Being silent on racism not an option to Wheeler
Jets captain says that white athletes must join fight with Black athletes
Blake Wheeler got a text from his dad the other day.
James Wheeler told his son about growing up in Detroit in the late1960s, when the city and country were wracked by race riots and deep, painful divisions in society.
“My generation didn’t get it right,” he wrote. “Hopefully, yours does.”
With that front of mind, Blake
Wheeler is done staying silent. The captain of the Winnipeg Jets wishes he’d spoken up sooner. Now, he wants to use his platform as a white professional athlete to push for change on the issues of racism and inequality.
After a Twitter post over the weekend following the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests across the United States — a message that included the phrase “America is not OK” — Wheeler said on a Tuesday video conference call that “you can’t be silent anymore.”
Wheeler said Floyd’s death — captured in graphic detail on video as a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into the 46-year-old Black man’s neck for nearly nine minutes, and the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in February — finally moved him to speak up.
“I haven’t done a good enough job in the past,” said Wheeler, who grew up in suburban Minneapolis. “I’ve felt this way for a long time, and I’m not going to pretend like it’s an easy thing to do. It’s not an easy thing to talk about.”
But he says he will: on social media, to reporters, to his young family. Wheeler and his wife Sam have three children. The youngest two don’t fully grasp what’s happening, he says, but seven-year-old Louie does.
“They watched George Floyd die on TV,” Wheeler said of his kids. “Louie, he’s asking, ‘Why won’t he get off his neck? Why won’t he get off his neck?’ And to have to explain that to him, to try to explain to him, to a sevenyear-old, that the police that he feels are out there to protect us and look out for us ... that that’s not always the case.
“That’s a hard conversation to have.”
Wheeler also feels a level of guilt. He watched along with the rest of the sports world in 2016 when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the national anthem before NFL games to peacefully protest police brutality and racial injustice.
“We have to be as involved in this as Black athletes,” Wheeler said. “It can’t just be their fight.”