James Jones: ‘We have to wake up’
Yale coach says awareness of police brutality is essential
James Jones, the winningest coach in Yale basketball history, one of the most successful in Ivy League history, a familiar face in the New Haven area, goes running every day. And every day, he is reminded not of the content of his character.
“It happens all the time,” Jones said. “Most of the time I wave, I wave at other joggers. If the person is not of color, I rarely ever have anyone respond in kind. They don’t look at me. They just keep moving in another direction.
“It’s something I try not to think on, because you don’t understand people. I’m jogging in the opposite direction of you, what am I going to do, stop and try to have a conversation? What can I possibly do to hurt you? I’m not running away from anyone. I don’t have anything. It’s unfortunate.”
Like everyone with a soul and a shred of humanity, Jones said he was disgusted when he saw the video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin snuff the life from George Floyd.
“As time moves on, you start thinking about how much has it changed in this country?” Jones said. “Rodney King was 30 years ago and we’re still going through this today. Something that shouldn’t happen, can’t happen.
“People talk all the time that they want change, they want things to be better, but what are you willing to do about it? One way is to go out there and show support for the astonishing number of people that have been killed in this country for little or nothing. We have to wake up. People have to be aware that this is a problem, so it will change. Nobody wants this. I told people after George Floyd that before the summer is over somebody else is going to be killed by a police officer. Little did I know it would take only a few weeks.”
Jones, 56, is the son of a presser at a Long Island dry cleaner, a man who worked on his feet every
day, a man James has called the hardest worker he ever knew. He is the father of a 15-year-old son and he worries each time Quincy goes out. He remembers what his dad, Herman, used to tell him: “Don’t let anything stick to your hands.” There’s the perception a Black kid is going to steal something in a store.
“And that’s sad if that’s the way people look at you before they even know you,” Jones said.
He, too, is the brother of the head coach at Boston University. Joe Jones told the Boston Globe early in the month he had cried every day in the aftermath of the Floyd murder. As the coach at Yale, Jones doesn’t only deal with players, he deals with future leaders. And as a Black man, who already has walked twice in protests in the past month, his words about systemic racism and excessive force by the police are not plagues from different worlds. They are intertwined. And, yes, passed to succeeding generations.
Jones has seen the now-viral video that Stacey Pierre-Louis of Trumbull shared of his 10-yearold son, Eliah, hiding when he spotted a police car before resuming his basketball in the driveway when the cruiser passed. It was powerful enough for LeBron James to tweet, “Breaks my Heart.” The video had nothing really to do with Trumbull police, and everything to do with the fear a young Black child had of the police in general. Eliah doesn’t watch TV news, and Stacey said there is no negative talk about the police at home. Still, when Dad asked why he hid when he’d done nothing wrong, Eliah replied, “because they killed George Floyd.”
“It’s freaking awful,” Jones said. “It’s awful, but I understand why the kid thinks that way. How could you not? Who hasn’t seen the video or knows what happened with George Floyd? Listen, all this happens because of systemic racism that occurs in this country. That’s why. It all goes back 400 years with slavery. There are so many reasons why Black people commit crimes, but we don’t look at the reasons. We just want to blame the people.
“Every time these things happen, people who are against Black Lives Matter want to change the narrative. So it goes from Colin Kaepernick taking a knee to, ‘Oh, you’re disrespecting my flag.’ No, this has nothing to do with your flag, man. I’m not trying to disrespect the flag. As a matter of fact, Kaepernick went to a veteran (retired Green Beret Nate Boyer), and he told him he should take a knee. What’s disrespectful about taking a knee? He didn’t turn his back on the flag. He didn’t put a fist up like in the (1968) Olympics. He’s taking a freaking knee. But our president and people turned it into something else. It’s all smoke and mirrors. You don’t want to deal with the tough conversation about inequalities and racism, so you make it about something else.”
There has been so much reaction and analysis regarding what happened with Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta on June 12. What in God’s name led Chauvin to kneel on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes? Why were three cops holding down a man who wasn’t resisting? Why did Brooks, cooperative for a half-hour after being found asleep at a Wendy’s drivethrough, suddenly resist when being handcuffed? Why did a tussle ensue; why did Brooks, who’d been drinking, take one of the two cops’ tasers and start to run? Why, after Brooks halfturned around and shot the taser, did officer Garrett Rolfe feel compelled to shoot his gun three times, hitting a fleeing man twice in the back?
“The cops were called because (Brooks) was asleep in the car,” Jones said. “Now, does that threaten anybody’s life? If I’m a cop — again, I don’t know all what happened — but I would say, ‘You’re asleep in the car. It smells like you’ve been drinking. Can we call someone to come get you? I can’t let you drive the car.’ My job is to protect and serve. Why would it escalate to punches being thrown and a guy being shot to death? It makes no good sense to me. I don’t get it.
“Why would (Floyd) go sit in a Mercedes outside the store, long enough for the people from the store to come and ask for the cigarettes back and then stay there long enough for them to call police and long enough for the cops to come and try to arrest him? It’s $20. One of the officers, the one who killed him, knew George Floyd (from working at the same nightclub). I don’t know how that came into it. But you passed a bad 20 for a pack of cigarettes? Why are you dying because of that? And why are you dying because you’re running away from the police? That’s somebody’s son, somebody’s dad and he’s no longer with us because he fell asleep at a Wendy’s drive-through? C’mon! For those who don’t understand that, I pity them. They don’t want to understand.”
Jones stops for a moment. The statistics say 45 percent of the approximately 1,000 suspects killed each year by police gunfire are white, but the numbers don’t differentiate justified shootings from the unjustified ones.
“Where is the video of the white man getting shot by the police? I haven’t seen that, you know? That’s why you feel like this is against people who look like me. You can’t draw any other conclusion.
“I do think what’s different now and what happened with the previous protests after the murders of African Americans at the hands of police officers is that other races are involved. As an African American, it is heartwarming and surprising. I’m glad to see the country is outraged. I would suspect anyone who feels strongly about humanity is on the side of Black Lives Matter to figure out a way to make this better.”
So Yale’s winningest coach and daily runner is urging his players to find their voice.
“I have to worry about my 15-year-old son,” Jones said. “I hope they won’t have to worry about their sons, sons and daughters, whenever that happens. I’m trying to let them understand the importance of all this. There shouldn’t be any race, creed or color picked on, targeted by the police.”