MORE THAN JUST FERGUSON
The gesture of five football players speaks to life for blacks in the U.S.
Five members of the St. Louis Rams delivered a powerful statement during player introductions prior to their game against the Oakland Raiders Sunday afternoon, and they should be applauded for having the courage to do so.
As their names and numbers were called out, Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin, Jared Cook, Chris Givens and Kenny Britt exited the tunnel leading to the field with their arms in the air, mimicking the “hands up, don’t shoot” pose adopted by those protesting the police shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August.
Nationwide protests erupted last week after a grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson, who maintains Brown attacked him and tried to grab his firearm.
As you can imagine, the Rams’ protest did not go over all that well with the powers that be.
In a fiery statement released by the St. Louis Police Officers Association, business manager Jeff Roorda lambasted the players and demanded that somebody “throw a flag on this play. If it’s not the NFL and the Rams, then it’ll be cops and their supporters.
“Now that the evidence is in and Officer Wilson’s account has been verified by physical and ballistic evidence as well as eyewitness testimony, which led the grand jury to conclude that no probable cause existed that Wilson engaged in any wrongdoing, it is unthinkable that hometown athletes would so publicly perpetuate a narrative that has been disproven over and over again,” Roorda is quoted as saying.
It should come as no surprise that a police association statement would gloss over the fact that the public prosecutor’s bizarre handling of the case may have impacted the grand jury’s decision, that instances of grand juries refusing to indict are exceedingly rare, that Wilson’s account of the incident was just as questionable as those of the so-called unreliable eyewitnesses, or that an indictment would have allowed that supposedly unreliable eyewitness testimony to be tested in court.
But those omissions, and the threat of some unnamed penalty, do speak to the kind of tone-deaf approach to race relations that prompt actions like that of the Rams players undertook.
Even though the Brown shooting prompted this particular protest, it wasn’t just about that anyway. It called to mind the black power salute by American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, the Miami Heat donning hooded sweatshirts in support of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin (shot and killed while in possession of some Skittles and ice tea) and his family, and the L.A. Clippers dumping their team warm-up jackets at centre court and turning their shirts inside out after former owner Donald Sterling was caught on tape making racist comments. In each case, athletes were pushed to the limit by a society that, in many way, still treats black people like second-class citizens.
Yes, the Michael Brown shooting was the catalyst this time, but this was about a pernicious racism that still infects much of America. The killings of Brown and Martin and 12-year-old Tamir Rice — gunned down within seconds of his encounter with police officers on Nov. 22 — are certainly some of the worst examples, but the protest spoke to the kinds of attitudes that can also result in everyday annoyances for people just minding their own business.
On Monday, for example, a video circulating on social media showed a black man being stopped by police in Pontiac, Michigan, for walking down the street with his hands in his pockets (it was snowing outside). Said the officer: “Well, you’re making people nervous.” That man escaped unscathed, unlike Levar Jones, 35, who was shot Sept. 4 while reaching into his vehicle to retrieve his driver’s licence — after being asked by a police officer to get it. The last of the four shots fired at him came as he raised his hands high in the air.
And people wonder how the Rams could have the audacity to spoil everybody’s football fun by raising their own.