldn’t be shocking because it’s where we are in this country right now,” he said. “Anyone who thinks that race has faded away in any realm of life is obviously kidding themselves.”

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise at all that race, which people are usually only subconsciously aware of, is also there shaping decisions in every match we watch or play in,” Williams said.

The biases noted are an extension of unchecked social issues in American history. Like most sports, black soccer players are stereotyped due to assumptions about their physical attributes. Racial stacking occurs. This phenomena places players in, assumed, more athletic positions that require less tact. Black players will get recruited as attackers and get routinely moved to defensive positions.

Ibikunle noted this, mentioning his former teammate Chris Duvall at Wake Forest. Duvall came into the ACC as a right midfielder. Wake’s coach at the time, Jay Vidovich, moved Duvall to right back. Duvall ended up getting drafted as the 22nd overall pick in the 2014 MLS draft. But, he didn’t ask to play right back. He was recruited as a midfielder. The assumption was that it was for the good of the club.

Duvall found success as an MLS defender, but the chances that he’d soar as a winger are unknown. He was never given the chance to develop at that position.

“Chris played right mid his whole life, couldn’t play defense if you paid him,” Ibikunle said before commenting about the current status race has in America. “Look who our president is. We know what it’s like. We know (racism) is there. But, I don’t go searching for it or coming up with ideas for it even if it does exist ... this stuff happens but worrying about if it’s there or not there, it becomes tiring.”

The inherent, racist culture soccer has produced goes beyond just officiating bias. The culture has always attacked black players, even internationally, according to Peter Alegi, a Michigan State professor and one of the world’s best minds on soccer.

It goes beyond the banana-waving ultras at Fenerbahçe or Zenit. It’s more robust than the managers who give fewer opportunities to black players. The lack of black managers and a current culture commonly seen from fan and player behavior from England to Russia to Brazil is inescapable.

So, while finding empirical data is difficult, Alegi said, there’s plenty of soft and hard discrimination to believe the bias can take hold in refereeing. American soccer is not excused.

“It can’t be denied,” Alegi said. “Racism in soccer, in Europe certainly, is very real. And, regrettably, despite all the progress that’s been made in terms of messaging and tolerance in local football culture, it’s still there. And everybody knows it.”

A Feb. 2015 study from Thomas Dohmen and Jan Sauermann stated that most literature in America focuses biased behavior on a player’s race. Realistically, the blame is shared. Soccer’s culture has affected its black players. Each league, the officiating, fans, and more, are complicit in the problem.

Erin Simon, a former forward on the University of Kentucky’s women’s soccer team, said that for most of her career she’s encountered these biases. They are abundant in soccer, she said. The undertone is something that can’t be ignored.

“I've had players or coaches that told their players to hurt me, or been called a monkey or a ni**er,” she said. “Even beyond racial biases, that's just how life is, unfortunately. It's our responsibility not to let our subconscious biases dictate our actions or responses. But, could there be implicit biases from some refs? Yes.”