Athletes embrace opportunity to address inequality

Last week I shared a post with my Facebook friends and Twitter followers that I thought would put smiles on their faces amid our political news that feels like a tempest. “I’m done reading the news today and will spend the evening reading my happy news, which is anything sports related,” I blissfully announced.

Well, the day after that post, New England Patriots’ running back LaGarrette Blount became the fifth player from the Super Bowl LI championship team to tell the media that he would be skipping the White House visit with President Donald Trump. Blount was pretty much blunt in his reasoning: “I just don’t feel welcome into that house. I’m just gonna leave it at that.” The other Patriots who have decided not to make the trip to Washington are Chris Long, Martellus Bennett, Devin McCourty, Don’t’a Hightower, and Alan Branch.

So much for happy news. Honestly, with that post I was trying to slip into a transient moment where I could get a bit of relief from the ongoing rancor toward specific Trump Cabinet appointees and the slugfest that Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway and chief strategist Steve Bannon continue to have with the media.

However, I expected athletes to jump into the political fray in the age of a Trump administration that has attempted to barrel a seven majority-Muslim-nation travel ban through an executive order without proper judicial review and deliberately dilute ethics lines.

So far, only Blount, Bennett, Long and McCourty have specifically stated political reasons for not meeting Trump, and Bennett and Long have been in a war of words with fans and trolls on Twitter that has resulted in some heated racial exchanges. Bennett boldly tweeted right after the Super Bowl that “I was a black man yesterday and I’m going to be a black man tomorrow” and asserted that he was going to speak his mind because for “a looonng time my ancestors didn’t have a voice.”

Long, who is white, received a string of tweets this week accusing him of actually hating white people and thinking that he is “selfimportant.” In one of his retorts, he mentioned the birther movement against former President Barack Obama.

The outspokenness of the Patriots’ players along with the recent surge of athletes who are lending their voices and influence to social activism has made some sports fans uncomfortable and extremely irritated. Yet, what those who just want athletes to “shut up and play ball” forget is that sport is a microcosm of our society. When we examine racial and structural inequalities in our country, the sporting world has served as a political platform for athletes to speak out against injustices.

What we are seeing now mirrors the 1960s sports activism during the civilrights movement. The raised fists for the national anthem by Bennett and McCourty, along with other NFL players like the Los Angeles Rams’ Robert Quinn and Kenny Britt during regular season games, evoked memories of John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising their black-gloved fists on the medal stand at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.

Last year we saw New York Knicks’ superstar Carmelo Anthony call for athletes to hold their congressional representatives and local leaders accountable and tennis great Serena Williams speak up about police shootings of black men after winning her 22nd Grand Slam title at Wimbledon. These athletes are standing on the shoulders of their pioneering predecessors Jim Brown, Wilma Rudolph, Bill Willis, Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, to name a few.

We are in a political era now where many athletes will not stay silent regarding issues that are of importance to them. The immigration, racial, and gender debates that have swirled with controversy surrounding Trump and his administration have fueled a compelling social consciousness. I doubt Trump is really concerned about a few Patriots’ players missing the traditional presidential Super Bowl photo-opt, but he should be paying close attention to athletes’ civic engagement because it’s not going away.