Boldin fights on amid despair
The words just haven’t come. Choked out – by anger and tears shed over yet another African-American’s senseless murder at the hands of someone sworn to protect and serve, fitful nights of sleep as the images of George Floyd’s final moments replay on loop, and exhaustion from trying to correct and explain racial insensitivities to ignorant people – my creative juices refused to flow as I tried in vain to pen my feelings in recent days.
My usual optimism over change – the belief that I am living my ancestors’ wildest dreams – plunged to an all-time low. Virtually nonexistent.
All last week, I struggled to keep the faith. This weekend, as well-intentioned protests were hijacked by evil opportunists nationwide, my feelings of helplessness only grew. So too did my anger over repeated indignant and sermonette social media posts from privileged individuals who remained silent following Floyd’s death – ruled a homicide Monday by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office and an autopsy commissioned by his family – but jumped on soapboxes to condemn the riots that ensued.
I can’t recall a point in my lifetime when I felt so hopeless on the racial equality front. Commiserations with immediate family and adopted brothers and sisters helped a little. So too did the words of support from non-minorities who do long to understand and help.
But then came Monday afternoon’s talk with another black man – a father, like me, who craves a hate-free America where his children can grow up. That’s when Anquan Boldin, one of the strongest and most prominent NFL social justice warriors, offered the reminder that regardless of how dark and heavy the cloud hanging over us, despair is the one thing that we can’t afford.
“Did I think it was going to be easy?” asked Boldin, who retired almost three years ago to devote himself fully to fighting social injustice.
“No. I’ve always been a fighter. In my neighborhood, if you didn’t fight, good luck! But that’s what we’re going to have to continue to do. Not some of us, all of us.”
It’s hard to understand why something so far from right continues to take place.
But here we are again, just weeks after the men in Georgia who hunted down and killed Ahmaud Arbery this February for being black were finally arrested. Here we are, just months after Louisville police broke into Breonna Taylor’s apartment in the middle of the night and pumped her full of bullets.
The Black Lives Matter chant drones on. But it again feels as if no one is listening. And justice remains elusive.
“I think the disheartening part about it is,” said Boldin, while discussing the Floyd tragedy, “if we gave this scenario to any 7-, 8-, 9-year-old and told them, ‘This is what happened,’ and we asked them what should happen to this guy that killed this man – from every last one of them, we would get the exact same answer: That this guy should go to jail, and he should serve time.
“How is it that adults cannot get this right?” he continued. “How is it that you have different opinions about the right way to take care of this? How is it that this guy is not immediately charged and prosecuted for murdering somebody? And not only them, but those that stood around and allowed him to do this. What kind of world are we living in? What kind of country are we living in that everybody isn’t seeing this as – it is what it is, it’s a murder. … We’ve got people worried about the looting and the rioting when all that could be prevented if you guys had done the right thing.”
Every time a senseless killing like this occurs, it rips off a scab for Boldin. His cousin, Corey Jones, was shot and killed by an on-duty police officer in 2015 after Jones’ car broke down on the side of a Florida road.
Two years later, Boldin retired and helped found the Players Coalition, which works with local and state governments to end systematic oppression.
He and his NFL brethren have protested. They have raised millions of dollars. They have funded education initiatives. Lobbied lawmakers on criminal justice reform and voters’ rights. They have tried to serve as bridges between communities and law enforcement agencies.
But the police brutality continues, and frustration remains high.
“We’re at a point now as a nation where we have to ask ourselves, ‘What is it that’s allowing this to continue to happen? What are we fighting?’” Boldin wonders. “That’s an honest question that we have to have as a nation, because there is something that continues to allow these types of actions to take place in our country and not be dealt with in a proper manner.”
The “something” is the system, Boldin explains. It’s protection that bad cops have exploited as they abuse their positions of power. It’s partnerships that district attorneys have formed with police departments that cause them to respond to crimes like the killings of Arbery, Taylor and Floyd with leniency.
“I’m in this to expose all the things in the system that allow these things to go on,” Boldin said, his voice crackling with emotion. “We have to educate ourselves, and we also have to understand that we are the ones that elect DAs and state attorneys.
“We put them in those seats, so it’s on us to understand … what policies they stand for. We have to be knowledgeable enough to vote these people up out of those seats. Because I guarantee you if the right person was elected DA in that region, that (Arbery) case would not have sat there for two-and-a-half, three months. We would have had somebody who did the right thing the first time around – not someone who was trying to protect the offenders.”
Knowledge is indeed power, and the polls offer impactful opportunities for justice-craving men and women to flex their muscle. But that will never happen if we allow the pain and anger of the last week and month to fade. In this country, we tend to suffer from short attention spans. Outrage quickly dwindles and efforts fade into distant memories until the next tragedy strikes.