Two Lions know the pain of racism protests in the U.S.
Burnham says strength is gained when CFL teammates support each other as human beings
Bryan Burnham was born and raised in Moorestown, N.J., a leafy eastern suburb of Philadelphia that’s generally rated among the better places to live in the United States.
Burnham’s father Lem is a decorated Vietnam veteran who played for the Eagles and eventually became the NFL team’s psychologist. He has an uncle who is a cop in Philly. Two of his high school coaches were cops.
Growing up, Burnham had a circle of four close friends. Three were white. One was black. He calls them his brothers.
“I was pretty much sheltered from racial tension,” the B.C. Lions receiver says over the phone.
Burnham left home to attend the University of Tulsa, the site of one of the worst race riots in American history.
He remembers being pulled over by the cops three times when he starred for the Golden Hurricane. The first two times were for speeding and were without incident.
The third wasn’t, and it still sticks to Burnham, a scar that will never heal.
“He was an older, white officer,” says the B.C. Lions receiver. “He told me I’d done something I hadn’t.
“I said, ‘Sir, I didn’t do that.’ He got very aggressive and said, ‘You calling me a liar, boy?’ I was 19 and I thought of myself as this big tough guy, but at that moment I was scared.”
Burnham and wife Aubrey have made Tulsa their off-season home. A mixed-race couple, they have close friends there, and in Burnham’s words, they have met many great people in the Oklahoma city.
But there are times when they walk into a restaurant and they can feel the room stop and stare.
He’s asked how the protests and riots that have followed the murder of George Floyd have affected him.
“I haven’t been able to sleep thinking about everything that’s going on,” he admits. “It’s seems so simple, but it’s 2020 and we’re still talking about it.
“It’s a terrible thing we’re facing, but the thing that gives me hope is so many people — black, white, Asian — are speaking out against it. I’ve gotten so much support from people in Canada. They don’t understand it, but they show their support, and that goes a long way.”
And maybe, just maybe, it leads us somewhere.
Wednesday marked the ninth consecutive day that Americans have taken to the streets to signal they have had enough, that they’re tired of waiting for change, and this time they’re going to seize it.
Police brutality and Floyd’s death is the flashpoint, but this is about something bigger, a 400-year history of oppression and subjugation that reaches into every part of American life.
This time there have been demonstrations in all 50 states. This time there have been demonstrations in Canada — and we have our own sins to answer for — and in the U.K., in France, the Netherlands, Turkey and Kenya.
There have been other movements and other incidents that sparked outrage but, as Burnham says: “This is different.”
Geroy Simon, for one, hopes so.
Simon was raised in Johnstown, an industrial town in western Pennsylvania most famous for a flood in 1889 and as the home of the Johnstown Jets, the real-life inspiration for the Charlestown Chiefs of Slap Shot fame.
In Canada, we don’t think of western Pennsylvania as a racially charged area, certainly not like the Deep South. But Simon tells a different story.
“Oh man, it has issues,” says the Hall of Fame receiver and current B.C. Lions’ scout.
“I try to take the positive out of everything and I talk about the greatness of my hometown. But it was in your face. The more I talk about it the more I remember.”
Like high school games when an opposition defensive back would look at him and casually say: “You ain’t doing nothing today, nigger.”
“I lived with it for 17 years,” Simon says. “I tried not to let it affect me, but I was so determined I was going to get out of there when I had the opportunity.”
Simon went to Maryland, near Washington D.C., and he thought he had stepped into a different world. He saw black doctors, professors, lawyers and business leaders. He saw affluence among his people.
Then one day, as he was preparing for the NFL draft, he walked out of his apartment and learned it never really leaves you. It’s always there, lurking, ready to steal something from you.
“I was talking to this (agent) who wanted to represent me,” Simon says. “We walked out and there were two cops. One of them had a gun and he ordered me to the ground.”
At first, Simon didn’t comply. Why should he? He had done nothing wrong.
Then, with his would-be agent pleading and the gun still pointed his way, he got on the ground.
The cops looked at his ID. Mistaken identity, they said.
We had reports and this is a bad neighbourhood, they said.
“It wasn’t,” Simon says. “It traumatized me. I can’t lie about that. It affected me and it still does to this day.”
Simon is asked if every black player on the Lions has a similar story to tell.
“I would say 90 per cent of black guys who grew up in the U.S. have had a bad experience with the police,” he says.
When asked the same question, Burnham says: “I think most of the black players in our locker-room have stories that would make you sad.”
This one might make you feel better: On Tuesday, Burnham took part in a Zoom meeting with Lions’ quarterback Mike Reilly and the team’s receiving corps: a white guy and five black guys from all over the U.S. and Canada.
It’s generally a skull session where the playbook is dissected and Reilly takes the lead role in the conversation. But this time the quarterback wanted to talk about something else. This time he wanted to talk about what was going on in the U.S.
“That was awesome,” Burnham says. “There’s been a lot of pent-up frustrations. We’re all cooped up (because of COVID-19) and this stuff weighs on you. To be able to talk about it was a great release.
“These are people I have to depend on and they just don’t support me as a football player. They support me as a human being. In the locker-room we learn to put our differences aside for the same goal.”
If only we could all learn to do the same.
I would say 90 per cent of black guys who grew up in the U.S. have had a bad experience with the police.”
Geroy Simon