Bruce Arthur
DeRozan and Lowry among Raptors who know all too well where the need to protest comes from
Racial tension hits close to home for Raptors,
The first time a police officer pulled a gun on DeMar DeRozan he was 15, he thinks; he and two friends were just riding bikes. Kyle Lowry had it happen too: he was 13, maybe, and he says they were just being kids. Fred VanVleet was 13 when he and his teenage older brothers were pulled over for speeding, and the police officer just pulled the gun out, didn’t point it at them, just held it as they spoke. VanVleet never forgot.
As sports has been pulled into the gasoline-and-matches soaked orbit of the President of the United States, the arguments are by their nature bigger, balder, stupider. Athletes are following Colin Kaepernick, and are protesting the flag! The anthem! The troops! The United States itself! So much yelling, so much anger, so much dishonesty. There’s a lot of pushpin, bumper-sticker patriotism going around.
But media day in the NBA was full of thoughtful reactions: LeBron James speaking eloquently and at length, and San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich too — “we have no clue what being white means” — and Washington’s John Wall, and more. It was a remarkable day in the NBA.
It was remarkable in Toronto, too. There was a lot to listen to. DeRozan, the Raptors all-star, grew up in Compton, Calif.
“I’ve had friends killed by police officers,” says DeRozan. “A couple days after being at my house, when I was young, and even recently. And it sucks, because even myself, I drive a nice car and I’m still being questioned: How you get this car? Do you do this, do you do that? And it’s not fair at the end of the day because I always think about, I have my kids in the car. You see all these incidents on the internet, with these officers doing things to people and it’s caught on camera, and they still have no repercussions. And they still get up the next day like, it’s just another day.”
Lowry, his fellow all-star, gets told this story. He nods.
“Yeah, it’s happened to me,” says Lowry, who grew up in north Philadelphia. “I haven’t been pulled over too many times, but I’ve been asked that question enough. ‘Whose car is this?’ It’s mine.
And knowing that you really want to say: FU, this is my s---, I paid for it, I’ve earned this. You can’t. Because you know it might not be the right thing to say. You don’t know how that cop’s day is going. They’re not all bad cops out there. There are many amazing patrolmen, patrolwomen out there. But you have to be careful, you do have these thoughts. You have to think: I have to be careful, and watch my ass.”
VanVleet grew up in Rockford, Ill., and lost his father to gun violence at age 5. His white mother tried to teach him, as best she could.
“I learned early on that when a cop pulls you over you turn the music off, you take your hat off, you take your glasses off, you put your hands on the wheel,” says Van Vleet, whose stepfather was a Black police officer. “Or, before he gets there, you have your registration ready so that when he gets there, you don’t have to reach. If you don’t feel comfortable, you say, I don’t want to grab it.”
Norman Powell grew up in San Diego. People don’t think San Diego is tough, but Norm says south San Diego, where he grew up, was.
“It was always: no sudden movements, be polite, be kind, always show your hands,” says Powell. “Like a safety protocol.”
They say Canada feels much safer, for the record. But they are millionaires, even famous, and they still worry if blue and red lights flash in the rearview mirror at home. They learned how to be careful from their parents, because their parents grew up Black in America, too.
“It’s no secret: in urban cities and places, you’re taught a fear of the police from day one,” says veteran swingman C.J. Miles. “Even if you haven’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t a criminal, but at the same time you see the police and think, I have to get to a different place.”
“Yeah, I could go on for days with that,” says DeRozan, asked about the LAPD. “It was tough when it came to the police. Seeing ’em, not wanting to look ’em in the eye, because you didn’t want to get questioned. You see ’em, you go in the house. It’s the way we grew up, to where it became like we was hiding or running from something, even if you didn’t do anything, just because you didn’t want to get hassled or get harassed for something you didn’t do.”
“I can remember nights of walking down the street and getting pulled over, or driving with a group of my friends and being suspected of being gang members, or on Halloween, we were trying to beat the crossing light and a police car pulls up and tells us to get on the ground,” says Powell. “You know? Don’t move. We weren’t doing anything. Tenth grade. It was Halloween, and we were told to get on the ground. We were judged on our appearance, on our look. It’s reality. And you deal with it.
“But it’s always been a worry. It’s still a worry for me now, when I go back home.”
That’s what Kaepernick was protesting, and it became what hundreds of NFL players were protesting. Beyond Donald Trump, the buffoon, that’s what NBA players are talking about, with the support of the league and of management.
“My reaction is I like the players’ reaction,” said Raptors president Masai Ujiri. “I like LeBron’s reaction. I like (Steph) Curry’s re- action. I like Kobe (Bryant’s) reaction.”
So when people talk about politics, about unity, about having a platform and a voice, what they are saying is this: America should treat Black people — or a great number of other visible minorities, while we’re on the subject — the same way whites are treated when it comes to law enforcement, sentencing, everything. They have seen the videos of Philando Castile, of Tamir Rice, of Alton Sterling, on and on. Coach Dwane Casey grew up in segregated Kentucky schools until the fourth grade, and he feels like America is sliding back to where it was in the 1960s. This is where they are.
“It’s crazy and it’s sad that I didn’t know until I got older,” says VanVleet. “Because you’re used to it. You think it’s normal for cops to stop you for no reason. You think it’s normal for people to discriminate. As Black people we have become accustomed to it, to deal with it.”
We should listen to them. The Raptors say they haven’t decided if or how to make a statement, but we should listen to why they would, why it’s about more than some loudmouth bum of a president. NBA players want that to change: for themselves, and for their children. Of course, their parents did too. That’s why they taught them to fear the police, to watch out, to be careful. Because they loved their children, and wanted them to be safe.