This time, the movement for racial equality may endure
My gut tells me this is different. After a lifetime watching and protesting incidents of racial injustice and hatred, I feel like it’s possible, just possible, we may have reached a point where real change can be sustained.
Like the rest of America and now the world, I have been outraged by the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. I watch the huge protests. I am encouraged by the athletes, coaches, teams and leagues that have raised their voices with strong calls for an attack on racism and hate.
More than ever before I see very diverse crowds in those demonstrations and I hear white people talking about to people of color. I think we finally realized as white people we really don’t know what it’s like to be black in America.
In 1978, I was the American leader of the sports boycott of apartheid South Africa. After leading protest demonstrations for four days in Tennessee, where a South African team was headed, I was working late in my college office in Virginia when two men wearing stocking masks attacked me. They caused liver and kidney damage, a hernia, a concussion and used scissors to carve the “N-word” on my stomach.
Some people suggested, “Now you know what it’s like to be black.” I told them, “I really don’t know because I can walk away from the fight against racism and rejoin the white middle-class. I will never face the daily discrimination that confronts people of color every day.” We can never totally understand that reality.
With so much emphasis on police brutality, I hope people don’t lose sight of the fact that this is not totally what this is about. Racism stains every fabric of American society. People call it a broken system but I wonder if the system wasn’t designed throughout our history to produce exactly the situation we live in today regarding race. I think we must break this system that has resulted and what we live with every day.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the United States has more than 1,000 hate groups. White nationalist groups have grown by 55% in the Trump era. Some of our children are learning how to hate.
According to the FBI there were 4,571 incidents classified as hate crimes in 2019. The report states that more than half of all hate-crime victims never file a complaint.
My generation witnessed all of the murders during the civil rights era. It was awful and forever changed many of us. We read about it and saw still photographs. The same was true for racial attacks that occurred for the next 40 years. There were always demonstrations and calls for change. Little did change because the movements were never sustained.
The reason why my gut tells me this may be different is that I believe Generation Z and Millennials are more compassionate, passionate and open to a just society than previous generations.
This generation is bearing witness to racial hate captured on smartphones and repeated over and over in their social media accounts as well as in the news.
Another reason is the diversity of the protesters and that they are really grasping the underlying sentiment of what “black lives matter” really means. They have the technology of smartphones and social media to sustain the movement. .
Finally, sports, which among the athletes is America’s most diverse workplace, we have athletes — student-athletes and pros — of all races speaking largely with unified voices. They are being joined by coaches, teams, leagues and college athletic departments. Collectively, they need to hold leadership and people in power accountable on this issue.
They need to engage their communities, especially where there are communities of color. Like everyone else, teams and athletes need to listen to youth and invest in their future. As it always does, sport has the potential to heal divisions and bring communities together.
I hope my gut is right and that we have really reached a moment when we can bring about change that creates a new, just system. If some children have learned how to hate, we can teach them how to love again.