Mets’ Smith speaks out on encountering ‘racism on every level’
Dominic Smith, like many other athletes, has had to transition from one pandemic to another.
The four-year Mets veteran started his spring helping sports’ campaign to pause during the coronavirus outbreak. Now, he’s refocused his social media feeds on speaking out against racism and social injustice in the third week of protests after the killing of George Floyd.
“When I got drafted in 2013 and left Los Angeles, I finally understood what my parents have been teaching me my whole life,” Smith, 24, wrote in a post to his Instagram and Twitter pages on Sunday. “As a black man in America you encounter racism on every level. Your parents prep you for it. They prep you for routine police stops. They prep you on how to talk to people with respect.
“When you have one strike against you (your skin color) you have to make the people you come across like you, and you do it with respect, with a smile, with love,” Smith said. “I didn’t understand it as a kid. I went to predominantly black schools my whole life, so when I got into the real world, it hit me. I saw how we were oppressed firsthand… I saw how I wasn’t equal and treated unfairly just because of my skin color. Without people even trying to get to know me, they already had a perception in their head of who I was.
“I’m not saying all people have prejudice or are racist because they’re not,” Smith continued. “I’m just speaking on personal experiences I’ve had.”
Smith joins a long list of black athletes who have spoken out.
On Friday, ex-Yankee Gary Sheffield, via the Players Tribune in an essay titled, “Do You Believe Me Now?” shared how he was brutalized by Tampa police in 1986 while still a prospect in the Brewers’ minor-league system. Sheffield was with Mets ace Doc Gooden, who was also beaten by cops.
“I was with my uncle Dwight Gooden and some friends at a University of South Florida basketball game. As we were leaving in three separate cars, we were all pulled over without cause. The police detained my uncle — put him in cuffs and slammed him face-first to the ground… They proceeded to beat all of us unmercifully.”
“It shouldn’t have taken the death of so many innocent men and women for the world to take notice,” Smith wrote. “And if we didn’t have social media or smart phones, how many more innocent lives would we have lost? SILENCE KILLS.”
“The system has been killing African-Americans and minorities for hundreds of years and enough is enough,” Smith exclaimed. “I don’t want to fear being stopped by a police officer or looked down because of my skin color!… It’s not acceptable, it’s not okay, it’s not ethical. Our people have been fighting for decades and we’re still here today, reaching another chapter of Black Lives Matter.”